The Electoral College Is Unfair To Democrats, Republicans & All Of Us
We need to figure out a way to end this dinosaur political equivalent of Russian Roulette
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
In December, 2020 I published this column:
The Electoral College Delivers Unpredictable, Almost Random Results, But It Can Be Fixed — Our Systems Of Justice, Government, Finance, Etc. Need To Deliver Predictable Results
Upon further consideration I’ve concluded that my proposed fix was equivalent to applying heroic measures to save a terminally-ill 95-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. In the long run it was probably going to create as many new problems as the old ones it was going to alleviate.
The Electoral College’s Bias In Favor Of The Citizens Of Low Population States
Each state has two senators no matter how small or large the population, and each state has a number of members of the House of Representatives, generally in proportion to the state’s population. I say “generally” because no matter how small a state’s population, it will always elect at least one member of the House.
The fairness of the Electoral College is flawed from the get-go because the 538 electoral college votes are only about 81% based on the number of citizens in the states delivering those votes while about 19% of the electoral votes are awarded to states irrespective of their their population.
If a state’s electoral votes matched the state’s population Wyoming would cast one electoral vote instead of three. In 2020 each citizen of Wyoming essentially got three votes for President while each citizen of California got only one vote.
Sometimes This Unfairness Benefits The GOP & Sometimes It Helps The Dems
If you’re a Republican and you might think that the Electoral College’s bias in favor of low-population states is good for you because California votes mostly Democrat while Wyoming votes mostly Republican, BUT remember that this same unfairness in allocating voting power also increases the voting power of the citizens of New Mexico and Rhode Island who generally vote for Democrats while it reduces the voice of the citizens of Texas and Florida who generally vote for Republicans.
The fact is that not all low-population states vote Republican and not all high-population states vote Democrat, and that makes the Electoral College randomly unfair to everyone.
2016 Presidential Election
Clinton (Clinton/Trump popular vote) — 51.1%
Clinton’s Percentage of Electoral Votes — 43.1%
Trump (Clinton/Trump popular vote) — 48.9%
Trump’s Percentage of Electoral Votes — 56.9%
In 2016 the candidate that got 3 million more popular votes received only about 43% of the electoral votes and the candidate that got 3 million fewer popular votes received almost 57% of the electoral votes.
In 2016, the weird machinations of the Electoral College benefited the Republican.
2020 Presidential Election
Biden (Biden/Trump popular vote) — — 52.3%
Biden’s Percentage of Electoral Votes — 56.9%
Trump (Biden/Trump popular vote) — — 47.7%
Trump’s Percentage of Electoral Votes — 43.1%
In 2020 Biden’s 52.3% of the popular vote gained him almost 57% of the electoral votes and Trump’s almost 48% of the popular vote got him only 43.1% of the electoral votes.
In 2020 the Electoral College intricacies flip-flopped to increase Biden’s winning percentage over and above his percentage of the popular vote.
If Electoral College Votes Were Awarded In Proportion To The National Popular Vote
2016
E Votes Based on Pop. Vote — — — — — — Actual Electoral Votes
Clinton — 275 Electoral Votes…………….227 Electoral Votes
E Votes Based On Pop. Vote — — — — — — Actual Electoral Votes
Trump — 263 Electoral Votes………………304 Electoral Votes
2020
E. Votes Based On Pop. Vote — — — — — —Actual Electoral Votes
Biden — 281 Electoral Votes………………306 Electoral Votes
E. Votes Based On Pop. Vote — — — — — — Actual Electoral Votes
Trump — 257 ……………………….………….232 Electoral Votes
In 2020 we had the same candidate, Trump, who received almost the same percentage of the popular vote, 48.9% (2016) vs. 47.7% (2020), but Trump’s electoral votes declined from almost 57% in 2016 all the way down to roughly 43% of the electoral votes in 2020.
An Unreliable System
Talk about crazy math and disconnected results. No one today would design such an unreliable, unpredictable, biased and almost random system for electing our President.
If Electoral Votes Were Awarded Proportionally Within Each State
Back in my December 2020 column I recalculated what the electoral vote totals would have been if the electoral votes were awarded in proportion to the votes within a state, that is, if a state had 20 electoral votes and one candidate got 60% of that state’s popular vote then s/he would get 60% (12) of that state’s electoral votes.
2016 — — Proportional Allocation — — Actual Electoral Votes
Clinton — 275 …………………………..…….227
Trump — 263………………………..…….....304
2020 — — Proportional Allocation— — Actual Electoral Votes
Biden -— 277 ………………………...………306
Trump — 261 ……………………………..…..232
What If We Removed The Electoral Votes Based On Senate Membership?
Of course, one of the factors that makes the electoral college system unbalanced is the addition of 2 electoral votes to each state over and above the electoral votes the state would have if they were based solely on the state’s population.
If We Had Electoral Votes Based Only On The Number Of Members Of Congress
So, I asked myself, “What would happen if the current system was modified to remove the extra two votes based on Senate membership so that the total number of electoral votes was 438 instead of 538?”
438 Electoral Votes — Percent…438 Electoral Votes — Percent
2020 Biden — 256 ……….58.4% ……Trump — 182 …..……41.6%
If the total number of electoral votes in 2020 was 438 instead of 538 then Biden’s 52.9% of the popular vote would have rocketed him up to 58.4% (256/438) of the electoral votes and Trump’s 47.7% of the popular vote would have crammed him down to only 41.6% (182/438) of the electoral votes.
Not having those two extra Senate-based electoral votes per state actually would have increased Biden’s electoral vote percentage from 56.9% under the current 538 system UP to 58.4% under a 438 system, and it would have reduced Trump’s 43.1% of electoral votes down to only 41.6% of electoral votes.
The Electoral College Is Random, Unreliable, & Difficult To Impossible To Fix
Can we agree that the current electoral college system is unstable, unpredictable, and unreliable? It sometimes grants a disproportionate number of votes to the big-population urban-state Democrat candidate and sometimes it helps the small-population rural-state Republican candidate.
It’s the political version of Russian Roulette.
Awarding each state’s electoral votes in proportion to each candidate’s popular vote within that state, as I previously suggested, does result in the winner of the popular vote also winning the electoral vote, but it takes the election from the clear-winner and the clear-loser contest that we would have under a pure national popular vote system to many more exceptionally close, long-delayed, litigation-inspiring contests.
There would be an incentive to litigate every vote in every congressional district in every state.
That doesn’t help anyone.
Options?
So, we can
- keep the Electoral College, but with a proportional allocation that would add an additional layer of complications, calculations and litigation akin to applying heroic measures to keep alive a terminally-ill patient, or
- we can simply decide to award electoral votes based on the total national popular vote in which case Biden would have gotten 52.9% X 538 = 285 (vs the 306 he got under the present system) and Trump would have received 253 vs. the 232 that the current system gave him.
And yes, that would make the Electoral College irrelevant, but cosmetically it might be a less bitter pill for people to swallow than eliminating the Electoral College entirely.
And, also yes, it would require a constitutional amendment. I know — good luck with that.
Right now the Electoral College is in full-on dementia spouting “I love Republicans” one election and “I love Democrats” the next, with little reason to give credence to either proclamation.
Will Increasing The Number Of Electoral Votes Help?
In his column The Real Reason Al Gore Lost the 2000 Election Dustin Arand pointed out that the first Congress had one Congress member for every 60,000 citizens; Great Britain has one member of Parliament for every 103,000 people, and Germany has one member of their parliament for every 140,500 people while the U.S. has one member of Congress for about every 758,300 people.
Arand mentioned that political scientist Arend Lijphart believed that the optimal size for a legislature is the cube root of the population it represents. Under that formula there should be 691 members of Congress which would expand the electoral college today to 795 (4 for D.C.).
This would have given the high- population states more electoral votes (California 86) while the electoral votes of low-population states would stay the same (Wyoming 3).
If in 2016 and 2020 this change would have resulted in the winner of the popular vote winning the electoral vote with the percentage of electoral votes for each candidate roughly equal to their percentage of the popular vote then I would support this change. If not, then not.
Someone would need to perform some fairly tedious calculations to answer that question for both the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.
And The Answer is . . . ?
So, how do we fix this mess?
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
