The Electoral College sucks. Full disclosure. My opinion is that it is completely undemocratic specifically due to the inherent disproportional over-representation of small states. Obviously this institutional disenfranchisement of large states is directly due to how we arrive at 538 electors in the college. Each House and Senate seat gets an equivalent elector which automatically results in over representation of small states. House seats are based on population. Every state gets 2 senate seats regardless of population, and therefore it is easy to recognize that California’s 2 senate members are representing far more human beings in their state than the senate members of South Dakota. Its an inherently unfair system.
That editorial aside, I took the liberty of crunching some numbers in excel to see what would have happened if we lived in an alternate universe where voter equality was important and we attempted to achieve a fair national election. Here are the potential models as I see them:
- Status Quo (538 Members of the Electoral College with a Race to 270)
- Winner take all (National Popular vote)
- Maintain 538 EC Members but distribute the votes based on state by state proportional vote (IE in a state with 20 EC votes, Candidate 1 gets 75% and therefore receives 15 EC votes)
- Restructure the EC so that we remove the superfluous (50 states plus DC ) EC votes based on Senate representation. This would leave us with an EC made up of 436 members (based on House of Rep allocation plus 1 for DC) and therefore a race to 219 rather than 270. Maintain the “winner take all approach” for each state. It would limit the under representation of largely populated states yet maintain the use of the EC.
- Go with that 436 member EC but remove the “winner take all” aspect and instead allocate votes proportionally on state by state basis.
- 1 state, 1 vote. I only include this because I heard it mentioned on public radio this morning. I won’t spend any time on it because it is completely stupid.
So what would have happened under these alternate models? Lets take a look:
- Winner take all National Popular vote: HRC Wins (62,067,156 to 61,041,102 at last check on green papers)
- Race to 270 with State by State proportional distribution of votes: Neither Candidate gets to 270. HRC secures 256. Trump gets 252. Now, this spins the conversation into whether we continue to allow the House to select the president if no one reaches 270 or if we elect whichever candidate secures the most EC votes.
- Race to 219 (based on the new size of the EC being 436 to eliminate the disproportionate representation between large and small states but maintaining a “winner take all” state approach: Trump still wins 245-191.
- Race to 219 (but proportional state by state allocation of their votes): Neither candidate gets to 219, but HRC leads 211-203.
So, I think in walking through this exercise, if it shows one thing, its that winners and losers can be decided by how we choose to count the results. HRC wins a popular vote and gets more EC votes if the states simply allocate their votes based on their statewide vote rather than using a “winner take all” model. Personally, I support a national popular vote. Its clean. Its fair. What else could a person want when it comes to something this important?
Now, I am no expert mathematician, so I encourage all the math nerds out there to pick this apart, but I think its safe to say that this vestigial system needs to be seriously discussed an hopefully removed.