US Electoral College: Key Insights Into The Process Of Presidential Elections

One of the unusual and often misunderstood roles of government in deciding who will become US President is played by the US Electoral College. 

That means that election season is always a time to take a disproportionate weighting of a small group of voters from one or a few states. In the 2024 US election, for example, political attention is focused on 150,000 of the 160 million eligible voters. 

Why does the system operate like this? If you want to actually understand, you have to break down how the US Electoral College works and why some voters are more important than others.

The Focus on Swing States

You may have noticed that certain states are more frequently at the front of US politics headlines, and near elections. Political coverage almost always focuses on states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

The voting populace of these states are not solid in one political party and are therefore considered politically unsure, or ‘swing states’ (‘battleground states’).

This is why these US states are focusing so much on a relatively small number of voters — because of the mechanics of the US Electoral College. The national election, featuring millions of voters across 50 states, and seven territories, and the District of Columbia, is, curiously enough, hyperfocused on the voters in one or two, if not just one region. 

Or is this because these voters are undecided between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as could be expected in 2024? Yes! But they’re not the only undecided voters in the country.

Why is Location Important in the US Electoral College?

The election does not end with the winner of the popular vote — the US Electoral College can see a candidate win the majority of votes nationally but lose the presidency. Instead, electoral votes are distributed by state, and the system relies on them. These 150,000 voters are significant because they are in these cities.  

Electors are these appointed people who represent each state in the US Electoral College and these votes come from electors. Population size determines how many electors a state gets based on congressional representatives and senators, and those in turn represent congressional representatives and senators as well. 

That means bigger states get more electoral votes, but those votes are awarded as a result of the winner-takes-it-all system. Therefore, even a narrow election victory, especially in a swing state, can result in an undeniable electoral win.

What is the US Electoral College?

The US Electoral College is an elector body established under the US Constitution appointed only to select the president and vice president. This seems complicated, but it’s really not. 

According to each state’s Congressional representation, the number of electors each state will get is assigned.  Say, California population wise has 55 electoral votes, while Wyoming has only 3.

This makes the system complex because the Constitution permits each state to pick whom it chooses to elect. The selection of administrators was initially left to the states but as political parties developed, selection came to be dependent upon party interests. 

But the US Electoral College became so powerful that political leaders came to use the process to elect their candidates. Thomas Jefferson wanted Virginia to adopt a system for statewide selection of electors, which would almost certainly have secured his presidency in 1800.  

James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” preferred a district-based system, in which electors would be chosen from each Congressional district rather than statewide. Yet these early debates did not stop the adoption of the winner takes all approach that is now used by almost all states today.

The History of the US Electoral College’s Impact

Many pivotal moments in the history of the US have been casted by its US Electoral College. The nation first held an election where the winner of the popular vote did not become President, in 1824.

None of the four opponents of Andrew Jackson received enough popular and Electoral College votes to win the presidency outright. That left the election to the House of Representatives, which picked John Quincy Adams.

The next time Edward Randolf was elected President, followed by the election of Andrew Jackson, who allowed Jackson’s election and called upon reforms of the US Electoral College system after his win. However, efforts to amend or replace the system were stymied by another controversial part of the US Constitution: the Three-fifths Compromise. 

This provision counted enslaved people as ‘three fifths of a person’ for purposes of representation, thereby diluting the power of the northern states in the electoral college by far more than splitting the power of the southern states.

Urban vs. Rural Influence

The US Electoral College is also divided by urban and rural areas. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries industrialization and immigration added enormously rapidly to urban populations. 

Yet when Congress put an end to all complaints about the size of the House at 435 in 1929, it restricted the representation of these growing populations. This led to cities being a part of larger Congressional districts while smaller states retained an ill fit within the Electoral College.

Now, this imbalance is unclear. When you have small populations states, say Wyoming or Vermont, that have the same number of electoral weight as bigger, more populous states. In fact, that’s actually resulted in quite a few examples where the winning presidential candidate doesn’t have the majority of the popular vote. It also includes historical examples, such as 1824 Adams, 1876 Hayes, 2000 Bush, and 2016 Trump elect.

The Call for Reform

After these disparities, there has been a growing push to reform the US Electoral College. Activists in the National Popular Vote movement have pushed for changes to the system that would better reflect the popular vote since 2006. 

Instead, pushing for a constitutional amendment, which would be hard to get through the political struggles, they want state laws passed that would shift their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote.

Success with this movement has already been had. The National Popular Vote, has been passed into law as of today by 17 states totaling 209 electoral votes. But these laws won’t go into effect until enough states, totaling more than 270 (no more, no less, of the US Electoral College) pass something similar.

The Road Ahead for Voters

While there are still efforts to remake the US Electoral College, and these efforts may in fact succeed in a future election, it is unlikely that any change would affect the 2024 outcome. Rather, focus will remain on the 150,000 important swing voters in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, putting the divide between those voters and those in other states in sharp contrast.

The US Electoral System is ultimately a geographic parlour game that gives greater weight to geography than to national consensus. Whether this is a flaw or a feature depends on your perspective, but one thing is clear: The keys to the White House will continue to reside in the hands of certain voters in certain states as long as the system is in place.

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