President-elect Joe Biden won the popular vote, but it is the electoral votes that matter due to the Electoral College system.
The electoral college is made up of a number of electors from each state, corresponding to their number of lawmakers in Congress. Each state has two senators and a minimum of three votes overall. There are 538 electors in total- each one representing a vote. A candidate needs a minimum of 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Most of the time, states give all their Electoral College votes to whoever won the popular vote. For example, in Georgia, if Candidate A wins by a very small margin, all 16 of it’s electoral votes would go to that candidate, as they would with a larger margin, making it possible for the candidate who received less votes to win, as in 2016. Maine and Nebraska, however, separate their electoral college votes into congressional districts and the winner of the popular vote. Members of the electoral college are permitted to vote for whoever they want in some states, but they almost always vote for who their state picked.
In effect, less populated states are overrepresented while larger populations are underrepresented. California’s ratio of one electoral vote to people is 1: 718,000, while Wyoming’s ratio is 1: 193,000, so an electoral vote in California represents more than three times as many people as an electoral vote from Wyoming. Professor Edwards III at Texas A&M University claims this ‘violates the core tenet of democracy, that all votes count equally,’ and that it ‘favours Republicans’ due to distribution of votes.
Why this system? In 1787, a popular voting system nation-wide was impossible to achieve. Smaller states preferred the electoral college system, as it gave them more of a voice. Southern states particularly favoured this system, given to a large proportion of their population being slaves, counted as ⅗ of a person in the US census.
What system do you think would work better?
Written by Anoushka Joshi
Artwork by Zara Masood
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