The Electoral College is a failure of democracy

Throughout modern politics, we have seen presidential candidates fail to grasp the electoral votes, despite having the popular vote. Most recently, we have seen this with Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election cycle against Donald Trump, but as many know, this is not the only time that the most popular candidate did not receive the nomination.

In November of 2000, the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush ended nearly in a tie, only to be decided by one state. Ultimately, while Gore was more popular, Bush won. So, what causes this dissonance between who is the most popular and who is elected?

The answer lies within the complicated mathematics of the Electoral College. Despite statistics that very distinctively tell which candidates are most popular, the country still resorts to a pledged delegate system, allocating states to a particular number of electoral votes that then count against a total of 538. For example, Pennsylvania currently has 20 electoral votes in the electoral college, while California has 55. The problem with separating votes in such a manner is that it truly does not make every vote equal: everyone contributes to a different percentage to that final sum.

For proof, consider the two states mentioned above. Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes contribute to approximately 3.71% of all total votes in the electoral college. Further split that percentage between the amount of voters in the election by summing Donald Trump’s 2,912,941 votes and Hillary Clinton’s 2,844,705 votes in Pennsylvania, we find that each person’s vote in Pennsylvania contributes to approximately 6.4436 * 10^-9 percent of the electoral vote.

Okay, that’s a very small number, but compare that number to the situation in California: Since California has 55 electoral votes, that means California contributes to 10.22% of all 538 electoral votes. Dividing that number by the sum of Clinton’s 5,637,955 votes and Trump’s 3,034,901 votes, we find that each vote in California represents 1.1787 * 10^-8 percent of the electoral votes. Conclusively, while these numbers are very small, Californian voters are accounted for more than Pennsylvanian voters: 1.82 times more, actually.

Now, there are other potential scenarios to prove why the Electoral College system does not work. Take the states of Pennsylvania and California again. Using the numbers mentioned above, Trump beat Clinton by 68,236 votes in Pennsylvania. In California, Clinton beat Trump by a margin of 2,603,054. Hypothetically speaking, if 68,237 Clinton supporters from California voted in Pennsylvania, Trump would have lost 20 electoral votes, and Clinton would have gained those 20. And, Clinton still would have kept California.

What this math shows is that the Electoral College does not represent every citizen of the United States equally: rather, it favors certain states over another, and ultimately, votes in certain states count more.

While this math could be slightly different if every single person in the population voted, that is not a reality; predetermined division in our electoral system does not work. The Electoral College was originally meant so that each state was represented fairly in presidential elections, and unfortunately, it no longer treats everyone equally.

Trump was very lucky in this election– the percentages in each state worked in his favor. But if each and every single vote was represented equally, along with an abolished electoral college, the popular vote may indeed be represented once again.