Thoughts on the Electoral College
Updated: May 3, 2025
The Electoral College, whether you like it or not, has saved us from some weak presidents. (At least, that was the case up until the current moron in the White House – either time.)
There are two main problems with the Electoral College. The first is that it is too small, in two ways. Firstly, the number of Representatives in the House has been fixed for more than 100 years, and the population has grown and shifted among the states enough that the Representative proportions set in 1910 no longer reflect the population distribution today. The number of Electors is equal to the total number of Representatives and Senators. In the frequently cited example of Wyoming and California, Wyoming’s 3 Electors are set by 2 Senators and 1 Representative. That single Representative serves all 584,153 citizens of Wyoming. To maintain that proportion, California should have a total of 66 Representatives in the House, rather than 53, and a total of 68 Electoral votes. Extending that proportion across the United States (assuming a population of 328,504,837, estimated by Worldometers) indicates that the House should have 563 Representatives rather than the existing limit of 435, which in turn indicates a total Electoral count of 663 Electors.
The second way the Electoral College is too small is simply that a single Representative can’t expect to adequately serve half a million people. When the number of Representatives was fixed at 435 in 1911, each Representative served an average of about 212,000 citizens. Simply applying that proportion to today’s population alone would more than triple the current size of the House, and by extension the current number of Electors. (And it’s still too few, in my opinion.)
The other problem with the Electoral College is the way the electoral votes are awarded by each state. Almost all of the states use a winner-takes-all model, in which the majority winner of each state gets all of that state’s electoral votes. Two states – Maine and Nebraska – award their electoral votes proportionally, with the statewide winner getting the 2 electoral votes representing the Senators, while the electoral votes representing the Representatives are awarded according to the majority vote in each House district. If all the states took this approach, the electoral vote would mirror the popular vote MUCH more closely. The disadvantage with this approach, however, is that it becomes possible for a situation in which no single candidate garners a majority of the electoral vote. Under the current law, the House would then decide the election, which in my opinion isn’t desirable in this day and age. We would be better off disposing of the primary / caucus system and utilizing a runoff ballot (e.g., 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice) in each state.
Drop yer $0.02... you know you want to!
(Note -- email addresses are kept private.)
