Many Americans don’t want to hear it, but the Electoral College is a uniquely damaging system that wildly distorts the will of the voter, yields crazy outcomes and suppresses participation—since most of us live in places where the outcome is preordained.
It also makes the United States into a global joke for seeming unable to hold a reasonable election. I’ve been involved in covering perhaps 100 countries as a foreign correspondent, and can safely say that among democracies, none has a system that’s anywhere near as berserk.
Because of it, former President Donald Trump may well will win Tuesday’s election while receiving far fewer votes than Vice President Kamala Harris, and it would mark the third time in seven rounds (after 2000 and 2016) that this has happened. That’s because, as every child knows, the “popular vote” doesn’t mean anything. You know what’s a synonym for the “popular vote”? The “vote”—and in every other democracy it means a lot.
This has fueled widespread dissatisfaction, with polls showing around 60 percent in favor of a national popular vote for president. And yet, most people also think such a change cannot be made—a disgracefully undemocratic predicament.
How did we get here?
The Electoral College was established in 1787 during the Constitutional Convention, when there were just 13 states forming a union—the original colonies that declared independence from Britain. And almost every one of the reasons for it no longer applies—beginning with the main goal of balancing influence between populous and less-populous states. The thinking was that since every state held its own election, slightly overrepresenting the somewhat smaller candidates would compel candidates to pay attention to them.
But, for starters, mass communication has made personal campaigning less important now. And even more importantly, the massive concentrations of support now mean that all but a handful of “battleground states” will always vote a certain way and under this system can be ignored. And the states that happen to “benefit”—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and some others—are not generally the smaller ones at all. Those, contrary to the plan, can safely be ignored, and are.
Absurdly, also safely ignored are voters in the three largest cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago; candidates have no incentive to campaign in these urban centers because the states they’re in are reliably Democratic. In a direct election, where every vote counts, American presidential candidates would make appearances there as French ones do in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille.
Secondly, the elitist framers feared “mob rule” and wanted a buffer between the public and the outcome, trusting electors to make an informed choice. Yet the electors now are not directly relevant, except if an election is tied. They don’t make choices but rather are human stand-ins for what are, essentially, the “points” awarded by the states.
The system was also designed to preserve the states as distinct entities, reflecting the federal system. That might sound right, and it certainly reflected the hesitation the 13 colonies felt in establishing a single nation. But it is wildly out of sync with reality now.
The United States is a country—one with a claim to being the world’s most important—even if there exist local and regional peculiarities, as anywhere. Many a Frenchman is proud of Provence, but they’re still French; an American might feel affinity to New Jersey, but with few exceptions, the primary affiliation is to the country and not to the state.
The last reason for the system was logistical: At the time, travel and communication limitations made a direct national popular vote challenging. But now, precisely the opposite is true. Having a simple common system would remove the frictions caused by every state having different schemes that allow for different shenanigans, a la Florida’s hanging chads.
Moreover, at the time the Electoral College was devised, there weren’t such huge disparities in the size of the states. Virginia was almost twice as populous as number two Pennsylvania, but only about 10 times larger than Delaware, the smallest state.
Compare that to today, when California, home to 39 million people, is 67 times larger than Wyoming. But because of the way the number of electors is calculated, it has only 18 times the number of electoral votes (54 versus the minimum three). This means a vote in Wyoming is worth, mathematically, almost four votes in California. Like allowing any nut to buy assault rifles, this is unique in the world, and not in a good way. It is a fundamental, in-your-face violation of the basic democratic principle of “one person, one vote.”
The Senate, which is more powerful than the presidency in that it can remove the president, is even worse. Because of the same exaggerated respect for states, each elects two of the 100 senators. This means a Senate vote in Wyoming is worth 67 in California, and that the 25 smallest states, with about 18 percent of the national population, can control the Senate. Since the vast majority of those smaller states are reliably Republican, since that party appeals most to rural voters, this means the system is rigged heavily in favor of that party.
Other countries with district-based systems also face distortions, if support is “wasted” by hyper-concentration in certain areas. So, it is in Britain—but the outcomes there are never as crazy as in America, because at least the districts are roughly the same size.
There’s almost no way to change this madness, because it attaches to the Constitution, and amendments must be ratified by three-quarters of the states—meaning many of the reliably red states would have to agree to end their own privilege.
It isn’t sustainable. It seems too unfair, and will cause too much frustration in Blue America, which disproportionately creates the nation’s wealth (Brookings found that counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 accounted for 70 percent of the U.S. GDP).
Should current patterns continue, expect secession talk from the overwhelmingly Democratic Pacific and Northeast regions. How long will they tolerate Republican obstruction of gun control or health care reform, or maybe a national abortion ban? Since secession requires a nearly impossible constitutional amendment, it may get violent.
There is one conceivable way out: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This strangely underreported initiative offers a practical solution without needing to amend the Constitution: It is an agreement among states to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, regardless of state vote. The compact only takes effect when enough states join to reach the 270 electoral votes required to win.
As of 2024, the NPVIC has been enacted in 16 states and Washington, D.C., collectively representing 209 electoral votes. It has gained traction in large blue states like California and New York, but also in smaller states like Vermont and Delaware. To activate the compact, an additional 61 electoral votes are needed. States targeted for potential inclusion in the compact are Minnesota (10 electoral votes), Nevada (6 electoral votes), Maine (4 electoral votes), and Michigan (15 electoral votes). Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), though a crucial state in this discussion, has seen efforts to pass NPVIC legislation repeatedly stall in the state legislature despite some public support.
Pennsylvania’s hesitation reflects a larger national trend: swing states, which currently enjoy disproportionate influence in presidential elections, are resistant to the compact. But if it prevails, the NPVIC would mean that every vote counted, and the winner would be the person who attracted the most support. It would also mean that rather than focusing exclusively on swing states, candidates would be forced to appeal to voters nationwide, including in smaller states that aren’t swing states—as the framers had hoped!
As the country grapples with polarization and declining trust in institutions, this could help restore faith in politics. And since the NPVIC offers the only solution, and since people are people, I have one piece of emphatic advice: Seek ye a catchier name!
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former Chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and the author of two books. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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