Every four years, Americans practice some special kind of math.

No other country still uses a system like the Electoral College to select a national executive through indirect voting.

It was written into the Constitution as a compromise between having Congress choose the president and a popular vote – unheard of in 1788.

Today, its practical implications depend on the allocation of electoral votes that reflect the size of each state’s congressional delegation, inherently reducing the impact of large population centers. That’s by design, but the country has grown and evolved over the past two centuries, expanding the vote to include most adult citizens.

Is the Electoral College still an essential measure to protect small states and pluralism? Or an anachronism that makes America less democratic?

Protecting the few

The Electoral College is a triumph of federalism that has produced clear mandates and peaceful transfers of power for two centuries. As a buffer between the people and the presidency, it counters demagoguery, cronyism and regional political machines, while strengthening coalitions and protecting our pluralistic society against the tyranny of the majority. It requires candidates to consider both the many and the few.

In a popular vote, cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago would dominate the elections and reform policies in their favor. The distribution of electoral votes protects smaller states and rural areas from this fate. The rise of swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania may be controversial, but it is not unhealthy.

“Battlefield states are not a perfect microcosm of America,” says Audrey Perry Martin, an election law expert and fellow at the Federalist Society, “but they are much closer than huge population centers.”

No region has enough electoral votes to secure the presidency, so candidates must build diverse geographic coalitions that can strengthen minority voting blocs. Workers played a major role in liberating Michigan in 2016. Latter-day Saint women helped decide Arizona in 2020. This year, Georgia will likely rely on Black voters, who make up just 30% of the population.

“By encouraging candidates to form broad coalitions, the Electoral College ensures that the interests of minority groups are taken into account,” says Martin.

One problem this system prevents is runoff elections. If a popular vote is too close, or if no candidate wins a 50% majority, additional rounds of voting could push some democracies into a precarious situation. But here, candidates can obtain clear mandates even if third parties split the popular vote, as happened in 1992. Only once in US history has no candidate reached the 270 electoral vote threshold needed for victory.

Finally, the Electoral College is much more balanced than it seems, even taking into account flaws in its design or dark influences on its origins. While theoretically smaller states are favored, the widespread winner-take-all accounting method means that large states like Texas or Florida can deliver outsized electoral gains with small changes in the popular vote. They are in no danger of being forgotten if small states make their voices heard.

One person, one vote

Many Americans are dissatisfied with the Electoral College, but that is nothing new. In the 1960s, civil rights activists saw it as a tool to preserve the old political order they opposed. In 1970, it took a filibuster by Southern senators to kill a largely bipartisan constitutional amendment that would have led to a popular vote, after an uncomfortably close outcome in the 1968 election. In 2000 and 2016, this outdated process produced presidents who won despite losing the popular vote. No wonder a 2023 Pew survey found that 65% favor direct voting.

The Electoral College responded to a question that is now thankfully obsolete: how to represent the enslaved population in the Southern states. As Founding Father James Madison put it, “the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty, and seemed on the whole to meet with the least objection.” Together with the regrettable Three-Fifths Compromise, which increased that region’s congressional representation, it gave much more weight to voters in presidential elections. Today it has a similar effect for all rural states.

In 1790, 95% of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, 80% live in cities, concentrated in coastal states. One effect is that a vote in sparsely populated Wyoming is worth about four times more than a vote in California.

From another perspective, the math gets even worse. According to Doug McAdams, a professor of sociology at Stanford University, the margins of victory in the 2012 presidential election in all but six battleground states made four in five American voters irrelevant – on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes decisive votes come from just a few provinces, which can bring fringe views and extreme positions into the national discourse.

Imagine a baseball game, writes Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne Jr., where a team wins not by scoring the most runs, but by winning the most innings. The absurdity not only fuels those who question the validity of elections, but also discourages participation. After all, what’s the point of voting if most Americans agree with you, but you still lose?

“While our founders believed we needed a brake on ‘mob rule,’” writes Dan Glickman, the former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Bill Clinton, the Electoral College is “incompatible with our current national credo that every vote counts.”

This story will appear in the November 2024 issue Desert Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.