‘Politics Explained’: What Is the Electoral College? How the Way We Elect Presidents Is Like a Bad Family Barbecue

You might think that in America, the winner is the one who gets the most votes in an election. But with regards to presidential elections, that is not true.

One need look no further than Al Gore and Hillary Clinton to see how the American way of electing presidents can disappoint most voters.

Under the Electoral College, each state receives a certain variety of delegates who vote on behalf of voters in elections.

A state’s electoral votes are determined by the variety of senators (2) plus the variety of House representatives, which is predicated on the state’s population. For example, California may have 54 electoral votes (52 House representatives plus two senators), but a smaller state like Maine will only have 4 electoral votes.

When you add up all the state delegates, there are a total of 538 electoral votes. The presidential candidate who receives a majority of the electoral votes — 270 — wins the election.

In most states, if a presidential candidate wins a majority of the popular vote, she or he wins all of the electoral votes in that state.

For example, if Kamala Harris wins 5 million votes in a single state and Donald Trump only wins 5.1 million votes, Donald Trump will receive a portion of that state’s electoral votes.

Within the Electoral College, each state constitutes a mini-election of sorts.

Here’s where things get a little tricky. Many people think the Electoral College system is not fair to larger, more densely populated states like California or New York, because in those states, one delegate has to represent so many individuals. The Electoral College gives smaller states with fewer people just as much power as larger states.

Imagine the Electoral College as one big family barbecue. One side of the family might say they need macaroni and cheese as their most important course. They’re a big group with many members, like the states of California and New York.

But there may be one other side of the family, a little smaller, like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Because they’ve more elders, their opinions carry more weight. That means if enough elders want potato salad, it doesn’t matter that almost all of the family wants macaroni and cheese. The elders have the upper hand in influencing what’s served.

That’s just about how the Electoral College works. States like New York and California could have more and are more densely populated, but their votes don’t carry as much weight as swing states, which could have fewer people but more heavily weighted electoral votes.

That’s why candidates spend a lot time in places where the Electoral College votes are more heavily weighted and where the consequence isn’t predictable. The assumption is that a place like New York will vote Democratic and Texas Republican, but there is not any such guarantee in Wisconsin.

That’s why voters have to listen to the changes in laws happening across the country right before our eyes – like in Georgia, where a group of pro-Trump voters in power recently voted to have all votes counted by hand, and hundreds of thousands of votes that before the deadline set by the state for confirming the voteThis is a rule change that can likely decelerate election results.

If you’re wondering why the United States adopted the Electoral College despite criticism over the years, the history of slavery played a role. During the drafting of the Constitution, the states of the North and South agreed to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which meant that an enslaved person can be counted as three-fifths of a person. This compromise ensured that the South wouldn’t be outnumbered by the more populous North. Essentially, slave bodies might be counted for representation, although enslaved people couldn’t vote.

Maintaining the Electoral College system protected Southern interests.

So in the event you vote this 12 months, remember what was done then to preserve the establishment, and do not assume the lengths people will go to now to tip the scales of their favor.

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