If you have been following these dispatches, you know the pattern by now. We look at an issue. We look at the data. We look at what the founders actually said. And every single time, we find the same thing: Americans agree on far more than the system gives them credit for — and the system itself is often the problem.
Today we are talking about the mechanism that decides who becomes the most powerful person in the country. Not the popular vote. Not the will of the majority. A system most Americans do not fully understand, that the founders themselves could not agree on, and that has been controversial since the day it was created.
The Electoral College.
Here is the number:
63% of Americans say the president should be elected by whoever wins the most votes nationally. Just 35% want to keep the current Electoral College system (Pew Research Center, 2024). Gallup’s September 2024 poll put support for a popular vote at 58%, with opposition at 38% (Gallup, 2024a).
And here is where it gets interesting: this is not new. Gallup has been asking this question since the 1960s. In polls conducted in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, an average of 70% of Republicans, 66% of Democrats, and 74% of independents supported changing to a popular vote (Gallup, 2024a). Support for reform has been the majority position for over half a century.
Yet the system remains unchanged.
Before we talk about why people want to change it, let’s make sure we understand what it actually is.
How It Actually Works
The Electoral College is not a building. It is not an institution with a campus or a staff. It is a process — a temporary group of 538 people called “electors” who are chosen every four years for the sole purpose of officially electing the president and vice president (National Archives, n.d.).
Here is where the 538 number comes from:
- 435 electors — one for each member of the House of Representatives, apportioned by state population
- 100 electors — one for each U.S. senator, two per state regardless of size
- 3 electors — for Washington, D.C., granted by the 23rd Amendment in 1961
Each state’s total is simply its House seats plus its two senators. California, the most populous state, has 52 House members + 2 senators = 54 electors. Wyoming, the least populous, has 1 House member + 2 senators = 3 electors. No state can have fewer than 3.
A candidate needs 270 — a simple majority of 538 — to win.
Step 1: You vote — but not for who you think. When you cast your ballot for president, you are not technically voting for the candidate. You are voting for a slate of electors who have pledged to support that candidate. Each party nominates its own slate in every state, and whichever candidate wins the popular vote in that state sends their party’s electors to the next step.
Step 2: Winner takes all — in most states. In 48 states and Washington, D.C., whoever wins the most votes gets all of that state’s electoral votes — even if they win by a single vote. This is the “winner-take-all” system, and it is not in the Constitution. It was never debated at the Constitutional Convention and is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers (National Constitution Center, n.d.). The Constitution simply gives each state the power to decide how to award its electoral votes — and in the early years, states tried a wide variety of methods, including legislative appointment, district-based systems, and statewide popular votes (FairVote, n.d.).
Winner-take-all became the norm through a kind of political arms race. In 1796, Thomas Jefferson lost the presidency by three electoral votes — in part because his strongest states, Virginia and North Carolina, split their electoral votes by district while his opponent’s states delivered theirs as a block (FairVote, n.d.). The lesson was not lost on party leaders. By 1800, Virginia had switched to a statewide winner-take-all system to consolidate its electoral power. Jefferson himself acknowledged the dynamic, writing that while “an election by districts would be best, if it could be general,” it was “folly & worse than folly” for states to keep splitting their votes when others were delivering theirs as a block (Jefferson, as cited in FairVote, n.d.). Once a few large states adopted winner-take-all, others followed to avoid being at a disadvantage. By 1836, every state except South Carolina had adopted the system (Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d.). James Madison — one of the architects of the Electoral College — was so alarmed by this trend that he proposed a constitutional amendment requiring states to use the district method, writing that the district mode “was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted” (Madison, 1823, as cited in FairVote, n.d.). The amendment went nowhere. It was not until the 1970s and 1990s that two states — Maine and Nebraska — decided to break from the pack.
Step 3: The exceptions — Maine and Nebraska. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that do not use winner-take-all. They award two electoral votes to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district, which means their electoral votes can be split between candidates.
Maine adopted the congressional district method in 1969, effective for the 1972 presidential election. The change was driven by the contentious three-way 1968 race between Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace, which fueled concerns that a candidate could win all of a state’s electoral votes with barely a third of its popular vote. State legislators argued the district method would better reflect the will of Maine’s voters (Portland Press Herald, 2020). Nebraska followed in 1991, when State Senator DiAnna Schimek championed the system after learning about Maine’s approach at a conference. Supporters argued it would make Nebraska more relevant in presidential elections and give voters a more meaningful voice (Nebraska Public Media, n.d.).
Neither state is large enough for the winner-take-all bloc strategy to give it much political leverage — Maine has 4 electoral votes and Nebraska has 5 — so the tradeoff made more sense for them than it would for a large swing state like Pennsylvania or Florida.
The system has produced split results only a handful of times — but enough to prove it works. In 2008, Barack Obama won one of Nebraska’s electoral votes from the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, the first time the state had split since adopting the method (Smithsonian Magazine, 2020). Maine first split in 2016, when Donald Trump won the state’s rural 2nd Congressional District. Both states split again in 2020 and in 2024 — when Trump won Maine’s 2nd District for the third consecutive election while Kamala Harris carried Nebraska’s 2nd District, the third Democrat to do so (Associated Press, 2024).
Step 4: The electors cast the official votes. In mid-December, the winning slates of electors meet in their respective state capitals and formally cast their votes for president and vice president.
Step 5: Congress counts the votes. On January 6th, Congress meets in a joint session to count the electoral votes and certify the result.
Step 6: What happens if nobody wins. If no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, the election goes to the House of Representatives. But here is the twist: each state delegation gets one vote — not each representative. That means Wyoming’s single representative has equal say to California’s 52. This has happened twice, in 1800 and 1824. The 1800 election required 36 separate ballots in the House over nearly a week before Thomas Jefferson was finally chosen — a constitutional crisis so dysfunctional that it led directly to the 12th Amendment, which fundamentally changed how presidents and vice presidents are elected.
That is the system. Now let’s talk about where it came from.
Why the Founders Built It This Way
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 held no fewer than 60 votes on how to select the president before settling on the Electoral College (Mount Vernon, n.d.). It was one of the most contentious issues the delegates faced, and the final product was less a grand design than a compromise among competing fears.
The delegates considered and rejected three alternatives: election by Congress, election by state legislatures, and direct popular vote. Each had serious problems in their eyes.
Election by Congress would make the president dependent on the legislature, undermining the separation of powers they were trying to build. Election by state legislatures would make the president a creature of state politics. And a direct popular vote raised several concerns — some principled, some practical, and some deeply troubling by modern standards.
Alexander Hamilton laid out the case for the Electoral College in Federalist No. 68. He argued the system would place the actual selection in the hands of “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation” (Hamilton, 1788). These electors would be informed citizens chosen specifically for this one task, insulated from outside pressure. Hamilton believed this would guard against “cabal, intrigue, and corruption” — including interference by foreign powers seeking to place “a creature of their own” in the presidency (Hamilton, 1788).
Hamilton also argued the system would require candidates to build broad, multi-state support rather than relying on popularity in just one region. He wrote that while “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State,” winning the presidency would “require other talents, and a different kind of merit” (Hamilton, 1788).
James Madison supported the Electoral College as well, but for a more complicated reason. During the Convention, Madison acknowledged that a popular vote was “in his opinion the fittest” method of electing the president. But he recognized that under a direct vote, southern states — whose populations included hundreds of thousands of enslaved people who could not vote — would be at a severe disadvantage. The Electoral College, combined with the Three-Fifths Compromise that counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a free person for purposes of congressional representation, gave slaveholding states significantly more electoral power than their voting populations alone would have justified (PBS, 2016).
This is not a minor historical footnote. After the first census in 1800, Virginia’s free population was 10% larger than Pennsylvania’s, but Virginia received 20% more electoral votes because of the Three-Fifths Compromise (League of Women Voters, n.d.). For 32 of the first 36 years under the Constitution, a slaveholder from Virginia held the presidency (League of Women Voters, n.d.). The Three-Fifths Compromise was abolished by the 14th Amendment after the Civil War, but the structural framework it helped shape — the Electoral College itself — remained.
It is also worth noting what the founders expected the system to do versus what it actually does. Many framers believed that after George Washington, few candidates would win an outright majority of electoral votes, and most elections would end up being decided by the House of Representatives (Constituting America, n.d.). The emergence of national political parties — which the founders broadly opposed — quickly rendered this expectation obsolete. Within a decade, electors became partisan pledges rather than independent deliberators, and the system Hamilton described in Federalist No. 68 effectively ceased to function as he envisioned.
Five Times the System Overrode the Popular Vote
The most fundamental criticism of the Electoral College is straightforward: five times in American history, the candidate who received the most votes from the American people did not become president (U.S. House of Representatives, n.d.).
1824: John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson. Jackson won both the popular vote and the most electoral votes but did not reach a majority. The House of Representatives chose Adams instead, in what Jackson’s supporters called “the corrupt bargain.”
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote and was one electoral vote short of victory. Twenty disputed electoral votes from three southern states were awarded to Hayes by a partisan commission. The resulting deal to resolve the crisis included withdrawing federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.
1888: Benjamin Harrison over Grover Cleveland. Cleveland won the popular vote by nearly 100,000 votes but lost the Electoral College 233 to 168.
2000: George W. Bush over Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. The election came down to Florida, where Bush was certified the winner by 537 votes after the Supreme Court halted a recount in Bush v. Gore.
2016: Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes but lost the Electoral College 304 to 227.
Each of these elections reshaped the country. And in each, the person chosen by the most Americans was not the person who took office. Defenders of the system point out that both candidates were competing under Electoral College rules — and that campaigns would have been structured very differently under a popular vote system. The outcomes are a product of the rules both sides agreed to play by.
The Swing State Problem
Even setting aside the popular vote question, the Electoral College creates a second structural issue: it makes most Americans’ votes effectively irrelevant in presidential elections.
Because of winner-take-all rules, candidates have no reason to campaign in states they are certain to win or certain to lose. The entire presidential election effectively takes place in a handful of competitive “swing states.”
In 2024, 94% of all general-election campaign events took place in just 7 states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These seven states contain less than 20% of the American population. The other 43 states and Washington, D.C. — home to more than 80% of Americans — were essentially spectators (FairVote, 2024).
This is not an aberration. It is how the system works. If you live in New York or California or Texas or Alabama — reliably “blue” or “red” states — presidential candidates have little incentive to visit, advertise, or address your concerns. Your vote counts in the national tally, but it does not change the outcome. Forty states have voted for the same party in the last five presidential elections (National Popular Vote, n.d.).
The result is a system where a voter in Wisconsin has dramatically more influence over who becomes president than a voter in New York — not because of any constitutional principle, but because of the accident of geography combined with winner-take-all rules.
The Small State Argument — and Its Complications
Defenders of the Electoral College often argue that it protects small states from being ignored in favor of large population centers. Without it, the argument goes, candidates would campaign only in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and rural America would have no voice.
This is a reasonable concern, and it is worth examining honestly.
The Constitution does give small states a structural boost through the Electoral College. Wyoming, with a population of about 577,000, gets 3 electoral votes — one for every 192,000 residents. California, with nearly 39 million people, gets 54 electoral votes — one for every 722,000 residents. A voter in Wyoming has roughly 3.7 times the per-capita electoral representation of a voter in California (USAFacts, n.d.).
But here is the complication: the current system does not actually protect small states. It protects swing states. In 2024, the seven states that received nearly all campaign attention included some of the largest states in the country (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan) and excluded nearly every small state. Of the 13 smallest states, only New Hampshire — because it happened to be competitive — received significant campaign attention (National Popular Vote, n.d.). Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, the Dakotas — all ignored, despite their theoretical Electoral College advantage.
Both sides of this debate make points worth considering. Whether the current system’s boost for small states is a vital protection for federalism or an undemocratic distortion depends largely on what you believe the purpose of a presidential election should be.
What People Are Proposing
Americans and lawmakers have been debating Electoral College reform for over 200 years. More than 700 proposals to change or abolish the system have been introduced in Congress (National Archives, n.d.). Here are the most prominent approaches currently on the table.
Constitutional Amendment: Direct Popular Vote. The most straightforward option. Abolish the Electoral College and elect the president by national popular vote. This came closest to happening in 1969, when the House passed an amendment 338 to 70 with strong bipartisan support and the endorsement of President Nixon. It was killed by a Senate filibuster led by southern lawmakers, and has never come as close since (U.S. House of Representatives, n.d.). A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratification by 38 state legislatures — an extraordinarily high bar.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This approach does not abolish the Electoral College. Instead, participating states agree to award all their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, regardless of who won their individual state. The compact only takes effect once states representing at least 270 electoral votes have joined — ensuring that the national popular vote winner automatically wins the Electoral College. As of early 2026, 18 states and Washington, D.C. have joined, representing 209 electoral votes — 61 short of the 270 needed (National Popular Vote, 2026). Virginia signed the compact into law on February 27, 2026, becoming the 19th member. Supporters say it works within the existing constitutional framework, since Article II gives state legislatures the power to determine how electors are appointed. Critics raise concerns about states awarding their votes to a candidate their own residents did not choose, and question whether the compact would survive legal challenges.
Proportional Allocation. Instead of winner-take-all, states would divide their electoral votes proportionally based on the popular vote within the state. If a candidate wins 60% of the vote in a state with 10 electoral votes, they get 6. This would make more votes meaningful and reduce the swing state problem, but could also make it harder for any candidate to reach 270, potentially sending more elections to the House. It would also significantly benefit whichever party is in the minority in reliably partisan states.
Congressional District Method. Already used by Maine and Nebraska. Award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district and two to the statewide winner. This approach is more granular than winner-take-all but introduces a new problem: because congressional districts are drawn by state legislatures, this method would make gerrymandering — the manipulation of district boundaries for partisan advantage — an even higher-stakes game.
Keep the Current System. Some argue the Electoral College works as intended. It forces candidates to build geographically diverse coalitions, prevents a president from being elected solely on the strength of a few major cities, preserves the federal structure of the republic, and provides stable, decisive outcomes by magnifying slim popular-vote margins into clear electoral victories. They argue that the occasional popular-vote mismatch is a feature of federalism, not a flaw in democracy.
There is also a practical argument: the Electoral College produces clear, state-by-state results that are easier to administer and verify than a single national vote count. Recounts under the current system are confined to individual states. Under a national popular vote, a close election could trigger a nationwide recount — a logistical and legal challenge the country has never had to face.
Each of these approaches involves genuine tradeoffs. None is without criticism from reasonable people.
Why This Matters
The question of how we elect the president is not abstract. It determines which voters get attention, which states get resources, which issues become priorities, and whether the person who leads the country actually has the support of the majority.
It also connects to everything else we have discussed in these dispatches. When 80% of Americans are spectators in presidential elections, candidates do not have to respond to their concerns. When a handful of swing states determine every election, the policies that get debated are the policies those states care about — not necessarily the policies the country needs.
The founders struggled with this. They held 60 votes. They compromised. They built a system shaped by the politics of their time, including the politics of slavery — a system they themselves expected would need to evolve. And they knew the system was imperfect. The 12th Amendment, ratified just 17 years after the Constitution, was already a fix for problems the original design created.
The question is not whether the founders were right or wrong. They were dealing with a different country — one where information traveled by horse, where most people could not vote, and where the very concept of a national popular election was logistically impossible. The question is whether a system built for 1787 still serves a nation of 330 million people today.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans say it does not. Thirty-eight percent say it does. Both sides have arguments grounded in real values — democratic equality on one hand, federalism and geographic diversity on the other.
The data is here. The history is here. What you do with it is up to you.
References
Associated Press. (2024, November 6). Nebraska and Maine split their electoral votes. Here’s how it worked. https://apnews.com/article/nebraska-maine-electoral-votes-split-2024
Constituting America. (n.d.). Federalist No. 68 — The mode of electing the president, from the New York Packet (Hamilton). https://constitutingamerica.org/federalist-no-68/
Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Electoral college. https://www.britannica.com/topic/electoral-college
FairVote. (n.d.). How the Electoral College became winner-take-all. https://fairvote.org/how-the-electoral-college-became-winner-take-all/
FairVote. (2024). Presidential campaign events tracker, 2024. https://fairvote.org/resources/presidential-elections/
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Hamilton, A. (1788). Federalist No. 68: The mode of electing the president. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp
League of Women Voters. (n.d.). The Three-Fifths Compromise and the Electoral College. https://www.lwv.org/blog/three-fifths-compromise-and-electoral-college
Mount Vernon. (n.d.). Issues of the Constitutional Convention. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/constitutional-convention/issues-of-the-constitutional-convention
National Archives. (n.d.). What is the Electoral College? https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about
National Constitution Center. (n.d.). Interpretation: Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-ii/clauses/350
National Popular Vote. (n.d.). Almost all (94%) of 2024 presidential campaign was concentrated on 7 states. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/almost-all-94-2024-presidential-campaign-was-concentrated-7-states
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Nebraska Public Media. (n.d.). Nebraska and Maine split their electoral vote. Is it a better system than winner-take-all? https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/nebraska-and-maine-split-their-electoral-vote-is-it-a-better-system-than-winner-take-all/
PBS NewsHour. (2016, November 6). Electoral College is ‘vestige’ of slavery, say some constitutional scholars. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/electoral-college-slavery-constitution
Pew Research Center. (2024, September 25). Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/25/majority-of-americans-continue-to-favor-moving-away-from-electoral-college/
Portland Press Herald. (2020, September 21). Why does Maine split its Electoral College votes for president? https://www.pressherald.com/2020/09/21/why-does-maine-split-its-electoral-college-votes-for-president/
Smithsonian Magazine. (2020, November 5). Why do Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-do-maine-and-nebraska-split-their-electoral-votes-180976219/
U.S. House of Representatives. (n.d.). Electoral College fast facts. https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/
USAFacts. (n.d.). Representation in the Electoral College: How do states compare? https://usafacts.org/visualizations/electoral-college-states-representation/
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