American politicians like to brag that the United States is the greatest democracy in the world. But a little humility is in order. The way the United States elects its presidents is not the method any self-respecting democracy should use to choose a head of state, as our Electoral College system holds us hostage to the whims of a shrinking segment of the electorate.
A new Washington Post report tracking the modern path of the Electoral College contains the latest factual data and concludes that the race for the White House in 2024 “is likely to target a smaller share of Americans than at any time in the modern era, despite massive increases in spending due to fundraising.” Online”.
The overwhelming majority of American voters have become spectators in their own republic.
But a quick refresher on our electoral system before we delve into just how bad these numbers are: Under the Electoral College, American voters do not directly elect the president, but instead choose a pool of electors in a given state to represent their votes. The distribution of voters is not perfectly proportional to the population of states and is largely representative of the voting power of citizens in small states. And because of the winner-takes-all system for voters in every state except Maine and Nebraska, presidential candidates view states that consistently skew heavily toward one party as not worth dealing with.
Before our era of polarization, this led to White House hopefuls ignoring a range of citizens, but still engaging with many of them: As The Washington Post explains, political scientists Daron R. Shaw, Scott Althouse, and Costas Panagopoulos found that between 1952 and 1980, presidents targeted an average of 26 states during their election campaigns. That number has declined since then, and during the last election Republicans and Democrats competing for president focused on only ten states and two congressional districts. In that first era, presidential campaigns targeted districts covering about 3 in 4 Americans, but by 2020 that proportion had dropped to 1 in 4. And it’s likely to get worse: “If the major parties do not compete in Florida in 2024, as “This is the case on a large scale.” It is expected that only 18% of Americans will live on battlefields.
This is a grim statistic. The overwhelming majority of American voters have become spectators in their own republic. How can we call ourselves a great democracy – or even a functional democracy – when less than a fifth of voters live in areas where their individual vote plays a decisive role in presidential elections, and thus their votes outnumber those of many others? Can we call ourselves a democracy at all if that same system allows the popular vote to be overridden through an unrepresentative distribution of voters, as has happened twice in the last six elections?
In addition to being anti-democratic, our system also narrows our policy horizons. A handful of states, disproportionately located in the Midwest, have become central to the policy calculations of presidential candidates. The unique demographic, political, and economic characteristics of states like Wisconsin or Michigan disproportionately shape the type of policies offered by White House hopefuls, even though they represent only a small slice of the American experience. (All the chatter about landlocked states representing exclusively “real America” wouldn’t work if we had a real one-person-one-vote system.) Democrats’ interest in winning the Rust Belt tends to make them more cautious about some progressive policies. The proposals would be better than they would be if states like California and New York had electoral representation proportional to their populations. In other words, our distinctive electoral system is sabotaging Democrats’ ability to put forward some of our biggest ideas for solving our social problems.
There are a number of explanations for the historical design of the Electoral College system, including suspicion of popular democracy and successful lobbying by slave states to enhance their influence among national voters. Whatever its origins, it is clear that it today constitutes an obstacle to the expression of popular will. Americans must demand the abolition of this system in favor of a sound democratic voting system.
The Electoral College system has long been a subject of debate and criticism in American politics. With new data showing that it is getting worse, the flaws of the system are becoming even more apparent. As the United States continues to grapple with issues of voter disenfranchisement and representation, the Electoral College’s shortcomings are coming under increased scrutiny. From distortions in representation to an undemocratic allocation of power, the system is facing growing criticism and calls for reform. With the latest data highlighting its failures, the need for a reevaluation of the Electoral College system has never been more pressing.