Next President to be Elected by 18% of Voters

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Last week the Washington Post, one of our nation's leading newspapers, came out with a special report on "the modern trajectory of the electoral college" which illustrates that presidential elections in the United States are becoming untethered from democracy.  

As we all are becoming painfully aware, American voters do not elect the president, slates of electors from each state do.  In most instances the candidate who wins a majority of votes in a state receives all of that state's electoral votes when the electoral college meets in Washington the next month - December - to cast their votes for President.  Congress then "counts" the electoral college votes in January - and we all should remember the anarchy that ensued when the Congress tried to "count" the votes on January 6th, 2021!

That all boils down to a political reality of presidential candidates concentrating on winning individual states rather than winning a majority of the voters.  In two of the past six elections, candidates have won the electoral college vote without winning the majority of the overall vote.  Democracy was thwarted because of the electoral college provision that is embedded in our Constitution.

Among other findings, the Washington Post report said that between 1952 and 1980, presidential candidates actively campaigned for votes in twenty-six states where they targeted a total of 3 in 4 American voters.  But by the presidential election of 2020 the number of states targeted for actual campaigning was only ten (plus two congressional districts*), and only 1 in 4 American voters were targeted.    The report further stated that Florida may not be contested in 2024 (it will just be ceded to the Republicans), and the number of American voters who will have an actual say in electing the president will shrink to 18%, or less than 1 in 5.

That's pitiful, and it is certainly something other than democracy.

The report in the Washington Post also highlighted the fact that the types of legislation pursued by parties is more reflective of the concerns of people in battleground states than it is of the desires of the overall population and the needs of the country.

(*Note:  Normally electoral votes are assigned by each state on a winner-take-all basis, but Nebraska and Maine have a more complex system where the overall winner of the state gets two electoral votes - one per each US Senator - and each congressional district in the state gets one electoral vote.)

Currently Democrats look to be in a position to win 17 states and the District of Columbia next year in the presidential contest for a total of 211 electoral votes, and Republicans are relatively safe in 24 states and one congressional district for a total of 218 electoral votes.  It takes 270 electoral college votes to win the election.

The presidential battlegrounds for 2024 will account for 109 electoral votes.  The battlegrounds will be:

Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - plus the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska and the 2nd congressional district of Maine.

So let's all be nice to the voters in those states because they will be choosing our next President.

Every vote should be equally important.

IT'S TIME TO END THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE!