The main problem with the Electoral College today is not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. Those states do get a boost from their two Senate-based electoral votes, but that benefit pales in comparison to the real culprit: statewide winner-take-all laws. Under these laws, which states adopted to gain political advantage in the nation’s early years, even though it was never raised by the framers — states award all their electors to the candidate with the most popular votes in their state. The effect is to erase all the voters in that state who didn’t vote for the top candidate.
Today, 48 states use winner-take-all. As a result, most are considered “safe,” that is, comfortably in hand for one party or the other. No amount of campaigning will change that. The only states that matter to either party are the “battleground” states — especially bigger ones like Florida and Pennsylvania, where a swing of a few thousand or even a few hundred votes can shift the entire pot of electors from one candidate to the other…
Two hundred years after James Madison’s letter, the state winner-take-all rule is still crippling our politics and artificially dividing us. Every four years, tens of millions of Americans’ votes magically disappear before the real election for president happens — about six weeks after Election Day, when 538 electors convene in state capitals across the country to cast their votes for president. “Blue” states give all their electors to the Democrat, no matter how many Republicans voted for their candidate; vice versa in the “red” states.
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