Although the United States touts its status as one of the world's leading democracies, its citizens do not have the ability to directly elect the president. That task is reserved for the Electoral College, the complicated process by which Americans have chosen their president since the 18th century.

Contrary to its name, the Electoral College is a process rather than a body. Every four years, in December after an election, its members – politicians and largely unknown party loyalists – meet on the same day in all 50 states and cast their votes for president. Then they essentially disappear.

Criticism of the Electoral College has increased in recent years, heightened by the fact that two Republican presidents – George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 – were elected president despite losing a majority of the vote. However, there are no signs that the US elections will change any time soon.

Here you will find everything you need to know

What exactly is the Electoral College?

Article II of the US Constitution governs the process for electing a president.

Each state has a number of electors equal to the total number of representatives and senators it has in Congress. Washington DC receives three electoral votes. There are 538 voters in total. To win, a candidate needs the votes of 270 of them, a simple majority.

Gray map of USA with blue and red circles

The Constitution says state legislatures can decide how to award their electors. All but two states have long opted for a winner-takes-all system—the winner of the popular vote in their state receives all the electoral votes.

To make matters worse, two states, Maine and Nebraska, identify their voters differently. In both states, the national winner is allocated two electoral college votes. Each state then awards its remaining electors – two in Maine and three in Nebraska – to the winner in each of the state's congressional districts.

Why does the US do Do you have an electoral college?

When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft the U.S. Constitution, they had great difficulty finding a system for electing a chief executive. First, they proposed a plan that would have Congress elect the president. However, this raised concerns that the executive branch, which is independent of Congress, would be affected.

A portion of the delegates also supported electing the president through a direct popular vote. But the idea never gained widespread support and was repeatedly rejected during Congress, writes historian Alexander Keyssar in his book “Why do we still have the Electoral College.”

There were a number of reasons why the idea was not widely adopted. First, the convention had adopted the racist three-fifths compromise, in which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for population purposes. This was a victory for the southern states, where slaves made up a significant portion of the population. A popular electoral system would have disadvantaged the southern states because they would have fewer eligible voters.

Map of the USA with California colored pink and several US states colored green illustrating the state's population

Keyssar said there were also concerns that too much power would be given to larger states and that voters would not be able to learn about candidates from different states. It was a debate that was more about pragmatics than about political rights, he writes.

Towards the end of the convention, a committee of 11 delegates was appointed to deal with unresolved matters, including the selection of the president. They proposed a version of what we now understand as the Electoral College.

“This short Christmas story makes clear that the constitutional system of presidential elections embodied a web of compromises, born of months of debate between men who disagreed and were unsure how best to proceed,” wrote Keyssar. “It was, in effect, a consensus second election, made acceptable in part by the remarkably complex details of the electoral process, details which themselves represented compromises between, and beliefs or gestures towards, particular groups of voters.”

What is a Swing State?

States in which one of the two presidential candidates has a good chance of winning are often referred to as “swing states.”

There are seven swing states in the 2024 election: Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Michigan (15 electoral votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes), North Carolina (16 electoral votes), Arizona (11). electoral votes) and Nevada (six electoral votes). Whichever candidate wins the election must have a combination of these states, which is why candidates will spend the majority of their time and resources there. Joe Biden won all of these states except North Carolina in the 2020 election.

The idea of ​​a swing state can also change over time due to demographic changes. For example, until recently Ohio and Florida were considered swing states, but today they are considered pretty solidly Republican. Michigan was considered a pretty solid Democratic stronghold until Donald Trump won it in 2016.

A bar chart with red and blue bars showing the electoral power of each US state in the Electoral College

Does the Electoral College allow minority rule?

There have been five elections in U.S. history – 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016 – in which the presidential candidate failed to win a majority of the vote. This has led to a broader recognition of the imbalances in the system and led some to push to abolish the Electoral College altogether.

The loudest criticism is that it is a system that dilutes the impact of a presidential election depending on where you live. A single voter in California represents more than 726,000 people. In Wyoming, one voter represents just over 194,000 people.

A bar chart with red and gray bars comparing the electoral and popular votes in past elections

Another criticism is that the system allows a small number of Americans to decide the outcome of the presidential election. In 2020, around 44,000 votes between Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona allowed Biden to win the Electoral College. In an election in which 154.6 million people voted, such a small margin is extraordinary.

In 2016, Trump gave a combined lead of around 80,000 votes in the most important swing states.

Do voters have to vote for a specific candidate?

State political parties select as voters people who they believe will be party loyalists and will not defect and vote for someone other than the party's candidate. Still, voters have occasionally cast their ballots for someone else. For example, in 2016, there were seven voters who voted for candidates other than the pledged candidates. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, this was the first time since 1972 that there was a faithless elector.

Many states have laws that require voters to vote for the candidate they have pledged to support. In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that states could force voters to vote for the party's nominee. And in 2020, the court said states could punish voters who don't vote for the candidate they pledged to.

How did the Electoral College last so long?

Almost immediately after the Electoral College was passed, there was a push to change it. “There were constitutional amendments that were advanced within a little over a decade of the ratification of the Constitution,” Keyssar said. “Since 1800, there have probably been 1,000 or more constitutional amendments filed to amend or abolish the Constitution. Some of them are similar.” (According to the Congressional Research Service, there were more than 700 efforts in 2019 alone.)

When the idea of ​​a national plebiscite was proposed in 1816, Keyssar said, Southern states objected. Slaves continued to give them power in the Electoral College, but they could not vote. “They would lose the additional bonus they received on behalf of their slaves,” he said.

After the Civil War, African Americans had the legal right to vote, but Southern states continued to prevent them from voting. A statewide popular vote would have reduced their influence on the overall outcome, so they continued to support the electoral college system.

At one point in the late 1960s, the country came close to abolishing the Electoral College. In 1968, George Wallace, the segregated Southern governor, nearly threw the system into chaos by getting nearly enough votes to deny one candidate a majority in the Electoral College. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the amendment 339 to 70. But the measure stalled in the Senate, where senators representing southern states filibustered.

According to the Washington Post, this led to ongoing objections to a nationwide popular vote so that whites could continue to wield power in the South. President Jimmy Carter eventually endorsed the proposal, but in 1979 it failed to receive enough votes in the Senate (Joe Biden was one of the senators who voted against it).

“It's not that we suddenly realize that this system really doesn't work,” Keyssar said.

Is there a chance now to abolish the Electoral College?

The best-known attempt to abolish the Electoral College today is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The idea is to get states to allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome in their respective states. The pact would go into effect when states with a total of 270 electoral votes — enough to determine the winner of the election — join.

So far, 17 states and Washington DC – a total of 209 electoral votes – have joined the initiative.

However, the future path of the project is uncertain. Almost all states that did not join have either a Republican governor or a Republican legislature. And legal observers have questioned the constitutionality of such a rule — something that would likely be quickly referred to the U.S. Supreme Court.