Now that you've learned about the origins and the functioning of the Electoral College, you'll wade into the hot-button debate about whether we should keep it or change our system of electing the president. As you read about the proposals for changing the system, think about your own evaluation of whether the Electoral College is fair.

The most straightforward method to change or abolish the Electoral College would be to amend the Constitution. But the constitutional amendment process is extremely difficult. We will study how this process works later in the year. But for now, it's enough to point out that because of how hard it is to amend the Constitution, it's very unlikely we will see this happen for the Electoral College any time soon.

There are problems with this system. If the Republican knows they will lose California, why bother campaigning there at all? Likewise, if the Democrat knows they will lose Texas, why bother campaigning there? Hundreds of millions of Americans live in noncompetitive states, which almost always back one of the two parties. A much smaller number of Americans live in swing states. Swing states can go either way, sometimes voting for Democrats, sometimes voting for Republicans.

But in two states, Nebraska and Maine, they do not use the winner-take-all system. Maine, for example, has 4 electoral votes. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 48% of the popular vote and Donald Trump won 45% in Maine. But Clinton only received 3 electoral votes, and Trump received 1. This is because Maine has a quasi-proportional system. The winner of the plurality (the most votes) is guaranteed 2/4 electoral votes. But you also win an electoral vote for each Congressional District in which you win a plurality.

The Constitution does not require states to use a winner-take-all system in their Electoral College. So states are free to adopt the Maine or Nebraska models.

As we have seen, the formula for deciding the number of electoral votes each state receives is: Number of Senators + Number of House Representatives. Every state, no matter how big, only gets two senators. But the bigger the population of a state, the bigger the number of House Representatives you get. California, the biggest state, has 52 members of the House. But the seven smallest states in the country only have 1 member of the House.

This means that another strategy for making presidential elections "fairer" to voters in large, populous states, is to increase the size of the House of Representatives. Once a state has more House representatives, it also has more electoral votes.

There might be other advantages to this reform, as well. When the constitution was originally ratified, each congressional district had about 30,000 people in it. This meant that every representative in the House represented about 30,000 people. Today each district has 747,000 people living in it! That's a huge increase! Maybe having more representatives would allow for a closer connection between Congressmen and ordinary voters.

For more information about this strategy, check out this recent report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Questions to Think About While Watching

1. In 2016, Donald Trump won the electoral vote even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. How was this possible?

2. Do you think it is fair to be able to become president even if you lose the popular vote?

3. How would this proposal to introduce a popular vote compact work?

4. What problems do you see with moving to a popular vote system?