The North Dakota Legislature is considering a resolution called Senate Concurrent Resolution 4013 to proclaim its support for the Electoral College. The Electoral College is our system for electing the U.S. president and is unlike any other election for public office in the country. With this system, the president doesn’t need to win the most votes to be declared the winner. Indeed, five times in our country’s history, the presidential candidate with the most votes didn’t take office. Their opponent won with fewer votes, but a majority of the Electoral College.
In our country, we don’t elect our president by popular vote. When you cast a ballot in the November presidential election, you are voting for a slate of electors: a group of individuals usually selected by the state’s political party who cast their vote for a presidential candidate after the state’s election results are finalized.
Each state is allocated a number of electors based on its two U.S. Senate seats plus its number of seats in the U.S. House. In North Dakota, this means each political party selects three electors to represent them in the Electoral College if their candidate wins the majority of votes in the state. You may have noticed the electors’ names listed on North Dakota’s November ballot last year next to the presidential candidates.
After the November presidential election results are finalized, the electors meet to award their Electoral College votes to presidential candidates. This group of electors across the country is known collectively as the Electoral College, and a presidential candidate needs at least 270 of these electoral votes to win the presidency.
Presidential candidates have been declared the winner while losing the popular vote because most states have a winner-take-all electoral system. If a presidential candidate wins a majority of the votes in the state, they are awarded all of the state’s Electoral College votes. For example, if a presidential candidate wins 49% of the votes in the state, they are awarded zero Electoral College votes if another candidate receives 50% of the votes.
This is why there is so much focus on battleground states and why presidential candidates and their campaigns spend so much time and money in certain states. The candidates don’t have to persuade voters across the country. They simply need to create a strategy to get those 270 Electoral College votes to win, and North Dakota only has three of those votes to cast.
The way we elect our U.S. president through the Electoral College system is convoluted, it’s not direct democracy, and it’s not representative of the people. The League of Women Voters strongly supports getting rid of the Electoral College system and moving to the direct popular vote of the U.S. president. The candidate with the most votes should win.
Barbara Headrick is president of the League of Women Voters of North Dakota.
4013
A concurrent resolution to support the electoral college, denounce the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and invite interested states to form the Electoral College Interstate Compact.
House Sponsors: Bahl (R, District 17),
Senate Sponsors: Sickler (R, District 17), Erbele (R, District 28), Klein (R, District 14), Meyer (R, District 18),
