Our presidential election process is broken. In five elections winners received less than 50 percent of the popular vote. In four of them the winner actually received fewer votes than the loser; John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in1876, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016. Yet all, except Adams, won the Electoral College vote. The House of Representatives gave Adams the win despite getting only 31 percent of the popular vote.
In 2016 Clinton got nearly three million more votes than did Trump but lost the Electoral College 304 to 227. In 2024 Trump got 49.8 percent of the popular vote but 58 percent of the Electoral College vote. An election system that produces winners with less than half of the popular vote and especially fewer votes than the loser is illegitimate in a democracy.
Three features of presidential elections make it possible for a winner to have received less than half the popular vote, perhaps even fewer than the loser. They are the Electoral College, partisan primaries and plurality voting. In fact, such outcomes are not only possible but likely, if recent experience is a guide. The political duopoly has exploited these features to entrench themselves.
The Electoral College is the main culprit. We don’t directly elect presidents, instead we vote for a slate of electors who actually elect the president in the Electoral College vote. That process sometimes choses winners who have gotten fewer votes than did the loser because it over represents states with small populations. The Electoral College was a compromise our founding fathers made in part to coax slave-holding states to join the union.
Partisan primaries and plurality voting are in cahoots with the Electoral College. Partisan primaries, in which each party holds its own primary, effectively block independents and minor party candidates. Plurality voting means the candidate with the most votes wins regardless of whether that is a majority of all votes. If there are only two candidates, plurality voting assures one candidate will have gotten at least fifty percent plus one vote but does not assure that candidate will win the Electoral College vote. However, elections frequently include independents or minor party candidates. In both 2020 and 2024 nearly three million votes were cast for candidates other than the two major party candidates. In multi-candidate races, plurality voting may well produce winners with less than half the popular vote, as we’ve seen.
There are fixes available; redesign or elimination of the Electoral College, single primaries, and ranked choice voting, for example. The two parties will never fix our elections unless voters force them to. The status quo furthers interests of both parties so our elections will stay broken and imperil democracy.
Patrick Taylor lives in Ridgeland.
