Understanding the Electoral College and its Impact: The Case of Washington, D.C.

The Electoral College is the formal body that elects the President and Vice President of the United States. Every four years, 538 electors from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. cast their votes for these offices. A candidate needs a majority of 270 electoral votes to win. This system, known as the Electoral College, allocates each state the same number of electors as it has members of Congress - one for each member in the House of Representatives and one for each of the state’s two senators. This means that each state is guaranteed a minimum of three electors, regardless of population size. It also means that there is always a total of 538 electors, or equivalently, 538 electoral votes - that’s the sum of 435 voting members of the House, 100 senators, and three electors assigned to Washington, DC.

When voters cast ballots for president and vice president on Election Day, they’re actually voting for a slate of electors who have pledged to vote for their favored candidates. Most states (with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska) use a “winner-take-all” system of choosing electors, meaning that - assuming electors vote according to their pledges - all of the state’s electoral votes are cast for the candidate that wins the majority of the state’s popular vote.

How the Electoral College Works

The Electoral College is not a physical place; it's a process defined by the U.S. Constitution. Unlike many elections where candidates are elected directly by popular vote, the president and vice president are not elected directly by citizens. Instead, they are chosen through a system of electors.

Allocation of Electors

Each state is represented by a number of electors equal to the size of its congressional delegation, which includes its representatives in the House and its two senators. Including Washington, D.C.’s three electors, there are currently 538 electors in all.

The total of 538 electoral votes is fixed, but how these votes are distributed between states can change as a result of the decennial Census. Every 10 years, the results of the Census determine how seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned, and states may gain or lose electoral votes accordingly. Electoral votes won't be reallocated again until the 2032 election.

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Choosing Electors

Each state’s political parties choose their own slate of potential electors. The process of who is chosen to be an elector, how, and when varies by state. While the Constitution does not require electors to vote for the candidate chosen by their state's popular vote, some states do. The rare elector who votes for someone else may be:

Fined
Disqualified
Replaced by a substitute elector
Prosecuted by their state

Electors pledged to Vice President Kamala Harris (D) and Gov.

The Voting Process

Most states require that all electoral votes go to the candidate who receives the most votes in that state. After state election officials certify the popular vote of each state, the winning slate of electors meet in the state capital and cast two ballots-one for Vice President and one for President. Electors cannot vote for a Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate who both hail from an elector’s home state. For instance, if both candidates come from New York, New York’s electors may vote for one of the candidates, but not both. In this hypothetical scenario, however, Delaware’s electors may vote for both New York candidates. This requirement is a holdover from early American history when one of the country’s major political fault lines divided big states from small states.

Although it is not unconstitutional for electors to vote for someone other than those to whom they pledged their support, many states, as well as the District of Columbia, “bind” electors to their candidate using oaths and fines. During the nineteenth century, “faithless electors”-those who broke their pledge and voted for someone else-were rare, but not uncommon, particularly when it came to Vice Presidents. In the modern era, faithless electors are rarer still, and have never determined the outcome of a presidential election.

There has been one faithless elector in each of the following elections: 1948, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1988. A blank ballot was cast in 2000.

Counting the Votes

Congress is required to tally votes in the Electoral College. The sitting Vice President presides over the meeting and opens the votes from each state in alphabetical order. He passes the votes to four tellers-two from the House and two from the Senate-who announce the results. House tellers include one Representative from each party and are appointed by the Speaker. Sitting Vice Presidents John C.

Objections to Electoral Votes

15 has set the method for objections by Members of Congress to electoral votes. During the Joint Session, lawmakers may object to individual electoral votes or to state returns as a whole. An objection must be declared in writing and signed by at least one Representative and one Senator. In the case of an objection, the Joint Session recesses and each chamber considers the objection separately for no more than two hours; each Member may speak for five minutes or less. After each house votes on whether to accept the objection, the Joint Session reconvenes and both chambers disclose their decisions. If both chambers agree to the objection, the electoral votes in question are not counted. If either chamber opposes the objection, the votes are counted.

Objections to the Electoral College votes were recorded in 1969, 2005, and 2021. The 1953 electoral vote count declared Dwight D.

Historical Context

Prior to 1804, electors made no distinction between candidates when voting for president and vice president; the candidate with the majority of votes became President and the candidate with the second-most votes became Vice President. The Twelfth Amendment-proposed in 1803 and ratified in 1804-changed that original process, requiring electors to separate their votes and denote who they voted for as President and Vice President.

Electoral Representation and Population

Generally, states that are home to more people control more electoral votes. California - the largest state by population - has 54 electoral votes, while Wyoming - the smallest - has the minimum allocation of three. But because electoral votes are allocated according to seats in Congress, where each state holds two Senate seats regardless of population size, electoral representation varies quite a bit across states.

One way to think about electoral representation is to consider how many people each electoral vote represents, based on a state’s population. According to 2023 population estimates, one electoral vote in Wyoming accounts for around 194,000 people, while a vote in Texas, Florida or California accounts for over 700,000. For context, if all 538 electoral votes were distributed evenly among the US population, each vote would represent about 623,000 people.

Another way of thinking about electoral representation is to consider the difference between a state’s share of the nation’s total population and its share of all electoral votes. For example, Wyoming makes up about 0.18% of the US population but controls 0.56% of all electoral votes. This difference may seem minuscule, but it translates to approximately two additional electoral votes for Wyoming, relative to its population share. If Wyoming’s electoral share aligned with its share of the US population, it would have 0.17% of all 538 votes, which is about one electoral vote - but because votes are allocated based on seats in Congress, the state has the minimum of three votes in the Electoral College.

Total population helps determine how electoral votes are allocated, but eligible voters determine how the votes are cast.

Disparities in Electoral Representation

On the end of the spectrum, California represents 11.6% of the US population and has 10% of all electoral votes. This means California controls roughly nine fewer votes in the Electoral College than it would if votes were allocated based on population alone (because 11.6% of the total 538 votes is about 63 electoral votes, but California currently controls 54). If electoral votes were distributed according to population, one electoral vote would represent about 622,000 people.

These examples demonstrate electoral representation based on each state’s share of the national population, and that’s because states receive representation in both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College according to the total resident population, not just according to how many voters live in the state. The resident population is all who live in the state at the time of the Census count, including both citizen and noncitizen residents, and both adults and children.

Winner-Take-All System and Its Implications

It’s important to note that even if electoral votes were allocated exactly according to each state’s share of the US population or share of eligible voters, the electoral process would not resemble a national popular vote. This is because of the winner-take-all rule for choosing state electors, currently used by 48 states and Washington, DC. According to this rule, all electoral votes go toward the candidate that earns the most votes in the state’s general election; therefore, votes cast for any other candidate do not earn any of the state’s electoral votes.

In other words, according to the winner-take-all policy, a candidate may earn 49.9% of a state’s popular vote and earn 0% of the state’s electoral votes. This explains how a candidate may win the national popular vote but, by failing to earn 270 electoral votes, may still lose the presidential election in the Electoral College - a scenario which has occurred in five US presidential elections, including the most recent election in 2016.

Unusual Electoral College Scenarios

It is possible to win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote. This happened in 2016, 2000, and three times in the 1800s.

Contingent Elections

In the case of an Electoral College deadlock or if no candidate receives the majority of votes, a “contingent election” is held. The election of the President goes to the House of Representatives. Each state delegation casts a single vote for one of the top three contenders from the initial election to determine a winner.

Only two Presidential elections (1800 and 1824) have been decided in the House.

Though not officially a contingent election, in 1876, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana submitted certificates of elections for both candidates. A bipartisan commission of Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, reviewed the ballots and awarded all three state’s electoral votes to Rutherford B.

What happens if no candidate wins the majority of electoral votes?

If no candidate receives the majority of electoral votes, the vote goes to the House of Representatives. This has happened twice. The first time was following the 1800 presidential election when the House chose Thomas Jefferson.

The District of Columbia and the Electoral College

The District of Columbia is the only non-state to be enfranchised for presidential elections, gaining electoral votes through the ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961. That amendment gave residents of the nation's capital a share of electors proportional to its population, but limited it to no more electors than the least populous state. The District of Columbia has had three electors since the Twenty-third Amendment was ratified in 1961.

Since the enactment of the 23rd amendment to the Constitution in 1961, the District of Columbia has participated in 16 presidential elections. The amendment states that it cannot have any more electoral votes than the state with the smallest number of electors. Since then, it has been allocated three electoral votes in every presidential election.

Political Leaning

The Democratic Party has immense political strength in the district. In each of the 16 presidential elections, the district has overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic candidate, with no margin less than 56.5 percentage points. It has been won by the losing candidate in 9 of the 16 elections. In the 2000 presidential election, Barbara Lett-Simmons, an elector from the district, left her ballot blank to protest its lack of voting representation in Congress.

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

The district is a signatory of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an interstate compact in which signatories award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national-level popular vote in a presidential election, even if another candidate won an individual signatory's popular vote.

Attempts to Change the Electoral College

There have been other attempts to change the system, particularly after cases in which a candidate wins the popular vote, but loses in the Electoral College. Five times a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election: Andrew Jackson in 1824 (to John Quincy Adams); Samuel Tilden in 1876 (to Rutherford B. Hayes); Grover Cleveland in 1888 (to Benjamin Harrison); Al Gore in 2000 (to George W. Bush); Hillary Clinton in 2016 (to Donald J. Trump).

The closest Congress has come to amending the Electoral College since 1804 was during the 91st Congress (1969-1971) when the House passed H.J. Res. 681 which would have eliminated the Electoral College altogether and replaced it with the direct election of a President and Vice President (and a run off if no candidate received more than 40 percent of the vote).

The Constitution and the Electoral College

The Electoral College is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It would take a constitutional amendment to change the process.

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