According to popular vote, Hillary should’ve won the election.

In the last 240 years of American history, the Electoral College has chosen a president that did not win the popular vote only four times. Currently, a coalition of 11 states are trying to end the Electoral College in favor of just relying on the popular vote. Would that really ensure, as their website says, “that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election?”

The eleven states who have proposed this idea are all Democratic leaning states. The four larger states who have enacted this bill are New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey. These states include New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago: three large Democratic cities.

These cities would get much more attention from presidential candidates without the Electoral College because the Electoral College was created to protect the smaller states and rural areas. Without the Electoral College, these smaller states might have little impact on the outcome of national elections.

Charles Fried, a professor of law at Harvard University, offered an explanation for the necessity of the Electoral College in an interview with The New York Times. Fried said, “The states have their own political cultures, personalities and traditions which persists in spite of our far more transient population.”

The Founding Fathers agreed with Fried. They ensured every state was given electoral votes, so they could impact the national elections. Thus, even low population states, like Rhode Island and Wyoming, have some national political power. The number of electors is determined by the number of Representatives and Senators each state has in Congress.  

It is fairly rare for the winner of the presidential election to not capture both the popular vote and the Electoral College. However, in the last decade, two presidents were chosen that the popular vote did not choose. Now some are calling for the elimination of the Electoral College.

California Senator Barbara Boxer, a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

Using the only popular vote has its issues as well. Critics of the popular vote claim that if a recount would ever be needed, it would take an incredibly long time. As elections are conducted at the county level, there would need to be over 3,000 separate recounts in a contested election. It could seriously slow the election process.

Yet a coalition of 11 states have found issues with the Electoral College. National Popular Vote said, “Presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion.” They claimed 38 states had been ignored.

Those who are in favor of the Electoral College, however, claim that without it, the sparsely populated middle section of the United would be ignored. In a Washington Post article, they said, “Anyone who cares to defend the interests of minorities should pause before calling for the abolition of the electoral college.” Without the Electoral College, candidates would focus their efforts in cities and suburbs.

Akhil Reed, a professor of law and political sciences at Yale, agrees with these eleven states. He was featured in the same article as Fried. These “recount nightmares” and “fairness to rural areas” Reed said are moot points. “If these arguments were truly sound, then states are stupid. And states are not stupid,” Reed said.

Reed floated an idea that electoral voters should give their votes to popular votes; however, he thinks it will be more likely that the candidates of the 2020 election will “solemnly and publicly long before Election Day [promise] to abide by the national popular vote.”

“Keep your eye on 2020,” Reed concluded.