I’ve written recently about the American presidential elections, but it’s easy to forget that The Cud has an international audience. Non-Americans often have no clue just how we REALLY elect a president—and, for that matter, a good chunk of Americans don’t, either.

People assume that Americans, living in their bastion of democracy, elect a president by a popular vote. Every other elected office in the country is chosen by popular vote: representatives and senators in Congress, state governors, county sheriffs, state-level legislators, and even city councilors. Heck, we even elect people to town school boards.

But we don’t choose our president this way. It’s the highest office in our land, one occupied by the most powerful person in the free world, but despite our glorious democracy we don’t elect whoever wins it. And that has to change.

Part I:
A primer on the American electoral system

The United States has three branches of government: the legislative, which is Congress; the judicial, which is the federal court system, including the Supreme Court of the United States; and the executive, which is the president and his vice president and cabinet. This mixed-government system is about ensuring the separation of powers. For example, as the leader of the executive branch, the president has many powers, including appointing judges to courts. But judicial appointments must be confirmed by the Senate in Congress. This is one of the many checks and balances in our governmental system that ensures that one branch doesn’t have too much power.

Congress is a bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Senate (the upper house). Collectively, the total of a state’s representatives and senators in Congress is referred to as its congressional delegation.

According to the U.S. Constitution, every member state has two senators. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Wyoming (population about 586,000, the lowest in the U.S.) or California (population over 39 million, the most); each state has two senators who represent the entire state. Voters in their states elect their senators via popular vote.

The House of Representatives is based on population. There’s a lot of fun history with that, but I’ll stick to what we have now, which is 435 total House members. Wyoming has just one representative while California has 53. Congressional representatives represent geographical areas called districts; all of Wyoming is one district, and California has 53 districts, one for each representative. Voters in their states elect their representatives by popular vote and by district. So only residents in District #1 vote for a representative in District #1.

This makes fairly decent sense so far. It won’t in a moment.

So along comes the national presidential election. Voters in all the states cast their votes for president, but the votes are not tallied on a national scale to determine a winner. Instead, each state appoints electors who in turn cast their votes for president, generally based on whichever candidate won their state’s popular vote. A state has a number of electors (and thus electoral votes) equal to the number in its congressional delegation. So Wyoming, with one representative and two senators, has three electoral votes. California, with 53 representatives and two senators, has 55. Nearly all states award its electoral votes in a “winner take all” fashion. So if a candidate wins California—even if he beats his closest competitor by a single vote—then that candidate gets all 55 of California’s electoral votes.

Two states can split its electoral votes—Maine, since 1972, and Nebraska, since 1992—by congressional district. The reason that they can do this is because the Constitution allows each state to award its electoral votes however they choose. In fact, how states award them has changed over the years. In our first presidential election, in 1789, only three states awarded them in the “winner take all” fashion—and they all repealed that method by 1800. It wasn’t until 1880 that virtually all states had adopted winner-take-all. A state could choose to award them proportionately based on the popular vote in that state, or any other way it chooses. Again, this is because our Constitution says they can do it how they wish. It’s just that the states have mostly all favored winner-take-all for 135 years.

The electors are part of what is called the Electoral College. They are representatives whose duty it is to vote for the candidate indicated by their state’s rules on awarding electoral votes. The concept is not unique to American politics, and has its roots in nobility being elected by peers.

There were a number of reasons to set up such a system, but one of them was that the South had a lower population of eligible voters—what with so many non-voting slaves filling up their lands. Indeed, the 1790 census shows over 3.8 million total individuals, but excluding free white males under age 16 and women, that left about 807,000 total voters. Compare that to the 694,000 slaves—about 600,000 of them in Southern states—who were part of the population but not able to vote, and it’s easy to see that voting Southerners would have been outnumbered by voting Northerners.

But back to electing a president. On Election Day, the electors meet in their state capitals to cast their electoral votes. Each elector then completes six Certificates of Vote: one is sent by registered mail to the President of the Senate (usually the sitting vice president), two are sent by registered mail to the Archivist of the United States, two are mailed to the state’s Secretary of State, and one is mailed to the chief judge of the U.S. District Court where those electors met.

Strange setup? It could have been worse. And sometimes it still can be.

Part II:
Problems with this system

During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, many favored what was called the Virginia Plan, which would have had the Congress elect the president. But that would have ensured that whoever controlled the legislative branch would control the executive branch—not much in the spirit of separation of powers.

Constitutionally, to win the presidential election, one candidate must have a majority of electoral votes—currently 270, based on a total of 538. Once a candidate has reached or exceeded that number, the election is won. But what if no candidate gets 270?

If that happens, then the House of Representatives chooses the president from the top three electoral-vote-getters, and the Senate chooses the vice president from the top two electoral-vote-getters.

Huh? What kind of balance is that between the branches of government? A crappy one. And the chance of this happening is greater than you might think. Currently, the United States is effectively a two-party system—Republicans and Democrats—and the minor parties never make enough of an impact to win any states, so it’s a given that one candidate will win a majority.

So let’s put the current election into perspective. Based on all the numbers right now, Hillary Clinton is going to run away with this election, but there are still 80-plus days remaining as I write this. It’s possible that things could change, and suddenly the race might be a lot closer than it is. Stranger things have happened. And if it did, what if there were a bloc of electors who are Trump idiots in states that don’t have laws forcing electors to do their duties? That bloc could instead award votes to Trump when they should be awarded to Clinton.

But even more likely is that the minor political parties might actually make a difference this year. Trump has alienated many Republicans, and while some of them have come out saying that they’ll vote for Clinton, many are likely to vote Libertarian. And there are still some of those stubborn, sore-losing “Bernie or Bust” supporters who, despite Clinton’s stances and the Democratic platform being extremely close to Bernie Sanders’ platform—in large part thanks to Bernie Sanders—who refuse to vote for Clinton. If you get enough Libertarian supporters out there, you might see a shift in the electoral votes. In an otherwise close Clinton-Trump race, a strong Libertarian candidate could conceivably win a few small states and prevent anyone from winning 270 electoral votes.

And in that event, we all know what would happen. The House of Representatives, currently solidly Republican, would likely vote Donald Trump in as president—despite any of their public statements of opposing Trump.

All of this, of course, has nothing to do with the popular vote on a national scale. Usually, the candidate elected president is also the winner of the popular vote, but not always. There have been four times out of 57 presidential elections where the winner of the electoral vote did not win the popular vote. The first was in 1824, when no candidate earned a majority of the electoral vote, so the House elected John Quincy Adams—who had soundly lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson, 151,271 to 113,122. The second was in 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes won neither the popular nor electoral vote but political deals awarded him an additional 20 electoral votes to give him the presidency. The third was in 1888, when Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 90,596 votes but won the electoral vote 233-168.

The fourth, of course, was in 2000, when George W. Bush was first elected. Al Gore was ahead of Bush by 543,895 in the popular vote, but Bush won 271 to 266 electoral votes—thanks to a contested Florida recount that was ultimately halted by a Supreme Court decision. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes out of 5,963,110 total votes cast. The debate as to Bush’s legitimacy as president—and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s installation of him as such—rages to this day.

All of those examples—particularly the most recent—demonstrate why a national popular vote is so vital. In 2000, one state was so close that the whole electoral system failed.

Part III:
One hope: the National Popular Vote movement

There is one hope. It won’t help us in this election, but it’s one that must happen. Even if you’re not an American and even if you despise the United States, there’s no denying the overwhelming influence and effect this country and the office of its president has on the entire planet. Even if you have no say in who we elect to that office, you’d certainly better pay attention to it.

Under our Constitution, there are only two ways for us to change our system so that we elect a president by popular vote.

The first is by constitutional amendment. Without going into too much detail, basically an amendment has to pass both the House and the Senate by a two-thirds majority, and then be ratified by three-quarters of the states (currently 38). Since 1789, there have been 33 proposed constitutional amendments, 27 of which have passed; 10 of those, known as the Bill of Rights, were introduced in 1789 and ratified on the same day two years later. The next 17 amendments took 201 years. There have been none since 1992. Americans are finicky about constitutional amendments—unless they’re far-right conservative whack jobs who want to amend the Constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman, or other such time-wasting, rights-stealing bullshit.

The second way to change our system is far easier, and it’s happening now. It requires no change to the Constitution.

Ongoing polls consistently show bipartisan support for choosing our president based on the popular vote. Nationally, 70 percent of American citizens support it. Polls in some states have support as high as 80 percent. Clearly, Americans by and large reject the Electoral College as we know it.

So along came the National Popular Vote movement. These folks made a very simple observation: The United States Constitution establishes how many electoral votes a state has, but specifically allows the states to award them however they choose. This is how Maine and Nebraska could split their votes if they chose to do so, and why every other state awards their electoral votes as a winner-take-all affair.

The NPV came up with a very simple solution by drafting legislation that it has been working to get passed through every state legislative chamber (Nebraska has one chamber; all other states have two). This legislation—the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact—says that the state agrees to award all of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. So if Candidate A wins the popular vote in a state that has enacted the NPVIC but Candidate B wins the popular vote on a national scale, then that state would award its electoral votes to Candidate B.

Slowly but surely, it has been getting passed in the various chambers. Once enacted by a state, this interstate compact lies dormant until enough other states have enacted it to represent a majority of electoral votes—currently 270. So, for example, let’s say that the NPVIC gets 267 electoral votes locked up, and then Wyoming, with its three electoral votes, passes it. The locked-up number would hit 270—and the law would go into effect in every state that has passed it.

Once that happens, how the remaining states award their electoral votes won’t matter.

Part IV:
Answering questions

Some people believe that the Electoral College is vital to protecting small states from being disenfranchised. They believe this because they’ve heard it repeated so often that they assume that it’s true. It is not.

The belief is that small states such as Wyoming, with just a half-million people, would be ignored by candidates in favor of states like California, with the big, 55-vote prize. But this is not the electoral reality. California will almost certainly go Democratic for president because it has since 1992. Likewise, Texas, with 34 electoral votes, has gone Republican since 1980.

This tells us that Democrats don’t need to campaign hard nor spend too much money in California, and the same is true for Republicans in Texas. Remember, whoever wins a majority in California wins ALL 55 votes. If you’re a Democrat, why work that state hard?

But what about Wyoming? This year, Wyoming will almost certainly go to Trump (although given the status of the Trump campaign, anything is possible) because it has gone Republican since 1968. According to an Associated Press story on August 16 that cited the Wyoming Bureau of Elections, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in Wyoming more than three to one—about 143,000 to about 42,000. So even with lots of Republican defectors this cycle, Clinton knows she almost certainly can’t win the state, so she doesn’t need to waste too much time there—but neither does Trump. Wyoming’s three electoral votes are considered an expected loss for the Dems and an expected win for the Republicans.

THIS is an example of a state being disenfranchised. And it’s nothing new. Battleground states are the ones that matter to candidates—the ones where they need to focus time and money. As Dr. John R. Koza, the NPV chair, said, “The result of these state winner-take-all laws is that neither candidate has any reason to campaign in any state where he’s safely ahead or hopelessly behind.”

This isn’t just opinion; it’s solid fact. In a table of data from the NPV which showed a combined 300 appearances by candidates in 2008 following the party conventions, none were in California nor Wyoming. All were in states that were up for grabs. And in 2012, campaign events were limited to just 12 states—those within 3 percent of the national outcome. Of those 12 states, four of them got two-thirds of the events: Ohio, with 73 (almost a third); Florida, with 40; Virginia, 36; and Iowa, 27. In all, 96 percent of the campaign visits were concentrated in just eight states. Through this, both parties completely ignored 23 states that they knew the Republicans would win, and 15 states and the District of Columbia that they knew the Democrats would win.

But it’s more than just the popular vote. In the book Presidential Pork, author John Hudak noted that battleground states got 7 percent more presidentially controlled grants, twice as many federal disaster declarations, and considerably more exemptions from Superfunds and No Child Left Behind. The statistics go on and on, but it certainly seems that presidents cater to battleground states that help get them elected or reelected.

With NPV in place, you can bet that candidates will be hitting every state to earn every last possible vote—because no longer will it be about winning a state for its electoral votes but winning the most popular votes nationwide—and there will be a lot less playing favorites from the Oval Office.

There is one remaining, nagging worry among some: Won’t the non-major parties likely result in a winner who doesn’t even get a majority?

This is true. We could conceivably end up with a four-way race in which the two smaller parties end up with, for example, 15 percent—which would not be any worry in an electoral system, but that could eat up 30 percent of the national popular vote. If the top two parties then ended up with around 35 percent each, we might well elect a president with just a 35 percent plurality instead of a better-than-50-percent majority. But should we?

We should. When candidates have to work harder to earn as many votes as possible, that comes a lot closer to a democracy, where more people have more access to candidates. And we can’t forget the three-branch nature of the American political system. Regardless of what plurality a candidate gets to win the White House, the bicameral Congress still ensures that there can be checks and balances.

Part V:
The future

More importantly, if we’re going to continue with political parties, we sure as hell need more than two of them controlling the entire American political process. Maybe if minor parties start making impacts, they’ll earn seats in Congress. Maybe the minor parties will cease to be second-rate affairs and start to make a difference. Maybe fringe groups like the Tea Party will splinter off from the Republicans, leaving the GOP to right its ship and let the far-right whack jobs flounder in obscurity.

 Maybe the “Bernie or Bust” folks in search of a political revolution will be able to find a progressive candidate more capable than Bernie Sanders, and one who won’t have to become a Democrat just to run for president. Maybe we finally WILL see a REAL political revolution.

Eleven states representing 165 electoral votes have enacted the National Popular Vote compact. This is 61 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed for it to go into effect. But 34 chambers in 23 states have passed it, so there are many states where it has passed one chamber but not yet the other. It’s a matter of time before the final 105 electoral votes are represented; when that happens, the NPV law will go into effect and forever change American politics—and how those politics affect the world stage.

It could happen fast. The NPV folks hope that 2016 will be the last U.S. presidential election that is not decided by the national popular vote.

I have only given you the tip of the iceberg with the National Popular Vote. Visit www.NationalPopularVote.com to learn more.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a writer living in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.