The shortcomings of the current system stem from existing state “winner-take-all” laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state.

• Voters in 7 states (with less than 20% of the country's population) will decide the Presidency in 2024.

• Five of our 46 Presidents came into office without winning the most popular votes nationwide.

• The current state-by-state winner-take-all system regularly enables a few thousand votes in a small number of states to decide the Presidency—thereby inviting post-election controversies that can destabilize the country. 

• Every vote is not equal throughout the United States under the current system. 

• The current system could easily result in the U.S. House choosing the President on a one-state-one-vote basis.

Details:

Voters in 7 states (with less than 20% of the country's population) will decide the Presidency in 2024. 

Because of the winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes, presidential candidates only pay attention to the concerns of voters in closely divided states.

Voters in 7 states (with less than 20% of the country's population) will decide the Presidency in 2024.

That means 43 states (with 80% of the country's population) are mere spectators in this critically important presidential election.

In contrast, candidates will be compelled to solicit the support of every voter in every state in every presidential election in a national popular vote for President.

Five of our 46 Presidents came into office without winning the most popular votes nationwide. 

The second-place candidate won the presidency in two of this century’s six presidential elections, namely in 2000 and 2016.

In addition, another two elections (2004 and 2020) have been “near-misses” in which a shift of a small number of popular votes in one state, or a few states, would have given the presidency to the loser of the national popular vote.

For example, the 2020 election was decided by 10,457 votes in Arizona, 11,779 in Georgia, and 20,682 in Wisconsin. Despite leading by over 7 million votes nationally, Joe Biden would have been defeated without these 42,918 votes. Overall, there have been 13 such near-miss presidential elections.

The National Popular Vote bill will guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The current state-by-state winner-take-all system regularly enables a few thousand votes in a small number of states to decide the Presidency—thereby fueling post-election controversies. 

The fact that a few thousand votes in a handful of closely divided states regularly decide the presidency is a recurring feature of the current system.

The state-by-state aspect of the current system starts by dividing the nation’s 158,224,999 voters into 51 separate state-level silos.

Then, the winner-take-all aspect of the current system channels virtually all campaigning into a few closely divided battleground states—because they are the only places where the candidates have anything to gain or lose.

The presidency has been decided by an average of a mere 287,969 popular votes spread over an average of three states in the six presidential elections between 2000 and 2020.

Inevitably, some of these battleground states end up being extremely close on Election Day. These close results, in turn, generate post-election doubt, controversy, litigation, and unrest over real or imagined irregularities.

In contrast, the winner’s average margin of victory in the national popular vote in these six elections was 4,668,496—16 times larger than 287,969.

Every vote is not equal throughout the United States under the current system. 

There are four sources of inequality in the value of a vote for President under the current system, namely

• the two extra electoral votes that each state receives beyond the number warranted by its population
• the imprecision of the process used to apportion U.S. House seats among the states (and hence electoral votes); 
• intra-decade population changes that do not get reflected in the Electoral College until the next census; and 
• voter turnout differences from state to state. 

The current system could easily result in the U.S. House choosing the President on a one-state-one-vote basis. 

If no candidate receives an absolute majority of the electoral votes (that is, 270 out of 538), the U.S. House of Representatives chooses the President on a one-state-one-vote basis. The District of Columbia has no vote in this process.

In each of the first six presidential elections of the 21st Century, there have been numerous politically plausible combinations of states that could have produced a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. The candidate who lost the national popular vote could easily win the presidency in a one-state-one-vote election in the U.S. House.

LEARN MORE

• 9-minute video explaining National Popular Vote
• National Popular Vote home page