Distortion due to state population size
There are several ways that the electoral college (EC) distorts the principle of one person one vote. At the most basic level, since every state plus D.C. is allocated at least three electors regardless of population, the less-populated states get outsized influence.
Based on 2010 census population estimates, if the average voter strength in the EC is 1.00, voters in Wyoming, with a population of 563,626 and 3 electoral votes, have 3.05 times the average voting power. On the other hand, voters in California, population 37,253,956 and 55 electoral votes, come in at only 0.85. I.e., a WY voter has 3.6 times the influence of a CA voter. The map above shows the picture across the country, grouped into quartiles each with 12 or 13 members.
Note that an effort toward a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college in favor of a direct nationwide popular vote would require assent of three-fourths of the state legislatures. Therefore, successful passage would mean that at least some states in the third quartile, voter strength 1.08 to 1.56, would have to voluntarily give up their advantage.
Distortion due to winner-take-all rules
Most states have the rule that all the state’s electoral votes go to the candidate with the highest raw vote total in the state. This has the effect of making votes over a plurality for a given candidate utterly meaningless. We recently saw this feature in action as the 2016 California votes trickled in for weeks after the election, adding a million votes or more to Clinton’s nationwide popular vote lead as merely an academic exercise. Those voters simply didn’t matter at all in the presidential race.
Per figures currently reported on wikipedia, in the recent election in the states where Clinton won, there were 11.2 million “excess” Clinton votes that effectively didn’t count. Conversely, in the states where Trump won there were 8.6 million excess votes.
Distortion due to the granularity of allocating only 538 total votes
Per the apportionment based on the 2010 census, electoral votes are allocated two per state plus one per 709,136 of population with rounding, with a minimum of three total. So there’s potentially some slack of 709,136 state residents before the next electoral vote gets earned.
In this sweepstakes, North Carolina comes out as the biggest loser with 347,013 excess residents over what their electoral vote allocation of 15 would indicate. I.e., (15-2)*709136 = 9,218,768 but the NC apportionment population per the census is 9,565,781. If the 2010 NC population had been just about 8,000 more (0.1%), the Tarheel state would have been allocated 1 more electoral vote for 16 total, a 16/15 or 7% increase in electoral strength. Of course since the total number of electoral votes is fixed at 538, that vote would have come at the expense of a state on the other end of the electoral sweepstakes, in this case perhaps Rhode Island, Minnesota or Washington, each of which had just enough 2010 resident population to snag an additional electoral vote.
Basically, the equation for the 2010 allocation is:
EV = 2 + round(pop2010/709136)
Using the resident population numbers at the link above, that equation works for every state except Rhode Island for some reason, which got 4 electoral votes instead of the three the equation would indicate. Perhaps as the state closest to getting an extra electoral vote, with an un-rounded allocation of 3.488, RI was awarded the odd one “left over” to make 538 total.
Distortion due to demographics
It’s often said that the impetus for establishing the electoral college in the first place in 1789 was to give the then less-populous Southern states more leverage in the presidential election, with particular reference to the institution of slavery. Of course, such population demographics change rapidly and indeed for the advocates of slavery the electoral college turned out to be a double-edged sword. The prospect of a ban against slavery in new states carved out of western territories, each with two senators and at least one representative and three electoral votes, meant that slavery would inevitably be voted into oblivion, and rather quickly, irrespective of the absolute number of settlers. Thus came secession and the Civil War as soon as Abraham Lincoln, who had run on such a platform concerning new territories, was elected.
Beyond the distortions of the electoral college based on state population, there was at the time the Three-Fifths compromise giving slave states an advantage. Lincoln said in his Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854
Then again, in the control of the government---the management of the partnership affairs---[the South] have greatly the advantage of us. By the constitution, each State has two Senators---each has a number of Representatives; in proportion to the number of its people---and each has a number of presidential electors, equal to the whole number of its Senators and Representatives together.
But in ascertaining the number of the people, for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal to three whites. The slaves do not vote; they are only counted and so used, as to swell the influence of the white people's votes.
The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a comparison of the States of South Carolina and Maine. South Carolina has six representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina has eight presidential electors, and so has Maine. This is precise equality so far; and, of course they are equal in Senators, each having two. Thus in the control of the government, the two States are equals precisely. But how are they in the number of their white people? Maine has 581,813---while South Carolina has 274,567. Maine has twice as many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over. Thus each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over the white man in every other free State, as well as in Maine. He is more than the double of any one of us in this crowd. The same advantage, but not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave States, over those of the free; and it is an absolute truth, without an exception, that there is no voter in any slave State, but who has more legal power in the government, than any voter in any free State. There is no instance of exact equality; and the disadvantage is against us the whole chapter through. This principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave States, in the present Congress, twenty additional representatives---being seven more than the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska bill.
Today of course the census tabulation and voting franchise is applied equally, in principle, although we have seen voter suppression efforts still applied to varying effect, and illegal gerrymandering of Congressional districts has resulted in a 51% nationwide vote for Congressional Republicans translated into 55% of the seats. We’re left with a demographic picture still echoing Lincoln’s time in some respects:
Indeed, South Carolina currently has a large black population, 28%, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic despite the state’s electoral votes going to the Republican in 13 of the last 14 elections since 1960, Pres. Carter being the only exception, and that favor was not returned in 1980.
In a sense, black voters in SC could be seen as disenfranchised by the electoral college, which makes their overwhelming preference meaningless in the presidential contest. If we had instead a nationwide popular vote for president, at least everyone’s vote would count equally toward the result, regardless if one was outnumbered in one’s own neighborhood.
The same of course could be said for, say, Republican voters in California or New York, who have been likewise shut out of the presidential contest for decades.
But demographics and politics do change and trying to say anything really quantitative about such disparities quickly leads one down a rabbit hole of assumptions and unknowns. As just one broad look at the matter, take the situation created by racial identity and the unequal distribution of same such as shown for blacks in the map above, and how that plugs into the electoral college outcomes.
For example, if Native American population is distributed mostly in less populous Western states with outsized electoral vote allocations, which it is, then their voting power in some sense is greater than average. Likewise, if blacks tend to live in more densely populated states, their electoral vote strength would be below average. Crunching the numbers this way nationwide gives this result:
Vote strength in electoral college
race |
vote strength |
white
|
1.004
|
black |
0.975 |
asian |
0.959 |
Native American |
1.103 |
Pacific islander |
1.137 |
other/TWO or more |
1.028 |
So it’s not as bad as a three-fifths compromise, but call it one person, one vote +/- 10%.
The all-bets-are-off distortion
Finally, there is the case of electors casting their votes not for the candidate chosen by the popular vote in their states, but for someone else, fundamentally at their own absolute discretion. This is seen by most as a perversion of democracy, but as we have seen, the electoral college itself is a perversion of democracy at many levels. It’s a bit inconsistent to hold all of its anti-democratic features sacrosanct only up to the point where electors might not behave like rubber stamps for their respective boards of election. Then all of a sudden democracy must rule the day, so the assertion goes.
But consider the words of Hamilton in Federalist No. 68: The Mode of Electing the President. He does not describe electors as automatons but rather:
...men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.
So are they to be conducting complicated investigations then?
Further, the mode of each state convening separately in December was seen as a guard against undue influence that might occur if they were all gathered in one body. And this “intermediate body” was seen and preferable to direct election:
The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.
He adds:
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.
“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68