How to Game the US Electoral System
Hint: It's easy if you have a lot of money.
The Electoral College- Trick #1
General Election Results
Presidential Candidate #1 Total Votes = 81,000,000
Presidential Candidate #2 Total Votes = 41
And the winner is Presidential Candidate #2 with only 41 votes.
Don't think is possible? Or maybe you can figure out how it is possible?
Here is how it would work: In the 10 most populous states all the registered voters went with Presidential Candidate #1. So Presidential Candidate #1 received all there 250 Electoral College Votes. In the 40 least populous states only one person voted in each state and that one person voted for Presidential Candidate #2 receiving all 285 Electoral College Votes from those least populous states.
Here are the details and spreadsheets.
If an amateur spreadsheeter like myself can figure this out in about 30 minutes spare time, imagine what a team of professional statisticians hired by ideologically driven billionaires can do with all the time in the world.
Why Trump is the perfect candidate to take advantage of Trick #1
Most of the least populous states have economies which are not diverse and are heavily dependent on resource extraction. In addition these least populous states have residents who tend to be not only culturally conservative but also culturally homogeneous. Meaning they tend not to adopt social changes like gay marriage readily, they are resistant to influence and successful examples from other countries and their schools and neighborhoods tend to be racially segregated (of course this happens in large cities as well.)
Explained- Canditate #1- 81,000,000 votes Candidate #2- 41 votes and the winner is Candidate #2 with 41 votes.
---How to Game the US Electoral System---
The Electoral College Trick #1
The Electoral College has two major weaknesses as an electoral system so I simply calculated the worst case scenario assuming these two weaknesses were taken to their extreme.
- 1- It incentivizes voter suppression, so if only one person votes in a state, that person's choice receives all of the Electoral College votes.
- 2 It's formula for deciding how many Electoral Votes are allotted to each state favors small states over large states (by population).
So---- if there is only one person from each of the 41 smallest states (including DC) voting and those 41 people all vote for Candidate #2, that candidate would receive 282 Electoral votes, enough to win the Presidency. It wouldn't matter if all the registered voters from the 10 largest states- 81,000,000 (vs 76,600,000 in the 41 smallest states with DC) vote for Candidate #1, their votes are tossed out.
Of course this model would never happen in real life but this provides a political strategist with an excellent model to work with.... Spend your money in the small states with; voter suppression, propaganda, and play up the hot ticket emotional topics such as abortion, immigration, gay marriage, and all the "advantages" minorities have. Also favor resource extractive and farming interests over quality of life interests. This provides an excellent model for winning the Presidency (and the Senate) no matter what the political climate of the country may be. --Sound like the Republican Party to you?
Often if you have the money to spend, this same strategy works in the large states as well. I think Trump won 7 of the 10 largest states.
My point is the Electoral College is incredibly vulnerable to manipulation, and it does not foster honest political discourse. Trump knows this, that is why he doesn't care what the majority of the population thinks he only cares about remaining in favor with his rabid base.
Response to Madison quoting Republic defender:
This essay makes the case for "A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking." over a "pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction." It is fairly typical of Enlightenment Era writing in that it cites no widely observable data to support it's premises. Don't get me wrong I think our country owes a great debt to these Enlightenment Era thinkers that helped us escape the draconian monarchies and religious-based governments of the past. ......But I'm talking Electoral College here and the Electoral College it not a great example of the Republican ideal. The original idea was that the voter would not even vote for their presidential candidate, the voter would only vote for his/her elector. When is the last time you knew who your elector was or listened to the opinions of your your elector? This still happens behind the scenes but most everyone who votes, thinks they are voting for their particular presidential candidate. The Electoral College may have been based on Republican idealism but in practice it is poorly constructed and ripe for exploitation from moneyed interests. Here are the 3 main weaknesses I see; 1. it encourages voters suppression (a candidate receives all of a state's electoral votes even if there is only 1 voter), 2. It's formula favors small states over large states, I think we have enough of that small state favoritism in the Senate already (I think it is about 18 vs 82 balanced by population between the 9 largest vs the 41 smallest). 3. It encourages a candidate to focus all their policies on the small number of swing states in play. This is not only true during the election but throughout a presidency. .....I'm pretty sure the Mercer family is not applying Madison's essays when they are deciding which states to target using Cambridge Analytical with fake Facebook ads, voter suppression, gerrymandering and calculating what talking points work best in which states...Ultimately electoral systems come down to a numbers game, and need to be built on foundations which can withstand partisan and corrupt attacks. ......Otherwise we end up with incompetent and corrupt people representing us.
More Response to Republican Ideals
Madison's rationale for a democratic republic over a pure democracy was basically that a core group of representatives could serve as a anchor from some of the whims of a pure democracy. That core group of representatives could serve as a more rational body and keep sight of the longer view of things. Unfortunately our founding fathers dwelled in a world of philosophical conjecture, they did not have a lot of actually data to work with. Today we can see that, the electoral and legislative advantages given to; the wealthy, the corporations and the citizens of states of small populations (it was probably never imagined that states would have such huge differences in population) as envisioned by our 18th century Republican ideals is not very rational, level-headed and does not take the long view of things. Instead that party which best exploits these baked in republican advantages is a hot-bed of white supremacy and climate-change denial. These rather clumsy poorly implemented 18th century structures have become excellent tools for our plutocratic government to exploit.
