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The Electoral College employs a first-past-the-post voting system in which a candidate who receives the most electoral votes wins. When candidates have high support levels in states with smaller populations and lower support level in more populous ones, such as in the 2016 election , this can have a consequence in which the winner of the ...
The Electoral College system was established by Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution, drafted in 1787. [95] [96] It "has been a source of discontent for more than 200 years." [97] Over 700 proposals to reform or eliminate the system have been introduced in Congress, [98] making it one of the most popular topics of constitutional reform.
At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, these electors almost always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of the federal legislature, the Congress, are directly elected by the people of each state.
Based on its population per electoral vote, D.C. has the third highest per capita Electoral College representation, after Wyoming and Vermont. [ 121 ] [ non-primary source needed ] Currently, there are 538 electors, based on 435 representatives, 100 senators from the fifty states and three electors from Washington, D.C.
However, the same effect could be achieved if the Electoral College representatives from states with a majority of the electoral votes were all committed to voting for the presidential slate that achieves a national plurality (or the majority after instant-runoff voting): Presidential candidates would then have to compete for votes in all 50 ...
Multi-winner electoral systems at their best seek to produce assemblies representative in a broader sense than that of making the same decisions as would be made by single-winner votes. They can also be route to one-party sweeps of a city's seats, if a non-proportional system, such as plurality block voting or ticket voting , is used.
There have been four exceptions: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016, in which the Electoral College winner's portion of the popular vote was surpassed by an opponent. Although taking fewer votes, the winner claimed more electoral college seats, due to winning close and narrow pluralities in numerous swing states.
This page contains four lists of third-party and independent performances in United States presidential elections: National results for third-party or independent presidential candidates that won above 5% of the popular vote (1788–present)