Why we don't know about the Electoral College

Banned Histories of Race in America

In case you didn’t know, there are only 538 Americans who actually get to vote for the president—and they’re not even the same ones every time. It may not seem that way at the polls, but when we check the box for the candidate of our choice, we are in fact voting for a political party. The Democrats and Republicans in each state have chosen representatives called electors and whichever party wins the majority of votes in that state will then send its electors to vote for the president.

This system is called the Electoral College and it is super dumb for every single reason. First, the “majority” of state votes is frequently manufactured. Racists local leaders are constantly redrawing district maps to create white supremacist districts which in turn create entirely false “majorities”. In 48/50 states (Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes), if your vote is not aligned with the majority, your elector is not chosen and therefore your vote is no longer counted. This results in the Electoral College functioning only to magnify a corrupt and racist system.

On top of that the distribution of electoral votes disproportionately leans toward the more racist party. For example, one electoral vote in famously-liberal California represents more than 700,000 people, but in Wyoming—the reddest state—less than 200,000.