Why is Donald Trump’s Big Lie of massive voter fraud so big? Because the number of popular votes it actually takes to tip a presidential election is so small.
Trump lost in 2020 by almost 8 million popular votes nationwide, but if just 22,000 of those votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin had tipped all three states to his favor, their combined electoral votes could have made him president. Those 22,000 votes were only .0141935484% of the entire 155 million votes cast nationwide. How does one express that number, simply, with words? You don’t. It’s too small!
This outsized role played by a handful of states, results from the fact that we don’t really have a single presidential election, we have 51 (that’s one in each state plus the District of Columbia.) When the victor in each of those elections is called, he or she gets all that state’s electoral votes.
But with this way of electing presidents, any power smaller states like Utah gained under the Founders’ original design has now been lost to states of whatever size whose election outcome is unpredictable. Utah, Nevada and Iowa all have around 3 million people and six electoral votes, yet in 2020, Nevada got 11 campaign events, Iowa got five, and Utah got, wait for it… zip, zero, nada.
Why? Because Utah is predictable. Heck, Wisconsin only has four more electoral votes than Utah and it got 18 campaign events! Poor old Texas with a mighty 38 electoral votes? Got just 3. And what about California? The biggest state in the nation with 55 electoral votes, the 5th largest economy on the planet? Nothing. Huh, Utah and California do have something in common: predictability in presidential elections.
We all know about the divergence of the popular and electoral votes in 2000 and 2016. But how many know about previous near misses? If there had been the lack of faith in election integrity displayed today in 2004, John Kerry might have challenged election results in Ohio, when just over 59,000 popular votes could have given him the 20 electoral votes required for victory over George W. Bush.
In 1960, Nixon resisted the urge to challenge the approximately 9,000 popular votes from Illinois and South Carolina that gave Kennedy his 35 electoral vote victory. In 1976, Gerald Ford conceded rather than challenge the 9,000 popular votes from Ohio and Hawaii that gave Carter the 29 electoral votes he needed to win.
When candidates plan campaign routes, they look at a map of the United States and simply take for granted every state that’s predictable, and zero-in on those that aren’t: 10-12 battleground states where campaign promises, federal dollars and resulting legislation often ignore the rest of the country. The election for the only national office we have is determined not by the most individual votes across the entire nation, but by that handful of individual votes tucked safely away inside the border of a few fickle swing states. If those votes had noses, they’d be thumbing them at the rest of us every four years.
Problem is, it’s no joke. Our current system for electing presidents that emphasizes electoral votes over popular votes, allows for the winner to lose and not surprisingly, for the nation to distrust its elections.
There’s a way to fix that, and according to the latest Pew Research Center, 63% of Americans think it’s a good idea. The National Popular Vote Bill making its way around the country will guarantee the presidency to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Currently states totaling 195 electoral votes have passed it into law. When states equaling another 75 do the same and bring the total to the 270 needed to win the presidency, in the following presidential election, these participating states will award all their electoral votes to whomever gets the most popular votes nationwide.
In a national popular vote, it won’t be just a few thousand votes in a few unpredictable states picking our next president. It will be the most votes from a pool of over 150 million nationwide. Big numbers will mean something again.
Bunnie Keen
Bunnie Keen, grew up in Idaho and settled in Utah, just voting and complaining until she decided it was time to do more. She encourages everyone to go to www.nationalpopularvote.com to learn more or volunteer to help inside or outside of Utah to make a national popular vote the law of the land by 2024.
