Is Elizabeth Warren Right About the Electoral College?
No one knows how candidates would campaign in a popular-vote system — or which states would benefit.
Not so fast.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
At a CNN town hall in Mississippi on Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called for an end to the Electoral College. She claimed that while small states like Mississippi are largely ignored under the current rules, a popular-vote system would ensure that all voters count. Is she right?
In one sense, small states actually benefit from the college: It’s one part population, one part credit for just being a state. So each person in Wyoming and Mississippi is represented by a slightly larger percentage of Electoral College votes than their state’s population alone would suggest. Of course, that’s not really how the politics play out (no one campaigns in solidly Republican Wyoming and Mississippi, for instance, or solidly Democratic Vermont and Rhode Island).