Imagine an election night scenario in which a presidential candidate wins only 12 states but wins the election because those states delivered the requisite 270 Electoral College votes.

Just do the math:

1. California (54)
2. Texas (40)
3. Florida (30)
4. New York (28)
5. Pennsylvania (19)
6. Illinois (19)
7. Ohio (17)
8. Georgia (16)
9. Michigan (15)
10. North Carolina (16)
11. New Jersey (14)
12. Virginia (13)

Thats 281 electoral votes, enough to secure the presidency at the expense of the remaining 38 states. Worth noting: 38 is the minimum number of states required to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But you need only those 12 to win the presidency.

Unlikely? Of course. But someday? Why not?

The scenario underscores one criticism of the Electoral College: It allows candidates to focus on a few key states rather than campaigning across the entire country. We do that now. Theyre called swing states.

Every focus on polls of the 2024 election emphasizes that only the so-called swing states matter. Media outlets gorged themselves on Kamala Harris choice for a running mate, and every expectation was that her vice presidential pick would be someone from a swing state. And it was, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The Electoral College causes such narrowcasting, and we should finally do away with it.

It wont happen, of course. It might, had Republicans been winning the popular vote and losing the electoral one. But theyve won the popular vote only once in the last six presidential contests in 2004, probably because he was the incumbent. Yet theyve won the election two other times courtesy of the electoral vote, profoundly changing the direction of the nation. I dont particularly appreciate that two presidents in my lifetime, George W. Bush and Donald Trump , won without winning the popular vote, and both men proved terrible for the country. I wouldnt like it if theyd been good for the country, either.

Consider: Despite Joe Biden s margin of victory of 7 million votes in 2020, if 45,000 people in three battleground states had voted differently, Trump would have been reelected. Should 45,000 people hold sway over 7 million?

So, maybe we should think about the election process differently because what we have now doesnt seem to be working in anyones favor.

Yes, we were taught in school that the Electoral College was created for every state to have a voice, ensuring all parts of the country are involved so that a big state like California or Texas alone doesnt decide who gets elected. We are the United States of America, not the United States of California. But is the United States of Wisconsin or Georgia a better alternative?

California has a population of 39 million. With 54 electoral votes, thats roughly one electoral vote per 722,000 people. Wyoming the least populous state in the country has one electoral vote per 195,000 people.

Twelve percent of Americans live in California, but its percentage of delegates is only 10%. That pattern repeats itself in nearly all the nations most populous states, starting with Texas, Florida and New York. The greater a states population, the greater the disparity in delegate representation and the more dramatically they are underrepresented. Conversely, each of the least populous states enjoys the opposite pattern: They have more delegates as a percentage of their populations and, thus, are overrepresented.

An analysis by The Washington Post found that if every person in each state voted, a vote in Wyoming would still be worth almost four times as much as one in California.

A common argument favoring the Electoral College is that it provides political stability a cleaner, clearer and more decisive outcome, thus reducing the likelihood of a contested or inconclusive election. Its also supposed to be a buffer against election fraud by decentralizing the vote-counting process across the states.

For Republicans who still insist the election was stolen, the unwillingness to get rid of the Electoral College seems a bit at cross-purposes with that conspiracy theory, no?

The Electoral College forces candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters across different states and regions, were told , potentially promoting more moderate and inclusive policies. Would you call campaigning in just seven swing states the best way to appeal to a wide range of voters? Are Trumps policies moderate?

There is an even better reason to rid ourselves of the Electoral College. Voter apathy. More like resignation. How often have you heard, or even said yourself, Why should I vote? My vote wont matter anyway.

Its a common frustration for a conservative living in an overwhelmingly blue state, and vice versa. Historically, vast swaths of eligible voters dont vote. How many felt their vote didnt matter because it all came down to some state they dont live in?

The 2020 election saw a huge turnout, you say? Explain how, out of 240 million eligible voters, 81 million of them did not cast a ballot. Thats how many people voted for Biden. I suspect 2024 will see a similar turnout. Extremism will do that, and nothing brings out voter extremism like Trump, regardless of party.

But go back through the previous four-year cycles and a pattern emerges. In 2016, decidedly fewer people voted for Hillary Clinton (65.8 million) or Trump (62.3 million). More than 40% of eligible voters didnt vote 90 million people. In 2012, only 57% of eligible voters voted. And so on. Consistently, in each four-year cycle, 40% of the nations eligible voters do not vote.

How many more would have turned out to vote if they knew their vote counted? Or if it were easier to vote? Less than half of young voters vote, and we typically think thats because of apathy and disengagement. Not exactly.

Registering to vote and figuring out where and how to vote can look easy on paper, explains Vox Media . But for many young adults, getting clear instructions, along with all the variables that can change at the last minute, is more challenging than you might think.

It points to another tradition that has outlived its usefulness: voting on Tuesdays. On Jan. 23, 1845, Congress voted to hold all national elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. (All political bribes would be accepted only on the third Wednesday after the second Friday of every other month.) It was done to accommodate a then-agrarian society. Think we could update to the 21st century?

How many more would turn out to vote if they could register easily, and vote conveniently, as well as knowing their vote mattered? What? Is moving Election Day to election weekend too hard? Or work toward a future of smart digital voting

Good luck getting any of this to happen. There have been over 700 attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College. It means securing a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress followed by ratification in three-fourths of the states. Given recent election results, Republicans in Congress and Republican state governments are incentivized to keep what keeps them in power. Theyll scream something about voter fraud, always without evidence, but fearmongering always works for their base of voters.

Workaround efforts are in play. Among them is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact . Started in the mid-2000s, the compact is an agreement among states pledging to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, effectively bypassing the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment. It takes effect only when states representing at least 270 electoral votes join the compact. As of April 2024, 17 states and the District of Columbia are on board, comprising 209 electoral votes.

Another idea: Proportional allocation. Rather than a winner-take-all approach, there would be two variations of allocation based on the popular vote within each state:

1. Award two Electoral College votes from each state to the winner of the national popular vote and the remainder to the winner of the state. That means that the national winner would automatically get 102 Electoral College votes. If you lost the popular vote but won a given state, youd get the rest of that states electoral votes.
2. Award two Electoral College votes from each state to the winner of the national popular vote, and award the remaining electors to the winner of each congressional district. Nebraska and Maine already do something along these lines.