Regardless of which side of the political fence you are on. and regardless of which candidate wins the election, know that you never truly had a say in the matter in the first place.
Let's start with a simple figure, according to Census.gov the current population of the United States is 337,267,223. Or at least that’s the number we’ll use for this argument since it’s an ever-changing number.
Now, let’s take a moment to look at how the candidates were chosen. (We’ll get back to the population number in moment.) The first state to hold their primary was Iowa, no shock there. The population of Iowa is 3,214,315.
Let’s do a little math: The population of Iowa divided by the U.S. population (3,214,315 / 337,276,223 = .0095) then converting to a percentage and rounding up, that’s essentially 1% of the population. So, if every single Iowan went to the polls and cast their vote in January then 1% of the U.S. population’s voice would have been heard.
Next fact: Again, for the sake of argument, let’s say there were initially 6 Republican candidates (we’ll pick on the Democrats later). Okay, okay, I can already hear you arguing with me. Depending on which state you voted in, there could have been more or less, but for arguments sake we’ll count: Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ryan Binkly, and David Stuckenberg. You might be thinking, “but what about Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Tim Scott?” Sure, they made the debate stage but dropped out before the first primary which is why we’re not counting them.
The results of the Iowa primary were:
Time for some more math. Of the 3,214,315 Iowans in the state 56,260 voted for Donald Trump. That’s 1.8% of that state’s population or .00001668, converting to percent and rounding up, equals .017% off the U.S. population. The next state to hold their primary was New Hampshire on January 23, just over a week after Iowa’s vote. By then Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, and Ron DeSantis dropped out leaving only 3 primary candidates: Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and Ryan Binkley. Now mind you, so far only .016% of the U.S. population has had a say in the matter of who they would like to be their presidential candidates at this point. New Hampshire’s population is 1,405,105 of those 176,385 voted for Donald Trump. In other words, 12.5% of New Hampshire’s population or .000522, converting to percentage is .05% of the U.S. population.
Between January and March of 2024, these 26 states held their primaries, below are those states and their population. Not number of people who voted, but population of each state (plus DC):
Then, on Super Tuesday:
What does March and this list have in common? Nikki Haley was the last one to drop out of the
Republican race essentially leaving the nomination to Donald Trump. Let’s take a moment to mull this over: 167,053,861 (the total population of those 26 states) equals almost 50% of the U.S. that at least had the chance to vote (although not all of them had the full selection, only Iowa did) that means the other 50% didn’t even get a say in the matter.
Guess what Maryland? You don’t count.
Pennsylvania,? Nope - not you either.
New York, you don’t get a say.
Indiana, sorry about your luck – we’ll let you know who your candidate will be.
West Virginia, Nebraska, Wyoming, Kentucky, New Jersey, I would go on, only well…you just don’t count. Sorry.
To prove their dissatisfaction at the process and with Donald Trump as their candidate, more than 1.7 million people voted for a candidate who had dropped out of the primary instead of voting for Donald Trump when he was the only candidate officially still in the race. Feeling bad about our political system yet? So far, we have established that we, the people of the U.S.,
have no real say in our election process – I mean look how the Democrat nominee was chosen. Did anyone get a voice in that??? And that’s the crux of it, there was never a choice – it was all just smoke and mirrors.
Let’s step back into history and reminisce about the good ol’ days. In 1789, George Washington was our first president, that was 235 years ago. Today, Joe Biden is our 46th president. If you think about it, 46 is a pretty small number as far as the history of the world goes. Take a moment to wrap your mind around that, only 46 times in the history of the U.S. have we chosen
a new leader. Well, technically, that’s not completely true either. Yes, we are on president number 46, but we (the people) didn’t exactly choose all of them.
The first scandal was in 1825, president # 6, John Quincy Adams. Andrew Jackson, Quincy’s opponent, won both the popular vote AND the electoral college vote and lost the election. Four years later Andrew Jackson ran again and won, he served 2 terms as president.
President # 10, John Tyler, was the vice-president to William Henry Harrison who died of
pneumonia leaving Tyler as the new president.
Zachary Taylor, president # 12 died of either illness or poisoning within a year of taking office leaving his vice-president, Millard Fillmore as the new Commander in Chief.
Then of course, there is Abraham Lincoln who was assassinated just one month into his second term leaving Andrew Johnson to take over.
The next big scandal was in 1877 when congress had to create a bipartisan Federal Electoral Commission to settle the argument over electoral votes that decided Rutherford B. Hayes would be the 19th president.
The next president, James A. Garfield, our 20th president was assassinated less than a year into his first term leaving his vice-president Chester A. Arthur as our 21st president.
In 1889 Benjamin Harrison became the 23rd president after losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college vote.
Theodore Roosevelt’s was initially the vice president to our 25th president, William McKinley, who was assassinated leaving Roosevelt as president # 26. Roosevelt was re-elected for a second term.
President # 29, Warren Harding, died of heart failure halfway through his first term leaving Cavlin Coolidge to take over. Coolidge was also re-elected for a second term.
The nation’s only 3 term president, Franklin Roosevelt, died of a pulmonary embolism leaving Harry Truman in charge.
John F Kennedy, president # 35, was assassinated halfway through his first term leaving Lyndon B. Johnson president # 36.
Part way through Richard M Nixon’s second term he resigned after the Watergate scandal making Gerald R Ford the 38th president.
In 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote, while George W. Bush won the electoral college making Bush the 41st president.
President # 45, Donald Trump, won the electoral college vote while opponent, Hilary Clinton won the popular vote.
Think about that, 14 of 46 presidents were not elected by the popular vote, aka the vote of the people. That’s 30% of our elected (and I use that term loosely) leaders were not chosen by the people. Although, to give them credit, a few who became president after the sitting president died did later get re-elected of their own merit.
Once upon a time, I happily and naively believed that the people of the U.S. of America chose their president. I proudly wore my “I voted” sticker on election day, proud to have participated in our election process thinking that my say, my vote, mattered. It wasn’t until 2000 when Al Gore who won the popular vote, but lost the election did I first discover that maybe my vote didn’t matter.
I was young and there have been a lot of TV commercials, billboards, radio ads, etc. reminding me how important it is to go out and vote. I know people fought for my right to go out and cast my vote giving me a say in the direction of our country. But, what about Al Gore, Hilary Clinton, Andrew Jackson or the others who should have been president, but lost the electoral college?
So what exactly is the electoral college? In theory, we the people, aren’t smart enough to select a
president so the electoral college is in place since us simple minded folk can’t be trusted to make good decisions. (Can you hear the dripping sarcasm??)
State Populations w/ Electoral Votes
California 38,889,770 - 54
Texas 30,976,754 - 40
Florida 22,975,931 - 30
New York 19,469,232 - 28
Pennsylvania 12,951,275 - 19
Illinois 12,516,863 - 19
Ohio 11,812,173 - 17
Georgia 11,145,304 - 16
North Carolina 10,975,017 - 16
Michigan 10,041,241 - 15
New Jersey 9,320,865 - 14
Virginia 8,752,297 - 13
Washington 7,841,283 - 12
Arizona 7,497,004 - 11
Tennessee 7,204,002 - 11
Massachusetts 7,020,058 - 11
Indiana 6,892,124 - 11
Missouri 6,215,144 - 10
Maryland 6,196,525 - 10
Wisconsin 5,931,367 - 10
Colorado 5,914,181 - 10
Minnesota 5,761,530 - 10
South Carolina 5,464,155 - 9
Alabama 5,143,033 - 9
Louisiana 4,559,475 - 8
Kentucky 4,540,745 - 8
Oregon 4,227,337 - 8
Oklahoma 4,088,377 - 7
Connecticut 3,625,646 - 7
Utah 3,454,232 - 6
Iowa 3,214,315 - 6
Neveda 3,210,931 - 6
Arkansas 3,089,060 - 6
Kansas 2,944,376 - 6
Mississippi 2,940,452 - 6
New Mexico 2,115,266 - 5
Idaho 1,990,456 - 4
Nebraska 1,988,698 - 5
West Virginia 1,766,107 - 4
Hawaii 1,430,877 - 4
New Hampshire 1,405,105 - 4
Maine 1,402,106 - 4
Montana 1,142,746 - 4
Rhode Island 1,098,082 - 4
Delaware 1,044,321 - 3
South Dakota 928,767 - 3
North Dakota 788,940 - 3
Alaska 733,536 - 3
DC 671,803 - 3
Vermont 647,818 - 3
Wyoming 586,485 - 3
Take some time to ponder the numbers in the chart above, really compare the numbers and the
populations. Let’s look at some of the states that have 4 electoral votes: West Virginia with a population of 1,766,107 gets the same number of electoral votes as Delaware whose population is 1,044,321, or doing the math, 721,786 less people. Let’s look a little higher up the chart at some of the bigger populations, how about Michigan and New Jersey? Michigan has 10,041,241 while Jersey has 9,320,865 which comes to a difference of 720,376, not that different than our first example of WV and DE. And yet in this example Michigan gets an extra electoral vote. I would go on, but this process is too disheartening to ponder further. Just take a moment, look over the chart, do the math for yourself.
The short version is: There are 538 electoral votes, in order to win the presidency a candidate needs to win 270 of them. It’s all just a numbers game, do you ever watch live news on election night? They announce the winner long before all the states votes are in, because they don’t need to know who won the popular vote – nobody cares what the people want, only those 538 voices matter. You never hear them saying “the race is down to Wyoming.” nobody cares what people in Wyoming want (no offense Wyoming) they only have 3 votes, so they are essentially irrelevant. When you watch the news today, this week or next, they’re not saying “the candidates are out campaigning in Alaska,” again, no one cares about Alaska (well I do, but that’s a different matter) since they only get 3 votes too.
Going back to the U.S. population number from the previous article 538 electoral votes divided by the U.S. population of 337,267,223 equals .0000015952. Yes, you are reading that correctly, there are 5 zeros in that number. Converting to percentage, .00015% of the population gets a say in the next presidential election and they don’t have to choose the candidate based on the what the people want. So don’t forget to go out and vote on election day!
Okay, really, do go out and vote – there’s other things on the ballot that are important that we do get a say in, or at least I think we do. Then again, maybe it’s just like everything else, just smoke and mirrors.
Editor's Note: Please check out other work associated with nature HERE.
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