In 2000 and 2016, the candidate who lost the popular vote was elected president. Somehow, that’s democracy at work, and it’s thanks to a baroque institution called the Electoral College. Born out of the same contentious negotiations in 1787 that gave America the Three-fifths Compromise and the structure of the Senate, which bestows equal representation on Wyoming (the least populated state) and California (the most), the Electoral College remains with us today despite numerous attempts to abolish it. That’s because the Constitution is almost impossible to change, and because the Electoral College ultimately values some votes more than others. But America is changing, and as the composition of the electorate shifts as America grows more diverse, is the Electoral College a symbol of the insurmountable structural problems embedded in our democracy or a distraction from the power we exercise when we all vote?

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