Electoral College unfair to all voters, rural and urban, Republican and Democrat alike

Gaylen Wobeter
Guest Columnist
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Professor Emeritus Dennis Clayson recently offered his thoughts on why picking a president through the current Electoral College is better than a national popular vote: A popular vote, he argued, would favor the large metropolitan areas, and voters in Iowa would become “essentially meaningless.”

In reality, it’s our current, flawed process that renders many votes from both big cities and small communities essentially meaningless — including Iowans. This happens because nearly all states allocate Electoral College votes through a “winner-take-all” approach, meaning that even if Candidate A falls short with 49.5% of the vote, all of the state’s electors will go to Candidate B. A Republican voter in California is just as disenfranchised as a Democrat in Kansas when the Electoral College votes.

The result is what we have right now: lopsided influence by a small number of “swing” states. We know which they are because we’ve heard them over and over in recent weeks: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and, now, Arizona and Georgia. In this election, 96% of all general election campaign events were in just 12 states. We need to a system that encourages presidential candidates to campaign for every vote in every state.

Another outgrowth of the current process is the number of lawsuits and recounts we’re seeing right now. Candidates need to grab big blocks of Electoral College votes to get past 270, and if the prize starts to slip away, they see courts and recounts as giving them another opportunity to turn it around.

Professor Clayson uses Nevada to support his rural/urban distinction: With 90% of Nevada’s population in its two largest cities, he argues, its rural voters would get ignored. Yet, Nevada and all other states allow the popular vote to decide its governor, U.S. Senators, mayors, city council members and school boards. Nevada does not try to give its rural voters a “little more” of a vote when they select a governor. Every other state in the U.S. is the same way. Would we even think of doing it any other way?

Of the 10 most rural states, only one has received any general election campaign visits in the past three presidential elections, Maine. The current system isn’t protecting rural voters or small states, it’s giving all of the power to pick the president to voters in just 12 states. It shouldn’t be this way; instead, every American’s vote should be equal.

We have a chance to make “one person, one vote” how we elect our president. The National Popular Vote bill (learn more at proposes a reform of the Electoral College that would award the presidency to the person who gets the most votes nationwide. This bill does not change the way primaries are run, but it does ensure that whoever gets the most votes in the general election would win the race. We’re 72% of the way there and we can make it happen by the next presidential election in 2024.  Iowans can help; your voice matters. Write your state legislators and ask them to support National Popular Vote, at   

Gaylen Wobeter is a member of the League of Women Voters of Iowa and a lifelong Iowan.

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