President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek reelection lends intrigue and an unusual twist to the 2024 presidential election. But from the perspective of our state, it highlights the shortcomings of our nation’s process for electing a president.
The truth is that Washington — and most other states — are irrelevant in presidential elections. Rather than serving as a national referendum, presidential elections are a series of smaller votes spread throughout the states and the District of Columbia — a result of the antiquated, undemocratic Electoral College.
Whether Vice President Kamala Harris or somebody else is selected as the nominee from the Democratic Party, they are almost certain to win Washington’s 12 electoral votes in November. The Democratic candidate has won the state in every election since Ronald Reagan in 1984; the margins in the past four elections have been 17, 14, 16 and 19 percentage points.
There are reasons to believe that trend will continue this year. Donald Trump again is the Republican Party’s nominee, after being trounced in Washington in the past two elections; and Democrats hold all statewide elected positions and strong majorities in both legislative chambers. A majority of voters in our state simply prefer the Democratic Party.
This is not inherently good or bad; it merely is a fact of modern politics in Washington, and it is echoed in favor of one party or the other in much of the country. In most states, the outcome of the presidential election is a foregone conclusion; and because the winning candidate captures all of a state’s electoral votes (with two small exceptions), there is little reason for candidates to campaign for every last vote in those states.
Such is the system codified in the U.S. Constitution by the Electoral College, which is skewed from oversized representation by low-population states. Wyoming, for example, has one electoral vote for every 192,000 residents; California has one for every 721,000 residents. The result is that a presidential candidate can win the national popular vote but lose the election.
For most of our nation’s history, this has been a moot point, with the winner of the popular vote also capturing the Electoral College. Prior to 2000, three elections saw the winner of the popular election lose the presidency. Since then, it has happened twice, with George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 winning the presidency despite losing the popular vote.
That ties in with Washington’s irrelevance in the presidential election. Political observers have identified seven states that are up for grabs this year — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If every other state falls along predictable partisan lines, voters in those states will decide the presidency.
Washington is the 13th most populous state and has the ninth largest economy, but candidates from the major parties have little reason to spend time or money wooing votes in our state. The same can be said about California, which would have the world’s sixth-largest economy if it were a separate nation.
When large swaths of the United States are rendered irrelevant in a presidential election, it undermines our democracy and diminishes the notion of one person, one vote.
In Washington, it likely does not matter who is atop the Democratic Party ticket. That probably speaks poorly of our state’s voters, but it says even more about an outdated system that disenfranchises millions of American voters.
