If the Democrats want to win the elections, they will have to win big. The numbers are against them.

The Democrats depend on, well, democracy. They expect to win when they get a majority of the votes. Maybe not. They could lose the presidency and Congress because of election math.

In four presidential elections involving the two major parties, the new president did not win a majority of the popular vote. All of the winners in these elections — Hayes (1876), Harrison (1888), Bush (2000) and Trump (2016) were Republicans.

This outcome could well occur again in 2024 because an understanding among the Framers of the Constitution has gone awry. At the time they wrote the document, their plan would have resulted in the president being chosen by electors representing a popular majority.

Before the first census, the Framers assigned seats in the House of Representatives based on population estimates. The result was that a presidential candidate relying on the smaller states would need nine states of the 13 to collect enough electoral votes. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Framers required ratification by at least nine states for the Constitution itself to take effect.

But the Framers also understood that a candidate relying on the larger states might need only six states to win the presidency. Those states’ electors would represent 55% of the population compared with the 51% represented in the smaller states group.

In either case, when the Constitution was drafted, the Framers could expect that the president would be elected by states inhabited by a popular majority even if not chosen by a majority of the states.

History did not follow that rule. Today, it is mathematically possible for 41 smaller states to elect the president, though they have only 46% of the population. At the other extreme, the president could be elected by 12 states with 60% of the population.

Of course, states do not vote by population blocs but by party. Many small, rural states are controlled by the Republicans, who also dominate former Confederate states like Texas and Florida. The Republican candidate can win even without a popular majority, as Donald Trump did in 2016.

The proposed National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would restore the traditional expectation of a popular majority. States with a majority of electoral votes would agree that all will assign their votes to the presidential candidate having won the majority of the national popular vote. They would only be bound if all participating states kept this commitment.

Maine has just become the most recent state to accept the national popular vote. By narrowing the gap to only 61 more electoral votes needed to join, the state’s move is significant.

Inevitably, the Supreme Court will be asked to rule on the compact, and almost certainly its decision will be heavily influenced by politics. In theory, though, the national popular vote could occur without a compact as the result of independent decisions of states with 270 electoral votes.

Maine has also been in presidential focus thanks to the way it picks electors. The state, later followed by Nebraska, decided to assign electors to the statewide victor and the winner in each congressional district. Other states use the statewide winner-take-all. The Second District in each state has occasionally departed from the state’s total result.

Seeking another possible electoral vote for Donald Trump, Nebraska is considering returning to pure statewide voting, eliminating the possibility of Biden carrying Omaha. A Maine Democratic leader has warned the cornhuskers that Maine could retaliate by taking away the chance it gives Trump to win a single vote.

Just as the current method of picking the president favors one party, so does electing members of Congress. State legislatures can design congressional district boundaries to divide voting groups to produce biased results. Gerrymandering sometimes aims at limiting seats held by Blacks, but it often focuses on favoring one party.

Both parties gerrymander, but the GOP makes its moves in Texas and Florida — the second and third largest states by population. The Supreme Court tries to block racial gerrymandering but avoids most political redistricting disputes, except where they have a racial effect. Much gerrymandering has already taken place, so the court would have to unravel past actions.

Added to such creative House redistricting will be voter suppression, often intended to limit minority voting. It’s based on unproven Republican assertions of possible fraud in federal elections (but not in their own state races). It undermines efforts to increase participation.

Popular control of elections won’t improve for this year’s elections. The Democrats would have to focus attention on voting issues as a way to turn out their supporters. Faced with election reality, capturing seats from the White House to Capitol Hill will require the Democrats winning by big margins and carrying swing states.

Gordon L. Weil formerly wrote for the Washington Post and other newspapers, served on the U.S. Senate and EU staffs, headed Maine state agencies and was a Harpswell selectman. 

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