9.5 Myths about Big Counties

Nathan Fleming criticized a national popular vote for President by saying:

“Just 146 counties (out of 3,000+) could elect a President. Bad idea.”[266]

“You could theoretically get 50.1% of popular vote with only those 146 counties.”[267] [Emphasis added]

It is a fact that a majority of the nation’s voters live in the 146 most populous counties (out of 3,143 counties).[268]

However, the key word in Fleming’s criticism is “theoretically.”

In fact, the voters of these 146 counties could elect a President in a nationwide popular vote onlyif you make the politically preposterous assumption that one candidate receives 100% of the vote from each of these counties. However, these 146 high-population counties voted only 59% Democratic in the 2012 presidential election—nowhere near the 100% on which Fleming’s scary scenario is based.

This criticism of a national popular vote has an even more serious flaw—it applies to the current system more than to a national popular vote.

Anyone who is bothered about the hypothetical possibility that 146 counties might control the outcome of a national popular vote should be considerably more agitated about the current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes. The current system enables a candidate who receives 100% of the popular votes in just 61 counties to win a majority of the Electoral College (and hence the presidency).

Under the current system, a candidate receiving 100% of the popular vote in a mere 61 counties in 2012 would have:

• won a majority of the statewide popular vote in each of the 18 states containing those 61 counties; and
• therefore won 100% of the electoral votes from each of those 18 states; and
• therefore won the presidency, because those 18 states have a majority of the nation’s 538 electoral votes.

Moreover, these 61 counties contained only 26.6% of the nation’s voters.

Table 9.19 lists these 61 counties and 18 states for 2012.

• Columns 1 and 2 indicate the state and its number of electoral votes.[269]
• Column 3 shows the state’s presidential vote in 2012.
• Column 4 shows a majority of the state’s presidential vote.
• Column 5 shows the number of the state’s most populous counties that, if 100% of their voters were to support one candidate, would constitute a majority of the state’s presidential vote.
• Column 6 lists the specific counties.
• Column 7 shows the total presidential vote for those counties.
• Column 8 shows the percentage of the national popular vote cast in those counties.

For example, California had 55 electoral votes in 2012. A total of 13,038,547 votes were cast for President in 2012 in the state. A statewide majority was therefore 6,519,275. Five populous counties cast 6,801,011 votes for President—more than half of the state’s vote. Those five counties were Los Angeles County with 3,181,067 votes; San Diego County with 1,192,282; Orange County with 1,122,664; Riverside County with 661,907; and Santa Clara County with 643,091. If those five counties had cast 100% of their votes for a single presidential candidate, that candidate would have won all of California’s electoral votes. The actual vote for President for these five counties was 6,801,011, which was 5.3% of the national popular vote for President.

Table 9.19 The 61 counties

Figure 9.4 shows the 61 counties.

The above analysis and map come from a FairVote report[270] by Nathan Nicholson and additional research by Andrea Levien of FairVote (who analyzed the 2004 election and showed a similar pattern).

In any event, there is nothing special—much less controlling—about the voting power of the voters in the 146 biggest counties, any more than there is anything special or controlling about the voting power of the voters in the remaining 2,997 counties.

Moreover, counties do not vote for President—voters do. County boundaries were not established for the purpose of electing the President and have never played any specific role in presidential elections. County boundaries (especially in the early states in the eastern and midwestern parts of the country) were typically established to enable people to conveniently reach the county seat for voting and other business.

Footnotes