The existing winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is often justifiably criticized because the candidate getting the most votes nationwide often doesn't become President; because every vote is not equal; and because candidates to pander to 6 to 12 closely divided battleground states.
But an equally serious flaw is that a tiny number of accidentally mishandled or intentionally manipulated ballots can decide the Presidency.
During the current pandemic, more voters will be relying on the Post Office to deliver their ballot than ever before. However, five of the six most hotly contested battleground states require that mail ballots arrive before the polls close on Election Day (and the remaining state requires at least a postmark by then).
Thus, a delayed mail truck in one or more of the battleground states may end up disqualifying numerous qualified voters, thereby flipping all of that state's electoral votes, and thereby deciding the Presidency.
A mere 537 popular votes out of 5.8 million votes decided the Presidency in 2000 when George W. Bush won Florida (while losing nationally by 537,179 votes).
Trump won the Presidency in 2016 because he carried Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes (while losing nationally by 2.8 million votes).
The national popular vote winner would have been defeated in four 20th Century elections by a shift of a mere 9,246 votes (in 1976), 9,212 votes (in 1960), 12,487 votes (in 1948), and 1,711 votes (in 1916) in one or two battleground states.
Learn more
Foreign adversaries can also exploit the fragility of the winner-take-all system to flip a few votes in a particular state, and thereby flip the national outcome, as pointed out by former director of the National Counter-terrorism Center and general counsel at the National Security Agency Matthew Olsen and former Army intelligence officer Benjamin Haas in their 2017 article entitled "
The Electoral College Is a National Security Threat." Read more in
New Yorker article
