Voters in the US don’t directly elect the president. Sometimes that can undermine the popular will

The US has a unique system for electing a president, the Electoral College. In modern times, it has placed disproportionate voting power in the hands of a few states that are fairly evenly divided politically.

That forces campaigns to spend most of their money on the so-called states on the battlefield. There are seven this year: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The lack of attention to other states leaves voters in much of the country feeling like they and the issues they care about are being overlooked during the presidential election.

American voters do not directly elect their president through the popular vote. When they cast their votesthey technically vote for a series of electors who will then vote for president and vice president on a specific day in December.

Nearly all states have laws requiring electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state, but that does not mean that the presidential candidate who receives the most Electoral College votes is the one favored by the majority of voters.

In two of the last six US presidential elections, candidates have lost the national popular vote but won the presidency. This includes former President Donald Trump, who lost the 2016 popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 2.9 million, but still won enough votes in the Electoral College to become president.

This often sounds crazy to people living in democracies around the world. The US is the only country with a system where voters select a group of electors whose sole function is to elect the president. In most other democracies, the president is directly elected through the will of the people.

The number of presidential electors from each state is equal to the number of representatives in the U.S. House and Senate. This benefits smaller states and paves the way for presidential elections that will largely depend on just a handful of swing states.

To win, a presidential candidate must receive a majority of the total of 538 electoral votes (the District of Columbia gets three). Most states use a winner-take-all system, where all voters award their votes to the popular winner in the state. Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions and award their awards on a pro-rata basis.

The Electoral College encourages presidential campaigns to concentrate visits and spending on a small number of swing states.

This year’s presidential battleground states represent 18% of the country’s population but have dominated the attention of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and their running mates.

Through Tuesday, Democratic and Republican tickets have had a total of just over 200 campaign stops — three-quarters of which have been to the seven battleground states, according to a database of campaign events based on Associated Press reporting. Pennsylvania alone has been visited 41 times, the most of any state. The AP data shows Michigan is second, with 31 visits through Tuesday, followed closely by Wisconsin, with 27. The rest: North Carolina, 18; Nevada, 13; and Arizona and Georgia with 12 visits each.

But it’s not just the state visits: presidential campaigns tailor their appearances to specific provinces they believe are crucial to their success. The AP’s database shows that their campaign events in these seven states are concentrated in counties with 22.7 million registered voters — just 10% of all voters registered nationwide for this year’s presidential election.

The lack of attention from presidential candidates is acutely felt in places like Waukegan, Illinois, a predominantly Latino working-class city that has struggled as factories closed and the waterfront deteriorated. Aside from the odd fundraiser in Chicago, Illinois has been largely bypassed by presidential candidates because the country votes reliably Democratic.

Its neighbor to the north, Wisconsin, is a popular spot for presidential candidates.

The last time a presidential candidate set foot in Waukegan was when former President Donald Trump landed at the airport in 2020. He walked off Air Force One, waved, and immediately hopped into an SUV that crossed the border into Kenosha, Wisconsin.

But Racine, a similarly sized city in Wisconsin just 50 miles north of Waukegan, hosted Trump a rally in June near a harbor overlooking Lake Michigan, where he talked about development along the lakeshore, talked about revitalization efforts in Racine and the Milwaukee metropolitan area, and emphasized the importance of their constituents in his effort to get back return to the White House. Just a month earlier, before dropping out of the race, President Joe Biden touted a new Microsoft center in Racine County during a campaign stop in the city.

Waukegan residents say they feel lost in the national conversation during the presidential election and wish they could be on the candidates’ radar, too.

“It’s not so much the candidates as it is the anti-democratic Electoral College,” said Matt Muchowkshi, chairman of the Waukegan Township Democrats. “It is frustrating that the votes of certain voters count more, and that they disregard and discredit the votes of more urban, more voters of color.”

___

Multimedia journalist Kevin S. Vineys of the Associated Press in Washington contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory reporting on elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.