The first Electoral College application available in npm open source!
Go to HOW_TO_USE for complete information.
This is currently configured for the 2024 Presidential Election. Party names are used:
- Rep (Republican)
- Dem (Democratic)
- Lib (Libertarian)
- Grn (Green)
- Ind (Independent)
CD -- Congressional District
EV -- Electoral Vote
PV -- Popular Vote
gop -- Republican
dem -- Democratic
lib -- Libertarian
grn -- Green
ind -- Independent
Current state-by-state system -- winner-take-all prevailing except for Maine and Nebraska, which award 2 EVs to the PV winner and 1 EV to the winner of each Congressional District
Proportional Representation -- a "What If?" scenario were all EVs awarded proportionally on a state-by-state basis according to the PV in each state. -- E.g. Wisconsin has 10 EVs. A candidate in WI winning 60% of the PV would receive 6 EVs instead of all 10 EVs. A candidate winning 30% of the PV would receive 3 EVs rather than 0 EVs.
See /docs/HOW_TO_USE.md for more information.
538 EVs 270 EVs needed to win
Current / Winner-Take-All (Trump Wins):
Trump -- 306 EVs Clinton -- 232 EVs Johnson -- 0 EVs Stein -- 0 EVs McMullin -- 0 EVs
Proportional (No Winner):
Trump -- 260 EVs Clinton -- 267 EVs Johnson -- 9 EVs Stein -- 1 EV McMullin -- 1 EV
No winner if the Proportional System was used! This would have thrown the election to Congress, with the House of Representatives picking the President (1 vote per State delegation; majority of States required to win), the Senate picking the Vice President (majority of Senators required to win). The top three EV-getters for President qualify, meaning Trump, Clinton, and Johnson would have been eligible; the top two EV-getters for VP qualify, meaning Pence and Kaine would have been eligible. Would Trump have won in the House? Maybe. Johnson may have been seen as a compromise candidate and won instead. It's likely Clinton would not have won given the make-up of the House. Pence probably would have won in the Senate.
The point, though, is that even though Trump won comfortably using the current system, his actual level of support wasn't so wide-spread. Keep in mind, though, that Clinton's margin of victories in CA and NY were substantial, which accounts entirely for this discrepancy.
No electoral system is perfect. Each one has its pros and cons. It is my belief the Electoral College is a vital part of our Republic's electoral system, rather than an outdated relic. It requires the winning candidate for President to have broad support across the country and its different regions, cultures, and socio-economic differences. It balances majority rule with protection of minority rights -- something a direct, national, popular-vote-only election would not do.
But a winner-take-all system is not the most representative. It allows the two major parties, Republicans and Democrats, to have a stranglehold on elections. Awarding EVs proportionally would lead to a much more accurate reflection of each candidate's actual support. It would also begin to break the hold of the two major parties, enabling third-party candidates to win EVs. It might even cause elections to be thrown to Congress because it would increase the likelihood no one would receive a majority of EVs. This would have happened in 2016! And it just might result in better candidates -- from all parties -- rather than a constant "lesser of two evils" system in which we are stuck today. For third parties to start gaining traction in American politics, voters have to see third-party candidates as viable. Imagine if they started winning a few EVs -- voters would see actual results rather than be told they're wasting their votes. Imagine what could happen. And I believe this is a system the Founders would have approved of as it would maintain the integrity of the Electoral College by continuing to balance majority rule with protection of minority rights.
In 1992 and 1996, Independent candidate Ross Perot received a substantial portion of the PV. In each of those years the winner was Bill Clinton. In each of those years, even with a Proportional system, Bill Clinton still would have won a majority of EVs, meaning the elections would not have been thrown to Congress. But imagine what could have happened if people saw a third-party candidate winning a substantial number of EVs!
I'd like to support passing in state-by-state voting data so you don't have to manually enter the vote percentages in each state. I'd also like to support passing in all data, including the candidates complete with their pictures, party info, etc. Maybe in version 3.x.
Add full unit testing. Currently have full test coverage for utilities and constants and basic snapshot tests for everything else.
Turn this into a more-easily-importable module into other websites and applications.
Reduce initial load time.
Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm using CRA. This was a just-for-fun project that I quickly built in 2016 using React 13, upgraded to React 16, then quickly forgot about it in early 2017. I got back around to in time for the 2020 election. Would this be better without CRA, set up to use Webpack, etc.? Yup. For now this is what it is.
This project was bootstrapped with Create React App.
In the project directory, you can run:
Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.
The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.
Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.
Builds the app for production to the build folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.
The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!
See the section about deployment for more information.
Note: this is a one-way operation. Once you eject, you can’t go back!
If you aren’t satisfied with the build tool and configuration choices, you can eject at any time. This command will remove the single build dependency from your project.
Instead, it will copy all the configuration files and the transitive dependencies (Webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc) right into your project so you have full control over them. All of the commands except eject will still work, but they will point to the copied scripts so you can tweak them. At this point you’re on your own.
You don’t have to ever use eject. The curated feature set is suitable for small and middle deployments, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to use this feature. However we understand that this tool wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t customize it when you are ready for it.
You can learn more in the Create React App documentation.
To learn React, check out the React documentation.
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