Article II of the U.S. Constitution lays out a clear process for the election of presidents, under which each state will choose electors equal to the combined total of their representation in Congress. Those electors choose the president. The idea behind the Electoral College was to make sure state interests were fairly represented by the new central government.

In recent decades, the Electoral College has been the object of scorn among liberals. The principled argument they make is that it is a countermajoritarian institution, giving more weight to voters in a small number of swing states. The real-world argument is that Democrats Al Gore and Hillary Clinton received the most total votes nationwide in 2000 and 2016, yet Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump were elected. While Joe Biden has had a solid wire-to-wire lead in national polling, liberals are still anxiously awaiting whether Trump will be able to eke out a victory in a critical mass of states.