Most people who have voted for president in the United States knows that presidents are not chosen by a direct popular vote. Rather, votes are taken in each state and the majority of each state puts forth a certain amount of “votes” (distributed according to population) in a winner-takes-all system. Therefore, if Obama wins Ohio by 50.01%, he gets all 20 of Ohio’s Electoral Votes. If Obama wins Ohio by 99.99%, he gets all 20 of Ohio’s Electoral Votes.

While the necessity of the Electoral College is certainly debatable, and while it can change elections and the course of history rather dramatically, the system still stands and if a candidate gets a majority — currently 270 votes out of a possible 538, they win.

What this does mean is that we can have fun “hacking” the Electoral College and seeing what the minimum percentage of the popular vote is needed to win the Presidency if the candidate is really lucky and wins all the “right” votes.

First, let’s look at population versus number of electoral votes to see if any states have an edge:

*2008 estimate based on 2000 census.

Analyzing this data, we can see that the smaller states have a disporoptionally larger say in electing the president. In Wyoming, there is 1 vote for every 174,277 people, but in Texas there is only one vote for every 703,070 people — a staggering difference.

But this debate on the effectiveness is not for this article, rather it allows our hypothetical canidate — who we will name Dan — to win the small states and get more electoral votes while using less of the popular vote, whereas our hypothetical opposition — who we will name Kyle — will win the large states overwhelmingly, bringing in a lot of popular vote without bringing in as many electoral votes.

Since we need to get Dan to 270 votes, he can win the slightest majority — 50% + 1 person — in Wyoming, District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Connecticut, Nevada, Alabama, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington.

Kyle wins 100% of the entire populations of Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas.

It may seem like Dan is winning an overwhelmingly large part of the country, but Dan is only winning land area. Kyle is picking up all of the densely populated states like California, and he is picking up every single person in this hypothetical scenario — compared to Dan only picking up 50% +1.

Dan picks up 270 electoral votes. Kyle picks up 268 votes.

Kyle picks up every single vote in all of his 12 states for a starting total of 172,372,424 people.

Dan and Kyle then split the votes for each state Dan won, but Dan wins 1 more vote in each state than Kyle. Dan wins every electoral vote from these states, however, because of the winner-takes-all system. Among the population of these states, Dan picks up 65,843,682 votes and Kyle picks up 65,843,618 votes.

The totals are Dan with a winning 270 electoral votes but only 65,843,682 popular votes and Kyle with a losing 268 electoral votes but a whopping 238,216,042 popular votes. This means that about 78.35% of the US population voted for Kyle, yet Dan won.

And that’s how we hack the electoral college.

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