Are American Cities Prepared for The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election?
Over the next four weeks, American citizens will cast their votes to elect the 47th President and the 49th Vice President. Voting by mail begins today in many states. The process concludes with traditional in-person voting at tens of thousands of local polling places throughout the nation on Tuesday, November 5th.
Cities in the U.S. play no official role in the process of electing a President or Vice President. As we’ve noted several times in previous essays, cities have no direct status as units of government within the framework of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. is a federation of states. The powers of cities derive from, or are recognized by, 50 different state constitutions.
So why should American cities prepare themselves for the upcoming 2024 Presidential election?
Before answering that question, it helps to review the complex process for administering a Presidential election in the U.S. This will be helpful to our readers outside of the U.S. (about half of you). Please forgive the length. I am knowingly violating our usual goal about the length of an essay!
Who Administers Elections In the U.S.?
All American elections are administered by the fifty U.S. states.[i] State constitutions typically divide their territories into counties. Each county is required to have its own department that administers elections within its borders. County election departments are required to follow rules that are set by each state’s most senior administrative officer, most of whom have the title “Secretary of State.”
In 35 states the Secretary of State is independently elected. In most other states this officer is appointed by the Governor or elected by the state legislature. A few states assign the responsibility of overseeing elections to the Lieutenant Governor. Consequently, the process of electing the 47th President and the 49th Vice President will be overseen by County election officials who oversee tens of thousands of local polling places, using rules governed by senior state-level officials (Secretaries of State).
Who Can Vote In the U.S.?
Today, virtually all citizens of the United States over the age of 18 are eligible to vote in every election. This principal has been expanded and guaranteed by state and Federal laws and amendments to the U.S. Constitution.[ii] The 15th Amendment, passed in 1870, expanded the right to vote to all male citizens regardless of “race, color, or previous status of servitude.” The 19th Amendment (1920) extended the right to vote to all women, and the 26th Amendment (1971) extended the right to vote to include those between 18-21 years old. The Snyder Act of 1924 clarified that all native Americans (men and women) are U.S. citizens, and thereby also eligible to vote.
Yet being eligible to vote does not alone give one the ability to vote. Every voter needs to register to vote. Each state (and territory) has its own registration process, with its own rules. No state or territory automatically registers all citizens to vote. Indeed, many states have long histories of creating administrative barriers to voter registration designed to stymie the expansion of Federal government efforts to expand voter eligibility. The “cat and mouse” game of state-level voter registration rules has been adjudicated through many cases in Federal courts over the years. And that process continues to this day.
How Are Votes Cast and Counted?
The great majority of votes cast in American elections are in-person. Voting is a voluntary activity. Those who wish to cast a vote go to their locally-designated polling place. Poll workers verify each voter’s registration (verification requirements vary by state) and voting occurs via secret ballots (either paper or via voting machine).
Observers from each political party oversee the process at every polling place, although no partisan politicking is permitted within (or nearby) each polling place. Once voting is finished, poll workers count and double-count the in-person votes under the gaze of partisan observers and report results to County Election Department officials. County judges are assigned to deal quickly with any issues or disputes that arise on Election Day.
Voting by mail (and early voting in person at designated locations) has become more popular in recent years. At least one state, Oregon, now uses mail-in voting exclusively for all elections. Mail-in ballots are all delivered to one location for each County via the U.S. Post Office. Poll workers open ballots, verify registrations, and count up the totals, all while under the watch of partisan observers from each major political party (Democrats and Republicans).
County Election Departments verify the votes from all in-person polling places, add them to the mail-in results, and report the total numbers to State-level election officials. Several days are often required to officially certify election results, but unofficial counts are reported as quickly as possible by County and State election officials, most often on their own web pages.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees the principal of “one person – one vote.” Consequently, the winner of each election is whoever gets the most votes. Some states adjust this rule for state and local offices by having run-off elections when no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. But the runoff election is then resolved by whoever gets more than 50% of the vote.
There are no runoff elections, however, for Federal offices. Whoever gets the most votes wins for elections to the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate. But NOT for President or Vice President. The U.S. Constitution creates a unique process for determining who wins these two offices. It is known as the Electoral College.
How Does the Electoral College Work?
Elections for President and Vice President are not won by whoever gets the most votes cast by citizens. These offices are determined by whomever gets a majority of votes in the Electoral College. When citizens vote for specific candidates for President or Vice President, they are actually voting for individuals who have pledged to vote for those candidates in the Electoral College.
Each state is allocated a specific number of Electoral College votes. The number of votes equals that state’s number of U.S. Senators (all states have 2) plus that state’s number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (a minimum of 1 House seat for five states but as many as 54 for California).[iii] In addition, the 23rd Amendment (1961) gives the District of Columbia 3 Electoral College votes, even though the District of Columbia has no Senate seats and only one non-voting member of the House.
The total number of votes in the Electoral College today, therefore, equals 538 (100 Senators, 435 Representatives, plus 3 votes for DC). This means that the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency go to the candidate who gets at least 270 Electoral College votes.
If this isn’t confusing enough, the U.S. Constitution allows each state to appoint individual Electoral College electors however it sees fit. Prior to election day in Presidential election years, every state has its own process to identify potential Electoral College electors, each of whom is pledged to vote for a specific candidate.
For example, if a state has 10 Electoral College votes, that State uses its own process to approve ten people who will pledge to vote for each candidate on the ballot. If there are two candidates, then that state has 20 pre-approved potential electors. When citizens vote for a specific candidate, they are actually voting for one of the pre-approved electors who have pledged to vote for that candidate.
Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia formally appoint their Electoral College electors after election day on a statewide “winner take all” basis. That is, that state’s legislature formally appoints its Electoral College electors from those who have been previously approved and have pledged to vote for the candidate that won the most votes cast by its citizens on election day. Two states, Nebraska and New Hampshire, appoint electors based on citizen votes by House district, not the statewide vote.
Once each state legislature formally appoints its Electoral College electors, those electors convene themselves within the state (usually at the State Capitol Building) on a preset date to formally cast their votes (the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday of December). The electors’ votes are formally registered and either that state’s Secretary of State or its Governor is required by Federal law (updated in 2022) to certify the accuracy of the count. The written formal certification is then delivered by an authorized person to the Vice President of the United States.
It should be noted, however, that even though Electoral College electors are appointed by state legislatures based on who they pledge to vote for, they are not required by the U.S. Constitution to fulfill that pledge when they convene to cast their votes. Eighteen states have laws that void the votes of so-called “faithless electors.” These states would reconvene new electors before sending their votes to the Vice President. Seventeen states, however, have laws that recognize the validity of “faithless” votes, and fifteen states have no law to determine what would happen.
On the next January 6th, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives convene a Joint Session in the House Chamber, with the Vice President serving as the ceremonial Chair of the Joint Session. At that session, the Vice President opens each state’s formal Electoral College vote submission, and the formal Electoral College votes from every state are added up.
The validity of any state’s Electoral College votes can be challenged as long as at least one Senator and one Representative agree to file the challenge. The question is then put to a full vote of all members of the House and Senate. A few objections are often filed by disgruntled individuals, but it is very rare for any objection to be sustained by a majority vote of the House and the Senate. Once the totals are confirmed, the Vice President makes the formal announcement of who won the election. The winners are inaugurated soon afterward, on January 20th.
If no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes, which has happened only twice (in 1800 and 1824), the President is chosen by the House of Representatives and the Vice President is chosen by the Senate. In the House, each state gets only one vote. So, each state’s House delegation would determine that’s state’s vote.
How Well Has The Electoral College Been Accepted?
The awkward and unusual process of electing Presidents and Vice Presidents was written into the U.S. Constitution in 1787 to satisfy demands from slave-holding states during the debates within the Constitutional Convention. The Electoral College process was one part of a series of compromises to assure slave-holding states that the new Federal government would not be controlled by the more populous free-states, who they feared would eliminate slavery.
Despite the anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College, only five presidential elections have been won by candidates who did not win the national popular vote. Two of those five, however, have been recent elections. The first was George W. Bush’s election in 2000. Bush received 271 votes in the Electoral College despite the fact that his opponent Al Gore won the national popular vote by 543,895 votes. The second was Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016. Trump received 304 votes in the Electoral College despite the fact his opponent Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Yet despite five examples of when the Electoral College reversed the national popular vote, there was never a time when either candidates or political parties made a widespread challenge to the accuracy or the fairness of the process used to appoint Electoral College electors or the process used to count Electoral College votes by the Joint Session of Congress. The transfer of Presidential power went smoothly in each of those five elections.
Ironically, the two most volatile transitions of Presidential authority occurred after elections when the Electoral College votes were aligned with the popular votes.
The first was the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In a 4-way split of the popular vote, Lincoln received 485,706 more votes than his next rival (Steven Douglas). Lincoln won 180 Electoral College votes, which was 28 more than the majority he needed (152).
In the months between the popular election in November of 1860 and the tallying of Electoral College votes in February of 1861[iv] twelve state legislatures voted to succeed from the Union. And yet their Electoral College votes were still accurately recorded, transmitted to the Vice President, and included in the tally. Lincoln was duly inaugurated into office, even though he chose to sneak into Washington DC in disguise on an early morning train to avoid threats of assassination.
The second most volatile transition was just four years ago, following the election of 2020. Joe Biden won the popular vote with 7,059,526 more votes than his opponent, the incumbent President, Donald J. Trump. Biden received 306 Electoral College votes, 36 more than the majority of 270 that he needed.
Yet for the first time in U.S. election history, the losing candidate, and several influential factions within the losing political party, claimed widespread voter fraud and filed numerous legal challenges to the results. The results of the popular vote were challenged in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, and the processes used to appoint electors in those states were also challenged.
Sixty-five separate legal challenges were argued in state and Federal courts. Sixty-four failed because judges concluded there was no evidence of any substantial fraud. State and local election officials, both Republican and Democrats, provided detailed evidence that supported the accuracy of the certified voting results. Indeed, election fraud is very rare in the U.S. One case successfully challenged 200 votes, yet that number was insufficient to change the results in that state.
Yet the candidate, Donald J. Trump, and a substantial portion of the Republican party, continued to publicly challenge the validity of Electoral College votes that were transferred by state legislatures to the Vice President. In several states, groups of Republican state legislators met in unofficial sessions to appoint alternate slates of electors. Trump urged his Vice President to reject the Electoral College votes of many states and thereby force the election to be decided by the House of Representatives instead.
On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol Building in order to prevent the Joint Session of Congress from opening the Electoral College ballots and certifying the election of Joe Biden. The violent mob forced the Joint Session to flee the House chambers when they reached the chamber doors, and eventually invaded the chamber itself.
Yet despite this unprecedented attempt to derail the Joint Session of Congress, its members reconvened later that night once the Capitol Building was secured. Six Republican Senators and 121 Republican House members still challenged the results from Arizona, but were defeated by majorities. A similar challenge was made to the Pennsylvania results. That was also defeated. The Vice President, Mike Pence, refused Trump’s demand to use his role to decertify the Electoral College votes submitted by any state. Pence officially declared Joe Biden as the winner of the election early in the morning of January 7th. Biden was inaugurated as President on January 20th. Yet Trump refused to attend and continues to this day to proclaim, without evidence, that he was the winner of the 2020 election.
Back to the Role of Cities in 2024.
Between January of 2020 and today, Congress passed a new law clarifying that no Vice President has the authority to reject Electoral College votes that are properly submitted by states. The law also clarifies that each state must identify one official (usually the Governor but some states continue using the Secretary of State) as that state’s sole certifier of Electoral College electors and the votes they cast.
These reforms are a partial attempt to eliminate uncertainty in the complex process of deciding Presidential elections using the Electoral College. Yet the process still has many vulnerable steps since each state continues to have wide discretion in how its own rules are set. And each state relies heavily on elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, at the state and local levels to oversee the administration of elections and to certify the final results.
In the last four years, many state-level Republican parties have used local county elections and state-level elections to replace Republican election officials who certified the election results of 2020. Local election officials in most cities today are a combination of long-serving Democratic officials and newly elected Republican officials who won their offices by claiming, without evidence, that the 2020 election results were fraudulent. How will these local and state elections officials perform in the heated environment of the 2024 election?
In addition, the national Republican party today is also dominated by elected and appointed officials who won their offices largely by supporting Trump’s continuing claims that the election of 2020 was fradulent. Trump won the Republican Party’s nomination for reelection in landslide victories in all Republican state-level primary elections. He is now in a virtual tie for the popular vote with the Democratic Party’s nominee Kamala Harris. Polls project that the Electoral College vote hinges on the election results in six key states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. The winner must get 270 Electoral College votes.
The 2024 Presidential election may not directly involve city governments. But if the results of this election, four weeks from the day this essay is posted, are challenged among local and state election officials from different parties, and those challenges extend to state legislatures and statewide election officials, the consequences of widespread political turmoil and the potential for widespread political violence will affect cities first.
Basic public safety services are provided by cities. Local police forces have little interest in being engaged in election administration, but they are the first responders when political violence, or even the threat of political violence, emerges. People dial 911 for help.
To make matters even more complex, most big cities are governed by elected Democratic mayors and other local officials. This is true even in so-called Red States where state governments are dominated by elected Republicans.
If Republican state and local election officials challenge election results without any clear evidence of fraud, and if their actions produce heated local political confrontations, those confrontations will spill out to the general public. First responders will be called. That creates potential chaos by having local police forces, overseen by Democratic mayors, responding to local political turmoil, sponsored in many cases by Republican election officials, many of whom may be engaged in struggles with local Democratic election officials. American cities are not prepared to sort through this type of political complexity.
Recent examples of street takeovers in cities across the nation provide a glimpse into the limited capacity of city governments to deal with complex, unexpected events.
Street takeovers occur when organized groups, using social media, converge on urban street intersections, and sometimes sections of inner-city Interstate highways. They stop the flow of traffic and begin elaborate illegal exhibitions of car drifting, doughnut maneuvers, burnouts, wheelies, and other forms of stunt driving. Cars are set on fire, fireworks are set off, and other forms of entertainment are provided to the hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of spectators who arrive to watch the events. Groups of spectators are also known to victimize drivers and passengers in cars that are stuck in the traffic jams that street takeovers create.
Few cities have been able to respond effectively to these unexpected and unannounced events. Yet these street takeover events could set the example for how politically motivated groups, regardless of their political origins, could use social media to sponsor much greater and more widespread civil disorder in cities across the nation if they wished to use violence to spur social chaos in the aftermath of hotly contested state and local results in the upcoming national election.
Representative government depends profoundly on the principal of fair elections. Yet despite the complexities that are inherent in using the Electoral College to resolve who occupies the two most powerful public offices in the U.S., this awkward and vulnerable process has lasted more than two hundred years without a major challenge to its fairness. Until now.
If the election of 2024 unravels the perception of fair elections in the U.S., cities will be thrust onto the frontline of how we respond. They seem entirely unprepared to shoulder this profound and unexpected responsibility.
Bob Gleeson
[i] Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories do not participate in Federal elections.
[ii] Please forgive me for not addressing the complexity of voting rights for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. This essays is already too long!
[iii] The 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population.
[iv] Presidential Inaugurations were held in March at that time.