Fact check: Post errs assessing electoral power of the Los Angeles area

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·4 min read
3

The claim: Post implies abolishing the Electoral College makes Los Angeles 'stronger' than 43 states

The U.S. Constitution established the Electoral College system to select the nation's president and vice president, involving 538 electors who cast the critical ballots.

The system has always generated debate, particularly among those wanting a more straightforward popular vote. But some social media users say abolishing the Electoral College would give Los Angeles an outsized impact on the race for the White House.

"This should scare you," reads a Facebook post shared July 18. "Abolishing the Electorial (sic) College makes Los Angeles stronger than 43 states."

The post was shared more than 800 times in less than two weeks. Similar posts have amassed hundreds of interactions on Facebook.

But the implied claim here is false.

Election experts told USA TODAY that if the Electoral College were abolished, it would likely be replaced with a nationwide popular vote, in which one person gets one vote. The amount of influence accorded to Los Angeles in that system depends on how one defines the geographic area, but no definition of the relevant area would make the claim true.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

A voter fills out his ballot, Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in Miami. Early voting in the Aug 23 primary election began Monday in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties.
A voter fills out his ballot, Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in Miami. Early voting in the Aug 23 primary election began Monday in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties.

Comparison in post doesn't add up

Kristine Bezdecny, a geography professor at California State University, Los Angeles, told USA TODAY that people tend to be vague about which "Los Angeles" they are referring to, as was the case with the Facebook post.

However, there are generally three main regions "Los Angeles" could refer to: the City of Los Angeles; Los Angeles County; and the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, which typically refers to Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, according to Bezdecny.

If the Electoral College was abolished, the population of any particular region, whether a state or a city, would be irrelevant, assuming a system of nationwide popular election was substituted, James Gardner, an election law expert at the University of Buffalo School of Law, told USA TODAY in an email. In such a system, the president is directly elected by the people and each person gets one vote.

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So really the claim is just that "Los Angeles" is larger than 43 states. Let's check the numbers on that.

The City of Los Angeles' population was about 3.9 million in the 2020 Census, which exceeds the population of 22 individual states, said Robert Speel, a political scientist at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.

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Los Angeles County, the largest county in the U.S., was home to about 10 million people, according to the 2020 Census. It exceeds the population of 40 states, Speel said.

And the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area had a population of 18.6 million in the 2020 Census. That exceeds the population of 46 states, Bezdecny said. Only California as a whole, Texas, Florida and New York are larger. (This ranking would be unchanged if we considered the Census-defined Los Angeles Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a 2020 population of 13.2 million.)

Our rating: Missing context

Based on our research, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the implication that abolishing the Electoral College makes Los Angeles "stronger" than 43 states. The post doesn't spell out which Los Angeles area it is referring to, but the 43 states stat is wrong in any case. The city and county of Los Angeles have too few people for this to be true, and the metropolitan area is larger than that, outranked by only four states – one of which is California as a whole.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Post errs on electoral power of the Los Angeles area