Naomi Girson & Ember Duke | staff writer & layout editor

With 19 votes in the Electoral College, Pennsylvania is expected to play a pivotal role in next week’s presidential election.

Experts said it is hard to imagine a scenario where Pennsylvania – which has seen more visits by the top of the ticket than any other swing state this election season – does not lead directly to the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

“In the last three elections, Pennsylvania has gone to the winning candidate by less than 1% of the vote … the outcome is going to probably come down to 100,000 votes or less,” said Lewis Irwin, professor of political science at Duquesne. “It’s hard to see a path for either candidate to victory that doesn’t include these important Electoral College votes.”

The American presidency is determined by 538 electors, one for each member of Congress, plus three for the District of Columbia – on behalf of the American public.

Pennsylvania has one of the highest numbers of electoral votes at 19, all of which are awarded to one candidate in a “winner takes all” system. As a swing state, it is not certain whether the Pennsylvania popular vote will sway Democratic or Republican.

The popular vote in a state almost always dictates which candidate receives the electoral votes, said Luke Sheahan, a political science professor at Duquesne University.

Most states have laws which require electors to vote for their pledged candidate, according to The Library of Congress. Only a few times in history have “faithless electors” betrayed their voting pledge to the party which appointed them as an elector, Sheahan said.

“As we cast our vote in Pennsylvania, we’re deciding where those 19 electoral votes will go,” Sheahan said.

There have been five cases, two in this century, that the electoral college did not reflect the popular vote, leading to the president elect not being selected by the majority of Americans. The last instance being in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected and the one before that in 2000 when George W. Bush won over Al Gore. Cases like this are rare, Sheahan said.

States are given one electoral vote for every member of the House of Representatives they have and for each U.S. senator. The District of Columbia gets three electoral votes. Electors are not allowed to be active elected officials, Irwin said.

The electors are chosen in parallel with the party that wins the popular vote and are often people who have pledged loyalty to that party, Irwin said.

The Electoral College was established in the Constitution as the process to establish the presidential winner. It was designed to be a compromise for those who wanted the president to be decided by a popular vote and those who wanted the decision to come directly from Congress, according to the National Archives.

There have been 538 electoral votes since 1964, and the votes are reallocated to states every 10 years when the U.S. Census is taken. However, the population of the U.S. has almost doubled since 1964, creating underrepresentation in the most densely populated states.

The majority, 63%, of citizens feel the Electoral College should be disbanded, according to Pew Research Center. Sheahan said it’s a misconception that the tradition cancels out individual votes.

Citizen votes show the electors who they want them to vote for, so casting a ballot is still a significant way to take part in America’s democracy and the ultimate presidential decision, he said.

“Some people will say, because of the Electoral College, your vote doesn’t matter, but I don’t think that’s true,” Sheahan said.