On election day let’s gather round as Californians and celebrate for a moment how important our voices are and that the be heard. How important our massive crop of electoral votes are and how influential they are in selecting the next leader of the Free World. Let’s also consider whether any of that is the case.

Many have argued that the electoral college system undervalues the votes of people in highly-populated states, with small (low-population) states having more electors per capita than large (high-population) states. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the actual effect of how California uses our piece of the pie. To take an arbitrary round number, let’s take a look back at the past 25 presidential contests from 1916 to 2016. A full century of results that encompass many shifts in norms, changes in party policies, and societal development. Pardon the table.

Year	Winner	Our Pick	Our Votes	Winning Margin
1916	Wilson	Wilson	13	23
1920	Harding	Harding	13	263
1924	Coolidge	Coolidge	13	246
1928	Hoover	Hoover	13	357
1932	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	22	413
1936	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	22	515
1940	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	22	367
1944	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	25	333
1948	Truman	Truman	25	114
1952	Eisenhower	Eisenhower	32	353
1956	Eisenhower	Eisenhower	32	384
1960	Kennedy	Nixon	32	84
1964	Johnson	Johnson	40	434
1968	Nixon	Nixon	40	110
1972	Nixon	Nixon	45	503
1976	Carter	Ford	45	57
1980	Reagan	Reagan	45	440
1984	Reagan	Reagan	47	512
1988	H.W. Bush	H.W. Bush	47	315
1992	B. Clinton	B. Clinton	54	202
1996	B. Clinton	B. Clinton	54	220
2000	W. Bush	Gore	54	5
2004	W. Bush	Kerry	55	35
2008	Obama	Obama	55	192
2012	Obama	Obama	55	126
2016	trump	H. Clinton	55	77

A pattern emerges. For every election in which California’s votes went to the winner, the race was won by more electoral votes than California contributed. In each case, had California simply not selected our electors the results would have stood.

In which of those years would flipping California have changed the outcome? Flipping a state is a big deal; not only do you deny your opponent those electors but you gain them yourself. Remove from consideration the elections that didn’t go with California (1960, 1976, 2000, 2004, and 2016). Those races would have gone the same way with the winner getting extra votes. If California had flipped in 1916 Charles Evan Hughes would have been elected. If we had flipped in 1976 Gerald Ford would have been re-elected.

I propose we Californians calm down a bit about how the presidential vote gets tallied this year and in the foreseeable future. For presidential election purposes we are a protectorate, a non-voting territory that acts as a campaign piggy bank and little more. This isn’t a partisan matter. Republicans and Democrats alike have no cause to care about your vote at the top of the ticket.