Wyoming gets 7 electoral votes per million people, while New York gets only 1.9.
That's a 3.6x difference -- I would hardly call that a "small" edge.
That's a 3.6x difference -- I would hardly call that a "small" edge.
Here's my claim: if you drew a curve of electoral votes per person by percentile, there would be a very small area that was significantly elevated, and the remaining portion would be moderately flat.
Because Wyoming's population is so small, the absolute impact isn't that big. Go up just a few spots to Hawaii and it's more like a 2:1 ratio. Yet still, substantially less than 10% of the population lives in such small states. So there's a very small minority of people who have a proportionally larger impact (but still a small impact in absolute terms).
To be clear, I think that's a bad result. So far as the democratic process can allow it, our votes should have equal weight. But it's somewhat exaggerated how systematic of an effect it has. In the same vein, I've argued that the best defense of the electoral college is that it only errs by giving the wrong result in elections that were already very close. In contrast, the Senate is thoroughly anti-democratic, unsalvagably so.
(Btw: I can't replicate your math. New York had 19,378,102 people in 2010, and 29 votes = 1.49 votes / million. Wyoming had 563,626 and 3 votes = 5.32 votes / million).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_2010_Census_State_Popu...
The house is elected by population, the senate by state. The electoral college is designed to be a blend of the house and senate systems.
> As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” [0]
Firstly, that has nothing to do with a "blend", and secondly that purpose was far from served. I rest my case.
[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-elector...
PS: I like how you said "men and women" there. If we go by the founders, women wouldn't be part of the electoral college.
You said "It's an election of a minority leader.", but that isn't the case by any measure that actually matters, however upsetting it may be for you.
Whatever case you are resting has nothing to do with how many total electors there are, and neither does Hamilton's opinion.
The reason we're not talking about electoral votes is because the discussion revolves around how things would change if we went with the popular vote.
Yes, he got more electoral votes. Many would argue this is a broken system which has fucked our country for the second time in 3 presidents.
But on the other hand:
a) All recent presidential elections have been close in popular vote. And as the article points out, two of the last three presidents have won the electoral college while losing the popular vote.
b) Everyone would be appalled by any other large systematic difference in voting power, even if the overall impact was limited. Can you imagine if instead of going by state, we decided to go by income and the top 0.2% of people were given 3.6 votes each? People would lose their minds.
As for the math, I was using electoral votes divided by the voting-age population of each state in the 2010 Census. So, Wyoming is 3 EV / 0.428M = 7.0 EV/M and New York is 29 EV / 15.053M = 1.9 EV/M. If you use total population instead, you get the basically the same ratio (3.55x vs 3.64x).
Why is that bad? The Senate represents the states, the other sovereign entities in our federal republic.
I think that a) we should amend the Constitution to eliminate the direct election of Senators and mandating that they be appointed by the state legislatures; b) amend the Constitution to apportion 1 representative per 40,000–60,000 people (yes, this would mean over 6,000 representatives); c) amend the Constitution to mandate a similar structure for the states, with each state legislature required to be bicameral, with senators appointed by the counties and independent cities and representatives elected by the people.
Note that greatly increasing the number of representatives would make the Electoral College much more democratic. I'm not terribly fond of that, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for an overall healthier republic.
The ratio of votes per capita is relatively consistent - assuming a baseline level of votes so individual states aren't totally excluded - and is more a sign of a potential problem with the distribution not the system itself. But there's plenty of arguments which favour both ways.
Much like gerrymandering, which both sides have a long legal record of accusing the other of taking advantage of as the last two Supreme Court cases on the matter clearly demonstrates - each by the other, this seems to be a who's on the "winning" side motivation which misses the bigger picture.
In this case it's the smaller states who have been basically given a guaranteed entrance ticket to play the game, which is different than simply giving the state extra votes relative to their size. It functions almost as a social safety net which gives you a shot, not a good shot at that, but only if you'd otherwise have no other shot. If it was only per capita (even with balancing for size) the numbers would look a lot different.
California had 32 electoral votes in the 1950s. You may have meant the 1850s, when California did have only 4 electoral votes. That's because California was tiny back then, with a population of under 100,000 in 1850.
The electoral votes per capita has always been heavily skewed in favor small states. While it's true that some formerly small states have grown into large states, I don't see how that's relevant.
The other stuff about battleground states would have only a small connection to the electoral college, as even the small states would (still) only have a small amounts of votes, and have more to do with regional political trends.
Of course there will be push back from who ever most benefits currently. But I'm sure the political machines will learn to adapt and adjust for their new markets. There will always be enough moderates to swing both ways. Each only has to focus on the important ones, so changing who is important shouldn't hurt the parties unless they don't like having power.
Re 1850, thanks I updated my comment, I should note that doesn't change the fact they're not static.
States are entities of political significance, regardless of how many people happen to live in them. This is a union of states, and states get a say. If you don't believe that consider advocating for the replacement of states with population based administrative districts.
This is such an overwhelmingly stupid statement. It's effectively "if you don't like it, then leave."
Wyoming is not as desirable as California in many ways. People don't want to go there. Just because it's not as desirable doesn't mean it should get arbitrary favoritism when it comes to elections.
Second its only your perception that it receives favoritism, because of your mistaken interpretive frame that sees electoral college electors as being about individual citizens instead of as a compromise between two sets of stakeholders: states and the citizens living in them. Until you recognize that states themselves have an interest in Federal elections, you will continue to misunderstand the role the EC plays.
Fairness isn't a simple concept. There can be many mutually incommensurable notions of fairness. Unfortunately, partisans pick and choose those that suit their interests best.
Just as an example from domestic life. Consider a family of 4 individuals with different caloric requirements. One notion of fairness would split a pizza pie into four equal portions, but another would split it in proportion to their caloric needs. Getting everyone to agree on the notion that should be operant is hard because each choice implies winners and losers.
If you don't think states interest in Federal elections shouldn't count for anything, say so, and then give some thought about whether you think states should just be replaced with population based administrative districts that change with the census.