Oh, wait, I remember. First we started talking about ‘one man one vote’ in general, as in, how that concept applies to, or fails to apply to state law versus federal law. I said something that I’ve said many times, but (apparently) not to my parents before, and it turned into the topic of conversation. What I said was this: I’ve never been much for state rights. I think the only reason to have states at this point is because they serve as very useful testing grounds for federal legislation.
At that point my father hypothesized that if we went by ‘one man one vote’ and made everything important federal (a system I’d love to see) we’d be pretty much ruled entirely by New York and California. I’m not sure that that’s exactly true, but I do think it’s an interesting admission and a rather telling one. More on that later. From there we went to the most antiquated and useless system we still have left in this country.
So. The Electoral College: discuss.
I was genuinely of the impression that this institution was pretty much out of defenders who didn’t live in Rhode Island, Alaska or in one of those states in the middle, like Kansas, but as it turns out, I was wrong.
Also, as it turns out, it’s not clear that everybody in the country really understands the electoral college, so let’s start with a short civics lesson. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the what-it-is of the thing:
The United States Electoral College is a term used to describe the 538 presidential electors who meet every four years to cast the official votes for President and Vice President of the United States.[citation omitted] The Constitution gives each state legislature the plenary power to choose the electors who shall represent its state in the Electoral College. Through this constitutional authority, each state legislature also has the power to determine how exactly the electors are to be chosen (including the legislature choosing the electors). Presently, every state legislature chooses to allow its electors to be popularly chosen (by a state-wide ballot for slates of electors, who have informally pledged themselves to support a particular presidential candidate and a particular vice presidential candidate) on the day set forth by federal law for that purpose (i.e. Election Day). … The Constitution does not require the electors to vote as pledged, but 26 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require their electors to vote as pledged.[citation omitted]
The person chosen by majority of that vote is, of course, the next president. Most people know that part, or they know something like it, but what they may not know is that the electoral votes are not handed out proportionally according to state population. What’s something of a surprise for a lot of people is the fact that the electoral college system tends to favor, and in fact is designed to favor, smaller, less populous states.
How can that be, one might ask, looking at the layout. Here’s the layout, for those of you who want to look at it.
"How can that be?" one might ask, reasoning that one is pretty sure that states like California (55), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27) and Pennsylvania (21) are the most populous states in the Union. Also states like Alaska, Rhode Island, Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota (all 3s) are the leas populous. It seems like the more people you have the more electoral votes you get. But that’s not exactly true.
The number of electoral votes a state gets is equal to the total number of representatives that state has in both houses of congress. In other words, you get one for every representative you have in the house, and then two more (one for each senator). That’s why no state only has one electoral vote. The lowest number is three. So why, one might ask, would I say that a system that clearly gives more votes to states with higher populations favor states with lower populations? It’s because of those extra two votes. They just mean more to the smaller states.
Let’s look at the populations themselves. All these numbers are from Wikipedia and I assume they’re more or less accurate. Absolute accuracy isn’t important here. The gist is enough to make the point.
The Little Ones
- Wyoming: 493,782
- Vermont: 608,827
- Alaska: 626,932
- North Dakota: 642,200
- South Dakota: 781,919
- Montana: 997,195
- Rhode Island: 1,048,319
The Big Ones
- Pennsylvania: 12,281,054
- Florida: 15,982,378
- New York: 18,976,457
- Texas: 20,851,820
- California: 36,457,549
Now let’s have some fun with those numbers. The most jarring thing to look at is a simple comparison between Wyoming and California. In Wyoming 493,782 people pick three electors. That’s one elector for every 164,594 people. In California, each elector represents 662,864 people. That means that a Wyoming…an’s vote is worth 4.02 times what a Californian’s is worth. We’re not talking about subtle differences here. Everybody in Wyoming gets 4 VOTES for every Californian’s one.
Let’s look at it a different way. Take all the little guys and add them together. You get state with 21 electoral votes and a population of 5,199,174. Can you think of any other states that have a total of 21 electoral votes? How about Pennsylvania. The population of Pennsylvania is 12,281,054. That means, taken together, everyone in those states has 2.36 (think two and a third) times as much power in picking the president as everyone in Pennsylvania.
One more way of looking at this. Those states together have about 5.2 million people. Wisconsin has a few more people, abut 5.55 million. They get 21 electoral votes spread between them. Wisconsin gets 10. Roughly the same number of people. Half as many votes, just because they’re all in one state in Wisconsin.
How’s that for arbitrary lines and affiliations making big differences?
It’s interesting, too, to see how these differences boil down into real effects on who we see pulling up on Moving Day at the White House. Conversely, improbably, counterintuitively, the smaller the number on the electoral map, the bigger the influence that state has in the general election. If you can get a bunch of those little states and stick them together, you can win (easily) even if you lose the popular vote (in a landslide). That doesn’t usually happen. But it does sometimes happen. See 2000: Al Gore carries the popular vote with 50,999,897 votes to President Bush’s 50,456,002 and we still call him President Bush. Admittedly, this wasn’t a landslide example, but more than half a million more people voted for Gore than Bush and we got Bush anyway.
It’s late and I’m tired, so I’m going to have to come back to this on Sunday, when I have more time. Rest assured I have a bigger point to make here than, “Waaaaaah! That jerk stole my country!”
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