"The small states may have more power in terms of EV per person but in a winner take all system, its the big states that count.  Also weighted vote systems can ahve funny effects.
Let's say the US had 4 States: MD, TX, MI, and NY.

Lets say new york had a population of 40, TX had population of 40, MI had a population of 15,  and MD of 5.  Now lets say that NY has 4 EV, TX has 4, MI has 1.4, and MD has .6.  In this situation MD has a higher number of EV per person that MI but MI has more power than MD because MD's electoral votes never matter (no winning combination can hinge on MD, its just extra).  

This is over simplified but my point is essentially weighted voting systess dont mean that a state doesnt have power equivlent to its ration of EVs to toal Evs (flashback to Math Mod/Sim from senior yr...wish I stil lhad the text, it did a callculation of power quotients and the electoral colelge; annyone who could find a table on this that is update would be the recipient of many thanks from me). "

A popular vote is the real solution (although it would make election night less exciting for us political junkies).

Right now, Kerry is doing better in the battleground states than the country at large.  If his strength overall weakens just a little bit, he could very well win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote, IE, the opposite of 2000.  Maybe if that happens, there will be bipartisan support to eliminate it.

A state's EV is its number of representatives plus two senators. Only the number of representatives is supposed to be anything like population-proportional. CDs are figured at around 670,000 or so, so even Wyoming isn't hugely far off its House representation. You can say what you want about having two senators per state regardless of population, but that's the way the Constitution has it.

Electors aren't intended to be more than very roughly proportional to population because of the CD part of their number. And, as Brendan Loy shows, it is only very roughly proportional. But that doesn't bother me too much.

All political systems develop out of a people's history. Ours was drawn up at a time when states were distinct political communities and their interests had to be respected in order to get a national government created. It did get off the ground, and there are other vestiges of that compromise in the way we do things. Many would say, BTW, that the states are still distinct political communities.

We've made some important moves in the direction of popular democracy. But we don't have a completely centralized system like Britain or France. I'm pretty sure I don't want one. If we elected presidents by only popular vote, the parties would not only just campaign where the numbers are, they'd have to become much more narrow than they already are (particularly the Repubs) in order to run up their majorities in the areas where they're strongest. The Dems would only need to pay attention to CA, NY, and IL. And any party with lots of money would simply pay for all kinds of front groups to weaken their main opponents-- why do Ralph's adventures with Republicans spring to mind here?

This is a big topic with serious repercussions. It deserves more than the facile kind of calculation it's given here.

Altoid

Not only does it mean my vote as a Californian is worth less (I posted the first comment, finally got an account), the Electoral College means that not only are large states unrepresented, but only CLOSE states are worth campaigning in (regardless of size).  Nobody cares about Utah or Connecticut, because they are guaranteed to go one way or the other.  If it was a straight popular vote, maybe somebody running for president would.

For example in the example given about NY versus the '11' red states, 22 of those 52 electoral votes are due to the Senate delegations. If you take 22 away from those 11 and 2 from NY you are left with 30 for the mountain west and 31 for NY. All of a sudden NY is overrepresented?

So while I do NOT disagree with the contention of the article, it does not completely reflect how the Electoral Votes are divided up. In order to have a true apportionment based on population only we would have to drop the automatic 2 electoral votes given to the states by virtue of its 2 US Senators. Then that opens up the whole argument of actual representation in Congress. Such a small state as Wyoming is overly represented by having 3 in their Congressional delegation. However a state like Utah only has 2 more electoral votes but has over 4 times the population. That is a bit deceiving though because Wyoming only has 1 US House representative and Utah 3.

When the Constitution was drawn up, each House member represented roughly 37,000 voters. By 1910, when the House hit 435, it was up to a bit over 210 thousand. If we used the same ratio today, the size of the House would more than triple. (This article - reviewing a book by Novak! heh - pegged it at 1303 as of 2000.)

This is a good idea from all sorts of directions, seems to me.

Case in point: Texas. It has 34 EVs and about 20.9 million people. Contrast that with reliably Democratic VT (.6 million, 3 EVs), CT (3.4 million, 7 EVs), RI (1.1 million, 3 EVs), MA (6.3 million, 10 EVs), ME (1.3 million, 4 EVs). That's a total of 12.7 million and 28 EVs. Throw in the likes of DE (.7 million, 3 EVs), DC (.6 million, 3 EVs), HI (1.2 million, 4 EVs), and WA (not a swing state in my mind)(5.5 million, 11 EVs) and you've got 20.7 million people getting about 49 EVs. That's about 200,000 less people and 15 more electoral votes than the Lone Star Republic.

What is more striking to me is the huge built-in advantage of being a small state. If California got Vermont's representation in the EV, it'd have 167 votes in the Electoral College!!!!!

One thing that is also important to point out here, though: this will never ever, ever change.  It is a giant flaw in the constitution, one that was actually made to slave states at the constitutional congress just a few blocks from where I'm sitting now.   But it remains an almost pointless endeavor to even try to change it (even though it should be). In order to change this, you need to find 38 states to ratify and ammendment to change the system, only there are well over 20 states greatly benefit from this in terms of representation.  Even worse, they are mostly republican states, and when was the last time you saw a republican want to change something that wasn't going to benefit them directly before it helped anyone else?  Plu-ease.

Oh yeah, and you can shove all those states rights arguments right up your corn shoots.  There is a big difference between allowing regional governments be able to write and enforce laws of their own and those same regions turning around and writing laws for the rest of us, which is what W is doing right now.  States rights should be kept to the states and should not have extra representation in federal level government.sign an ammendment

The easiest solution would be to increase the size of the House of Representatives, since only the composition of the original House was specified in the Constitution. Also, as conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby pointed out, the Framers intended the House to grow with the country, as it did until fixed at 435 in the early 20th century. And tying each state's electoral vote to its representation in Congress makes the Framers' intention crystal clear: each state has a say, but bigger states have a bigger say. This principle, unfortunately, has been turned on its head by the growing population and the guarantee of at least three electoral votes to every state, no matter how small.

Just as an example, if the House were expanded to 600, then based on 2003 estimates the largest delegations would be California (73), Texas (46), New York (40), Florida (35), Illinois and Pennsylvania (26 each), and Ohio (24). At the other end fall Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, each with one. The eleven states Loy mentioned would have a combined 47 electoral votes to New York's 42. George Will suggested 1000, on the theory that the representatives would escape the overcrowding before they did any damage!

It's interesting that what little discussion this issue has received has been on the conservative side, as far as I've seen. They'll probably change their tune when they realize that expansion would diminish the influence of smaller (now mostly Republican) states, and would also diminish the effects of gerrymandering, which the Republicans have worked to significant advantage. This really shouldn't be a partisan issue, however, since the current system is playing havoc with the principles of democracy.

Nobody should hold their breath until expansion happens, of course, but this issue deserves far more attention than it's gotten. We need to make the House representative again.

--Michael Laviolette
New Orleans, LA

Jeff Jacoby, "A Bigger House," Boston Globe, 15 Feb 1999
George F. Will, "Congress Just Isn't Big Enough," Washington Post, 14 Jan 2001

I'd say that's because today's "conservatives" seem to have absolutely no compunctions about changing the Constitution and basic ground rules for whatever trivial short-term advantages they think they might gain. Where's truth in labeling when we really need it?

Altoid

I am not native to the area but it is very interesting to live in the capitol of the state that is small enough that one could say that you are only one person removed from every person in Dover.  Any person you see stopped at a stop light in the car next to you knows someone you know.  Dover, Delaware population approx. 35,000.

Sure, we have a whopping 3 electoral votes.  Last time they went for Gore.  This time, they are going for Kerry.

Since we only have one congressman, we don't have to worry about Tom "The Hammer" Delay coming in to show the state legislature how to carve up the discricts to get more republican congressmen.

We are not too sensitive about being mentioned as a small state in the media.  West Wing script writers drop a pokey lil' ole Delaware reference in just about every episode.

Nice blog, here, guy.

There are other imbalances in the system that are perhaps worse.  One is increasingly effective gerrymandering of Congressional Districts.  Another is the arbitrary fashion in which some states disenfranchise voters.  Third, concentration of media ownership, perhaps most acute in the case of radio.

Fourth, "power of large states" is really the muzzling of the minorities in those states.  Splitting the EVs in proportion of state's popular vote would be better -- if done in ALL states.

Piotr (semi-anonymous non-hero)

Winston Churchill once said that the biggest arguement aginst democry is a 5 minute converstion with the agerage voter.  Please stop proving him right.