How much is your vote worth? (electoral college system)

Fascinating chart that shows how many voters each elector in the electoral college represents.

A vote in Wyoming counts the most.  A vote in Florida counts the least.

Is there a way to keep the system, but make it more fair?

Or do you think it is fair?

Or do you think it should be scrapped?

10,000 registered voters = 1 electoral vote

No winner take all states.

The UN gets 1 electoral vote as well, in the event of a tie.

my knee jerk reaction is to scrap it....Seems the popular vote should trump the college, and turn the race into a bonafide fifty state event. That said nomo I am woefully uneducated in this arena and would love to hear higher minds on the subject.

I found an interesting article about changing the electoral college about a month ago. I'll try to find it. They made a great case.

Synopsis: Weight each states electoral votes by the popular vote instead of having each state being all or nothing. This would cause more equalized campaigning throughout all the states instead of ignoring a large number of states.

If 10,000 voters = 1 electoral college vote, then either we're no longer using the number of representatives in congress to determine the number of electors

OR

we're going to dramatically increase the number of representatives in the House to about 10,000 (assumes that 100,000,000 of our 300,000,000 people vote)

and incidentally, that's something that HAS been proposed - our population has grown a great deal but we maxed out at 538 seats in congress (space constraints really), which means some congresspeople represent way more people than they could ever hope to know or understand the wishes of (and so they know and understand the wishes of only the most vocal constituents)

Found it. Electoral change proposal.

bagga, it's a pretty obscure aspect of our system - only the most wonky of us concern ourselves with it ::giggles::

it was put in place to make sure that states with agricultural interests but lower populations didn't get totally dominated by industrial states with huge population centers -- because it was naturally assumed that such states might at times have conflicting interests (although I expect they never thought the conflict would center around women's reproductive health)

Original Post by moonikins:

Found it. Electoral change proposal.

 Intriguing.

Will have to ponder it.  Will it mean that agricultural interests would be swamped by large industrial areas population centers? 

It sounds reasonable, but why wouldn't it be more likely to result in a tie when there is an evenly divided electorate?  Wouldn't it make it easier to pull shenanigans with the voting machine (election management) since a very small shift in percentage of vote could mean the difference in the election outcome?

I guess I don't really see a need for the electoral college. :)

ok, well, do you agree that farmers have different interests than people who live in cities?

if so, do you think that farming interests are vital to our nation?

if so, do you agree that farmers deserve to have their interests represented by their president?

if so, do you agree that without the electoral college, urban and suburban areas would essentially determine the president and farming areas would be wholly ignored - since urban/suburban populations&nb sp;so vastly outnumber the rural populations?

That's a slightly more complicated version of splitting a state's electoral votes by the state's popular vote results.

I think it's a great idea, but Nomo brings up a potential sticking point about the efficacy of vote rigging under such a system.

And kg, without the electoral college, we wouldn't really have a representative government. Sure technically it would be, but not in the spirit upon which the nation was founded.

But...they already are disregarded. Aren't they? Florida gets 27, Wyoming gets 4 (?). They are largely ignored in most elections. For there to be fair and equal representation, there would need to be an equal number of electoral votes for each state?

I guess the fact that the electoral college is tied to the number of seats in the House is the flaw, IMO. I don't see what one has to do with the other. I think the number of votes each state should have should be based on the number of registered voters in the previous cycle.

And I do think there should be more representation in the House, BTW to adequately reflect the population growth.

Original Post by nomoreexcuses:

but we maxed out at 538 seats in congress (space constraints really),

 Time for a new reality show: Extreme Capitol Makeover

Original Post by kathygator:

But...they already are disregarded. Aren't they? Florida gets 27, Wyoming gets 4 (?). They are largely ignored in most elections. For there to be fair and equal representation, there would need to be an equal number of electoral votes for each state?

I guess the fact that the electoral college is tied to the number of seats in the House is the flaw, IMO. I don't see what one has to do with the other. I think the number of votes each state should have should be based on the number of registered voters in the previous cycle.

And I do think there should be more representation in the House, BTW to adequately reflect the population growth.

Under the electoral college, Wyoming gets about 4.5 times more representative muscle than it would get if it were based solely on their population.

515,000/300,000,000 __ vs __ 4/538

I guess what I really need to do is refresh myself on the electoral college and the way it works to truly contribute to the discussion. :)

if you wanted to make all states equal, then you'd just have 100 electors (= # of senators)

*tries to imagine the makeover that would enable congress to seat 10,000 reps*

Ty Pennington, you're gonna need a bigger bus!

hmmm. actually it would need to be 3 electoral votes per state. but then I guess the same argument would hold. Florida would then be under-represented.

How many senators does it take to screw in a light bulb?

#17 depends on what state they're from

dunno that either, Ig.

Original Post by ignayshus:

How many senators does it take to screw in a light bulb?

60?