Timeline for Does the Electoral College system really favor low population areas?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 8, 2017 at 10:46 | comment | added | David Richerby | @Dunk "Every state that... has joined since knew the rules and agreed to join anyways." You make it sound like the states were independent places that saw the awesomeness of the USA and asked to join. At least to the west of the Mississippi, what mostly happened was that Americans came along and said "This land is ours now! You must obey our laws" and started building towns and farms. Eventually, they were given the option to either continue to be ruled from Washington as a territory or to become a state and send some guys to Washington and have a say in what happens. What would you do? | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 19:52 | comment | added | Dunk | There's no such thing as a state being "under-represented" or "over-represented". Compromises were made to even allow the formation of the USA. Without those compromises there would be no USA. Small states were not willing to join and be "ruled" by the large states. Every state that originally joined and has joined since knew the rules and agreed to join anyways. Thus, every state is represented exactly as intended and exactly as they agreed to, meaning they are represented at the precise level of representation that they are supposed to be. Not over or under represented in any way. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 15:43 | comment | added | origimbo | @DavidRicherby And 50 states (and a district) which have decided to hold a vote in the first place. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 11:19 | comment | added | David Richerby | "But the founding fathers got their math wrong" No they didn't. The founding fathers left the states to decide how to allocate their electoral college votes. There is no "unit rule"; rather, there are 48 states that have decided to allocate all electoral college votes to whoever wins the popular vote in that state. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 3:06 | comment | added | ubadub | Democrats rarely campaign in California and Republicans rarely campaign in Texas. Instead, both go for a small handful of so-called swing states. Your example completely obscures this. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 2:13 | comment | added | origimbo | It's slightly unfair to blame the founding fathers, since there's no constitutional control on how electors are chosen. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 2:09 | comment | added | Teleka | The effect on electoral results is distinct from the effect on campaign efforts. Unless you can link competitiveness with population size, this isn't an answer. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 1:46 | comment | added | user1530 | This math only applies to the few swing states. CA is massively under-represented in the college compared to WY, for example. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 1:40 | comment | added | SJuan76 | If in both states the difference is percentually the same (you need to swing a 1% of the votes to be the winner) then winning Wyoming is far cheaper than winning California. Using absolute number is not representative (a difference of 10.000 votes in California means that it is a way closer call than what a difference of 10.000 votes in Wyoming would be). | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 1:15 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 7, 2017 at 5:48 | |||||
| Dec 7, 2017 at 1:11 | history | answered | Lee Daniel Crocker | CC BY-SA 3.0 |