The Electoral College Is Over-Representative Of Small States

The 2004 election was a little different than most, in that democrat John Kerry won many small states in New England. But most often in national elections, democratic candidates are somewhat less likely to win election because small states that tend to vote republican are over-represented in the electoral college.

Little Montana, with a population of 926,865, has three electoral votes, which means that one electoral vote represents 308,955 persons. And little Idaho, with 4 electoral votes, has a population of 1,393,292 persons, which means that one electoral vote represents 348,250 persons. Many other small states such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah , and others with smaller populations which are likely to vote republican are over-represented in the electoral college.

Large states, including the big industrial states that tend to vote democratic, are under-represented in electoral votes. California with a population of 35,899,799 has 55 electoral votes, or one per 652,709 persons. And New York with 31 electoral votes, has a population of 19,277,088, or one electoral vote per 621,838 persons. This means that each vote cast in a small state like Montana has twice the electoral colege weight of a vote cast in big democratic leaning states such as California and New York.

This inbuilt bias in the electoral college towards small states that tend to vote republican has helped to elect three republicans who lost the popular vote. No democrat has ever been elected by the electoral college that lost the popular vote, only republicans, because of this inbuilt advantage in the electoral college. In 1876, and again in the failed re-election of Grover Cleveland to republican Benjamin Harrison, and with the electoral vote loss of Al Gore in 2000, to republican George Bush who lost the popular vote by 500,000 votes nationwide. George Bush was the only one of the three republicans elected by the electoral college who lost the popular vote who was re-elected.

It would have been thought that after each of these flawed elections in which a candidate who lost the popular vote was able to claim a technical victory in the electoral college that some reform of the system would have been expected. But even in the very disputed 2000 election, too much critical view was aimed at the flawed election in Florida, and the electoral college itself was not questioned or reformed.

Instead of being based on population like the seats in congress roughly are, in which every state can have no less than one representative, two electoral votes are added to the every state equal to the number of senators, and this helps to bias the system towards more power to small states that tend to vote republican.

The election system isn't really based on majority rule for presidential elections, instead the votes of small states have nearly twice the clout of the votes of larger states because of the inbuilt bias of the electoral college that over-represents the votes of these small states and tends to benefit republican presidential candidates. America seems to want to promote "democracy" around the world. Yet democracy in America is deeply flawed. And despite the flawed election in 1876, change has never come to the electoral college, so three republican candidates who lost the popular vote were able to claim victories because of the electoral college and the bias towards too much clout to small states that tends to benefit republican presidential candidates.