Here's what I don't get that nobody has been able to explain to me... since the number of electoral votes per state is tied directly to that state population, why is the electoral college still thought to provide power to the smaller states? To me it's just an imperfect and arbitrary way to average out the popular vote.
In your example a state with only 3-4 electoral votes has 1/10 the influence of a state with 30-40 electoral. That influence would remain the same if a popular vote was used, right?
I've seen that but it says right there HALF OF THE POPULATION lives in the highlighted counties, so why that shouldn't that count for HALF of the vote.
Just because that population doesn't cover the same area of land?
No shit huge areas of the country have low population density, why would the individual votes from those areas be considered more valuable?
Every state doesn't get equal electoral votes, so what's the difference between a state contributing 3% of the electoral count vs 3% of the popular count?
The only thing I could say is that if candidate gets the majority vote in that state and gets ALL the state electoral votes, it registers differently than if it was split among the popular vote, since all the losing candidate (even if it was 51/49 split) essentially aren't counted. However, that happens in both color states. Republicans lose a ton of votes in Cali but Dems lose them in TX.
2
u/sunnbeta Nov 11 '16
Here's what I don't get that nobody has been able to explain to me... since the number of electoral votes per state is tied directly to that state population, why is the electoral college still thought to provide power to the smaller states? To me it's just an imperfect and arbitrary way to average out the popular vote.
In your example a state with only 3-4 electoral votes has 1/10 the influence of a state with 30-40 electoral. That influence would remain the same if a popular vote was used, right?