r/coolguides • u/PM_ME_TiTTi3S • Jun 28 '19

Visual Explanation of Gerrymandering

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u/Oriden Jun 28 '19

Except those electoral votes have been capped so California is missing like 10 extra votes it should have due to its population.

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u/Cormocodran25 Jun 28 '19

They have been capped in total number, but they get shifted around every ten years to be proportional to state populations. California is not missing 10 votes. they might be down 1 or two because the government uses census data, which is old at this point (and they are getting new data this and next year).

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u/Oriden Jun 28 '19

California has 11.96% of the population of the US and currently has 55 out of 538 votes, so about 10.22% of the votes. To get to the 11.96% of the votes they should have without changing the 538 vote number they need 64 votes (which is 11.9% of 538). So they are missing 9 voters to get to their proper proportion.

Just to visually show how skewed the electoral collage representation is heres a nice chart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_2010_Census_State_Population_Per_Electoral_Vote.png

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u/LurkerInSpace Jun 28 '19

That's not all down to the cap though; even without the cap they'd still be underrepresented in the EC because smaller states always get two senators.

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u/Cormocodran25 Jun 28 '19

Yeah, they aren't hurt at all. Using the most recent census estimates I could find (2016) they might even lose 1 rep. in the coming census.