Thursday, August 18, 2011

Doesn't the nature of the electoral college favor conservative candidates?

Because each candidate receives an electoral vote for each member in Congress the states they win have, a vote in a smaller state is worth more than a vote in a larger state because of the fact that each state is given two senators regardless of their population size. For example, Alaska has three electoral votes and as of 2007, 683,478 people, meaning that each person in Alaska (I know this includes those ineligible to vote, but it's just for easier math) is worth about 0.00043893% of an electoral vote. California, on the other hand, the largest state in the country, has 36,553,215 and 55 electoral votes meaning that each person is worth about 0.00015047% of an electoral vote. This means that if you live in a state with a larger population, your vote does not count as much as one of somebody in a smaller state. And as smaller states are more often red states, and larger states like New York and California are blue states, a single Republican vote is worth more than a single Democratic vote. Isn't this rather unfair?

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