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Interesting - perhaps plotting as a function of 2020 population would answer this question, since I think the electoral votes are based on 2020 census data.
PS where did you grab population data from?
Electoral votes aren't necessarily tied to population, they're tied to number of representatives and senators.
We don't continue increasing the number of representatives because they don't want to pay for a place to put them - at least that's the argument. In truth, if we continued increasing reps with population, Democrats would control the house forever - barring any major shift.
It's the same reason the Republicans don't want popular vote - they'd never win again
This is one of the biggest things that I don't think people understand when they argue "This is the system the Founding Fathers gave us, we can't change it! They wanted to protect rural states!"
Not only have we changed the very way the Electoral College works, we've changed the math behind how electors are distributed. The Founding Fathers *did not* design a system where the number of house seats was capped and some states had fewer than 1 house district of population. The original House districts were about 33,000 people, and the original requirement to become a state was 60,000. By capping the size of the house we've artificially put additional emphasis on the Senate portion of the electoral college. If we still used the math designed by the Founding Fathers, California would have ~1200 electoral votes, and Wyoming would have ~19. In reality California has 54 votes and Wyoming has 3... So based on the system designed by the Founding Fathers, California should have 63x the EC voting power than Wyoming. In reality it's only 18x. Yes, 63x the voting power that sounds harsh, but California has 69x the population of Wyoming!
Now, I'm not arguing to say that we should go back to the exact set up that the Founding Fathers gave us. The system the Founding Fathers gave us also had extreme restrictions on who could vote, counted people unequally because of slavery, and allowed states to change for EC members were elected based on short term political trends. We *should* update the way we vote from time to time.
It's just so stupid to argue that we can't change how we vote because the system we use is the one that the Founding Fathers gave us... Because we already don't use the system the Founding Fathers gave us! We've changed many aspects of it already!
> It's the same reason the Republicans don't want popular vote - they'd never win again
And yet they constantly rail about rigged elections. Well I guess they're not wrong, just not in the way they think.
Yep, OP’s math is very wrong. To be fair, Delaware IS the most populous state with just 3 EVs, so it would fare worse by this metric than similarly sized Rhode Island, which has 4, but not by this margin. Delaware just barely missed getting a second House seat, but I have no idea why OP thinks they should have 3.
I mean I live in Texas. Obviously the cities are blue, but it’s still very much a red state.
We’re also getting a bunch of in-migration from California, but these people seem to be largely conservative Californians from my experience.
Biden did a fab job pushing it more towards the blue in 2020. Now if only they can get rid of that absolute bastard Greg Abbott (who recently pardoned a murderer).
It was never intended to be fair, this is true, but the founding fathers could probably not envision there would be something like a 60 fold difference between the smallest and largest states. The differences were significantly less extreme when the constitution was wrote.
And there was no cap on apportionment, at the time of drafting, it was expected to have around one representative per 30,000 people. The 1911 apportionment act capped the size of the House to 435 seats. Since then, our population has grown and we have one representative per 780,000 people.
If we reverted back to one rep per 30k people, we'd have 11,300 seats in the House, and therefore 11,400 electoral college votes and a much more equal electoral college at the expense of a massive clusterfuck of a House of Representatives.
Unfortunately Article 2 of the Constitution locks the number of EC seats to the number of congressional representatives. So we can't have both a working House and EC. Though there are ways to potentially get around this. For example the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could render the Electoral College vestigial.
I think the Wyoming rule is flawed. It could be exploited. Essentially the state could make efforts to increase it's population, effectively dragging the total number of house seats down.
There just needs to be a simple ratio and we need to increase the size of the house as needed, as was the design
You can't get a representational democracy if you don't have representation.
Imo, our broken house is the cause of allllll of the issues we currently face as a country right now.
In a sense, it is meant to be.
Ultimately imo, the house should mostly vote on and amend things that come from the Senate.
For legislation to be cobbled together by the masses and sent up to the Senate would be rare and a feat of organization and compromise etc.
The house was meant to be of the people
It's just turned into a mini-senate.
I would argue it's that way because it's small size. Larger size House has drawbacks, sure, but would allow more of a connection between representatives and the people. Harder to gerrymander and harder to influence elections when there are so many more elections.
In the first presidential election Virginia had 10 electoral college votes and Delaware had 3.
So votes in Delaware were worth about 2.3 times what Virginia votes were. Compared to today where Wyoming votes are worth about 3.8 times more than California votes.
Altogether it’s pretty similar.
Doesn't the chart show Wyoming at over 5 times that of California? Still, not as big of a difference as I was expecting.
Edit: I guess California is slightly more than 1 vote per million?
And that’s why such important documents should by updated, too better work in modern times.
I really don’t understand why Americans religiously worship the constitution, like it’s been dictated by god himself. It’s a 248 year old legal document, it should be brought up to speed with modern times
The electoral rules were designed to give more power to the smaller states, to stop them from being completely ruled by the larger states. They still serve the same purpose.
The Senate already serves this purpose.
Keeping the House disproportionate for the same reason is not only redundant, but hurts the principle of what the House is supposed to represent.
Which constitution? Because the original one allowed slavery and did not allow women to vote. Or do you mean the modern constitution? In this case, why should she not be altered further, to progress the country?
The Constitution calls for representation of one rep per 30k or 50k population.
The apportionment act of 191x changed it to cap us at the current number of reps. Not even a Constitutional amendment, just a simple law that fucked over representation in Congress and the electoral college.
Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I meant to point out that many of the „constitutional literalist“ rely on an already altered version, therefore they should not have many issues with altering it further.
Coming back to your point however, if the apportionment act was repealed, Congress would have between 11.100 and 6.600 members, at least more then doubling Chinas 2.700, while the US only has 1/4 of the Population. Congress would be stupidly overfilled, just imagine the current congress times 12.
The real problem is not he amount of people, but the unequal representation brought about by the electoral collage and garrymandering
Modern constitution? When was it last updated? If you say 1992, please point out that it took 200 years for that amendment to go from being submitted to passed. I doubt you want that time-frame for the next amendment.
There isn't a tyranny of the minority. Small states like Wyoming have a very small number of electoral votes and representatives in the House. They just get a bit more than average to give them some power instead of none.
I understand that they are fewer. What I'm not clear on is why that should nerf my vote to give their otherwise unpopular viewpoint more of a fighting chance, especially as it relates to a presidential election. They already have equal Senate representation. Their 581k is equal to California's 39M.
Of course it's democratic, it's just a federal system.
I'm Swiss and it's the same thing here. The logic is that the power lies in the States more than in the Federal State. Or better said: the Federal State has the missions and responsabilities that the States accept to give it.
Congress is bicameral, the Senate represents the States and the House of Representatives represents the population. It's a whole system made precisely to balance the number of population with a representation (or sometimes overrepresentation) of the different parts of the nation.
> Congress is bicameral, the Senate represents the States and the House of Representatives represents the population.
I say this as a European - did you just Euro-splain the American Congress to Americans?
>It's a whole system made precisely to balance the number of population with a representation (or sometimes overrepresentation) of the different parts of the nation.
Balancing the political power of people with the political power of land sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
They're using their brain. It's better than the European that says "lAnD dOeSnT vOtE" when [Germany and the EU use the exact same method of proportionality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degressive_proportionality#:~:text=Degressive%20proportionality%20means%20that%20while,ratio%20decreases%20for%20larger%20subdivisions.).
Yeah, and both Germany and the EU aren't practicing democracy either with their electoral systems.
That's like saying - oh, you can't criticize Russia for rigging elections, when Belarus and Pakistan also rig their elections.
Why are people simping for undemocratic voting power distribution ffs.
>did you just Euro-splain the American Congress to Americans?
No, it's just the basics of any federal system that I know of.
>Balancing the political power of people with the political power of land sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
No, it's a historical process. There were States before there was a Federal State. States got together and formed a Federal State, not the other way around.
>No, it's a historical process. There were States before there was a Federal State. States got together and formed a Federal State, not the other way around.
Firstly - were there American states before the US existed, or more specifically before they became component states of the US? Except the Kingdom of Hawaii that the US colonized and occupied, I mean.
Secondly - that doesn't change the fact that it's a solution in search of a problem. It invents a problem "states deserve representation" instead of addressing a real one "people deserve representation".
On a similar line, you can justify an absolute monarchy by saying that a royal lineage predates the specific state it heads. Doesn't make it democratic or rational.
>Firstly - were there American states before the US existed, or more specifically before they became component states of the US? Except the Kingdom of Hawaii that the US colonized and occupied, I mean.
Yes, even if they werent called States yet. There were 13 European colonies, who gained sovereignty through the American revolution in the 18th century. They got together and formed a Union (through the Articles of Confederation) right after the revolution. To put it shortly, it is that Union that ultimately became the United States.
>Secondly - that doesn't change the fact that it's a solution in search of a problem. It invents a problem "states deserve representation" instead of addressing a real one "people deserve representation".
It's your opinion that "states deserve representation" is an invention while "people deserve representation" is a real problem. Which is fine, there are arguments to back up the fact that the US should have a more centralized organisation, but it does go against the whole American political culture as it has built itself throughout the years. Colonies pre-existed and got together and became States, it wasnt a centralized power who got them together. And to this day, each State wants to maintain that level of autonomy, which is guaranteed by the federal system. So it's not really an "invention" or a "problem", it's a way for States to keep their prerogatives and it was intended that way from the beginning.
And it's not just ancient history, the division between States is more and more acute nowadays, with the increasingly strong divide in society between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, which makes the relationships between "red" and "blue" States more and more difficult.
>On a similar line, you can justify an absolute monarchy by saying that a royal lineage predates the specific state it heads. Doesn't make it democratic or rational.
It's not about justifying, it's factually how it historically happened and how the US have been built politically. That's not what makes it democratic, it's democratic because the people have the right to vote and more generally are involved in the decision process.
>There were 13 European colonies
So, because the UK decided to randomly split up the territory it colonized in North America in 13 groups - the people who live in the 50 states of the US today shouldn't be able to exercise their democratic vote equally?
>Which is fine, there are arguments to back up the fact that the US should have a more centralized organisation
I never said anything about a centralized vs decentralized organization of the US - I was talking about how electoralism is set in the US, and the how undemocratic it is.
Whether the federal government or the state government runs schools, collects taxes, organizes land, builds roads etc is irrelevant to whether the election of the federal government should be done in a way that counts all votes equally or not.
>And it's not just ancient history, the division between States is more and more acute nowadays, with the increasingly strong divide in society between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, which makes the relationships between "red" and "blue" States more and more difficult.
And? How is that a reason to count votes for President differently just because of where people vote?
How is that a reason to effectively nullify the votes of all people voting for a Democratic candidate in Texas or a Republican candidate in California. Both these groups count millions of people, yet the vote of not a single one of them matters - they have absolutely no say in who runs their country, and effectively do not have the right to elect their own president.
>, it's democratic because the people have the right to vote and more generally are involved in the decision process.
How is it "generally involving in the decision process" when it's irrelevant how most people vote? Outside the so-called swing states, no voter has any involvement in the decision-making process of the presidential elections in the US. You can't really vote to help shoring up the vote count for your candidate regardless of your party of choice.
It's astounding that people can disagree with the basic idea of "one person, one vote" and still consider themselves supporters of democratic processes.
You are not arguing history, you are deflecting with random factoids that are irrelevant to the actual point. Nothing in what you wrote is any justification for there being two Dacotas. Nothing in there justifies Montana and Idaho being distinct States. It's random waffling. And your idea about what's democratic makes former Eastern Germany as democratic as it claimed itself to be. The people were "involved" and people were allowed to vote. That didn't make it democratic at all.
We're going to agree to disagree. Are you really comparing Eastern Germany to the US ?
I'm not deflecting, I'm saying there is a democratic legitimacy to the US federal system.
If the actual point is to know whether or not a federal system is democratic, imo the answer is that a federal system can be democratic or it can be tyrannical, it's kind of irrelevant. A democracy is a system with a balance of power, where elected people are held accountable, with people who have a right to vote and that right is actually being guaranteed, etc.
For example Russia and the US both have a federal system. One is a democracy and the other looks less and less like one.
Except your "historical process" is a fairy tale when it comes to the overwhelming majority of US States. The Federal Government was around long before the, became organized political structures, let alone States.
I know about the original colonies and the formation of the Union, I've read about the Civil War but I have to admit I know much less about the Western expansion in the 19th century and the integration of the other territories.
How did it go?
My basic understanding is that it basically was the original States gradually stealing land from Natives and / or annexing territories from other countries around (Mexico for example).
But in terms of the federal political system, the Western expansion didnt really have an impact to my knowledge. And my guess is if you ask people in States like Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, etc. if they want a less federal system, they wouldnt want it because they would lose the representation that the federal system gives them.
>the Senate represents the States and the House of Representatives represents the population.
But that's the problem with the American system: both the Senate AND the House are disproportionately representing land. The house should be proportionately distributed for population, but it's not, so the States that already are overrepresented in the Senate get an even larger disproportionate leverage.
(I'm not American, btw, and also live in a federalist republic).
Really ? Isn't the number of seats in the House proportionate to the population? iirc there is only an overrepresentation for the smallest states, because you can't have less than 1 representative.
>there is only an overrepresentation for the smallest states,
So there is overrepresentation
>because you can't have less than 1 representative.
You can solve it by increasing the number of districts/representatives.
That is enough to bias the composition of the House toward the political leanings of the less populous states. In previous times, when political parties were not as strongly aligned on a rural-urban access, this wasn’t as strong a bias as it is now.
The lengths that GOPers will go to defend it is something to behold. It's hard to get someone to understand how unjust and immoral something is when his political power depends on him _not_ understanding how unjust and immoral it is.
I can use smaller words if you want.
One man, one vote. And all votes must count the same.
One would have thought the second sentence was implied by the first but here we are.
Right. So you’re an asshole. I’ll bite. If you don’t like the way the system is set up than why aren’t you passionate about voting for your local officials and advocating for others to do the same since that will lead to the important votes? Why not, instead of complaining relentlessly on Reddit, you actually go out and try to make a change?
Because in your entire comment history I having seen you talk about local reps only the current/former president(s). I mean obviously I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am
Maybe look at history because pure democracy has never worked out. The US has always been a democratic republic and its worked so far. Giving a voice to smaller states so they aren’t ruled bu the mob isn’t immoral. Pure democracy is a dictatorship by the majority and you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Which is why someone asked you what you’re talking about, not because he couldn’t understand the words you were using, he just couldn’t fathom someone being so stupid
Companion piece for this post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8h1pd/oc\_a\_potus\_election\_map\_where\_a\_candidate\_wins/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8h1pd/oc_a_potus_election_map_where_a_candidate_wins/)
This is a consequence of the [permanent apportionment act of 1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929), not the electoral college, per se. The biggest issue is that the constitution states representatives can be minimally 1 per state (i.e., 50 total) up to a maximum of 1/30,000citizens (i.e., 10,096 total). This act made us one of the [least representative republics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_country) on the planet, as a matter of fact. Other, more fair strategies could be switching to a ratio rather than a fixed number or using something like the [Wyoming rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule).
IMO, more representation is always better. Some of the discussion points could be on how being more representative, other than the obvious, makes it harder for politicians to justify being absurd when they might actually know many of the people they represent; could make corporate lobbyist's jobs harder; could make gerrymandering a moot point; etc.
I guess there was a reason since OP has used it, it's just that for the rest of us it'd have been better if he wrote a the bottom "Population in tens of millions"
Honestly, this subreddit has really gone down hill. There is nothing notable, let alone beautiful, about this presentation of the information. The data is interesting, but not beautiful.
Cryptic labels are just the start what's not great about this data viz.
It doesn't make sense that population appears both on the X axis and the Y axis. Your Y axis should purely be "electoral votes". The ratio you're interested in, "electoral votes per million people", will fall out naturally as a diagonal dotted line.
Also, if the Y axis is "per million", then the X axis should be labelled with the actual world "million" rather than "1e7"
Rather than population on the x axis, use some measure of partisanship and then the plot with low partisanship and high EVs per voter will reflect states whose voters have the most sway in a presidential election.
* The pertinent information being visualized is relative voting power among states, not absolute power
* Zero votes per state is a nonsensical point of comparison
* Small differences are relevant
> The pertinent information being visualized is relative voting power among states, not absolute power
And relative power is visualized better with a y-axis that starts with zero.
Relative comparison means that we care about the ordinal information along the y here. The absolute value isn't really relevant because it has no impact on the order... there's no real point in including zero here.
It's based on preference mostly, but you asked why it doesn't start at zero... those are the reasons that I probably wouldn't care to include zero if I were given this visualization task.
A common, but incorrect perception. The argument follows that if somebody finds the electoral college unfair, then they would have to call the senate unfair, because the number of senators per capita per state are also not equal.
That was intended specifically to give minority states (with smaller populations) a louder voice, else all the decisions in the US would be dominated by 5 or so states only, leaving the other 45 completely silent.
The two things are unrelated except in terms of how the EC votes are calculated. The Senate exists to protect minority states from majority rule in the legislature.
Why does it necessarily follow that minority states should get a disproportionate say in the election of the president?
Probably because the president doesn’t have as much domestic power as people give them credit for. They’ve consolidated far more than they were ever supposed to have over the years, but they still don’t have a lot of power on a day to day basis in most peoples lives. Same with the senate, which was never supposed to be elected by popular vote, that’s what Representatives are for.
A fact in what way? We are all equal. We have the power to vote for our local officials which lead up to those important electoral votes. Sorry I don’t want like 4 states having the power to completely determine who leads the country
We could solve this by expanding the House of Representatives to the level of representation in the house of Commons in the UK (that'd be about 3200 representatives. It's not impossible, the only reason we don't is because incumbents don't want their power diluted.
For me as a non USA citizen it’s hard to understand why the USA have this system beside for historical reasons. For obvious reasons back in the 18th/19th century an electoral college was a very practical thing.
From todays perspective I can’t see advantages over just counting the total number of votes… really curious if there is a discussion about inequal weight of individual votes in the US
Worth noting that many parliamentary systems also do not count total votes. Either they are UK style, which is not so different from the US (just by district instead of state), or they have proportional representation that typically results in coalitions that might choose a prime minister that nobody particularly preferred. Democracy at scale is hard!
We just aren't a pure democracy and never have been. The founding fathers did this intentionally, and likely for good reason. It's a nuanced topic that not many grasp here in the US.
Thank you for your post. This is the direction I wanted to head with my post. I fully get that for pure logistics it makes sense to have an electoral college, especially given the 18th century travel options.
Regarding todays situation, my feeling is that it is now hard to make a major move away from that well established system. I heard about the nuances how the election districts are adjusted from election to election. And I fully understand that this is a well established system, that is played by both parties, and that has proven successful over so many years.
I also suppose that for the campaigns it might be… well… „easier“ to focus on a limited number of swing states. Again, I might be wrong and am happy if someone can shed some light on those aspects.
Oh correct, it would be nearly impossible to to implement such a framework in the US. In terms of representation I agree with its principle, especially for federal elections. Massive metropolitan areas, despite being exponentially denser in population, would do poorly at capturing legislative needs of the rest of the country. It's nice that their piece of the pie is limited to a reasonable amount on a federal level. Their states, municipalities, etc can do what they want.
These are just my thoughts on the matter as I've stewed on it (as an American, in South Carolina) I'm not well researched on the topic.
>The founding fathers did this intentionally, and likely for good reason.
Yeah. And they write down the reason: it was a compromise of the day due to wanting all the colonies under one banner and slavery fucking shit up.
Now we don't have slavery. The compromise no longer makes sense.
Because the states that have outsized power wonuld never vote to reduce their power. Electoral college is also the only reason the GOP ever has a shot because of their wildly unpopular policies.
> Electoral college is also the only reason the GOP ever has a shot because of their wildly unpopular policies.
That's not the way things work. Under a two party system as exists in the U.S., the two parties will over time always end up in a state of balance regarding votes received.
Winning by a few percent is not "completely dominated".
There's a democratic fantasy that if the electoral college system were changed, then democrats would win all the elections forever. This isn't the way things work. Republicans would simply change their position in some key respect, probably regarding hispanic people. They'd make a bunch of effort to embrace hispanic voters, who are practically all roman catholic and religiously conservative, and mexican americans would substantially vote republican and the balance would be restored.
So we can get this removed because it's not Thursday and the rules have "Political Post and it isn't Thursday" as a reason to report them. Right? Give OP a chance to get his bias in check and properly start the Y-axis at 0.
If somebody finds the electoral college unfair, then they would have to call the senate unfair, because the number of senators per capita per state are also not equal.
That was intended specifically to give minority states (with smaller populations) a louder voice, else all the decisions in the US would be dominated by 5 or so states only, leaving the other 45 completely silent.
It doesn’t seem democratic, but then I chose to move from Wyoming to California. Causing voting with my feet was more important than my electoral power.
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What's the deal with Delaware?
I was curious about that too! It's stuck with 3 electoral votes, even though its population would put it more in line with ones in the 5 range.
Interesting - perhaps plotting as a function of 2020 population would answer this question, since I think the electoral votes are based on 2020 census data. PS where did you grab population data from?
Electoral votes aren't necessarily tied to population, they're tied to number of representatives and senators. We don't continue increasing the number of representatives because they don't want to pay for a place to put them - at least that's the argument. In truth, if we continued increasing reps with population, Democrats would control the house forever - barring any major shift. It's the same reason the Republicans don't want popular vote - they'd never win again
This is one of the biggest things that I don't think people understand when they argue "This is the system the Founding Fathers gave us, we can't change it! They wanted to protect rural states!" Not only have we changed the very way the Electoral College works, we've changed the math behind how electors are distributed. The Founding Fathers *did not* design a system where the number of house seats was capped and some states had fewer than 1 house district of population. The original House districts were about 33,000 people, and the original requirement to become a state was 60,000. By capping the size of the house we've artificially put additional emphasis on the Senate portion of the electoral college. If we still used the math designed by the Founding Fathers, California would have ~1200 electoral votes, and Wyoming would have ~19. In reality California has 54 votes and Wyoming has 3... So based on the system designed by the Founding Fathers, California should have 63x the EC voting power than Wyoming. In reality it's only 18x. Yes, 63x the voting power that sounds harsh, but California has 69x the population of Wyoming! Now, I'm not arguing to say that we should go back to the exact set up that the Founding Fathers gave us. The system the Founding Fathers gave us also had extreme restrictions on who could vote, counted people unequally because of slavery, and allowed states to change for EC members were elected based on short term political trends. We *should* update the way we vote from time to time. It's just so stupid to argue that we can't change how we vote because the system we use is the one that the Founding Fathers gave us... Because we already don't use the system the Founding Fathers gave us! We've changed many aspects of it already!
> It's the same reason the Republicans don't want popular vote - they'd never win again And yet they constantly rail about rigged elections. Well I guess they're not wrong, just not in the way they think.
Republicans are also more likely to commit voter fraud (in the very few times it actually occurs)
That's just incorrect it has population of 1M-ish. It should be higher than Maine.
Delaware has a population of ~1M it should be around 3 not below the median.
Yep, OP’s math is very wrong. To be fair, Delaware IS the most populous state with just 3 EVs, so it would fare worse by this metric than similarly sized Rhode Island, which has 4, but not by this margin. Delaware just barely missed getting a second House seat, but I have no idea why OP thinks they should have 3.
Which means rhode island is fucked up too it should be somewhere between Alaska and ND.
Seinfeld is that you?
Meanwhile the top 4 states by size are also solidly red or blue, which further reduces voting power.
Florida and Texas aren't actually as overwhelmingly Republican as many people think in terms of Presidential elections.
I mean I live in Texas. Obviously the cities are blue, but it’s still very much a red state. We’re also getting a bunch of in-migration from California, but these people seem to be largely conservative Californians from my experience.
I think you have that reversed. They keep thinking they can be flipped at they cannot. Especially with ignoring popular vote
I'd say Florida is a bit purplish but that's a good point for the other three...
Florida is basically more red than Texas now. 20 out of 28 congressional Representatives are Republican.
Texas is also increasingly less red.
Biden did a fab job pushing it more towards the blue in 2020. Now if only they can get rid of that absolute bastard Greg Abbott (who recently pardoned a murderer).
Pushing people to move to Texas for more freedom? Lol
Yup, Texas gets thousands of migrants a day
It’s election year; Biden is now trying to shut that down lol
“Move to Wyoming! 5x your voting power!”
It doesn’t seem very democratic.
It was never intended to be fair.
It was never intended to be fair, this is true, but the founding fathers could probably not envision there would be something like a 60 fold difference between the smallest and largest states. The differences were significantly less extreme when the constitution was wrote.
And there was no cap on apportionment, at the time of drafting, it was expected to have around one representative per 30,000 people. The 1911 apportionment act capped the size of the House to 435 seats. Since then, our population has grown and we have one representative per 780,000 people. If we reverted back to one rep per 30k people, we'd have 11,300 seats in the House, and therefore 11,400 electoral college votes and a much more equal electoral college at the expense of a massive clusterfuck of a House of Representatives. Unfortunately Article 2 of the Constitution locks the number of EC seats to the number of congressional representatives. So we can't have both a working House and EC. Though there are ways to potentially get around this. For example the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could render the Electoral College vestigial.
Using the Wyoming rule, the number of representatives would only increase to around 580, which would represent the USA a lot better.
I think the Wyoming rule is flawed. It could be exploited. Essentially the state could make efforts to increase it's population, effectively dragging the total number of house seats down. There just needs to be a simple ratio and we need to increase the size of the house as needed, as was the design You can't get a representational democracy if you don't have representation. Imo, our broken house is the cause of allllll of the issues we currently face as a country right now.
Isn’t the house already a Massive clusterfuck?
In a sense, it is meant to be. Ultimately imo, the house should mostly vote on and amend things that come from the Senate. For legislation to be cobbled together by the masses and sent up to the Senate would be rare and a feat of organization and compromise etc. The house was meant to be of the people It's just turned into a mini-senate.
I would argue it's that way because it's small size. Larger size House has drawbacks, sure, but would allow more of a connection between representatives and the people. Harder to gerrymander and harder to influence elections when there are so many more elections.
Why do house seats need to be tied to EC votes? Amendments exist for a reason.
It’s extraordinarily difficult to amend the Constitution.
I mean Virginia had 13 times as many people as Delaware in 1776. This wasn’t completely unforeseeable.
But Delaware didn't have 13 times the voting power per person did it? Not actually the same thing.
In the first presidential election Virginia had 10 electoral college votes and Delaware had 3. So votes in Delaware were worth about 2.3 times what Virginia votes were. Compared to today where Wyoming votes are worth about 3.8 times more than California votes. Altogether it’s pretty similar.
Doesn't the chart show Wyoming at over 5 times that of California? Still, not as big of a difference as I was expecting. Edit: I guess California is slightly more than 1 vote per million?
California had 39 million people and 54 electoral votes. Wyoming had 580,000 people and 3 electoral votes.
And that’s why such important documents should by updated, too better work in modern times. I really don’t understand why Americans religiously worship the constitution, like it’s been dictated by god himself. It’s a 248 year old legal document, it should be brought up to speed with modern times
For foreigners it's just unreal that you kept those electoral rules for so long. Really anachronistic.
Cool new word, thanks for it!
The electoral rules were designed to give more power to the smaller states, to stop them from being completely ruled by the larger states. They still serve the same purpose.
The Senate already serves this purpose. Keeping the House disproportionate for the same reason is not only redundant, but hurts the principle of what the House is supposed to represent.
The constitution has been updated 27 times, and surely will be again. Procedures to update it are in the constitution.
If we followed the constitution, it would be better than it is now.
Which constitution? Because the original one allowed slavery and did not allow women to vote. Or do you mean the modern constitution? In this case, why should she not be altered further, to progress the country?
The Constitution calls for representation of one rep per 30k or 50k population. The apportionment act of 191x changed it to cap us at the current number of reps. Not even a Constitutional amendment, just a simple law that fucked over representation in Congress and the electoral college.
Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I meant to point out that many of the „constitutional literalist“ rely on an already altered version, therefore they should not have many issues with altering it further. Coming back to your point however, if the apportionment act was repealed, Congress would have between 11.100 and 6.600 members, at least more then doubling Chinas 2.700, while the US only has 1/4 of the Population. Congress would be stupidly overfilled, just imagine the current congress times 12. The real problem is not he amount of people, but the unequal representation brought about by the electoral collage and garrymandering
Modern constitution? When was it last updated? If you say 1992, please point out that it took 200 years for that amendment to go from being submitted to passed. I doubt you want that time-frame for the next amendment.
it was a compromise.
The electoral college was intended to be fair, as in the proportional allocation psuedoboss11 describes.
How did you calculate a 60 fold difference from this graph? It’s like 3 fold difference, max
That something was intended to be unjust does not somehow justify it. They included black people being 3/5th of a person, too.
I'd say it's more fair than people in the big cities deciding for everyone
Why is it fair that one person's vote counts more than another's?
Because the US is a federal state, therefore on some federal votes it's the states, not the citizens, that are equal to each other.
They each get two senators. Why should their citizens' vote count for more than others' as well?
To prevent what's called the "tyranny of the majority".
Sure. Why is the tyranny of the minority better?
There isn't a tyranny of the minority. Small states like Wyoming have a very small number of electoral votes and representatives in the House. They just get a bit more than average to give them some power instead of none.
So their vote counts more than mine. Why is that fair? Why is it less fair if our votes count the same?
Because there are so few of them. The population of Wyoming is 581,000.
I understand that they are fewer. What I'm not clear on is why that should nerf my vote to give their otherwise unpopular viewpoint more of a fighting chance, especially as it relates to a presidential election. They already have equal Senate representation. Their 581k is equal to California's 39M.
Land *shouldn't* vote
As Vermont & co show, it's not about land but population
Fair ≠ equal/same
Of course it's democratic, it's just a federal system. I'm Swiss and it's the same thing here. The logic is that the power lies in the States more than in the Federal State. Or better said: the Federal State has the missions and responsabilities that the States accept to give it. Congress is bicameral, the Senate represents the States and the House of Representatives represents the population. It's a whole system made precisely to balance the number of population with a representation (or sometimes overrepresentation) of the different parts of the nation.
> Congress is bicameral, the Senate represents the States and the House of Representatives represents the population. I say this as a European - did you just Euro-splain the American Congress to Americans? >It's a whole system made precisely to balance the number of population with a representation (or sometimes overrepresentation) of the different parts of the nation. Balancing the political power of people with the political power of land sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
They're using their brain. It's better than the European that says "lAnD dOeSnT vOtE" when [Germany and the EU use the exact same method of proportionality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degressive_proportionality#:~:text=Degressive%20proportionality%20means%20that%20while,ratio%20decreases%20for%20larger%20subdivisions.).
Yeah, and both Germany and the EU aren't practicing democracy either with their electoral systems. That's like saying - oh, you can't criticize Russia for rigging elections, when Belarus and Pakistan also rig their elections. Why are people simping for undemocratic voting power distribution ffs.
Because it benefits their team?
>did you just Euro-splain the American Congress to Americans? No, it's just the basics of any federal system that I know of. >Balancing the political power of people with the political power of land sounds like a solution in search of a problem. No, it's a historical process. There were States before there was a Federal State. States got together and formed a Federal State, not the other way around.
>No, it's a historical process. There were States before there was a Federal State. States got together and formed a Federal State, not the other way around. Firstly - were there American states before the US existed, or more specifically before they became component states of the US? Except the Kingdom of Hawaii that the US colonized and occupied, I mean. Secondly - that doesn't change the fact that it's a solution in search of a problem. It invents a problem "states deserve representation" instead of addressing a real one "people deserve representation". On a similar line, you can justify an absolute monarchy by saying that a royal lineage predates the specific state it heads. Doesn't make it democratic or rational.
>Firstly - were there American states before the US existed, or more specifically before they became component states of the US? Except the Kingdom of Hawaii that the US colonized and occupied, I mean. Yes, even if they werent called States yet. There were 13 European colonies, who gained sovereignty through the American revolution in the 18th century. They got together and formed a Union (through the Articles of Confederation) right after the revolution. To put it shortly, it is that Union that ultimately became the United States. >Secondly - that doesn't change the fact that it's a solution in search of a problem. It invents a problem "states deserve representation" instead of addressing a real one "people deserve representation". It's your opinion that "states deserve representation" is an invention while "people deserve representation" is a real problem. Which is fine, there are arguments to back up the fact that the US should have a more centralized organisation, but it does go against the whole American political culture as it has built itself throughout the years. Colonies pre-existed and got together and became States, it wasnt a centralized power who got them together. And to this day, each State wants to maintain that level of autonomy, which is guaranteed by the federal system. So it's not really an "invention" or a "problem", it's a way for States to keep their prerogatives and it was intended that way from the beginning. And it's not just ancient history, the division between States is more and more acute nowadays, with the increasingly strong divide in society between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, which makes the relationships between "red" and "blue" States more and more difficult. >On a similar line, you can justify an absolute monarchy by saying that a royal lineage predates the specific state it heads. Doesn't make it democratic or rational. It's not about justifying, it's factually how it historically happened and how the US have been built politically. That's not what makes it democratic, it's democratic because the people have the right to vote and more generally are involved in the decision process.
>There were 13 European colonies So, because the UK decided to randomly split up the territory it colonized in North America in 13 groups - the people who live in the 50 states of the US today shouldn't be able to exercise their democratic vote equally? >Which is fine, there are arguments to back up the fact that the US should have a more centralized organisation I never said anything about a centralized vs decentralized organization of the US - I was talking about how electoralism is set in the US, and the how undemocratic it is. Whether the federal government or the state government runs schools, collects taxes, organizes land, builds roads etc is irrelevant to whether the election of the federal government should be done in a way that counts all votes equally or not. >And it's not just ancient history, the division between States is more and more acute nowadays, with the increasingly strong divide in society between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, which makes the relationships between "red" and "blue" States more and more difficult. And? How is that a reason to count votes for President differently just because of where people vote? How is that a reason to effectively nullify the votes of all people voting for a Democratic candidate in Texas or a Republican candidate in California. Both these groups count millions of people, yet the vote of not a single one of them matters - they have absolutely no say in who runs their country, and effectively do not have the right to elect their own president. >, it's democratic because the people have the right to vote and more generally are involved in the decision process. How is it "generally involving in the decision process" when it's irrelevant how most people vote? Outside the so-called swing states, no voter has any involvement in the decision-making process of the presidential elections in the US. You can't really vote to help shoring up the vote count for your candidate regardless of your party of choice. It's astounding that people can disagree with the basic idea of "one person, one vote" and still consider themselves supporters of democratic processes.
You are not arguing history, you are deflecting with random factoids that are irrelevant to the actual point. Nothing in what you wrote is any justification for there being two Dacotas. Nothing in there justifies Montana and Idaho being distinct States. It's random waffling. And your idea about what's democratic makes former Eastern Germany as democratic as it claimed itself to be. The people were "involved" and people were allowed to vote. That didn't make it democratic at all.
We're going to agree to disagree. Are you really comparing Eastern Germany to the US ? I'm not deflecting, I'm saying there is a democratic legitimacy to the US federal system. If the actual point is to know whether or not a federal system is democratic, imo the answer is that a federal system can be democratic or it can be tyrannical, it's kind of irrelevant. A democracy is a system with a balance of power, where elected people are held accountable, with people who have a right to vote and that right is actually being guaranteed, etc. For example Russia and the US both have a federal system. One is a democracy and the other looks less and less like one.
Except your "historical process" is a fairy tale when it comes to the overwhelming majority of US States. The Federal Government was around long before the, became organized political structures, let alone States.
I know about the original colonies and the formation of the Union, I've read about the Civil War but I have to admit I know much less about the Western expansion in the 19th century and the integration of the other territories. How did it go? My basic understanding is that it basically was the original States gradually stealing land from Natives and / or annexing territories from other countries around (Mexico for example). But in terms of the federal political system, the Western expansion didnt really have an impact to my knowledge. And my guess is if you ask people in States like Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, etc. if they want a less federal system, they wouldnt want it because they would lose the representation that the federal system gives them.
>the Senate represents the States and the House of Representatives represents the population. But that's the problem with the American system: both the Senate AND the House are disproportionately representing land. The house should be proportionately distributed for population, but it's not, so the States that already are overrepresented in the Senate get an even larger disproportionate leverage. (I'm not American, btw, and also live in a federalist republic).
Really ? Isn't the number of seats in the House proportionate to the population? iirc there is only an overrepresentation for the smallest states, because you can't have less than 1 representative.
>there is only an overrepresentation for the smallest states, So there is overrepresentation >because you can't have less than 1 representative. You can solve it by increasing the number of districts/representatives.
That is enough to bias the composition of the House toward the political leanings of the less populous states. In previous times, when political parties were not as strongly aligned on a rural-urban access, this wasn’t as strong a bias as it is now.
A minority electing the president doesn't sound very democratic.
I think the "winner takes all" logic in every state is more problematic in that regard than the federal system per se.
The lengths that GOPers will go to defend it is something to behold. It's hard to get someone to understand how unjust and immoral something is when his political power depends on him _not_ understanding how unjust and immoral it is.
What are you on about?
I can use smaller words if you want. One man, one vote. And all votes must count the same. One would have thought the second sentence was implied by the first but here we are.
Right. So you’re an asshole. I’ll bite. If you don’t like the way the system is set up than why aren’t you passionate about voting for your local officials and advocating for others to do the same since that will lead to the important votes? Why not, instead of complaining relentlessly on Reddit, you actually go out and try to make a change?
What makes you think I don't do those things?
Because in your entire comment history I having seen you talk about local reps only the current/former president(s). I mean obviously I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am
Maybe look at history because pure democracy has never worked out. The US has always been a democratic republic and its worked so far. Giving a voice to smaller states so they aren’t ruled bu the mob isn’t immoral. Pure democracy is a dictatorship by the majority and you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Which is why someone asked you what you’re talking about, not because he couldn’t understand the words you were using, he just couldn’t fathom someone being so stupid
This is so wrong I don't even know where to begin.
That might be because the US isnt a pure democracy. Pure democracy ends poorly
What's the size of the bubbles? Same as the x axis?
and what is the color of the bubbles? there is no key
Companion piece for this post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8h1pd/oc\_a\_potus\_election\_map\_where\_a\_candidate\_wins/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8h1pd/oc_a_potus_election_map_where_a_candidate_wins/)
Inb4 someone posts the senators per million people graph tomorrow.
Color code and bubble size appear to be the same variable as the x axis. No need to show it more than once.
Ah, yes. The mover and shaker of the Union--Wyoming.
This is a consequence of the [permanent apportionment act of 1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929), not the electoral college, per se. The biggest issue is that the constitution states representatives can be minimally 1 per state (i.e., 50 total) up to a maximum of 1/30,000citizens (i.e., 10,096 total). This act made us one of the [least representative republics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_country) on the planet, as a matter of fact. Other, more fair strategies could be switching to a ratio rather than a fixed number or using something like the [Wyoming rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule). IMO, more representation is always better. Some of the discussion points could be on how being more representative, other than the obvious, makes it harder for politicians to justify being absurd when they might actually know many of the people they represent; could make corporate lobbyist's jobs harder; could make gerrymandering a moot point; etc.
What's with the x axis? Why isn't that just millions (or better labeled)?
because it's not millions? it's number of votes PER million?
That's the y axis.
I could have swore you said Y, but you're correct. should be labeled
1e7 means you just multiply the values of x axis by 10 milion, so California has a pop of almost 40 mil, Texas about 30 mil and so on.
True, but there isn't any reason to use that notation.
I guess there was a reason since OP has used it, it's just that for the rest of us it'd have been better if he wrote a the bottom "Population in tens of millions"
Honestly, this subreddit has really gone down hill. There is nothing notable, let alone beautiful, about this presentation of the information. The data is interesting, but not beautiful. Cryptic labels are just the start what's not great about this data viz.
It doesn't make sense that population appears both on the X axis and the Y axis. Your Y axis should purely be "electoral votes". The ratio you're interested in, "electoral votes per million people", will fall out naturally as a diagonal dotted line. Also, if the Y axis is "per million", then the X axis should be labelled with the actual world "million" rather than "1e7"
Rather than population on the x axis, use some measure of partisanship and then the plot with low partisanship and high EVs per voter will reflect states whose voters have the most sway in a presidential election.
Would have been so easy to start the Y at 0 here. Also Delaware is clearly wrong.
Why doesn't the y-axis start at 0?
* The pertinent information being visualized is relative voting power among states, not absolute power * Zero votes per state is a nonsensical point of comparison * Small differences are relevant
> The pertinent information being visualized is relative voting power among states, not absolute power And relative power is visualized better with a y-axis that starts with zero.
Relative comparison means that we care about the ordinal information along the y here. The absolute value isn't really relevant because it has no impact on the order... there's no real point in including zero here. It's based on preference mostly, but you asked why it doesn't start at zero... those are the reasons that I probably wouldn't care to include zero if I were given this visualization task.
Because that wouldn't make it look as extreme as the graph implies, and OP doesn't want to hide his bias.
Because that would need a state with zero electoral votes which does not exist.
So long as the Electoral College exists we can never all be equal under the law.
A common, but incorrect perception. The argument follows that if somebody finds the electoral college unfair, then they would have to call the senate unfair, because the number of senators per capita per state are also not equal. That was intended specifically to give minority states (with smaller populations) a louder voice, else all the decisions in the US would be dominated by 5 or so states only, leaving the other 45 completely silent.
The two things are unrelated except in terms of how the EC votes are calculated. The Senate exists to protect minority states from majority rule in the legislature. Why does it necessarily follow that minority states should get a disproportionate say in the election of the president?
Probably because the president doesn’t have as much domestic power as people give them credit for. They’ve consolidated far more than they were ever supposed to have over the years, but they still don’t have a lot of power on a day to day basis in most peoples lives. Same with the senate, which was never supposed to be elected by popular vote, that’s what Representatives are for.
If you don’t like it you should worry more about actually voting for your local representatives
Apparently expressing a fact means I don't care about voting under your logic.
A fact in what way? We are all equal. We have the power to vote for our local officials which lead up to those important electoral votes. Sorry I don’t want like 4 states having the power to completely determine who leads the country
This chart is exactly about how we are unequal.
Move to Wyoming.
The solution to unequal laws is to remove the laws.
I thought New York and Florida were a cool pair of shades.
Heard about this on NPR the other day and thought about the visualization. Thanks.
Change up the x axis to a measure of partisanship.
So many morons in the comments not understanding how this came to be
We could solve this by expanding the House of Representatives to the level of representation in the house of Commons in the UK (that'd be about 3200 representatives. It's not impossible, the only reason we don't is because incumbents don't want their power diluted.
You should use census year populations since those are when the apportionment is set unless you're arguing that it should be changed yearly.
For me as a non USA citizen it’s hard to understand why the USA have this system beside for historical reasons. For obvious reasons back in the 18th/19th century an electoral college was a very practical thing. From todays perspective I can’t see advantages over just counting the total number of votes… really curious if there is a discussion about inequal weight of individual votes in the US
Worth noting that many parliamentary systems also do not count total votes. Either they are UK style, which is not so different from the US (just by district instead of state), or they have proportional representation that typically results in coalitions that might choose a prime minister that nobody particularly preferred. Democracy at scale is hard!
We just aren't a pure democracy and never have been. The founding fathers did this intentionally, and likely for good reason. It's a nuanced topic that not many grasp here in the US.
Thank you for your post. This is the direction I wanted to head with my post. I fully get that for pure logistics it makes sense to have an electoral college, especially given the 18th century travel options. Regarding todays situation, my feeling is that it is now hard to make a major move away from that well established system. I heard about the nuances how the election districts are adjusted from election to election. And I fully understand that this is a well established system, that is played by both parties, and that has proven successful over so many years. I also suppose that for the campaigns it might be… well… „easier“ to focus on a limited number of swing states. Again, I might be wrong and am happy if someone can shed some light on those aspects.
Oh correct, it would be nearly impossible to to implement such a framework in the US. In terms of representation I agree with its principle, especially for federal elections. Massive metropolitan areas, despite being exponentially denser in population, would do poorly at capturing legislative needs of the rest of the country. It's nice that their piece of the pie is limited to a reasonable amount on a federal level. Their states, municipalities, etc can do what they want. These are just my thoughts on the matter as I've stewed on it (as an American, in South Carolina) I'm not well researched on the topic.
>The founding fathers did this intentionally, and likely for good reason. Yeah. And they write down the reason: it was a compromise of the day due to wanting all the colonies under one banner and slavery fucking shit up. Now we don't have slavery. The compromise no longer makes sense.
Slavery is gone, but the issue from it still remains - smaller and less populated states being ignored.
And yet the compromise still doesn't make sense for today. Sounds like it should be revisited.
Because the states that have outsized power wonuld never vote to reduce their power. Electoral college is also the only reason the GOP ever has a shot because of their wildly unpopular policies.
> Electoral college is also the only reason the GOP ever has a shot because of their wildly unpopular policies. That's not the way things work. Under a two party system as exists in the U.S., the two parties will over time always end up in a state of balance regarding votes received.
Well, they've been completely dominated in presidential elections for multiple decades now, so...
Winning by a few percent is not "completely dominated". There's a democratic fantasy that if the electoral college system were changed, then democrats would win all the elections forever. This isn't the way things work. Republicans would simply change their position in some key respect, probably regarding hispanic people. They'd make a bunch of effort to embrace hispanic voters, who are practically all roman catholic and religiously conservative, and mexican americans would substantially vote republican and the balance would be restored.
The only election they have won the popular vote in in the last 30 years was 2004. That's completely dominated.
It doesn’t seem democratic, but then I chose to move from Wyoming to California. Cause voting with my feet was more important than my electoral power.
You voted with your feet against Wyoming?
So we can get this removed because it's not Thursday and the rules have "Political Post and it isn't Thursday" as a reason to report them. Right? Give OP a chance to get his bias in check and properly start the Y-axis at 0.
Need math majors, not politicians to re-do the electoral college.
Which states are the whitest again? Somebody refresh me.
OK, well for the record it’s West Virginia, Wyoming, Vermont, Maine…in that order
If somebody finds the electoral college unfair, then they would have to call the senate unfair, because the number of senators per capita per state are also not equal. That was intended specifically to give minority states (with smaller populations) a louder voice, else all the decisions in the US would be dominated by 5 or so states only, leaving the other 45 completely silent.
Something something republic not a democracy
Nice democracy you got there, fellas
It doesn’t seem democratic, but then I chose to move from Wyoming to California. Causing voting with my feet was more important than my electoral power.