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Popular Vote: By the Numbers

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by RightHandMan

John, Matt (from Conservative Hideout), and Steve (from motorcitytimes) have been blogging about an important issue regarding our Electoral College (EC) and the Progressive States Network’s (PSN) attempt to destroy it. It seems that the PSN’s have trolls running around posting in the comments sections at our conservative sites. While we invite the comments, I feel it is important to refute the outlandish lies that are being presented.

The PSN would have you believe that the presidential electoral process is unfair, specifically to the smaller states; a lie that too many are buying in to. It should be obvious to all of us that this is untrue since one main purpose of the EC was and is to weight the system to boost the value of votes of smaller states. The PSN would have you believe that smaller states are being ignored by politicians because the votes in these states mean so little to the candidate. The argument, of course, evolves into the assumption that the popular vote would grant these states more power because in that system “every vote counts”.

While every vote in a popular vote would count, I’m here to prove that every vote in the smaller states would count for less. I decided to compute the value the popular vote and the electoral vote for three small states (Montana, ND, and SD) compared to the value of three large states (California, NY, and Florida) from the 2008 presidential election. In order to calculate the electoral value I simply divided the state’s electoral vote (3 for each of the small states, 55 for California, 31 for NY, and 27 for Florida) by the total US electoral votes (538). In order to calculate the popular vote value I took the number of voters within each state divided by the total number of voters nationwide.

Here are the findings:
US Voters- 538 electoral votes
125,225,901 total voters

ND – 3 electoral votes
309,879 total voters
ND popular vote value = .24%
Electoral vote value = .56%

Montana – 3 electoral votes
476,041 total voters
Montana popular vote value = .38%
Electoral vote value = .56%

SD- 3 electoral votes
373,978 total voters
SD popular vote value = .29%
Electoral vote value = .56%

California- 55 electoral votes
13,286,254 total voters
California popular vote value = 10.6%
Electoral vote value = 10.2%

New York – 31 electoral votes
7,557,429 total voters
New York popular vote value = 6%
Electoral vote value = 5.7%

Florida – 27 electoral votes
8,327,698 total voters
Florida popular vote value = 6.6%
Electoral vote value = 5%

There you go. The numbers are plain, smaller states get more worth out of an electoral vote than they would out of a popular vote. If the EC was abolished in favor of the popular vote smaller states would pull even less weight in the election and therefore ignored even more by candidates. If the popular vote were the process of election, why would anyone leave the populations?

Below is a cartogram showing how the states would look given the popular vote value:

Compare the above map to the map below. This map below is a cartogram showing the value of states given the electoral vote value. As you can see certain states are given more weight in the EC cartogram – specifically the smaller states like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, North & South Dakota, etc. You might also notice that the states given more weight are, at the moment, “red states”. (The above map is from 2008 and the below map is taken from 2004, but the values are nearly identical. There were just more red states in 2004.)
It took me less than 15 minutes to compute the numbers which makes one wonder; why haven’t the people at the PSN done the same? It isn’t rocket science. If they are all for the smaller states having more pull, why are they fighting for something that would hurt them in the name of saving them? Is there hidden agenda in here? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

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