The Unfairness of the Electoral System

I had a previous post in my “politics” category, where I discussed the much greater number of electoral votes of the smallest states with the same total population as California.  The 21 least populated states had less population than California, but had 92 electoral votes compared to California’s 55, or 5 votes for each of California’s 3 votes, or 67% more.

Today I want to complain about the farce of the system in regard to the swing or battleground states.  I was trying to look up the number of trips the candidates made to Ohio, the number of commercials unleashed on the poor citizens of Ohio, and the amount of campaign money spent there.  But I don’t really need to because everybody who watches the news knows about this.  Yet Ohio has only 18 electoral votes compared to California’s 55.  That is only a third of California’s.  Yet as Mark Petracca said at UCI, there is really no election for President and Vice President occuring in California, or the other states which aren’t swing states.  California is just an ATM for the race, and the candidates fly in, pick up their cash, and fly out.  Actually, Bill Clinton just spoke at UC Irvine to back democratic congressmen, which I missed, but I watched his great talk on youtube.

Ohio’s 18 electoral votes out of the 538 total electoral votes is just 3.3%, or 1/30 of all votes.

According to the New York Times Election 2012, seven states are in the tossup category.  These are Florida (29 votes), Ohio (18), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), and New Hampshire (4).  These give a total of 89 votes, or 16.5% out of 538, which is one-sixth of all votes, getting most of the candidates attention.

According to the Constitution, the states actually have the right to apportion electors as they see fit, but slates of electors for each candidate are pledged to support them, although the pledges cannot be enforced (hah!).  If the votes were split according to the number of voters for each candidate, or if we had a popular vote, then the candidates would really have to campaign nation wide, and they would truly represent the population of the US, not just those of the party primaries, or of the swing states.  Everyone would benefit from policies that represent all of the population.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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