All men are created equal, but don't vote that way.

[digitaldiscipline]

I've ranted in the past about my pipe dream of a weighted vote [originally germinated in my mind by Lou Tafler's book Fair New World, published by Backlash Books], where informed and clueful individuals' votes carry more weight than their ignorant compatriots', and this is rather quickly dismissed as unfair, unAmerican, or just a big fat pain in the ass to administer.

But, with election season upon us, and reminded by an article in Salon.com yesterday... if you want your vote to count, you need to live somewhere with a disproportionate weight per voter as calculated thusly: divide Electoral College votes by state population. (Note: This is not computed for registered voters, simply gross population.)

An individual's vote counts least in Texas (0.0000014873 ECV/person); it counts most in Wyoming (0.0000058905)... that's right, Cheney's vote on November 7th counts about four times more than GWB's, unless they both vote as DC residents (0.0000054494, 2nd "heaviest" of the lot).

Now, call me an egalitarian asshole, but I think that the EC needs to be abolished out of hand, or at the very least, be weighted evenly for all citizens to provide truly equal participation in the election process, even before we get into other sensible ideas, like distributing EC votes proportional to the popular vote breakdown in that state.

Anyone else feeling vaguely less-enfranchised this morning?

[Population & ECV statistics come from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population, if anyone else wants to replicate my spreadsheet.]

Comments

[witchchild]

Certainly. The electoral college is so outdated.

[anarcha.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to point out that a vote can matter more or less for other reasons besides population.

For example, DC ALWAYS votes democratic, at least 70% or so. Thus, even though by your standard, my DC vote counts a lot, in actuality, it's pretty much worthless, since there's absolutely no chance my vote will have any sort of impact. Now, if I lived in a more evenly split state, on the other hand...

[etcet.livejournal.com]

That was one of the points raised by the salon article; the folks in small towns in most states vote rather more Republican than Democrat, but in states/voting districts with large metropolitan populations, the Democratic majority outweighs the Republican one in their outlying areas.

Thus, a distribution of ECV based on popular vote is a relatively sane modification to the process, though a true one person, one vote system is best.

I live in an evenly-split metropolitan area, which is why I'm damn sure going to hit the ballot box on 11/7. (I'll probably lean D for the congress/senate race, but at the moment, the R gubernatorial candidate is a lot more attractive to me. *shrug*)

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

Why does it have to go by state/region? Why not have a true "one vote=one vote" *nationally*?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm saying.

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

I have been hammering this point since I was in High School.

It is not only antiquated, it was fairly elitist even at the time of it's creation.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Anyone else feeling vaguely less-enfranchised this morning?

Heh, most of us are almost completely disenfranchised. Two rounds (1990 & 2000) of GIS-driven electoral redistricting have left us with only a handful of Congressional seats that are ever going to be in play. The rest "represent" safe districts - safe for either the Republicans or the Democrats.

I think abolishing the Electoral College & having the President & Vice President elected on a straight count of the popular election is a dandy idea. But it would require a Constitutional amendment, & such an amendment would be extremely diffiult to pass because all of the small states (who wield disproportionate power under the current setup) would not ratify it.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Gerrymandering ought to be a public-stoning level offense, but that's just me.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I did my masters degree dissertation on gerrymandering. Give me control of the maps, & I'll give you whatever delegation you like. Tom Delay certainly understood!

[ex-xn667.livejournal.com]

This morning only? Feh. I've always felt the EC was just a Bad Idea (tm). Never thought about the weighting you described, tho, so now I'm extra-disgusted. As for areas where votes count less due to less impact, I'm in MD, so my blue vote is just another in a sea of blue. To top it off, I'm so sick of both of the big parties and sicker of votes split by outlier 3rd parties that I think the whole damn charade is moot anyway, barring the one consideration I hold onto as *some* vestige of faith in the system. Dem or Rep, it's the same Fortune 500 and the same herd of lobbyists currying favor, all of them playing both sides against the profit-driven middle. Sure, some of the decisions will be different depending on whether we have a Red House or a Blue House (sorry, white = purity in my book, they painted it the wrong color). BUT. I at least feel, however naively, that a vote for a Dem at least means (for how much longer?) that they'll tap moderate to left for seats on SCOTUS, and Reps will always jostle in the other (read: wrong) direction. Especially living in MD where my vote feels moot, at least I have SCOTUS to motivate my sorry ass to the polls for election day. Otherwise, I'm this close to saying fuckit, and to hell with anyone who says "if you don't vote, you have no right to bitch." They're clearly not looking at the same numbers or the same principles I am. C'est la vie.

[kendra-manycats.livejournal.com]

I've thought is was outdated for a while now. And then GW sqeaks into office by losing the popular vote but the EC on the other hand voted the other way.

And to think....all of this mess we're in was due to that little vote.