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The number of voters in the electoral college per state is equal to the number people in the House and Senate that that state has. For a refresher, the House is based on population and the Senate is two per state. This was a great idea so that the electoral college votes would both give the people a vote (House) and the states a vote (senate). The problem actually is because this is IN THE CONSTITUTION. Huh?

Well, here goes. So off the top of my head I can’t remember what the smallest number of electoral college votes any single state has, so let’s assume that the smallest state, “New China” (yes, it’s fictional) has a population of one. This state would get three electoral college votes; two for the senators of that state and one for the representative based on New China’s population (minimum of one). Now, let’s take a state like California which I believe has 55 electoral college votes. If you take the ratio of the number of electoral college votes to the population of that state, you’ll come out with the approximate number of actual electoral college votes per person. You can probably start to see the problem emerging. New China has 3 votes per person whereas the state with more electoral college votes (California) has very significantly less. Of course I’m exaggerating with the one person population of New China, but the concept is the same. The states with smaller populations actually have PROPORTIONATELY more votes in congress. Here’s where the problem arises of this being in the constitution.

In order to change the electoral college system, since it is in the constitution, we have to pass a constitutional amendment. In order to pass a constitutional amendment, we need a 2/3rds majority of the house and the senate, and then it needs to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states themselves(1). That, unfortunately, won’t happen because these smaller states population-wise (of which there are quite a few) feel that they will lose their voice. And indeed, they will lose their disproportionately large voting power. The only way we would ever have to get a direct democracy would be for a good number of the American States to willingly give up what they perceive as fair, and largely lose their political voices.

Reference: http://www.usconstitution.net/constam.html#process

# shannanegin Says:
March 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

@33
He was saying it would kill him to not have the nameplate he ALMOST stole of the first black president kook… he wasnt saying it would kill him to have a black president… holy hell.

Still the statement was pretty ambiguous. I had to read it several times to get the joke. I was really mad after my first read.

Not really cleverly worded.

But yeah, you should have stolen it you moron ;)

.-

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