I understand the weighting to allow smaller states a larger voice, and the system under the Constitution is set up that way. But that doesn't explain why the smallest state Wyoming gets an equal voice with a state nearly double it's population, Montana, which is itself the 6th smallest state. That actually is contrary to the Constitution.
As currently implemented, the representatives and electoral votes are not proportional to population as required by the Constitution. We really should have fractional voting rights for representatives and electoral votes to achieve true proportional voting. Maybe that mean a representative somewhere gets 1.1 votes or 0.9 votes, but that's fine with me - that would be proportional to the population that representative represents.

Just keep it the way it is now. You democrats got to have Obama for 8 years. Now it's our turn to see if we can get somewhere.

These problems are problems no matter which party wins, so no change it anyway. I was a supporter of getting congressional district method way back when I thought Clinton would win, and I'm a supporter of it now.

This isn't a republican versus democrat issue. It's a representation issue. Wyoming and Montana are both republican states, but a Wyoming resident gets twice the say of a person in Montana. Where is the republican vs democrat issue there? It should still be unbalanced at 4 votes for Montana to 3 for Wyoming, which still gives a person from Wyoming 1 and 1/2 times more voting power than a person in Montana, but at least that would be following the Constitution. This current system really is unconstitutional.

The biggest problem is that once an election cycle is over the victors party tends to not care about the EC. It's only the losers who generally care. It's the complete lack of forward planning on all parties and groups.

The imbalance between Wyoming and Montana is that the rebalancing for changing populations takes place every ten years with the census. But because Congress decided to fix the number of representatives, you no longer add representatives with increasing population. So the shift requires a bigger shift than Montana got with its population increase. Large states like California still decide how much population is needed per representative.

Numbers I gave above were based on the 2010 census, not current population - it's even worse with that. But it's still off with the 2010 census numbers. Just wrong, not even proportional per the Constitution.

Just another point, by dividing the electoral college votes the way I did above we would also effectively end the "swing" state culture where FL, PA, and OH decide elections.

@krellin How was Trump a better candidate than Hillary? He had countless gaffs, said insane things every day, and had no policy. The only reason he won was because Wikileaks's dropped DNC emails every day and for some mysterious reason never anything on the republicans and the FBI, or Comey, was so crooked that they released a letter with no point that scared voters a week before the election.

Now Trump is breaking every campaign promise he made before he even gets into office while also implying that's he's going to start a nuclear arms race with Russia

Also, proportionality with the lead electoral vote getter would be a vast improvement over our current system. I didn't vote in NY becuase i would have had to drive 2+ hours and I had to go to class. Why would I do this when my vote ultimately wouldn't matter? This would increase voter turnout and reduce swing states, making every state important to the candidates.

You should always vote. Get an absentee ballot if voting on election day isn't convenient. And even if you're frustrated with your presidential options, there are many other important offices and issues on every ballot. Vote.

@slypups

tl;dr: Whatever system you use, whether it's based on Wyoming or one of the systems used in countries that actually do proportional representation in their elections, there's going to be a big gap in people-per-representative between the "best" and "worst" states.


First off, if you're interested, here's an explanation of how House seats are shared out among the states: https://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/about/computing.html

Second, proportionality is a PRINCIPLE, and there are many, many methods to implementing it.

Setting Wyoming as the "unit" (or "quota" as election types technically call it) could work. Just divide a state's population by Wyoming's population (which was actually about 563k at the last census, not 523k) to get the number of quotas, and then if the quota has a decimal of 0.5 or above, round up to the nearest whole number, and if the quota has a decimal below 0.5, round down to the nearest whole number. Under this rule, California would have 66.08 quotas and get 66 seats. Texas would have 44.60 quotas and would get 45 seats. And so on.

But problem! The disproportionality at the margins would be almost as bad as what we have now. Under a Wyoming-quota system, South Dakota would have 1 representative for 841k people, and Delaware would get 2 reps for 898k people. That means SD would have 81% more people-per-rep than Delaware. Under the current system, Montana (with 989k people and 1 rep) has 88% more people-per-rep than Rhode Island (with 1.05M people and 2 reps). By comparison, 81% IS a mild improvement -- but emphasis on "mild."

[Side note: if the House had been re-sized in this way for the 2016 presidential election, the electoral college would have had 648 instead of 538, and Trump (assuming all electors voting faithfully) would have won 368-280.]

We could also try one of the methods that are used for proportional representation in other countries, while keeping the current House size at 435. There are four reasonably straightforward systems out there (many others also exist, including the current US one, but most others add complications to doing the calculation, usually with very minor differences in results, as you'll see):

1. The Hare quota. This isn't used much nowadays, but the US used it from 1850-1900. Its result: exactly identical to the current system.

2. The Droop quota, which is used in Ireland, Australia, and Malta. Its result: identical to the current system except that North Carolina would gain a seat, while Rhode Island would lose a seat. This would give Rhode Island 1 rep for 1.05M people, which is 70% more than Wyoming's 563k. This is a smaller gap than the both the Wyoming-quota rule and the current system would give you, but it's still a 70% disparity.

3. The Sainte-Laguë divisor, which the US used in 1840 and is used in several countries that have proportional representation today, such as Germany and New Zealand. Its result: identical to the Droop quota.

4. The d'Hondt divisor, which the US used from 1790-1830 and is currently used in most countries where proportional representation is practiced. Its result: quite a number of changes from the current system, with 8 of the 11 biggest states gaining seats and 7 of the 14 smallest states losing seats.....and Vermont and Wyoming getting NO SEATS AT ALL.

I should note that the proportional representation systems used elsewhere are generally used to determine number of SEATS WON BASED ON VOTES IN AN ELECTION rather than number of seats granted to a geographic area based on its population.

Several states have signed the National Popular Vote bill, which would require electors in their states to cast votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote. This would essentially put an end to the Electoral College. It will take effect when the number of Electoral votes cast by the states who have signed reaches 270 or more. The count currently sits at 165. A very clever work around, but I'm not sure they will ever reach the 270 required.

Terrible. Then a few states will control every election. This would be a huge mistake. The electors already vote for whoever got the popular vote in their state. The electoral college is misunderstood, but it will be understood when we don't have it.

All candidates have to do is make sure they get a majority of the vote in enough states to win the election.

The argument for the Electoral College is essentially that it prevents the "Tyranny of the majority." What about the tyranny of the minority?

As the Fed is set up now, the small states have more say in every single branch of government. Small states have more say in the Electoral College, which elects the President. The small states can block any bill that passes the House in the Senate. The Senate also approves or rejects SCOTUS nominees, giving smaller states another advantage in the Fed. I live in Podunk, Kansas USA. Because we have less population than California does not mean our ideas should be given more weight in every branch of the Fed. I just don't get the argument. National elections should be decided by the nation as a whole. One vote should equal one vote.

"All candidates have to do is make sure they get a majority of the vote in enough states to win the election." That's all they do now. 94% of the 2016 Presidential campaign took place in 12 states...

Thanks for the excellent info OutsideSmoker. And I like the workaround Matticus mentions, although it will never happen.

We do have the tyranny of the minority right now, which is pretty messed up. This isn't like race, religion, gender, etc - where we have to protect against majority oppression. Where you live does not make you some sort of protected class - you can move to or away from any such state. I don't want to have to move to a small state just to gain some sort of voting right that I lack in my current state. And the Constitution has plenty of protections for the local sovereign rights of states without extending advantages in electing the president to individuals in certain states.
As for proportionality, we just need to give Congress fractional votes and do away with the system of assigning seats. You represent X people in a total US voting population of Y? You get X/Y of the total available votes every time you vote in Congress or as an elector. That's it. The Senate and the electors representing the senate seats is plenty to take care of protecting the small states in our government.

didn't more people defect from hillary than trump when they redid it?

^Yes

Tyranny of the majority really would be worse. I've talked about this before on this forum. here is an example: price control. people who consume but produce little probably think price control would be wonderful, yet if prices are low, the stock cannot be replenished. Profit is what makes our system work. No profit, no production, no...compters? No...cars? No...food? The people in the rural states who have this extra tiny bit of power are not to be feared. The states who end up electing the president are the rural states who produce our food. I'm no expert, but look at trump's win, and W's second win. Rural states elected them. (or please correct me) You may think it is tyrants you fear, but those you fear are actually just farmers and ranchers. Like I said, I'm no expert, and I'll defer to the more knowledgeable of you.

I would argue the Rust Belt was more essential to the Trump win. So it's more car production than food production.

sounds good

You are making a large assumption about what a majority of people think to make a point about a dire scenario there.

Also, there is no such thing as a rural state. Every state in the Union has a higher population that live in urban areas. Most states, even large ones, have more acreage committed to farming/ranching as well. Different parts of the country have different mindsets. Some are more committed to conservative ideas, some to liberal ideas. It has more to do with the diversity within the population of a state than where the state is located. Texas is projected to be a swing state as soon as 2024 by some.

I just want to know why it matters what state someone lives in when we vote for a national executive position. Why? There were millions of people in Texas that voted for someone other than Trump, yet none of those votes counted. There were millions of Californians who voted for someone other than Hillary; none of those counted either. You want to drive up the turnout in nation-wide elections? Dump this heap. Currently, the only states worth casting a ballot for President are a handful of swing states

You make an argument for why price controls are bad, but you fail to connect it to why proportional state voting is bad. Most of that small state food is produced by large corporations located in large states and run by people who live in those large states. So not the best of examples.

Are you saying we should encourage a minority of people who run large wealthy corporations to run the country? We're doing a good job of that, I agree, and Trump fits in nicely with that crowd.

If the candidates only catered to the swing states, the states that are their "usual" constituents would no longer back them, and thus become swing states. If only high population states mattered, low population states would never have their interests represented. Under the present system all states are equally valuable, all considered. The mistake is to believe that the united States of America is a democracy. It simply is not. It is a republic.

And by rural I actually meant low population compared to states with a high population.

All states are not "equally valuable" in terms of the individuals. There was practically no presidential campaigning in California even though in theory it should have received 1/8 of the attention with 1/8 of the populace there. And I'm talking about campaigning where a candidate addresses the voting populace, not fundraising where he/she only talks to the people with money.

Presidential candidates these days cater to big money constituent interests regardless of where they are located, but they'll campaign to local swing state interests by telling them things they want to hear (i.e. "lets make America great again" - whatever that means, or Obama's "hope and change") - a strategy that worked well for Obama and Trump and that Clinton executed poorly. This is of course harder to do if they need to say conflicting things to different parts of the country, but we've made it easier for them by allowing them to ignore or annoy large parts of the country with the current system. It's a myth that candidates actually "cater" to any swing state "interests" - show me an example of a elected President making policies that favored certain state interests after winning the election. Doesn't happen - Presidents make national and international policy that tends to play about the same across all states.

@Off IN Church "@krellin How was Trump a better candidate than Hillary?"


Pretty simple...the purpose of a candidate is to win an election. Trump won by securing the most electoral votes, which is the ONLY standard of judgement in the end. There is zero discussion needed on this topic -- it is self-defined: he was the better candidate, period.