The cult of Trump never gets tired of arguing that up is down, black is white, and the Electoral College is necessary in the name of fairness. Their favorite tactic is the one employed here, where they hope that a map with a huge splotch of red on it will make you forget that relatively few voters actually live in that splotch.Red & orange areas have the same population. Imagine if orange elected our president every election & red was completely ignored. Exactly why we need to keep the Electoral College. pic.twitter.com/aiCuItbiVC— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) July 19, 2019
In a no doubt vain attempt to debunk their idiocy once and for all, I have calculated what I'm calling the Electoral Power Index (EPI). It's fairly simple. I have calculated what the vote of an average voter in each state is worth in the Electoral College simply by dividing the number of electoral votes for that state by the number of voting-age citizens in that state. Since the result of such a calculation is a really small number, I then multiplied the result by 1 million simply for readability. Here is how the states rank in the Electoral Power Index (data on voting-age citizens is from the Census Bureau, 2015):
| State | Voting-Age Citizens | EV | EPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wyoming | 434,584 | 3 | 6.90 |
| Vermont | 494,717 | 3 | 6.06 |
| District of Columbia | 504,242 | 3 | 5.95 |
| Alaska | 528,248 | 3 | 5.68 |
| North Dakota | 571,119 | 3 | 5.25 |
| Rhode Island | 784,997 | 4 | 5.10 |
| South Dakota | 634,140 | 3 | 4.73 |
| Delaware | 697,148 | 3 | 4.30 |
| Hawaii | 1,022,704 | 4 | 3.91 |
| New Hampshire | 1,035,684 | 4 | 3.86 |
| Maine | 1,056,410 | 4 | 3.79 |
| Montana | 797,198 | 3 | 3.76 |
| Nebraska | 1,352,947 | 5 | 3.70 |
| West Virginia | 1,451,557 | 5 | 3.44 |
| Idaho | 1,168,843 | 4 | 3.42 |
| New Mexico | 1,470,045 | 5 | 3.40 |
| Nevada | 1,942,764 | 6 | 3.09 |
| Utah | 1,945,001 | 6 | 3.08 |
| Kansas | 2,074,102 | 6 | 2.89 |
| Arkansas | 2,185,724 | 6 | 2.75 |
| Connecticut | 2,584,884 | 7 | 2.71 |
| Mississippi | 2,220,616 | 6 | 2.70 |
| Iowa | 2,310,467 | 6 | 2.59 |
| Minnesota | 4,007,159 | 10 | 2.50 |
| Oklahoma | 2,807,548 | 7 | 2.49 |
| Alabama | 3,653,381 | 9 | 2.46 |
| South Carolina | 3,677,799 | 9 | 2.45 |
| Kentucky | 3,329,835 | 8 | 2.40 |
| Oregon | 2,956,232 | 7 | 2.37 |
| Washington | 5,081,800 | 12 | 2.36 |
| Maryland | 4,239,987 | 10 | 2.36 |
| Arizona | 4,710,448 | 11 | 2.34 |
| Louisiana | 3,454,978 | 8 | 2.32 |
| Colorado | 3,896,986 | 9 | 2.31 |
| Wisconsin | 4,340,567 | 10 | 2.30 |
| New Jersey | 6,154,126 | 14 | 2.27 |
| Indiana | 4,856,797 | 11 | 2.26 |
| Tennessee | 4,919,574 | 11 | 2.24 |
| Massachusetts | 4,924,459 | 11 | 2.23 |
| Georgia | 7,168,068 | 16 | 2.23 |
| Illinois | 9,017,653 | 20 | 2.22 |
| California | 25,002,812 | 55 | 2.20 |
| Missouri | 4,567,771 | 10 | 2.19 |
| Texas | 17,523,904 | 38 | 2.17 |
| Michigan | 7,436,478 | 16 | 2.15 |
| Virginia | 6,062,304 | 13 | 2.14 |
| New York | 13,704,991 | 29 | 2.11 |
| North Carolina | 7,296,335 | 15 | 2.06 |
| Ohio | 8,765,154 | 18 | 2.05 |
| Pennsylvania | 9,752,322 | 20 | 2.05 |
| Florida | 14,441,877 | 29 | 2.01 |
This table really illustrates the problem with the Electoral College. Until someone can explain why the average vote for president in Wyoming should count more than 3 times as much as the average vote for president in Florida, they can't justify supporting it. You might get a Trumpian to agree that a Wyoming voter should count more than 3 times as much as New York voter, but they'll probably change their tune as soon as you tell them that a D.C. voter counts almost 3 times as much as an Ohio voter.
And if the response is that different geographic regions of the country need increased representation, ask why it is that the vote of a D.C. resident is worth almost three times as much as the vote of her coworker living a quarter-mile away in Virginia, or why crossing the border from New York to Vermont supercharges your vote.
Then ask why we only use such a bizarre, unbalanced system for the highest office in the land, while every other election in America is decided on the principle of one person, one vote.
It's easy to use this table to construct an extreme example of minority rule. Hypothetically, Satan McAwful could win a bare majority of the vote in the states with the 40 highest EPI scores, while getting 30% of the vote in the remaining states (because party affiliation guarantees any major-party candidate a floor of 30% of the vote, no matter how awful that candidate is). In this scenario, Satan McAwful would become president while receiving just 39.23% of the popular vote.
And sure, Satan would have won 40 out of 51 states (for Electoral College purposes, D.C. is a state, you sticklers) --- but why does that mean that more than 60% of the country should have to suffer under his rule for the next 4 years?
Democracy!
