Analyzing the Electoral College

cft_128 writes "David S. Bennahum of has an article that breaks down the numbers in the electoral college, backing up his original 'One Voter One Vote' talk (listen to the mp4). In summary, a vote in Wyoming (has the smallest number of voters per elector) is worth 2.6 votes in Pennsylvania (has the largest number of voters per elector). He has some PDFs of charts, an outline of the talk and a spreadsheet."

Comments

one of the points of the electoral college

[mzs]

The smaller more rural states were concerned about being dominated by the larger states with cities in the national arena. It was seen that the interests of the rural and city populations would be different. The scheme of the Senate with two votes per state regardless of population and the two to three bonus (there are no fractional electors after-all, consider this as round-off error depending on where the state falls in relation to other states in the last census) electors for smaller states was devised in part because of that concern.

David is from NY, a state with a number of large cities and he feels underrepresented, but consider the point of view of farmers and ranchers. We can have raging debates ad nausea for example about whether the federal government does too much or too little to assist farmers and ranchers, but the fact of the matter is that if it were not for the systems in place to grant disproportionate weight to rural areas, there would indeed be less aid.

Also, is there really a surprise that cities tend Democratic and rural areas Republican? Again this seems to be sour grapes from David based on his comments.