California popular vote totals1/8/2024 ![]() ![]() Just how many people elect the president of the United States? The answer may surprise you.Ĭonsider the 2000 presidential elections. Kimberling was the Deputy Director of the FEC's Office of Election Administration. Kimberling's essay, A Brief History of the Electoral College. Naturally, candidates tend to concentrate resources on the largest payoffs, the states which can provide the greatest number of electoral votes.įor a history of the development of the Electoral College, see William C. Because almost all states give all of its electors to whichever candidate wins the most votes within that state, candidates must win whole states in order to win the presidency. Ironically, there is a study that concludes that larger states are actually at an advantage in the Electoral College. Read this Providence Journal article on how small states control elections. ![]() The fear was that without this power, politicians would completely ignore small states and only focus on big population centers. The small states were given additional power to prevent politicians from only focusing on issues which affect the larger states. See how your state racks up against the rest on our Population vs. ![]() The difference between these two states of 537,943 is the largest in the Electoral College. By dividing the population by electoral votes, we can see that Wyoming has one "elector" for every 177,556 people and Texas has one "elector" for about every 715,499. This is because Wyoming has three (3) electoral votes for a population of 532,668 citizens (as of 2008 Census Bureau estimates) and Texas has thirty-two (32) electoral votes for a population of almost 25 million. The Electoral College gives disproportionate voting power to states, favoring the smaller states with more electoral votes per person.įor instance, each individual vote in Wyoming counts nearly four times as much in the Electoral College as each individual vote in Texas. Unequal voting power depending on where you live Grossly unequal distribution of campaign resources ![]()
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