I don't hear much talk about over-representation in the Electoral College.

[MissouriTeacher]

I don't mean just here, but in the media in general.

I'm currently reading Michael Lind's new book Made In Texas, and he mentions this quite a bit as being one of the main reasons Bush was able to "win" the election in 2000, and why Republicans are able to hold majorities in Congress.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but apparently, especially in the Western states, giving two senators to each state greatly over-emphasizes the votes of these states. And since the number of senators figures into the amount of electors for each state, the electors are over-represented as well.

Any thoughts on this? Will this ever become a part of the public debate? Obviously this plays into the Republicans favor.

[onehandle]

1. Compare Wyoming to Washington DC....

Wyoming 493,785

DC 572,059

DC (nearly 90% Democratic) is completely unrepresented.

Will this ever be debated? No time soon.

[SoCalDem]

2. Since it requires a 2/3 majority of the states,

the "smaller" states will never vote to change it.. We missed that opportunity long ago, and I do not see it coming back.. If the red states suddenly turned "blue", the repubes would start paying more attention..

It's human nature to "play your own advantage"..

I think they whole way we run congress should be re-done..

We have probably doubled our national population since we "set in stone" the number of representatives, and that has caused much grief.. Instead of playing shuffle the districts and keep incleasing the number of people that a representative has to represent every 2 years, it would make more sense to do more "local legislating via video link and actually increase the number of representatives.. Let them serve for 5 year terms instead of having to campaign every 2 years..

And drawing the actual districts should be done by using a grid...the same one for each community.. gerrymandering should be illegal..If the seats were not set into stone, like they are now, there would be no NEED for gerrymandering..as ne communities sprang up, they would automatically be represented, withoout taking representation FROM another group of people..

[rogerashton]

3. I've said this before

but maybe it is time to say it again.

The electoral college does not predictably favor small states. In the Kennedy election, 1960, it went just the other way. Because of the unit rule, when a candidate wins the big states by 50%+1, he gets all their votes. So a candidate could (and Kennedy almost did) win the big states by small margins and lose the small states by large margins and so win the electoral college with a minority of the popular vote.

The only thing predictable about the electoral college is that it is undemocratic.

By the way, within the small states the gerrymandering of rural distiricts typically results in city folks being underrepresented in both state and federal legislatures. That's the main reason the Senate is so often more progressive than the House.

Remedies:

Popular election of the president by preference voting with instant runoffs.

All representatives should be elected at large.