Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tully Mars
I'm no statistician but that doesn't even seem possible. If you increase the value of everyone's vote... wouldn't everyone's vote still have equal value?
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Putting this very simply: In a fully democratic election your vote is one of ~300 million. That means you have a 1 in 300 million chance of
your vote being the one that decides the election. Under the electoral college system, using my home state of Illinois as the example, my vote is actually only one of ~7 million (and that's being pessimistic, considering that the total population of Illinois, regardless of voting eligibility, is ~13 million). That means I have a 1 in 7 million chance of
my vote deciding who Illinois' 21 electors go to. Then, using admittedly fuzzy math, there's about a 21 out of 538 (~1 in 25) chance that my determining who Illinois' electors go to will also determine who wins the presidency. That means that my vote has about a 1 in 175 million chance of determining the election, instead of a 1 in 300 million chance.
(Yes, this is fuzzy math, but it gets the point across. The Electoral College is not a new issue: MIT physicist Alan Natapoff spoke to Congress on
this issue back in the 70's, and his testimony is one reason why we still have the Electoral College today. And
here's a link to his 1996 article in
Public Choice.)