re: #265 Hecuba’s daughter

I’ve used two arguments:
1. the one you just presented (which is that each vote counts equally — someone red in a blue state has the same effect as someone red in a red state). People currently can be discouraged from voting if they figure their vote doesn’t matter — which is true if your state isn’t a battleground state.

2. The current setup of winner-take- all — even if electors were truly proportional by state — can lead to a candidate winning 60+% of the popular vote and losing the electoral college.

But there is another overlooked factor: states that have large voter disenfranchisement (e.g. Florida) play too large a role; representatives are allocated by population size, not eligible voters. If your voting population is 10% less than it should be, then your state should have 10% less impact on the results. Indeed after the passage of the 15th amendment, African Americans were finally counted as a full person BUT in southern states they were barred from voting — so the South got even more electoral influence than they originally had under the 3/5 compromise. Southern states are still stopping people of color from voting but benefit from their presence in the number of electors they are assigned.

Interestingly enough, there is a provision in the 14th Amendment that covers this:

But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The franchise amendments probably means it’s any voting eligible inhabitants over the age of 18. But I don’t believe this power has ever been exercised. And I suspect that to try and exercise it now would be a grand clusterfuck