General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: did this latest SC decision kill the movement to make the Electoral College obsolete? [View all]Ocelot II
(131,260 posts)The number each state gets can change based on the census every ten years, but the total number doesn't change. Some states' populations have grown exponentially since 1911 but the number of representatives allocated has not grown proportionately because the total number is stuck at 435. A state's electoral college votes are equal to its number of senators (each gets two) plus its representatives, so Wyoming, with a population of about 580,000, gets 3 electoral votes (2 senators and 1 representative). California has 2 senators and 53 representatives with a population of about 39 million, and therefore gets 55 electoral votes. So Wyoming gets 1 electoral vote per 193,000 people while California gets 1 per 709,000 people. Since CA can't get any more representatives because of the 1911 statute, it's stuck with 55 EVs. If those EVs were calculated by actual population and you used Wyoming, the smallest state, as the base number, CA should really get 204 EVs. As it is now, WY's much smaller population has far greater proportional weight than CA. And this is why the GOP doesn't want to change the apportionment statute.