Our votes for president are NOT equal. We can fix that! (part 1, the problem)
There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Our votes for president are not equal. Votes in some states count more.
That’s why a candidate can win the “popular vote” by millions – yet lose the election.
Just a few examples:
- A vote in Wyoming is worth more than 3.6 times a vote in California.
- A vote in Alaska? Worth more than 2.8 times a vote in New York.
- You’d have to vote 3 times in Texas to be worth one Vermont vote!!
Why? Because we don’t vote directly for the president. A tiny group of people votes directly for president, based on how people in their state voted. This group is appointed each election by the political parties. This Electoral College (EC) is a crusty artifact from a bygone era.
The EC was created to be fair to the smaller states, which get a certain number of EC votes no matter how small their population is. But big states don’t get equal shares – their EC votes are not in proportion to their population. It’s not fair to anyone.
So surely there’s something we can do? YES! See the next poster for part 2: the solutions.