In case you didn't know, when it comes to presidential elections some states have way more pull than they should.
In case you didn't know, when it comes to presidential elections and the House of Representatives, some states have way more pull than they should.
Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution describes how the number of electors in the Electoral College are determined:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.
That article has been amended to allow for three electoral votes for the District of Columbia. Currently, there are fifty states, meaning of course that there are 100 senators and the number of members of the House of Representatives is set at 435. Add all up and you get 538 electors. This is a woefully inadequate number of electors. Why? Here's why.
California is the largest state in the Union, in terms of population. As of the 2000 Census, the population of California, for the purposes of Allocation of the United States House of Representatives, was set at 33,930,798. California has been allocated 53 members of the House of Representatives. This is a fair number of Representatives, given that the number of representatives is set at 435 and that each state gets at least one representative. This means that the average member of the House of Representatives in California represents approximately 640,204 people. The population of the 50 states of the United States at the time of the 2000 Census was determined to be 281,424,177, which means that the average Representative in the U.S. House represents 646,952 people. As you can see, California actually is slightly over represented in the U.S. House as compared to the average. That's somewhat of a problem, but California is not the best example to provide for the problems of mismatched representation.
No, the problem is best illustrated with the examples of two contiguous states: Montana and Wyoming. Wyoming is the least populous state in the United States, with a 2000 population of 495,304. Of course, they have one representative, per the rule that at minimum each state gets at least one representative. By contrast, Montana had a 2000 population of 905,315 and also has just one representative. This is just flat out unfair. But, that number is set at 435, right? Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution says:
The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative.
In other words, Congress has the power to set the number of seats in the House of Representatives, and up to the early part of the 20th Century, the Congress did, in fact, increase the number of Representatives. Note that the framers had in mind a minimum representation of one representative for every 30,000 people. One wonders if they ever contemplated a time with the ratio of citizens to representatives would explode to 20 times that.
In terms of allocation of Representatives within states with more than one Representative, the U.S. Supreme Court has adhered very strictly to the concept of one person, one vote. As a result, the States have been required to create districts with less than a one percent discrepancy in population. Yet, we have a situation where one state (Wyoming) has an unbelievably significant advantage in terms of representation over another (Montana). There is only one way to address this problem: increase the size of the House of Representatives. This will address the unfair representation problem in the House and help to partially solve a related problem: namely, the completely unfair distribution Electoral College electors.
Returning to California, I have pointed out how the state is slightly overrepresented in the U.S. House. However, the allocation of Electors is extremely unfair to California. The U.S. Senate, of course, was designed to give small states an equal footing in one branch of the Legislature. It's also given small states an extremely large, relative to population, stake in the election of the President. It seems to me that this, regardless of my political beliefs, is just too much to give to the small states. I say that having lived the large majority of my life in North Dakota, one of the states that has benefited from such a bias. California has 55 electoral votes and 33,930,798 citizens. The combined population of the smallest 21 states has a population of 31,654,285 and a total of 91 electoral votes. That is just ridiculously unfair. Of course, California is a reliably blue state, so you may say mndemguy, you are a crybaby. Okay, let's look at Texas, the second largest state in terms of population, at 20,903,994. Texas has 34 electoral votes. The 17 smallest states have a population of 20,495,878 and a total of 66 electoral votes. It's one thing to have misrepresentation issues in the US House between states with under 1,000,000 people. That's an inequity that should be rectified. But, this inequity in the presidential electors is just a ridiculous unfairness that affects huge numbers of people (and potentially, the will of the people, when deciding presidential elections).
The size of the U.S. House was last increased in 1911 to 435 members. At that time, each Representative represented an average of 212,407 citizens. I propose that the U.S. Congress raise the number of House seats to 1,000 (or better yet, tie the number of seats to a ratio, like not to exceed 250,000, so that the number of seats automatically expands every 10 years). By my rough calculations, had this been done prior to the 2000 Census, each state in the Union would have had at least 2 members of the House of Representatives. Wyoming would still be the most overrepresented state in the Union, with a member for each 247,652 people. But the most underrepresented state, North Dakota, would have a member for each 321,878 people. The standard deviation of the ratios for the 50 states would be 14,756, compared with 60,616 that it currently is. So, how many representatives would California have? 121. How about Minnesota, where I live now? 18.
What would this do for the House? Well, it would probably necessitate a remodeling and expansion of the House chambers (that place is pretty small). And it would make Representatives more responsive to their constituents. It might put an end to some of the ridiculous gerrymandering that has gone on. It might also allow 3rd parties a chance to get a foothold in the U.S. Congress. I see that as all good.
More importantly, what would it do for presidential elections? Well, California would have its 123 electoral votes and those 21 small states would have 155. There's still a bias for the small states, but the ratio of 155:123 or 1.26 is a lot more equitable than 91:55 or 1.65. So what would have this meant for the 2004 election? Nothing, really. By this apportionment, Bush still beats Kerry by 574 to 529. But, if the 2000 election had been held with 1000 seats in the House (and using the 1990 Census, of course), well, it would have been Bush 552, Gore 551. (However, with a ratio set at 250,000, the vote would have been 550 a piece! Given the makeup of the House at that time, the election still probably would have gone to Bush.) So, it doesn't even change the results of the last two elections, which I would have preferred, of course. This might suggest that I'm trying to fix a non-existent problem. I don't think so, however. There are two problems here, really, the representation problems in both the House and Electoral College. By making the House much, much larger, we make that body truly more fairly represented and we at least shore up the inequity a little in the EC. As the population continues to grow, the unfairness of the representation between states in the U.S. House and in the Presidential Elections will only continue to grow. Something should be done about it.
I should add that with the upcoming reapportionment, there's going to be a further shift electoral votes into southern, red states, which will, in combination with a collection of small states in the plains and mountain west, further build in what I think is an unfair advantage to the Republican Party. If Obama rebuilds the electoral map by adding such states as Virginia and North Carolina, there's going to be an advantage built into the Democratic Party, particularly if the Republican Party base is shrunk into only the cultural conservatives. But, this idea isn't really so much about political strategizing as it is about recognition of an inequity that has built up. As it probably would, in fact, allow for more representation by third parties and independents, the two established major parties are probably not in favor of it. Too bad. By the way, if the Bush and Gore states were apportioned at a 250,000 ratio based on the population of the US in 2006, Gore would win 671 to 626. As it turns out, the 2010 map will further shift the influence of the Bush states away from the Gore states.