Rural States flex their Muscles - Part 1
“The Electoral College should be neither seen nor heard”
Here at Voting Rights Brigade,
we have received a lot of questions about the Electoral College over the last month. Many come in the form of, “What is the Electoral College?” or “What do you mean the person with the most votes doesn’t necessarily win?” But, sometimes we get more nuanced questions such as, “How does the Electoral College give an advantage to rural voters?” or “How are Electors granted to each State?” Given the interest in the Electoral College following Donald Trump’s surprise victory--despite losing the popular vote--one can see that this archaic institution seems only to emerge into the popular conscience in times of controversy. So, here is a refresher on this quirky component of our electoral process that we would rather not see nor hear about.
In a previous post, we posited that the Electoral College gives greater weight to rural states, but it is important to put that into more tangible terms. In this edition, we intend to discuss two structural aspects of the Electoral College that grant this small state bias: the Senatorial Buffer, and the density disadvantage. We will cover the former below and the latter in a follow-up post.
So, what do we mean by the Senatorial buffer?
What many don't realize is that the Electors are not allocated based on population, but rather are granted based on the number of Senators and Representatives for a given State. As a quick reminder, every State receives two Senators regardless of size, but is allotted Representatives based on its population in the most recent national census (2010, in this case). A member of the House of Representatives is granted for approximately every 700,000 residents, so there are 7 States (and the District of Columbia) that have only one Representative in Congress: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and Wyoming. Each of those small States receive one Elector for each Representative and two for each Senator, granting them three Electors apiece. A large state like California, with 37 million residents, has 53 Representatives in Congress while Texas, with 25 million, has 36 Representatives. California and Texas also receive Electors for their two Senators, giving them 55 and 38 Electors, respectively.
Remember that the Electors are awarded using a winner-take-all system based on whomever receives the greatest amount of votes in a given State (except for Maine and Nebraska, which we'll discuss in a later post). This means that a candidate receives ALL of the Electors for that State, to include those Electors assigned by Senate seats. The practical effect of this is to grant extra weight to small States by giving them a disproportionately larger number of Electors per voter. California's 37 million voters are represented by 55 Electors, giving them a voting power of one Elector for every 677,000 voters. Wyoming, on the other hand, has 563,000 voters and 3 Electors. This grants Wyoming voters one Elector for about every 188,000 residents. Drawing a finer point on this: California would need to have 197 Electors to receive the equivalent voting power as Wyoming (37,000,000 divided by 188,000).
Let's also look at the effect of the Senatorial buffer on the 2016 Election. Donald Trump won 30 States, plus 1 Elector from Maine. Hillary Clinton won 20 States plus Washington, D.C., with its 3 Electors. Therefore, Trump had a Senatorial buffer of two Electors for each State (30 x 2 = 60), while Clinton had 42 (21 x 2), for a difference of 18 Electors (60 minus 42). This may not seem like much, and it wouldn't have decided the election, but an 18 Electoral vote margin is equivalent to granting Trump a buffer equivalent to the entire State of Ohio. There is a strong advantage to piling up wins among small, rural States, which Trump did by winning 20 out of the 34 States with 10 or fewer Electoral votes.
In a subsequent post, we will discuss the density disadvantage, which when combined with the winner-take-all system created a noxious brew to prevent Hillary's massive vote wins in urban states from giving her the keys to the White House.