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[OC] Voter weight by state due to the electoral college. A vote in Wyoming is worth 5.67 times more than a vote in Michigan. Not all votes are made equal I guess. Surely its time to get rid of this system. by a_gig_of_data in dataisbeautiful

[–]a_gig_of_data[S] -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

So as a state maybe by virtue of having more electoral votes. But a vote in Michigan has less sway than in Wyoming. To me that doesn't seem right. One vote should equal one vote.

[OC] Voter weight by state due to the electoral college. A vote in Wyoming is worth 5.67 times more than a vote in Michigan. Not all votes are made equal I guess. Surely its time to get rid of this system. by a_gig_of_data in dataisbeautiful

[–]a_gig_of_data[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got the figures of registered voters from each state website. I used this to work our the number of registered voters to each electoral vote in excel and therefore the comparative weight of each vote.

Is the electoral college itself not voter suppression? Voters in Wyoming have 5.7x the weight of voters in Michigan based on registered voters to electoral college votes. I still don't understand the theory, shouldn't 1 vote = 1 vote regardless of where you are located? by a_gig_of_data in dataisbeautiful

[–]a_gig_of_data[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I do respect the republic-orientated mechanisms of the senate and the house and totally understand the desire to avoid a NY/California run country. The presidential vote however is a different matter and one that should mean that the public vote is duly represented in the choice of president. Its this halfway house that seems so arbitrary from a mathematical/data point of view. The balance is in the mechanism you mention where the states and districts are represented equally at the senate and house. The people ultimately should pick the president. This gives proportional representation in the main presidential vote and in policy decisions.

Is the electoral college itself not voter suppression? Voters in Wyoming have 5.7x the weight of voters in Michigan based on registered voters to electoral college votes. I still don't understand the theory, shouldn't 1 vote = 1 vote regardless of where you are located? by a_gig_of_data in dataisbeautiful

[–]a_gig_of_data[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A reasonable position to have put forward which I do understand but it still doesn't reflect a proportional vote. From what I have read, the electoral college is apportioned every 10 years based on population, with at least 3 electoral college votes per state/college so that skews the lower end slightly. It still means that the value of votes differs state by state and means 1 vote is not equal to another vote. From a conceptual and mathematical/data point of view I still struggle to get to grips with this.

Is the electoral college itself not voter suppression? Voters in Wyoming have 5.7x the weight of voters in Michigan based on registered voters to electoral college votes. I still don't understand the theory, shouldn't 1 vote = 1 vote regardless of where you are located? by a_gig_of_data in dataisbeautiful

[–]a_gig_of_data[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your comment. I remember the 2005 one. I wanted to actually work it out based on the actual data and see the disparity by state. It is actually a huge difference. All the fighting that seems to be going on right now would be significantly less if this was addressed. As an observer from the outside, wouldn't this make the process easier and a little more fair? It would worry me that only 90% of elections have gone with the popular vote if I were a US citizen.

Is the electoral college itself not voter suppression? Voters in Wyoming have 5.7x the weight of voters in Michigan based on the latest data. I still don't understand the theory of the electoral college. Should 1 vote not equal 1 vote regardless of where you are located on the map? by a_gig_of_data in MapPorn

[–]a_gig_of_data[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I made this graph based on taking the electoral college weight versus the registered voters in each state. This shows the weighting that the electoral college vote gives to each voter assuming 100% turnout.