4. Protecting the Small States

Kelly Rene, Facebook post

The second rationale our Founding Fathers had for the Electoral College was to give extra voting power to the smaller states, who feared domination by the larger states. This resulted from a very practical consideration. The Republic could not be formed unless all states voted to join, and that was achieved through the “Great Compromise.” The House of Representatives is allocated by population, and the Senate consists of two members from each state, regardless of population. The Electoral College combines both systems, with Electors allocated to each state based on its Senators plus Representatives. The larger states get more, but not as much as their population would seem to warrant. As shown in this Facebook image, a vote from Wyoming is worth 362% as much as a vote from California.

Many justifications have been put forward for this bias. Small states should not be dominated by large states, sometimes called “Tyranny of the majority.” Also, the states gave up their sovereignty to join the Union. All of these arguments come down to a theory that the President represents the interests of states, rather than the interests of people. 

This assumes that each state has a particular interest. More likely, Trump voters in Massachusetts share an outlook with other Trump supporters around the country, rather than with Clinton voters in their own state. African-American voters in Massachusetts have similar interest to counterparts in other states. And so forth.

The extra voting power of small states could create a significant shift in election results if all the small states voted one way and all the large states voted the other way. Some people have portrayed the current election as large versus small states – so I was surprised to see that this was not the case. The top six states – California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania – alternated between Clinton and Trump, and a similar pattern holds true going down the list.

Trump now appears to have won 306 out of 538 Electoral Votes (assuming he wins Michigan), which is 56.9 percent of the Electoral College. We can eliminate most of the small-state bias if we were to deduct 2 Electoral Votes from each state (i.e. the two that are given equally to each state) and leave just those based on population. (This is only an approximation, because there are no fractional Electoral Votes). In this case, Trump would win by 246 of 436 EV, or 56.4 percent, barely a difference. 

So if  the small state advantage did not cause Trump to prevail in the Electoral College, what did?