Whose Vote Is Worth the Most? Fun with Numbers, Part II
{Sorry this is so long. The headline is this: While there is well-documented discrepancy in the electoral college in average weight assigned each voter from state to state, this discrepancy is 15 times larger in the Democratic nominating process. }

The electoral college is controversial because, as a national election, not everyone's vote counts equally. The number of electors representing a state are pre-determined, and even though they are distributed proportionally based on population, variables of turnout generate some disproportion in the number of voters on average represented by each electoral vote. I know you all know this. But how much difference is there really? Is it substantial?

Taking the results of 2000, those lowest 6 and their ratios (numerator in thousands) were:
1. DC (67:1)
2. WY (73:1)
3. HI (91:1)
4. AK (95:1)
5. ND (96:1)
6. VT (98:1)

So in effect an elector in DC represents 67,000 voters. An elector from VT represents 98,000. The Vermont elector represents about 1.5 times the amount of people the DC elector does.

The top 6 ratios were:
1. MN (243:1)
2. FL (238:1)
3. WI (236:1)
4. MI (235:1)
5. WA (226:1) [Washington's high turnout giving Nader the support to claim his candidacy effectively won the Senate seat for Democrats as Cantwell barely squeaked by there]
6. MA (225:1)

So, a voter in Wyoming is almost 4 times as powerful as one in Minnesota in terms of their effect on the electoral college. Minnesota had more than 12 times as many voters. You'd think they have 12 times the electors, but really receive only 3.3 times as many. Still that is really as wide as the margin gets. I still think it's the wrong way to go, but I understand the arguments for the electoral college, and can at least hear the idea that the bad, in that ratio, is outweighed by the good.

But....here's how we decide the Democratic nominee. States are apportioned delegates based on population, but have the freedom to determine for themselves how those delegates are awarded. Every state has some superdelegates: elected officials and others that are official delegates but can vote for whomever they choose at the convention, no matter how their state voted. Every state also has some delegates that are proportionally allotted based on the state's vote. The proportion of super-delegates to delegates that actually represent the people's vote varies from state to state. Widely.

Here's where I get irked. The widest ratio spread in the electoral college we found in 2000 was about 4 to 1 (from Minnesota to DC); but, in the 2004 Democratic primary, a Michigan voter counted 10 times what the Wisconsinite did. Hawaiian caucus-goer's vote effectively counted 62 times what the Wisconsin primary voter's did. A delegate is a delegate. They get the same vote at the convention toward naming a nominee, and should represent the same basic number of people. But one of them will represent 11,353 of the people that voted for Dean in Madison, WI and one of them will represent
about 1,254 of the people that voted for Edwards in Detroit, MI. One of them will represent 254 Kerry voters in Idaho. They all get an equal vote in the convention: the 11,353-voter guy and the 254 voter guy.

299,000 people voted in Oklahoma and they select 40 delegates. 160,000 people voted in Michigan and they select 128. How screwed up is that?

People are pissed about the electoral college but the discrepancy in the primary, reaching over 60:1 from Wisconsin to Hawaii, is over 15 times as big as the Minnesota-Wyoming spread in the general election in 2000.

I think we need a new system. One Democrat's vote should count as much as any other Democrat in naming our nominee. Or should come darn close. We should be able to do that and still honor the retail politics of Iowa and NH. Would it have made a difference this time? No - not with Kerry so far ahead. But one of these times it, along with the super-delegates, will make all the difference. We will have a nominee who has more delegates and fewer votes. Maybe many more.

Am I just crazy? Here the good can not possibly outweigh the bad. What am I missing? You all are smart. Tell me. Is it no big deal? Why not apportion delegates at least partly based on previous voter turnout? Why should 817,000 voters in Wisconsin be represented by 72 delegates, while 416,000 from Missouri are represented by 74?