Currently, the electoral college is based on the number of congresspeople in each state + 2 senators. So states like Wyoming, get 3 electoral college votes, despite having fewer people than over 100 US counties.
In total there are 538 electoral college votes: 435 members of Congress, 100 for Senators and 3 votes for DC.
Here’s the list of how many electoral votes each state would gain or lose if they were proportional to the population:
- Alabama (AL): 0
- Alaska (AK): -2
- Arizona (AZ): +2
- Arkansas (AR): -1
- California (CA): +13
- Colorado (CO): 0
- Connecticut (CT): -1
- Delaware (DE): -1
- District of Columbia (DC): -2
- Florida (FL): +9
- Georgia (GA): +3
- Hawaii (HI): -2
- Idaho (ID): -1
- Illinois (IL): +2
- Indiana (IN): +1
- Iowa (IA): -1
- Kansas (KS): -1
- Kentucky (KY): 0
- Louisiana (LA): 0
- Maine (ME): -2
- Maryland (MD): +1
- Massachusetts (MA): +1
- Michigan (MI): +2
- Minnesota (MN): 0
- Mississippi (MS): -1
- Missouri (MO): +1
- Montana (MT): -2
- Nebraska (NE): -2
- Nevada (NV): -1
- New Hampshire (NH): -2
- New Jersey (NJ): +2
- New Mexico (NM): -1
- New York (NY): +6
- North Carolina (NC): +3
- North Dakota (ND): -2
- Ohio (OH): +3
- Oklahoma (OK): 0
- Oregon (OR): -1
- Pennsylvania (PA): +3
- Rhode Island (RI): -2
- South Carolina (SC): 0
- South Dakota (SD): -1
- Tennessee (TN): +1
- Texas (TX): +12
- Utah (UT): 0
- Vermont (VT): -2
- Virginia (VA): +2
- Washington (WA): +1
- West Virginia (WV): -1
- Wisconsin (WI): 0
- Wyoming (WY): -2
And here’s what the final map would look like:
And finally a map by Dodi Maps showing how the electoral college has changed over the past century.
What do you think good idea or not?
Ken Wood says
So if you combine this make with the electoral vote in 2024, who would have won?
Tired of the Disenfranchisement says
Democrats would have had 238 in this scenario. Republicans would have had 300. But this still ignores the fact that the Electoral College is an outdated and unfair system. One person, one vote is the only way to go. If it’s good enough for every other election we hold, why not the top job?
V says
Using an unchanged and arbitrary number of EC electors (538), is one way of doing the calculation. Other principles would produce other results. The least arbitrary would be one person one vote. One could even have a one person one vote system that maintains States deciding how their votes would be distributed, for example by district, direct, or all the State’s votes going to the majority winner in that State. Clearly the separate question of disenfranchisement has haunted the US for all of its history.