The Constitution of the United States (Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 and later revised by the Twelfth Amendment), established the Electoral College system, which apportioned electoral votes to states based on the number of Congressional Representatives and Senators each state has.

Congressional Representatives are apportioned by the population of each state but since every state has 2 Senators (regardless of population), this would give states with smaller populations a chance to compete with higher-populated states.

Let’s see precisely how this works.

Let’s compare 2 states only by the number of Representatives each has (which is based on population).

Comparing Wyoming to California, the calculations are:

So, we can say that each state gets 1 Representative (and 1 electoral vote) for about 650,000 citizens. That seems (roughly speaking) to be a fair and equal representation.

However, when the two additional electoral votes are added to each state, the advantage clearly lies with the sparsely-populated states.

Let’s look at Wyoming and California again.

This means that Wyoming is apportioned 3½ times more electoral votes per citizen than California does! (678,945 ÷ 189,433 = 3½)
Shouldn’t all elections adhere to the principle of “one person one vote”? In some states, one person’s vote could be worth many times more than the vote of a person from another state.

Looking at the chart below, we see that the ten least-populated states have between 2 to 3½ times more voting power than California!

Yes, the electoral college certainly gives the smaller-populated states an “edge” over the larger-populated ones. Perhaps this is too much of an advantage?

So, now the question is, does the electoral college system require changing or perhaps even total elimination?