At 01:54 PM 11/13/00 -0700, Rob Goodale wrote: >No, it's powerful campaigning in stratigic political hot spots Vs. mainstream American people that get screwed. The majority isn't "mainstream"? It happens that more than 50% of the U.S. population lives in those "political hot-spots". That's what makes them hot-spots, after all. I can understand any minority population being concerned about being marginalized by the infamous tyranny of the majority, but I don't see that such a concern confers mainstream status on them. This isn't politics, it's simple math. In fact I haven't heard a political debate in the U.S. in the last 20 years that didn't ultimately reduce down to the fact that what's good policy for densely-packed populations isn't necessarily a good idea for everyone else, and vice-versa. And speaking of simple math, we can use it to demonstrate who benefits most from the electoral college. I live in California, the most populous state in the nation. The least populous state is Wyoming (whose state population is roughly one-half the population of my city, San Jose). Here's how our two electoral counts stack up: State Population Electoral votes Persons/elector CA 33,145,121 54 613,799 Wyoming 479,602 3 159,867 As you can see, every vote in the state of Wyoming counts almost four times more heavily than my vote in California (a 3.84 ratio). To have representation in the electoral college equal to Wyoming, California would need 207 electoral votes! Whether or not you think this is a good idea or a bad idea, it's a fact nonetheless. As for me, I question whether as Americans, shouldn't we be free to travel and live in any state of this great nation? Why should our system dilute the power my suffrage just because I live in a heavily populated area? If Wyoming happened to be all white folks, and California all black, we would have seen this sort of thing abolished years ago. ;-) Best Regards, Greg ___________________________________________________________________ Greg Anderson greg@PlanetBeagle.com
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