States by population:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
The states with the most voting power:
California
Texas
New York
Florida
Pennsylvania
Illinois
The states with the least voting power:
Montana
Kansas
West Virginia
Maine
Arkansas
Utah
Nevada
The presidents and their state of birth:
George Washington (1789-97) Virginia
John Adams (1797-1801) Massachusetts
Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) Virginia
James Madison (1809-17) Virginia
James Monroe (1817-25) Virginia
John Quincy Adams (1825-29) Massachusetts
Andrew Jackson (1829-37) South Carolina
Martin Van Buren (1837-41) New York
William Henry Harrison (1841) Virginia
John Tyler (1841-45) Virginia
James K. Polk (1845-49) North Carolina
Zachary Taylor (1849-50) Virginia
Millard Fillmore (1850-53) New York
Franklin Pierce (1853-57) New Hampshire
James Buchanan (1857-61) Pennsylvania
Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) Kentucky
Andrew Johnson (1865-69) North Carolina
Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77) Ohio
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81) Ohio
James A. Garfield (1881) Ohio
Chester A. Arthur (1881-85) Vermont
Grover Cleveland (1885-89) New Jersey
Benjamin Harrison (1889-93) Ohio
Grover Cleveland (1893-97) New Jersey
William McKinley (1897-1901) Ohio
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) New York
William H. Taft (1909-13) Ohio
Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) Virginia
Warren G. Harding (1921-23) Ohio
Calvin Coolidge (1923-29) Vermont
Herbert Hoover (1929-33) Iowa
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) New York
Harry S. Truman (1945-53) Missouri
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) Texas
John F. Kennedy (1961-63) Massachusetts
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69) Texas
Richard M. Nixon (1969-74) California
Gerald R. Ford (1974-77) Nebraska
Jimmy Carter (1977-81) Georgia
Ronald Reagan (1981-89) Illinois
George Bush (1989-93) Massachusetts
William J. Clinton (1993-2001) Arkansas
George W. Bush (2001-) Connecticut


>In that case it isn't working very well, is it? There haven't been a lot of Presidents from small states.
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>>The argument is that the founding fathers wanted to protect the nation from our most populace states essentially electing their native sons into office every election. I've always felt that it really only protected rich white male landowners (at that time). In essence, they wanted to protect them from us - the majority.
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>>>>>>Actually, I have seen some guys come with a completely legal way to keep electoral college and have the right results at the same time: the college members are to vote as instructed by their states. The states can tell them to split their votes proportionally. They are within their rights to even pass a law to that effect, as a permanent instruction.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Two states, Maine and Nebraska, already have provisions for splitting their electoral votes instead of giving them all to the winner. There has also been talk of trying to get all the states to agree to cast their electoral votes for whoever won the popular vote nationwide. But I am not optimistic about either of these ideas catching on.
>>>>
>>>>I think the Maine/Nebraska approach makes some sense. IIRC correctly, the electoral votes are divided by congressional district with the state-wide winner getting the two extras. That seems to me to give a much better picture of what's going on, to give more people's votes value than the current system, and still to give small states some power so they're not totally overwhelmed by the large.
>>>>
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>>>The small states are hardly overwhelmed by the large. A vote in Montana counts many times what a vote in California counts, based on ratio of the states' electoral votes and percentages of the U.S. population. Without an electoral college everyone's vote would count equally IN THE NATIONAL ELECTION <g> no matter where they live. "One man, one vote" -- kinda has a ring to it, doesn't it? <g>