What is the definition of "voting power"? Clearly something other than the number of electoral votes.

And another question: are the Presidents whose names are boldfaced the ones from states which currently have fewer than 10 electoral votes?


>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.
>>
>>
>>>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.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>>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.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>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>