Voting Inequality in US 
Presidential Elections

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Introduction

 

Democratic elections depend on the principle that every vote is of equal value and that every vote is counted in the final tally.  Any adjustment to the relative value of votes or to the counting of all votes produces an election that is not democratic.  Like processed food that provides less nutrition and processed fact that contains less truth, processed elections accommodate less democracy and may completely reverse what would have been the democratic result. 

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An Overview of US Presidential Elections

 

The US Constitution does not mandate any election by the people for anyone in the national government, not for President, not for Congress, not for Supreme Court. (That is just one of many anti-democratic problems with the US Constitution.)  For President and Vice President, it prescribes an election by a group of electors equal in number to the Congress and chosen somehow by the states (appointment, election, lottery, cricket tournament, all would satisfy the Constitutional requirement).  Eventually all the states decided to choose their electors by election, winner takes all.*  (If any state were to decide today that electors would be chosen by the legislature, something permitted by the Constitution, there would be no national election at all in the US because at least one state would not be participating.)  The state elections, by themselves, would be democratic, assuming they include the votes of all eligible voters. However, to that is added the electoral college election, a process which radically reframes the popular vote, thereby changing both the value of the votes cast and the eligibility of votes to be counted.  In establishing a two-step process, the Constitution insures that US Presidential elections cannot be democratic.  And, because a democracy requires not only elections but democratic elections, the US Constitution defines a country that is not a democracy.  (Delgates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 wanted the wealthy southern states to remain in the union. Those states were filled with slaves and relatively few people eligible to vote. Changing the popular vote to an electoral vote increases the voting power of states with fewer voters at the expense of states with more voters. Democracy was sacrificed to insure the Union membership of the southern slave states and the less populated states in the north.)

 

This essay looks at the two ways in which US votes for president are distorted and the extent of that distortion. First, the Constitution requires a process that changes the value of the individual votes.  Instead of votes of equal value, votes in different states are of different values.  All votes are affected.  Because the range of vote values is so surprisingly large, the calculation of vote values is explained.  Second, the Constitution cancels all votes not aligned with the state’s winning candidate prior to the final counting of votes.  About half of the total votes are not included in the final counting

 

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The illustration above graphically represents the relative value of votes in eleven states from votes of least value (Florida) to votes of most value (Wyoming) in 2020.  A vote in Wyoming is worth four Florida votes.

 

 

Part 1.  Vote Values  (Some Voters Get Four Votes)

 

Instead of treating individuals as the final voters (as one would in a democracy), the Constitution treats states as the final voters.  Each state is given a number of electors (state votes).  The number comes not from anything related to the state (like population) or the election (like the number of voters).  Rather the number of state votes is derived from an arbitrary political formula that adds together the number of US representatives (roughly proportional to the state population) and the number of US senators (always two).   Adding them together produces a number related to nothing. The addition of two senators to a state's representatives can increase the latter number by as little as 4% (California) or as much as 200% (Wyoming). In a democratic election all votes have a value that decreases as the overall number of voters increases. But in these elections voters are voting for a number of state electors, so the value of votes in a state is affected by the number of voters in that state only (more voters, less value).  The overall number of voters in the US is not a factor.  Also because the number of electors varies from state to state, the value of votes in a state depends on the number of electors being voted for (more electors, more value).  So, in the end, the value of a vote in a state is equal to the number of electors controlled by a vote in that state divided by the number of voters in that state, the ratio e/v.

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number of electors / number of voters  =  e/v (vote value for state x)

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If the e/v of every state were the same it would be more like a democratic election, but the e/v's of the states are all different.  To measure the amount of inequality, we need to know the relationship among the e/v's of the states.  One way to do that is to set the lowest e/v in a state to one (one vote), then every other state has a vote value relative to that reference state. Relative vote values among the states can be calculated by dividing the e/v of any state by the e/v of the reference state, the state with the lowest e/v in that election.

 

For instance, in the 2020 election, Florida (FL) had 29 electors and 11.067 million voters which results in an e/v of 2.62. That turned out to be the lowest e/v among the states.  

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29 (FL electors) / 11.067 (million FL voters)  =  2.62 (FL e/v)

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To make Florida the reference state, we change the Florida e/v to 1.00 (1 vote) by dividing 2.62 by 2.62.  To find the vote value of any other state relative to Florida, we divide the e/v of that state by 2.62, the reference e/v (of Florida). So, for example, Vermont (VT) had 3 electors and .367 million voters, an e/v ratio of 8.17. To find its vote value relative to Florida, we divide 8.17 (the e/v in Vermont) by 2.62 (the e/v in Florida). The result is a relative vote value in Vermont of 3.12, that is, the value of a vote in Vermont was 3.12 times the value of a vote in Florida in the election of 2020, the equivalent of more that three Florida votes.

 

3 (VT electors) / .367  (million VT voters)  =  8.17 (VT e/v)

 

8.17 (VT e/v) / 2.62 (FL e/v)  =  3.12 (value of votes in VT relative to FL)

 

Applied to each of the fifty states, the above calculation results in fifty different vote values based on the value of a vote in Florida.  Votes within a given state are equal to each other, but among the fifty states vote values vary by a factor of about 4.  In other words, in US presidential elections, a vote cast in the state with votes of most value is equal to about four votes cast in the state with votes of least value.  This factor of four in the range of vote values seems to be relatively constant across recent US Presidential elections.

 

In a democratic election all votes are equal, all votes count as one vote. In US Presidential elections, no two states ever have votes of the same value. In the United States there is just one national election every four years for one person.  It is not democratic.

 

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Part 2.  Vote Cancellation   (Many Get None) 

 

Although there are two stages of voting in Presidential elections, only one of them is mandated by the Constitution, the second one that elects the President. Ordinary people vote in only the first stage, the stage that elects Electors. After counting the first stage votes, the candidate with the most votes in a state gets all the state’s electors.*  So, all votes not for the winning candidate in the state disappear after the state tallies its votes and announces its choice.

 

When the Electoral College meets to cast votes in the second stage of voting, the part of the process that actually elects a President, those voters who failed to choose the winning candidate in their state are no longer represented, even though the election is not finished. And even though other people who voted for that candidate probably are represented in the second stage of voting. And even though that candidate might, in fact, win the Presidency. If he should happen to win the Presidency, those voters whose votes (for him) were thrown out at the end of the first stage of voting will have played no part whatsoever in their candidate’s victory. It is as though they had not voted.

 

In a democratic election every legitimate vote is part of the vote count at the end of the election.  In US presidential elections, at the end of the first phase of voting, prior to the final counting of votes, about half the votes are thrown away (some for the losing candidate, some for the winning candidate). Far from being inconsequential, the erasure of almost half the legitimate votes can, and fairly often does, change the outcome of the election. The one national election in the US is not democratic in at least two ways (unequal vote values and vote cancellation) and, therefore, the US is not a democracy.   

 

In 2020, 76 million votes for President were cancelled, that is, they were legitimately cast but not represented in the final count of electoral votes.  The cancelled votes were 48% of the 158 million votes cast for President in 2020,   JL  

 

 

 

*  Two states, Maine and Nebraska, have decided to allocate their electors in proportion to the popular vote in their respective states. This is a way of solving the vote cancellation problem but does nothing to solve the vote value problem.