When I was circulating a petition to gather signatures for ranked-choice voting, I got many negative comments. The most-often cited was, “Well, with voting, there should be only one vote per voter.” I then asked, “Well, what about the Electoral College? Don’t you think that anyone elected by popular (one vote per person) vote should win the election?”

Their response was, “The Electoral College was started so that more populous states wouldn’t have an advantage over less-populated rural states.”

Well, OK to that. But don’t less-populated states already have a huge advantage over the larger states in the Senate? For example, Maine, with a population of 1.3 million, has two senators. New York state, with a population of 19.5 million, has only two senators. Maine has one U.S. senator for a little over half a million people. New York has one senator for approximately 10 million people. New York appears vastly underrepresented.

It looks to me that the less-populous states already have a huge advantage over the more-populous states. If we want to keep the Electoral College, in all fairness, we ought to elect our Senators the same way we elect our representatives. The number of senators ought to be apportioned the same as the House  Representatives — according to the population of that state.

 

Peter P. Sirois

Madison