If they did that, Republicans would lose. Same reason they don’t want to elect a President by popular vote. Republicans have no incentive to create a more just system. Amending the constitution to change the Electoral College is a heavy lift. It would require 2/3 vote from both House and Senate or a petition from 2/3 of state legislatures. In other words, it would require Republicans to vote in favor of shifting power to Democrats. Basically impossible.
I meant to mention earlier, this whole issue hits at another tension that is fundamental to US history - whether states should govern themselves or be governed by federal powers. States have a surprising amount of power over what goes down (or not) in their state. This conflict was also fundamental to the slaveholding argument. So when people inevitably tell you that the Civil War was about “state’s rights” they are conveniently omitting that it was about state’s rights to own slaves.
The apportionment was for the determination of the numbers of representatives in the House for the various states. There is no stand alone determination of the number of electors. That is just the sum of senators and representatives.
Since being freed, the slaves have been counted as full people in the census. Each new census (10 years) the number of representatives is apportioned. This has happened several times since the 3/5 compromise was nullified.
Plus despite the typical modern arguments, it was the slavers who wanted the slaves to be counted as full people. The abolitionists wanted them not to count at all.
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: […]”
That’s why I love it here. You would think when you remove all behavioral constraints everyone would be terrible all the time, but there are always pleasant surprises.
That definitely seems to be a factor. Unfortunately, because it means we aren’t going to be getting new states any time soon. Some of the members of each coalition that make up the two main parties would be relatively weakened if we got rid of the electoral college but the parties as entities would adapt and be close to competitive when they did so.
I’m not convinced even the small blue states really want the electoral college to go away. I think some aspect of their support is based on the concept that it’s highly unlikely to go away. It’s sort of like the argument folks make that the Republicans aren’t really trying to get rid of abortion on a national level since it gives them something to rally the base with.
The members of the House of Representatives is reapportioned every 10 years, which is why the Census is done every 10 years, so no, Wyoming is not way over-represented in the House, it has a proportional share based on the 2010 Census. All the ruckus about the Census this year is because those seats will all be juggled again according to the 2020
This would only be true if the number of Representatives was not capped.
For reasons, since 1929 there have been and will be (unless Congress changes this rule) only 435 voting Reps and no matter how the population grows, this number will not change. Also, each state is guaranteed at least 1 Rep.
So, a state like Wyoming with a little more than half a million people gets 1 Rep.
A state like California with a population of nearly 40 million currently gets 53 Reps.
That’s a factor of 80 difference in population but a representation difference of only a factor of 53.
So, yes, the state of Wyoming is, by population, way over-represented in the House.
Uncap the maximum number of reps while keeping it proportional to population, and California gets literally dozens more people in Congress while Wyoming’s representation wouldn’t change at all.
And the way demographics are going, this tilting in favor of small, rural states will only get worse in the next few decades. And likewise, this affects the number of electors and tilts things further in favor of those small, rural states.
The Senate, by design of course, is designed for small states to have representation significantly out of proportion with their populations.
The requirement that no state can have fewer than 1 representative to itself and the cap on the total number of representatives means that the House will never be proportional. Either allow the number of representatives to grow or allow low population states to be grouped together for representation.
I found some stats on this, and perhaps surprisingly the US is not bad by international standards. The EU parliament is particularly disproportionate, with a minimum of 6 members per country despite Malta having a smaller population than Wyoming, and Germany more than double that of California. Brazil and India are also significantly worse than the US: