Letters

By Our Readers, Richard Appelbaum & Peter Dreier

This article appeared in the September 20, 2004 edition of The Nation.

September 2, 2004

Link to original article.

SIZE DOESN'T MATTER...

Washington, DC

Katha Pollitt is right in her August 16/23 "Subject to Debate" column that small states have more electoral votes than they "should" according to a strict population count, owing to the constitutional malapportionment of the Senate. However, she overlooks the complicating factor that the population advantage to small states is largely canceled by the fact that all states, by law or custom, still award their Electoral College (EC) votes winner take all, which benefits large states. To wit, if a presidential candidate wins North Dakota by 537 votes this year, he gets three EC votes. But if the candidate wins Florida by that number, as Bush did (by the official tally) in 2000, he gets twenty-seven.

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About Richard Appelbaum

Richard Appelbaum, co-author of Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry, teaches sociology and global and international studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. more...

About Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier is professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College. He is co-author of The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City (University of California Press, 2005) and Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century (2nd edition, University Press of Kansas, 2005) and co-editor of Up Against the Sprawl. more...
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