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Electoral balancing act, by the numbers

Friday, February 23 at 12:01 AM

By Bill Blomberg, Parker

The movement to change the way states cast their electoral votes is gaining momentum. Colorado Senate Bill 46 would have states cast electoral votes for the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationally. As a practical matter, this change would forevermore prevent anyone who came in second (or worse) in the hearts of his countrymen from claiming the presidency.

The pros and cons of this have been amply debated, so no need to rehash them here. But there is one aspect of the Electoral College that has never been discussed, namely its fostering of the practice of “taxation without representation.” Most people would probably say they oppose that. Yet in our republic, representation is a zero-sum game. Thus, for every instance of taxation without representation, there exists a corresponding case of representation without taxation. Thus the question: Is the resistance to representation without taxation equally as heartfelt?

To illustrate, using census data from 2000, California was the most populous state with 33,871,648 people. Wyoming was at the opposite extreme with 493,782. The total U.S. population was 281,421,906 — an average of 5.63 million per state. Thus California had 12.04 percent of the U.S. population whereas Wyoming was home to a mere 0.18 percent of Americans. In a fully representative republic, California would therefore have a 12.04 percent voice in the presidential election, and Wyoming 0.18 percent.

Due to political compromises in the 18th century which gave rise to the Electoral College, our republic is less representative in this area than it is in most others. Based on the 2000 census, the Electoral College changes the above ratios as follows: California gets 55 electoral votes and Wyoming gets three, out of a total of 538. Hence, California has a 10.22 percent electoral voice and Wyoming gets a 0.56 percent vote. Compared to its population, California is about 18 percent underrepresented in the Electoral College whereas Wyoming is more than 300 percent overrepresented.

In general, states with populations less than 5.63 million will enjoy increased Electoral College representation while those with greater populations will suffer diminished representation — with no concomitant reduction in federal taxation. So the Electoral College is the political equivalent of income redistribution. To be blunt, it is political welfare for the small states.

This puts the question in a different light and poses a conundrum for those who oppose taxation without representation yet want to retain the Electoral College in its present form — they can’t have both. To be sure, eliminating or recasting the college would solve the problem of the distorted representation. But there is another way that would allow traditionalists to defend the Electoral College without imposing unfair taxation on millions of Americans.

If you are a numbers person, you may already have guessed where this is headed — we simply reflect the representational distortion of the Electoral College in the federal income tax. In this way, Californians would calculate their federal income tax as usual and then reduce the amount of taxes due by 18 percent. Wyomingites on the other hand would multiply their taxes due by 311 percent. Inhabitants of the other states would each adjust their federal income tax burden to match their particular state’s representational distortion.

Colorado for example had 1.53 percent of the 2000 population, but with nine electoral votes has 1.67 percent of the Electoral College representation, so we would multiply our federal income tax due by 1.67/1.53 — an increase of 9.2 percent, simply reflecting our surplus representation.

Obviously such an approach would be greeted with a gantlet of lawsuits as small states would seek to continue the political welfare benefit they receive by freely imposing underrepresentation on the larger states. And they might well win. But at least we would have exposed the threadbare conceit that supporters of the Electoral College are rock-solid, principled conservatives when they are in fact often little more than purveyors of the self-interested political equivalent of income redistribution.

Benefits are a lot less fun if you actually have to pay for them yourself.

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