states have the same, if not more, power than the larger states when it comes to electing the president. The first is, a presidential candidate must receive 270 Electoral votes in order to win the presidency (Law). To do so that means that he would need to receive Electoral votes from a wide range of states and cannot limit himself to a certain region of the country. This means that some of the smaller states will receive the attention of presidential candidates. The second reasons smaller states have the same, or more power, as larger states is in how the Electoral votes are distributed (Law). If you take a state such as Alaska, with a population of 619,500, which has three Electoral votes, this means that they have one vote for every 206,500 in population. Compared to California, which has a population of 33,145,121, and 54 Electoral votes. That works out to be one Electoral vote for every 613,799 in population. That means that someone who votes in the state of Alaska has three times the voting power of someone who votes in California. This is what ensures that candidates for president do not ignore these smaller states.Another way to see the effect of size is to look at the analogy of a coin toss. For a simple example, let’s assume that only two candidates are running, A versus B, and each vote is like a random coin toss, with a fifty percent chance of going either way. In your state of three, there’s a fifty percent chance that the other two votes will split, one for A and the other for B, and thus a 50 percent chance that your single vote will determine the election. Therefore candidates will give each of the three of you a lot of respect.As a nation gets larger, the citizens voting power shrinks. If you are part of a five-voter nation, the other four voters would have to split, two for A and two for B – for your vote to turn the election. The probability of that happening is 3 in 8, or 37.5 percent. As the nati...
