If the electoral college trend were to hold for next 100 years

[Padfoot]

Split Cali in three.

At least three if not four or five.  If LA County (the most populous in CA and the US) were to secede and become its own state it would be the 9th largest in the nation (based on 2005 Census estimates).  As its own state it would probably elect 15 or 16 congressman and have 17 or 18 electoral votes.  What happens to the new LA-less California then?  Not only would it still be in the top ten most populous states, it would also remain at the number one spot with about 4 million more people than Texas (the next largest state).

I would actually argue for splitting New York, Texas, and Florida as well.  These states weild too much power in the House and Electoral College.  The fact that these states are some of the worst gerrymandered in the country makes me even more uneasy.  The governments of only 4 states should not be in control of drawing districts for nearly a third of our congressmen.

[Padfoot]

Eliminating the two "extra" EVs each state gets for its Senators would directly undermine one of the biggest compromises forged by the founding fathers.  The House was created to represent the will of the people.  The Senate was created to ensure that the views of states with small numbers of people were not ignored due to their low populations.  Thus, by combining these two principles in the EC, everyone is happy.  States with high populations are still given a lot of power in the EC but the small states don't get ignored.  Plus if you eliminate the "extra" Senate votes, that means the nearly one million people in Montana only get one electoral vote.  If 1/100 of the population is only getting 1/435 of the vote in deciding who is president you have a very lopsided Democracy.

I think it makes the most sense for states with 10 or less House seats to be on the Congressional District method.  For states with more than ten House seats you use the proportional method with a twist.  I'll use the 2004 election results and Ohio as an example to help me explain.  If you use the pure proportional method each candidate gets 10 of Ohio's EVs because the race was so tight here (50% Bush 49% Kerry).  However if we only divide the "House" EVs based on vote percentage and award the two "Senate" EVs to the winner of the popular vote Kerry gets 9 EVs and Bush gets 11 EVs.  Thus the winner of the state still comes out with more EVs but the overall result is still fairly equal to the popular vote.  Also, this mirrors the CD method in which the winner of the popular vote wins the two "Senate" EVs and it lessons the affect of gerrymandering since it is harder to gerrymander when you only have 10 CDs.

[Padfoot]

Yet another map.  This one shows how things would look in 2100 if each state had the same net increase of people as they did from 2000-2005 every five years.  (ND was the only state to have a net loss from 2000-2005 according to Census estimates).


Grey=Unchanged
Red/pink=Loss
Blue=Gain

Darker colors indicate larger losses/gains and lighter colors indicate smaller changes.  Some of the Northeast states are hard to see  so here's some of them written out: DE-4 gain of 1, NJ-13 loss of 2, CT-6 loss of 1, RI-3 loss of 1.

[Padfoot]

Interesting that SC would eventually gain a seat.  It has gone the longest without changing of any state with more than 2 seats without change.

1 - DE since 1820
2 - NH since 1880
3 - NE since 1960
4 - AR since 1960
5 - OR since 1980
6 - SC since 1930
7 - AL since 1970
8 - MD and MN since 1960
9 - MO since 1980
10 - MA since 1990
11 - VA since 1990
13 - NJ since 1990

South Carolina actually doesn't increase its rank very much in my scenario.  It goes from currently being the 25th most populous stateto being 23rd in 2100.