I started thinking about this scenario after hearing about a proposed amendment to the Constituion which would have eliminated illegal immigrants from a state's offical apportionment population. If illegal immigrants were removed from the equation California would lose 6 seats in the House and Texas, Florida, and New York would each lose one seat based on the 2000 Census data. (I'm not sure what states would gain seats). Basically the arguement for the amendment is that people who aren't citizens shouldn't be influencing the balance of house seats between the states. This also spills over into presidential elections because the number of EV given to a state is directly related to the number of representatives it has.
So then I started thinking that if we're going to eliminate those who aren't allowed to vote, we might as well eliminate those who aren't registered to vote as well. Here's what the electoral vote map would look like today if we had used the number of registered voters in a state as its official apportionment population in the 2002 reapportionment:
Red-less EVs than current number
Blue-more EVs than current number
Grey-no change from current number
This map shows what states would have lost or gained over their 1992-2002 EV count:
Red: loses EVs
Blue: gains EVs
Grey: no change
Essentially what I gleaned from these maps is that California and Texas are screwing the Midwest. In 2004 Texas and California ranked 49th(47%) and 48th(48%) respectively based on the percentage of Voting Age Persons who actually voted. They were two of only three states to be below 50% in 2004 (Hawaii was 50th with 45%).
Looking at these maps should convince anyone that our reapportionment methods are highly inaccurate and should be re-examined. Counting those who are unable to vote or are able but don't care enough to do so is unfair to those who actually wish to actively participate in our government.