In a fair democracy, everyone's votes should count equally, but the method that the United States uses to elect its president, called the Electoral College,

violates this principle by making sure that some people's votes are more equal than others.

The Electoral College is, essentially, the 538 votes that determine who wins the presidency.

If these votes were split evenly across the population, every 574,000 people would be represented by one vote.

But that's not what happens because the Electoral College doesn't give votes to people, only states, which has some unfair consequences.

For example, there are 11.5 million people in Ohio, so, to fairly represent them, it should get 20 electoral votes.

But the Electoral College doesn't give Ohio 20 votes, it only gets 18, two less than it should. Where those other votes go? To states like Rhode Island. Plucky Rhode Island has 1.1 million people in it, so it should have about two votes, but instead it gets four. Those extra two votes that should be representing Ohioans go to representing Rhode Islanders instead.

Why? Because according to the rules of the Electoral College, every state, no matter how few people live there, gets three votes to start with before the rest are distributed according to population.

Because of this rule, there are a lot of states with a few people that should only have one or two votes for president but instead get three or four.

So Georgians, Virginians, Michiganers, and Jerseyites are each missing one vote. Pennsylvaniaans, North Carolinians, Ohioans and Hoosiers are missing two, Floridians are missing four, New Yorkers five, Texans six, and Californians are 10 votes short of what they should get. Because of this vote redistribution, the Electoral College essentially pretends that fewer people live where they do and more people live where they don't.

An American who lives in one of these states has their vote for president count for less than an American who lives in one of these states.

In some cases, the Electoral College bends the results just a little, but if you live in a particularly large or small state, it bends them a lot.

One Vermonters vote, according to the Electoral College, is worth three Texans votes, and one Wyomingite's vote is worth four Californians. Now whoa, hold on there, son, you might be saying to yourself right now. You're missing the whole point of the Electoral College is to protect the small states from the big states. Give the small states more voting power and the presidential candidates will have to pay them more attention in an election. If that's the goal of the Electoral College, it's failing spectacularly. Here's a graph showing the number of visits the presidential candidates paid to each of the states in the last two months of the previous election. If it looks like there are a few states missing, you're right. Only 18 of the 50 states received even a single visit from a candidate,

and just two of those states, Maine and New Hampshire, have very small populations.

The area of the country with the most small states is conspicuously missing.

The Electoral College doesn't make candidates care about small states.

But interestingly, the biggest states, California, Texas, and New York, are missing as well. So what's going on? Looking closer, just four states, California, Texas, and New York are missing as well. So what's going on?

Looking closer, just four states, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia received a majority

of the candidates' attention during the election.

And if you follow the money, it's the same story.

Why do candidates spend so much money and time in so few states?

Because the way the electoral college works forces them to do so.

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