Asian American votes get short-changed by Electoral College

The  picture of the U.S. as weighted by the Electoral College

REPRINTED FROM ASAM NEWS

THE OLD ADAGE one person, one vote doesn’t seem to apply in the presidential election for people of color.

An analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research has found Asian American votes are only worth 0.93 of 1 vote, Latinos 0.91, Blacks 0.95 and Whites 1.0

How can that be? Under the electoral college system, a candidate gets all the state’s electoral college votes whether they win by one vote or one million. Under the system, large states such as New York and California are underrepresented.

Minorities are clustered in those larger states. White voters tend to live where their votes count more.

In Wyoming, there’s an electoral vote for every 195,000 residents. North Dakotans get one electoral vote for every 252,000 residents and Rhode Island gets one vote for every 264,000 votes. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research “In the electoral college, White votes matter more.”

You may have heard that Donald Trump won the electoral college vote, but Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Those votes are still being counted, but right now, Hillary Clinton leads by 947,579 votes.

This is the second time in the last five presidential election where the presidential winner failed to win the popular vote. That’s lead to calls to change the system.

The group National Popular Vote is urging states to pass legislation to give their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote. That can only happen if the states with a majority of electoral votes pass the same legislation.

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