[ExI] wildlife vote

Darin Sunley dsunley at gmail.com
Mon Nov 14 22:05:06 UTC 2016


>…are the people of Wyoming really 3.5 times smarter than the people of New
Jersey?...

Every time I hear the word "smarter" snuck into these sorts of arguments,
it completely wrecks for me whatever point the speaker was trying to make.

It perhaps says something about us as a community, and perhaps as a
country, that "smarter" is the most reasonable reason we can possibly think
of why some people might be accorded extra voting power, to one degree or
another. Wyoming's extra EC votes per citizen aren't saying that
Wyomingites are smarter and should therefore get more votes. That has
nothign to do with it. They are saying that Wyoming is sufficiently
strategic, as a state, that they are worth a "signing bonus" to have in the
Union at all. The EC was created to assure the smaller of the 13 colonies
that they were valued members of the Union and that the Union valued them
sufficiently to give them voice over and above their populational share.

Which is not to say they Founders didn't value smartness. Indeed, they
valued smartness to a degree considered anathema today. They valued it /so
much/ that they didn't want non-smart people [which in their consideration
was virtually everyone who didn't hold public office] voting for President
[or Senators] at all. That is the reason why the EC exists.
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