[zeveb]

> However, this doesn't happen in practice because the electoral college system heavily reduces the weight of votes coming from inner-cities and urban areas, and also excludes votes coming from urban areas that lie within a larger, Republican-leaning state.

The Electoral College doesn't 'reduce the weight of votes coming from inner-cities and urban areas'; it allocates votes to states in roughly proportion to population.

Voting by states doesn't just 'exclude votes coming from urban areas that lie within a larger, Republican-leaning state,' but also excludes votes from conservatives living in Democratic states, e.g. California.

> probably most people in Philadelphia voted for Clinton, but their votes were nullified because the state over-all went to Trump.

Their votes weren't nullified any more than the votes of those against Brexit were nullified by those who voted for: it's in the nature of a vote that someone will lose (not be nullified).

I didn't vote for President Trump, but I am glad that we are a federal republic with an Electoral College, not a direct democracy or anything like it. I wish we had more federalism, not less, to include state legislatures appointing senators and electors, and the elimination of the popular vote for president altogether.

[dctoedt]

> The Electoral College doesn't 'reduce the weight of votes coming from inner-cities and urban areas'; it allocates votes to states in roughly proportion to population.

Um, that depends on what you mean by "roughly proportional":

+ Each state, no matter how low the population, gets a minimum of three votes in the Electoral College (one per House member and senator).

+ House representation increases by population, but Senate representation is capped at two, no matter how large the population.

+ As a result: "Each vote cast in Wyoming is worth 3.6 as much as the same vote cast in California. How can that be, you might ask? It’s easy to see, when you do the math. Although Wyoming had a population in the last census of only 563,767, it gets 3 votes in the Electoral College based on its two Senators and one Congressman. California has 55 electoral votes. That sounds like a lot more, but it isn’t when you consider the size of the state. The population of California in the last census was 37,254,503, and that means that the electoral votes per capita in California are a lot less. To put it another way, the three electors in Wyoming represent an average of 187,923 residents each. The 55 electors in California represent an average of 677,355 each, and that’s a disparity of 3.6 to 1." [0].

[0] E.g., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-petrocelli/its-time-to...

[charles-salvia]

> The Electoral College doesn't 'reduce the weight of votes coming from inner-cities and urban areas'; it allocates votes to states in roughly proportion to population.

It does reduce the weight of votes coming from inner cities, because it does not allocate votes proportionally all the time. The disparity occurs most obviously between the high populated states like New York, California, and Texas, compared with very low-population states like Montana or Wyoming. I live in New York, so my individual vote is worth less than someone living in Wyoming or Montana.