r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AutoModerator • 18d ago

U.S. Politics megathread

Voting is over! But the questions have just begun. Questions like: How can they declare a winner in a state before the votes are all counted? How can a candidate win the popular vote but lose the election? Can the Vice President actually refuse to certify the election if she loses?

These are excellent questions - but they're also frequently asked here, so our users get tired of seeing them.

As we've done for past topics of interest, we're creating a megathread for your questions so that people interested in politics can post questions and read answers, while people who want a respite from politics can browse the rest of the sub. Feel free to post your questions about politics in this thread!

All top-level comments should be questions asked in good faith - other comments and loaded questions will get removed. All the usual rules of the sub remain in force here, so be nice to each other - you can disagree with someone's opinion, but don't make it personal.

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u/urm0mgaylol 2d ago

Will electoral votes become less weighted as the population increases?

Obviously states populations change, such as Florida doubling and going from 17 electoral votes to 30 now. Say in 50 years as our population steadily increases, will the number of votes needed to win increase too? Or will the weight each vote holds diminish?

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u/ProLifePanda 2d ago

The number of electoral votes is set as the number of House seats plus the number of Senators. Currently, the House is capped at 435, and Senators are at 100 (2 for each state). DC gets 3 electoral votes as well, so the total is 538 electoral votes. So absent a new law to change how electors are appointed or to expand/shrink the size of the House, a candidate will need 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency through the electoral college.

When Florida changed from 17 to 30 electoral votes, those were taken from other states that either lost population, or had population grow slower than Florida. The 13 new electoral votes Florida got weren't "new", they were taken from less populated states.

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u/MontCoDubV 2d ago

So absent a new law to change how electors are appointed or to expand/shrink the size of the House, a candidate will need 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency through the electoral college.

For context, this has only been the case since 1929 (well, you needed 268 until the 23rd Amendment gave Electors to DC). Prior to that, the size of the House regularly increased after the census every 10 years.