Well after reading this interesting article from the Southern Political Report, it might be. According to John A. Tures, Associate Professor of Political Science at LaGrange College, it is so.
Although the South have some of the largest states in the Electoral College, like Texas with 34 votes, Florida with 27 votes, Georgia with 15, and North Carolina with 15 votes. Combine those 4 states totals and you have 91, a little over a third of the need 270 votes for a candidate to win. However, the breakdown of the number of residents represented by each electoral vote says another story.
Take Texas, with those 34 Electoral College votes (second in the nation).But divide that by their population of 24-plus million and they have 703,000 or so residents for every Electoral College vote.Sure, little old Vermont only has a measly three Electoral College votes, but they actually get one vote on Election Day for every 207,000 residents.
You may think that's an exception, right?You'd be wrong on that.Delaware has one Electoral College vote for every 288,500 residents, while one such vote exists for every 675,000 Floridians.Isn't there some "one person one vote" deal somewhere in the Constitution?Well, Electoral College votes are distributed by the number of representatives each state gets, plus two votes for both Senators.The latter certainly contributes to these disparities.
But the South gets extra harsh treatment with this system.Texas has the most residents per Electoral College vote, even though California is the most populous state.Even though New York has twice as many Electoral College votes as Georgia, the Peach State has one E.C. vote for every 636,000-plus residents, while N.Y. has one vote for every 622,500 citizens of its state.
So the states that have the worst deal (most residents per Presidential vote) are Texas (1st), Florida (2nd), Georgia (5th), North Carolina (8th) and Virginia (9th).Massachusetts has 200,000 more residents than Tennessee, but the Volunteer State has more residents per Electoral College vote, diluting the state's potential strength.No Southern state is in the top ten category of fewest residents per Presidential vote.
Well doesn't that suck, but what if there was an equal treatment for votes like other states in other regions would there have been a possibility of Obama getting elected last year? I mean that would have given this region which we all know 9 out 10 times will vote Republican for president over a Democrat the power to insure that nobody unless they were a social conservative or Republican would win the Presidency.
Having lived and having been quite involved in some campaigning in Tuscaloosa during the '90s*, I know something of about the town, its people and the various political currents that run through it.
I haven't lived there for a few years, so I don't pretend to be an expert on conditions on the ground today, but I have some certainty that it'll be tough to call for either Obama or McCain; too many variables involved that I don't know about.
That said, I've just found out that last night Bill Maher more-or-less challenged Tuscaloosa to not go for McCain; that he called-out Tuscaloosa on his show, "Real Time". He names -- of all places in the United States -- Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as the LEAST likely town in the nation to cast more votes for Obama than for McCain, owing to race.
Here's the vid, pay attention from 6:00-30:
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I hope that the Tuscaloosa County Democratic Party will, in 1 and 1/2 weeks, be able and inclined to touch base with Mr. Maher, show him the voting totals and note that, indeed, it's not the racist place Maher implies it is.
The challenge has been made. It's not the time to tell Maher what an uninformed putz he is, it's time to work to make sure he's proved wrong on November 4.
bg
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*Noting that my recollection of how the T-News did the story may not have been 100% accurate, more than 13 years after the fact, but I'll wager I'm 90% accurate.
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