Mississippi Today
In U.S. presidential elections, not all votes are equal
A Mississippian’s vote for president carries more weight than the vote of a Californian or than the vote of a resident of most other states.
Mississippi, with just under 3 million people, has six electoral votes for president โ or one for every 496,880 of its citizens. California, on the other hand, has 54 electoral votes for about 39.5 million people โ or one for about every 732,190 of its citizens.
But both Mississippi and California pale in comparison to sparsely populated Wyoming in terms of the weight of its electoral votes. Wyoming, with 576,851 people, has three electoral votes, or one vote for 192,284 Wyoming residents.
The national average, based on the latest U.S. Census numbers, is 632,518 people for each of the nation’s 538 electoral votes.
Votes for president in America are not equal.
The weight of electoral votes is of relevance as the nation goes through the cycle of electing the next president. The presidential election is viewed as a national race, but in a real sense it is about 10 separate campaigns in what has become known as swing states or purple states.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, will spend significant time and attention campaigning in Georgia, Pennsylvania and a handful of other swing states, while paying little or no attention to Mississippi, California or most other states.
America’s founding fathers opted not to elect the president by popular votes but by what is known as the Electoral College.
In that process, each state has the number of electoral votes equal to its number of U.S. House members plus its two senators. For instance, Mississippi has four U.S. House members and the two senators. California has 52 U.S. House members plus its two senators.
The fact that each state has two senators is one of the primary reasons the electoral votes of less populous states carry more weight than the votes of more populous states like California and Texas.
In all but two states, all of the electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in that state regardless of the margin of victory. Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes. The two Senate electors go to the candidate who wins the most votes statewide in those two states. But a candidate gets one electoral vote for each congressional district won in Maine and Nebraska.
Nebraska, like Mississippi, is a solid Republican state. But because Nebraska does not have a winner-take-all Electoral College process, it is likely that Harris and Trump will spend more time in Nebraska’s 2nd District, considered a swing district, than in those much larger non-swing states.
The Electoral College was a compromise between the founding fathers who wanted the president to be elected via popular vote and those who wanted Congress to elect the president. And, like so many aspects of American history, the compromise had racial elements. The notorious Three-Fifths Compromise counted Black residents who could not vote as three-fifths of a person to benefit the Southern states, where a significant portion of the population was slaves. The Three-Fifths Compromise gave Southern states more representation in Congress and thus more representation in the Electoral College.
And to this day, it could be argued the Electoral College still discriminates against Black residents since many Southern states, including Mississippi, have higher percentages of Black citizens who are generally more prone to vote Democratic. Because of the Electoral College, those Black voters in the South have little influence since by wide margins Southern whites, who make up the majority, are more likely to vote Republican and swing the Southern’s states electoral votes to the Republican.
The Electoral College process is in the U.S. Constitution. To amend the Constitution and change the electoral process would be time consuming and burdensome.
But there is another process called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the compact, the Electoral College process could be circumvented if legislatures in states with a majority of the of the electoral votes (270) pledged to give their electors to the candidate who won the popular vote.
The proposal has been filed in the Mississippi Legislature but has never been given serious consideration. Thus far 17 states with 207 electoral votes have agreed to the compact. It is not likely to pass anytime soon, though, because Republican-dominated states generally oppose the plan โ at least in part because the Republican presidential candidate has lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections.
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million, but Trump would have won reelection if about 21,000 voters in a handful of swing states had voted for him instead of Biden.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
AT&T, union reach deal ending strike
AT&T workers are back on the job today after the company reached a tentative agreement with the Communications Workers of America to end a month-long strike in the Southeast.
The new deal includes a 19.33% pay increase for all workers, and more affordable healthcare premiums.
Wire technicians and utility operations employes get an extra 3% pay increase.
In a statement, CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. praised the solidarity of the striking workers.
โI believe in the power of unity, and the unity our members and retirees have shown during these contract negotiations has been outstanding and gave our bargaining teams the backing they needed to deliver strong contracts,โ he said.
CWA district president Jermaine Travis told Mississippi Today that he and his coworkers are happy to be back at work.ย
โIt’s been a long month, so everybody is excited to get back to work and get back to taking care of business,โ he said.
Travis also noted the significance of the strike, the longest telecommunications strike in the Southeast.
โI think we’re gonna look back at this strike, at this moment in history, and see it was really important for workers to stand up for the rights and force companies to do right by them, so I think we did a good thing,โ he said.
AT&T has also reached a tentative agreement with the CWA in the West.
“As we’ve said since day 1, our goal has been to reach fair agreements that recognize the hard work our employees do to serve our customers with competitive market-based pay and benefits that are among the best in the nation — and that’s exactly what was accomplished,โ AT&T said in a released statement. โThese agreements also support our competitive position in the broadband industry where we can grow and win against our mostly non-union competitors.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1925
Sept. 16, 1925
โThe King of the Bluesโ was born Riley B. King on a plantation near Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers.
While singing in the church choir, he watched the pastor playing a Sears Roebuck guitar and told the preacher he wanted to learn how to play. By age 12, he had his own guitar and began listening to the blues on the radio. After playing in churches, he went to Memphis to pursue a music career in 1948, playing on the radio and working as a deejay who was known as โBlues Boyโ and eventually โB.B.โ
Within a year, B.B. King was recording songs, many of them produced by Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records. In 1952, โ3 O’Clock Bluesโ became a hit, and dozens followed.
While others sought to bring change through the courts, King did it through music. The songs that he and other blues artists created drew many listeners across racial lines. One of the biggest fans walked into the studio one day and called him โsir.โ His name? Elvis Presley, whose first big hit was the blues song, โThat’s All Right, Mama.โ
King explained that music was like water โ something โfor every living person and every living thing.โ His smash hit, โThe Thrill Is Gone,โ made him an international star and led to collaborations with some of the world’s greatest artists.
He survived a fire that almost burned up his beloved guitar, โLucille,โ and won 18 Grammys as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1987, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Both Time and Rolling Stone magazines ranked him as one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
In 2006, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the greatest civilian honor. Two years later, his hometown of Indianola honored him by opening the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. After he died in 2015, thousands flocked to the Mississippi Delta for the wake and funeral.
โHands that once picked cotton,โ the preacher told the crowd, โwould someday pick guitar strings on a national and international stage.โ He performed till the end, telling Rolling Stone in 2013 that he had only missed 18 days of performing in 65 years. He died two years later at 89 after battling diabetes for decades.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Sen. David Blount discusses tax cuts, retirement system, mobile sports betting
State Sen. David Blount sits down with Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Adam Ganucheau to discuss the push for income tax elimination and how that would affect the state’s budget. He also talks about needed funding for the state’s troubledย retirement system and whether Mississippi will soon adopt mobile sports betting.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
The post Podcast: Sen. David Blount discusses tax cuts, retirement system, mobile sports betting appeared first on Mississippi Today.
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