No, it's actually a pretty slick system. The old guys were pretty smart.
Every State gets TWO Senators. Period. Fixed rule, independent of population.
The total number of seats in the House of Representatives is limited to 435. (I don't know how or when they decided on 435, but they did. I'm sure I could google it up.)
Every State also gets ONE House Representative, no matter how small its population. Additional Representatives are based on population above this "minimum".
Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the Census).
So, there's an "equality factor" from the two "Senatorial Electors" but it's also adjusted for population "House of Representatives Electors."
The Census, as you can see, is of MAJOR importance in our political system. A lot of folks don't realize that.
So all you EU's would have to decide a "max number of Representatives to apportion those votes.
Each would get a base of say 2 EU College votes (Senators) and then you'd get 1 more no matter what your population. This ensures everyone has at least 3 votes. Then, additional votes would apportioned based on the "max" and your population over the "minimum".
Our minimum works like this (I'm sure you physicists types like formulas.
)
COMPUTING APPORTIONMENT Equal Proportions Method
P - represents a state's total population
n - represents the number of seats a state would have if it gained a seat (because all states automatically received one seat the next seat gained is "seat two," and the next "seat three," and the next "seat four," and so on.)
The multiplier equals (1 divided by (the square root of n(n-1)) [which is called the reciprocal of the geometric mean]. Computing these values is quite easy using a PC and a good spreadsheet package.
Thus the formula for calculating the multiplier for the second
seat is:
(1 divided by the square root of 2(2-1))
or
1/1.414213562 or 0.70710678
the multiplier for the third seat is:
(1 divided by the square root of 3(3-1))
or
1/2.449489743 or 0.40824829
the multiplier for the fourth seat is:
(1 divided by the square root of 4(4-1))
or
1/3.464101615 or 0.288675134
Continue until an appropriate number of multipliers
have been calculated.
Once the "multipliers" have been calculated, the next step is to multiply this figure by the population total for each of the 50 states (the District of Columbia is not included in these calculations). The resulting numbers are the priority values. Make sure you compute enough multipliers to cover the largest amount of seats in the House of Representatives that any one state stands to gain. Multipliers and priority values must be calculated for the largest number of seats assigned to a state. For example, if the largest number of seats assigned to a state is 50, multipliers and priority values must be calculated for the 50th seat. If you are using a PC, compute multipliers for seats 2 through 60. This will assure you have enough multipliers for apportionment.
Once you've calculated priority values for each state for the total anticipated seats, the next step is to rank and number the resulting priority values starting with seat 51 until all 435 seats have been assigned (remember, each state automatically received one seat). Next, tally the number of seats for each state to arrive at the total number of seats in the House of Representatives apportioned to each state.
Clear and simple, eh?
