Talk:County unit system

Question

From a foreigner's standpoint, it's very interesting how much this system resembles the U.S. Electoral College for the election to President. Even more interesting is that the County Unit System was ruled inconstitutional, but the Electoral College wasn't. Could somebody knowledgeable add an analysis about that to the article? MCBastos 15:27, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Electoral College can't, by definition, be declared unconstitutional since it's prescribed by the Constitution. But, I agree, it is very similar to the Electoral College, I imagine probably inspired by the latter, but that's just a guess on my part. Nik42 03:06, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, based on this article, it doesn't look like the unit system was based on population, since it appears that every county had either 6, 4, or 2 votes, and I can't believe that the most populous county had only three times the population of the least populous. Nik42 03:09, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The biggest problem with this system wasn't its overall unfairness (as shared with the Electoral College, in my opinion), but the way that unfairness was directed at minimizing the electoral power of African-Americans. In a similar case, gerrymandering is in many cases perfectly legal in many states, but is illegal throughtout the US if used on the basis of race (though political preferences do often go hand-in-hand with race). Xyzzyva 14:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The VRA requires some states to effectively gerrymander so as to have minority representation. 68.39.174.238 19:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

That depends upon how you define "gerrymandering", since it's pretty much just a catch all term for any redistricting plan that is perceived to be unjust. Ensuring that enough minority-majority districts exist in a state so that a large minority in the state has a share of seats proportional to its share of the actual population could hardly be considered gerrymandering. On the other hand, ensuring that every seat is racially homogoneous could very well be considered gerrymandering, because it would ensure that the majority race would be able to control every seat if it voted en bloc, while the minority would get nothing.65.0.180.71 (talk) 02:10, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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Electors or just votes?

I get the impression from this article that the votes were abstract "points" assigned to each county rather than, as with the Electoral College, a system in which actual persons are elected to cast votes, is that correct? XinaNicole (talk) 23:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)