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JULY 19, 2004
Voting: It's The Numbers, Not The Locale, That Count I thought "Does your vote matter?" (Cover Story, June 14) was generally very thought provoking. I have trouble understanding the logic of some of the letters in reply. (Readers Report, July 5). Darel J. Coterel of Prattville, Ala., wrote in support of the Electoral College, pointing out that Al Gore's win was largely based on vote totals in California and New York and in a big part, from -- horrors -- Los Angeles and New York City. "There is no way I want the values of two major cities to dictate national policy to the rest of the nation," Coterel wrote. All well and good, but who does Coterel believe should dictate national policy? Casper, Wyo.? Charleston, S.C.? Appleton, Wis.? Perhaps Prattville, Ala.? I'm puzzled why voters in those and any other U.S. cities should have any more right to "dictate policy" than those in Los Angeles and New York. Reader Doug Boehler of Bangor, Pa., tells us we need the Electoral College because otherwise we'd have mob rule, and Boehler certainly knows what that means: "If the popular vote of the 'mob' elected the President, New York and California would always elect a President for the whole country," Boehler pronounces. I wonder how Boehler's "mob rule" theory would have worked in the 1976 election, when New York went for Jimmy Carter and California for Gerald Ford, and also 1988, when California went to George H.W. Bush and New York to Michael Dukakis. Kind of blows the theory when the two states don't always vote the same way. We in Pennsylvania, with a population of something over 12 million, have two U.S. senators. The five smallest states, with a combined population less than ours, have a total of 10 senators. Add in New York, and we get a staggering four senators for 30 million people. (California gets even fewer for its 30 million-plus.) Sure, we get more votes in the House, but the House doesn't pass bills by itself. Smaller states also get a higher percentage of Electoral College votes, compared with Pennsylvania, than their populations justify. I'm really in no hurry to change the Constitution, but please spare those of us in the dreaded "elitist" East that rhetoric about votes counting less in small states. David Thompson Waynesboro, Pa. 
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