I’ve seen several people claim that their state’s vote for the US presidential election doesn’t matter because their district is gerrymandered, which does not matter for most states.
Most states use the state’s popular vote to determine who the entire state’s electoral college votes go to. No matter how gerrymandered your district is*, every individual vote matters for assigning the electoral vote. [ETA: Nearly] Every single district in a state could go red but the state goes blue for president because of the popular vote.
*Maine and Nebraska are the notable differences who allot individual electors based on the popular vote within their congressional districts and the overall popular vote. It’s possible there are other exceptions and I’m sure commenters will happily point them out.
Edit: added strikethrough to my last statement because now I have confirmed it.
Of the 50 states, all but two award all of their presidential electors to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in the state (Maine and Nebraska each award two of their electors to the candidate who wins a plurality of the statewide vote; the remaining electors are allocated to the winners of the plurality vote in the states’ congressional districts). (source)
Do states have more or less electoral votes based on population?
Like would California have more say in who becomes president than Idaho?
Or is it that stupid system where each state has an equal amount of votes?
It’s assigned proportionally but each state gets a few extra votes to give smaller states more weight.
Originally, states would then award these proportionally, but some state got “smart” and realized that if they gave all their votes to the most popular candidate they’d get more attention … other states soon followed suite and Madison went and died before he could fix this abuse of the system (which bothered him).
https://fairvote.org/why-james-madison-wanted-to-change-the-way-we-vote-for-president/