A Virginia humorist, Paul Bibeau, stumbled on a statistical oddity embedded in a Republican bill in Virginia that would divide the state’s electoral votes by congressional district. Had the bill been law in 2012, President Obama would have received only four out of thirteen electoral votes despite winning 51 percent of the popular vote.
Which is to say, Obama voters would have received almost exactly 3/5 of the electoral vote compared to their actual population — 30.7 percent of the electoral vote over 51 percent of the popular vote. The coincidence recalls one of American history’s — and especially Virginia’s — most infamous numbers, the three-fifths compromise that counted slaves as a fraction of a person when calculating a state’s federal representation.
(Photo: AP)
