What if Guam and Puerto Rico voted?
While the Electoral College system causes the US presidential election to hang in the balance, it's easy to get distracted by an interesting feature in the bizarre framework for electing the president. There are some good questions that can be asked, and could lead to a better system. There are areas of the US that aren't states: do they get to vote? It turns out there are two categories. In the first, it turns out the 3 representatives from Washington DC count as votes in the Electoral College, even though they don't vote in Congress. That's what brings the Electoral College to 538 = (3 + 435 + 100). The other Territories of the United States have no representation in the Electoral College, but do apparently have representation at party conventions. Curiously, Guam did run a presidential ballot just to make this point. Totalling up all the Territories, the Electoral College disenfranchises a population of up to 4 million, or about 1% of the US population, based on