Electoral College Math: Not All Votes Are Equal When it comes to electing the president, not all votes are created equal. And chances are yours will count less than those of a select few. For example, the vote of Dave Smith in Sheridan, Wyo., counts almost 3 1/2 times as much mathematically as those of his wife's aunts in northeastern Ohio. Electoral College math. A statistical analysis of the state-by-state voting-eligible population by The Associated Press shows that Wyoming has 139,000 eligible voters - those 18 and over, U.S. citizens and non-felons - for every presidential elector chosen in the state. In Ohio, it's almost 476,000 per elector, and it's nearly 478,000 in neighboring Pennsylvania. But there's mathematical weight and then there's the reality of political power in a system where the president is decided not by the national popular vote but by an 18th century political compromise: the Electoral College. Smith figures his vote in solid Republican Wyoming really doesn't count that much because it's a sure Mitt Romney state. The same could be said for ballots cast in solid Democratic states like New York or Vermont. In Ohio, one of the biggest battleground states, Smith's relatives are bombarded with political ads. In Wyoming, Smith says, "the candidates don't care about my vote because we only see election commercials from out-of-state TV stations." FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2008 file photo, sportswear bearing the name of a college that doesn't exist: the Electoral College, are seen in Glenburn, Maine, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008. When it comes to voting for president, not all votes are created equal. Chances are yours will count less than a select few. Each state's Electoral College votes are based on the size of its congressional delegation, not its population. Because of that, a presidential vote in Wyoming mathematically counts more than three times as much as a vote in Ohio, at least in terms of choosing electors. (AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach, File) Close The nine battleground states where Romney and Barack Obama are spending a lot of time and money - Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin - have 44.1 million people eligible to vote. That's only 20.7 percent of the nation's 212.6 million eligible voters. So nearly 4 of 5 eligible voters are pretty much being ignored by the two campaigns. When you combine voter-to-elector comparisons and battleground state populations, there are clear winners and losers in the upcoming election. More than half the nation's eligible voters live in states that are losers in both categories. Their states are not closely contested and have above-average ratios of voters to electors. This is true for people in 14 states with 51 percent of the nation's eligible voters: California, New York, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana and Kentucky. Their votes count the least. The biggest winners in the system, those whose votes count the most, live in just four states: Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. They have low voter-to-elector ratios and are in battleground states. Only 4 percent of the nation's eligible voters - 1 in 25 - live in those states. It's all dictated by the U.S. Constitution, which set up the Electoral College. The number of electors each state gets depends on the size of its congressional delegation. Even the least populated states - like Wyoming - get a minimum of three, meaning more crowded states get less proportionally. If the nation's Electoral College votes were apportioned in a strict one-person, one-vote manner, each state would get one elector for every 395,000 eligible voters. Some 156 million voters live in the 20 states that have a larger ratio than that average: That's 73 percent - nearly 3 out of 4.