Citizen Legislatures and Legislative Districts - Conclusion
Thus far, we've seen that Wyoming's legislature requires fewer seats to win than most FSP states, and a great many fewer than New Hampshire in particular.  We've also seen evidence that Wyoming's single seat districts are, overall, much smaller than New Hampshire's districts, and that these districts may be easier to win even in spite of the fact that you can come in less than first in some New Hampshire districts and still get a seat in the legislature.

Wyoming has a commanding lead in this area.

Nevertheless, let us look at one last comparison between Wyoming and New Hampshire in the legislative arena.  The following is a look into how many votes it would take to win to majorities in each state's House; not just how many seats, but how many actual
votes, based on Joe Swyer's State Legislatures Report.  The following is a quote from Joe from the FSP forum:

What was the least number of votes for a majority in the New Hampshire House versus the Wyoming House?  In other words, what are the least number of voters the Porcupines would have to convince to vote for a Free State candidate? (regardless of party label, or multiple labels with a "fusion" listing)

In doing an Analysis of State Legislatures for New Hampshire I did put the winning number of votes for each legislator in my spreadsheet, but I only used it to calculate a percentage which I put in the report which was posted.  Since WY and NH were among the first states I tabulated, I did not include winning numbers in the posted tables. Perhaps that could be added now (Jason?). Yet the amount of data for 400 reps just overwhelms the web pages ability to display it.

So, to answer the question above...

For Wyoming I isolated those winning totals, sorted them in ascending order,then did a total up through the 31st seat.

Adding up from the bottom doesn't work for complex multi-seat districts like New Hampshire's. Thus New Hampshire was more difficult and tedious. For each district I calculated the highest winning vote and divided it by the number of reps which that number of voters could elect.  This resulted in an average of how many voters per representative.

For example: 829 people in District 52, if they all voted for the top three reps, could have elected three reps at an average of 276 people per rep -- pretty "cheap" or easy.

On the other extreme: 6029 people in District 57, if they all voted for the top six reps, could have elected six reps at an average of 1004 people per rep -- pretty "expensive" or hard.

So I calculated the cheapest way to get a majority or, in other words, the least number of voters (determined by how voters/rep) needed to get a majority.

Answers:
The least number of votes to elect a majority in the New Hampshire House.
105,312 votes in NH

The least number of votes to elect a majority in the Wyoming House.
50,360 votes in WY

Having reviewed all of this information, it is evident that Wyoming's small, citizen legislature (composed of small districts and subject to term limits as of 2004) offers the FSP a greater opportunity for creating a legislative majority, and thus fulfilling the FSP's purpose.

Links to FSP forum discussions on the cited research:

Analysis of State Legislatures Discussion
New Hampshire has the LARGEST DISTRICTS too!
New Hampshire Has the Smallest Districts
Back to Wyoming QuickFacts
Back to Districts - Part III
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