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#235239 - 29/09/2004 11:41 Re: Electoral College [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
genixia
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 08/02/2002
Posts: 3411
The funny thing is, whilst you are wondering whether to 'follow' Europe, Europe has been trying to decide how to structure itself whilst looking west to see how the US is structured...
_________________________
Mk2a 60GB Blue. Serial 030102962 sig.mp3: File Format not Valid.

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#235240 - 29/09/2004 13:24 Re: Electoral College [Re: petteri]
mschrag
pooh-bah

Registered: 09/09/2000
Posts: 2303
Loc: Richmond, VA
This site is awesome. I've been looking for something like this for a while now.

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#235241 - 30/09/2004 00:39 Re: Electoral College [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
I'll have to read up some more on this, but I think that keeping the Federal government small is the main reason and shouldn't be dismissed.


I don't mean to dismiss the argument that "Federal government should be small" without critical examination, but my feeling about this so far is that the "FGSbs!" argument is the perennial knee jerk blunt argument of Big-L Libertarians. It is my feeling that the philosophy of the "Big L" folks is a political dead end so I just have a hard time accepting FGsbs! arguments on their face. Soooooo, I want to know: what are the positive benefits of the sacred States Rights? (in secret, I will admit that I can think of a few, but if I utter them out loud they are likely to be stamped out by our current crusading AG!)

Quote:
The main roll of Federal government is to offer national security and I think you're comment on Normandy supports that.


I would agree that a primary role of the FG is to offer national security (if you ain't secure, what do you have?), but just who decided that is the *main* role?

I read this: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

(of course, we could spend some time here talking about the definition of "security").

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#235242 - 30/09/2004 00:47 Re: Electoral College [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:
The main roll


Yeah, you're on a roll now. "role".

Quote:
I think you're comment


I am not. What a rude thing to say

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#235243 - 30/09/2004 01:33 Re: Electoral College [Re: Daria]
SE_Sport_Driver
carpal tunnel

Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
Hey, that's Bitt's job!
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Brad B.

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#235244 - 30/09/2004 01:42 Re: Electoral College [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:
Hey, that's Bitt's job!


Ok, and?

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#235245 - 30/09/2004 11:20 Re: Electoral College [Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
I have secret deputies.

I really, really, considered correcting those yesterday, since there were two egregious ones in a row, but my new job keeps me busy.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#235246 - 30/09/2004 11:52 Re: Electoral College [Re: wfaulk]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
Quote:
new job...

Congrats! Whatcha doin'?

-jk

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#235247 - 30/09/2004 12:12 Re: Electoral College [Re: jmwking]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
More Unix admin for a biotech company. I'd like to be able to say I'm contributing to the downfall of humanity, but it turns out that they're not doing anything really invasive or insidious here.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#235248 - 30/09/2004 12:21 Re: Electoral College [Re: wfaulk]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
Cool. (My brother worked for Monsanto for a while, so I've heard all about that invasive and insidious stuff. He's at Pfizer, now.)

I don't recall in which point of the triangle you live; do you have to fight I-40 now?

-jk

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#235249 - 30/09/2004 12:23 Re: Electoral College [Re: wfaulk]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:
I have secret deputies.

You should see the badge it comes with....

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#235250 - 30/09/2004 12:46 Re: Electoral College [Re: jmwking]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Quote:
do you have to fight I-40 now?

Yup. I live in Raleigh inside the beltline. I get onto Wade Avenue from Oberlin Road and have to drive out it, then out I-40 past the point that the Durham Freeway splits off in that big fork. So, basically, all the way on the other side of RTP. Takes me about 20-25 minutes in the morning. Much longer, oddly, in the afternoon.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#235251 - 30/09/2004 12:47 Re: Electoral College [Re: wfaulk]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
More Unix admin for a biotech company.


Oh, very cool. That didn't take long (Whew!) Congratulations.
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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#235252 - 30/09/2004 12:57 Re: Electoral College [Re: jimhogan]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Yeah. First and only job I applied for. I was only out of work for two or three weeks. Much better than my year-long unemployment two to three tears ago.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#235253 - 30/09/2004 14:05 Re: Electoral College [Re: wfaulk]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
Quote:
two to three tears ago.


Nice typo...

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#235254 - 30/09/2004 15:40 Re: Electoral College [Re: jmwking]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Heh.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#235255 - 07/11/2004 18:07 Re: Electoral College [Re: drakino]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
I figured I would bump this back up instead of glueing it on to one of the other threads.

Looking into the amendment more, it was started by a democrat from California. His goal with it was to get a state typicially on the edge, but still mostly republican to pass it. Thus, the republican candidate would lose votes, while the democrats gained votes. He didn't start this in California, since that is 55 solid votes that typicially go to the democrats.

Looking at the votes, we had 1,058,040 for Bush and 944,052 for Kerry. On this issue, 1,255,302 were against, and 661,305 for it. So it was more then just a party division on it, with 175,000 extra votes above the Bush supporters.

Even knowing the above and having some dislike for an outsider trying to affect our state, I did vote yes, as I still feel it would have been the start to much needed reform. Two states can divide their votes, but they never have. This amendment would have made us the first state to force proper allocation. At least this time around Bush did manage to get the electoral vote and popular vote.

2008 I am betting we will swing to a blue state. We put a democrat in the senate, and we now have a majority of democrats in the state government. Guess it all depends on who runs.

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#235256 - 07/11/2004 20:42 Re: Electoral College [Re: drakino]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
I've spoken to some political scientists about the Electoral College and other places where you might want to reform the electoral system. Suffice to say that it's a Pandora's Box. Once you open the discussion to reforming one part of the system, everything is suddenly on the table. If you feel, for example, that the Electoral College gives disproportionate weight to some states, then you're effectively saying the same thing about the Senate. Any argument you make against one applies to the other. In effect, you're tugging at the glue that (barely) holds things together in Washington. For example, if you want to go after the morass of redistricting, then you're going after the heart of what a Congressional district is, in the first place. Why stop at, say, "compact districts" when you could go after some sort of K of N scheme where you have larger districts, allowing minorities to focus their votes behind their favorite niche candidates yet preserving a majority's control over the government? You're really dancing around the fundamental question of what "representation" is all about. Is it about having a rep whose small district includes you, even if you disagree with your rep, or is it about having much larger and more vacuous districts, where you might have somebody with whom you more closely agree? One of the big arguments in favor of this sort of reform is that it makes third-party candidates viable. It's largely unclear how that would all pan out. Would we have coalition governments as occurs in many countries with a Parliamentary system? Do we want minority, single-issue parties, to serve the purpose of king-makers? "We'll join you to form a government under the condition that you support our abhorent position."

Much as I'd love to see these kinds of questions being seriously discussed in Washington, I doubt they'll go anywhere. And, if they do, they might not go somewhere that we like, because the people in power (notably Tom DeLay), have already demonstrated their willingness to push major changes for a strictly partisan benefit. If we'd had a scenario where Bush won the popular vote but Kerry won the Electoral College, then you'd have pissed off activists in both parties willing to discuss major reform. Given that the Republicans won in every way (modulo allegations of fraudulent activity), they're quite likely to be happy with things as they are.

Earlier in this thread, somebody was saying that, if the President were elected strictly based on popular vote, that the campaigning would turn to population centers away from rural areas. This is only partly true. In Florida, Kerry won most of the population centers, but Bush won the state based on his rural and suburban appeal. I don't know nationwide statistics, but there are enough suburban and rural people that a candidate would ignore them at his or her peril.

I can think of one good reason to keep the Electoral College around. It gives you someplace to focus your attention if things go wrong. Imagine, in a nationwide popular vote without the Electoral College, Candidate A beat Candidate B by a mere 500 votes. Suddenly, every damn precinct in the country would start doing recounts to see if they could bolster their candidate. It would be chaos. A similar effect could happen if, in every state, the electoral votes were split as they are in Nebraska, Maine, or in the falled Colorado initiative.

It's the devil you know verus the devil you don't.

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#235257 - 07/11/2004 21:24 Re: Electoral College [Re: DWallach]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Quote:
Suffice to say that it's a Pandora's Box. Once you open the discussion to reforming one part of the system, everything is suddenly on the table

Thats fine with me. It's a chicken and the egg type of problem and eventually something has to be started to get change to happen. Nothing can change overnight. But you can at least take the first step so that the next morning you are a tad bit closer.

Quote:
I can think of one good reason to keep the Electoral College around. It gives you someplace to focus your attention if things go wrong.

I suppose. But consider this. We live in a day and age where we know who is likely to be the next president days after the election. Under the current system, the actual vote won't occur until December. If things ever came that close, we have the technology and manpower to recount things quite a few times before the new president takes over. As long as we don't have punchcard systems in widespread use (and legally they should be all but gone now), recounts are easier then they were say 50 years ago. I'm not even talking about electronic voting being the main way to do recounts, but more the fact we have reliable optical scanners and such for the fill in the bubble ballots still in widespread use.

The other part of the presidental election process reform I believe in is implementing some sort of ranking based voting. More and more cities are implementing some type of system, usually after a near runaway vote to implement it. San Fransisco just used it in this past election for all city officials, and it worked well.

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#235258 - 07/11/2004 23:15 Re: Electoral College [Re: drakino]
music
addict

Registered: 25/06/2002
Posts: 456
Quote:
The other part of the presidental election process reform I believe in is implementing some sort of ranking based voting. More and more cities are implementing some type of system, usually after a near runaway vote to implement it. San Fransisco just used it in this past election for all city officials, and it worked well.


Well, I wouldn't quite go that far. You could say "it didn't work too badly."
There were some software and computer glitches which messed up and stalled the counting. These failures were of a qualitatively different type than just the usual eVoting snafus. They did get them fixed eventually, however.

But the more important issue is this: There are several different ways of doing ranking-based voting. The one which SF uses is the worst of these choices, called "instant runoff voting." It has the nasty property that you can sometimes optimize the chances for your candidate by not ranking the candidates in your preferred order.

I can't dig up the link right now, but there is a comparison of the different rank-order based systems and their pitfalls somewhere.
[Edit: this is not the link I was looking for, but at least here's something. electionmethods.org ]

Perhaps dwallach can direct us to some good resources here.

I'm all in favor of ranking-based voting systems, but we shouldn't get in a hurry and ram the wrong one into practice, as San Francisco did.

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#235259 - 08/11/2004 00:10 Re: Electoral College [Re: music]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
The catch with any "modern" preference voting systems is that none of them are "strategyproof", meaning two things. (1) There will always be cases where a voter has an incentive to state something other than their true preferences. (2) There will always be obscure corner cases where everybody can look at the numbers and say that, obviously, Candidate A beat B and C, but in fact, C won. This is the crux of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, for which he got a Nobel prize in economics.

electionmethods.org is a reasonable site, although it's clearly biased in favor of Condorcet elections. The wikipedia has a pretty good page on Condorcet election methods and voting systems in general. I actually have a soft spot for approval voting. Voters give up the precision of being able to rank candidates, but they get something much easier to understand. You can cast one or zero votes for each candidate. All of those votes are added up, and whoever gets the most, wins. One of the interesting side benefits of approval voting is that it works right away with traditional voting technologies. You just redefine overvotes as legal and now your old punchcards or optical scan system works just fine.

One of the most intriguing possibilities that I heard of recently is called "open primaries", as in California's Proposition 62, which apparently failed in the California election. The general idea is that the two candidates for November 2 will be decided in one, wild swinging open primary election with multiple candidates. In effect, the primary becomes an open election and Election Day becomes a runoff election. The only way you could make it work is with some kind of preference system (as above), which wasn't part of California's prop 62, as far as I know. Still, the idea of a multiround preference voting system might be a way to work around some of the undesirable features of single-round preference voting, but still end up with something that voters can wrap their brains around without causing too much pain.

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#235260 - 08/11/2004 03:32 Re: Electoral College [Re: DWallach]
music
addict

Registered: 25/06/2002
Posts: 456
Quote:
electionmethods.org is a reasonable site, although it's clearly biased in favor of Condorcet elections. [...] I actually have a soft spot for approval voting


It looks like the folks at electionmethods would be willing to settle for approval voting as a practical compromise. I have read a few other papers which point out that out of all the seriously proposed systems "instant runoff voting" is the worst according to a multitude of metrics. Though none are perfect, I would prefer we choose one of the better ones. As a practical matter, IRV apparently has the problem that it is difficult to "trickle up" votes from precincts, and that the computation matrix becomes huge as the number of candidates goes up. Sure, we have the computation power and bandwidth to deal with this, but I think the more transparency in an election process, the better. (Which means the complexity of Condercet is a strike against it as well.)

Quote:
One of the most intriguing possibilities that I heard of recently is called "open primaries", as in California's Proposition 62, which apparently failed in the California election.


I'm going to assume the Republicans voted against it because they didn't want two Democrats and zero Republicans on the final ballot, and the Democrats voted against it because they didn't want the Republicans to trash their primary and intentionally select unelectable Democrats in the primary -- a valid concern after the dirty tricks Governor Grey Davis played with the Republican primary a few years ago. (Davis, a Democrat, helped ensure that the Republicans chose someone he could easily defeat, instead of the stronger, more moderate candidate who would have posed him a challenge. Of course, residual anger about that is probably one of the things that bit him in the ass later and got Arnold swept into office.)

Quote:
Still, the idea of a multiround preference voting system might be a way to work around some of the undesirable features of single-round preference voting, but still end up with something that voters can wrap their brains around without causing too much pain.


Of course, the reason given for instituting IRV in San Francisco was to save money on elections by avoiding runoffs. So suggesting "multiround anything" probably makes it harder to push the issue of preference voting of any type.

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#235261 - 08/11/2004 04:44 Re: Electoral College [Re: music]
lectric
pooh-bah

Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
No idea where to post this, but Here is a cool results picture.

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#235262 - 08/11/2004 10:14 Re: Electoral College [Re: DWallach]
tanstaafl.
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5539
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
Dan --

I'm not replying to any specific thing in your post, but have been looking for a place to pose this question to you, as there is nobody I know whose answer would be as credible to me as yours.

Can you comment on the stories I have heard (I have no way of evaluating their truthfulness) that the discrepancies between the actual vote counts and the exit polls were extraordinarily high (in the area of 5--7%) when not once since the practice of exit polling began decades ago had the difference ever run more than 1--2%? That these alleged discrepancies occurred almost exclusively in precincts using electronic voting machines with no verifying paper trails is particularly disturbing.

tanstaafl.
_________________________
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

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#235263 - 08/11/2004 12:33 Re: Electoral College [Re: tanstaafl.]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
I've read many of those same stories. Probably the best analysis I've read so far is on Sam Wang's site at Princeton. He doesn't dismiss the possibility of fraud, but he does feel it's unlikely that there was enough fraud to throw the election. Also, for what it's worth, I think the best summary of where we need to go from here was in an editorial in yesterday's NYT. So many different things went wrong in this election. It's not just about voting technology. It's about the entire process, top to bottom.

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#235264 - 08/11/2004 15:26 Re: Electoral College [Re: tanstaafl.]
bonzi
pooh-bah

Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
Ann Coulter has an explanation: that was a transparent Democrat ploy to trick the voters into voting for that phony Vietnam hero Kerry by showing him as leading... But it not work, despite incompetent Rove almost ruining the landslide victory for Bush. What, you are not convinced?

BTW, the woman is news for me (I heard of her before, and some of her wisdom, but did not connect them, until a popup ad for her new book sent me Googling). A collection of her earlier gems is here. I always have trouble telling whether people like her are pulling our leg; I mean, nobody can actually think this, right?
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Dragi "Bonzi" Raos Q#5196 MkII #080000376, 18GB green MkIIa #040103247, 60GB blue

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#235265 - 08/11/2004 15:46 Re: Electoral College [Re: DWallach]
bonzi
pooh-bah

Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
Reforms that NYT suggest, reasonable as they might be, are a no go, I am affraid. Under the current interpretation of the Consitution (from Bush vs. Gore), "[T]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote. [...] The State legislature's power to select the manner of appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself." If that is indeed so (and the Supreme Court is who says whether it is or not), for the changes to be enacted amending the Consitution is necessary (with all those state ratification procedures etc). So, don't hold your breath, I would say.

BTW, what is your take on what was intention of the Constitution (of 'Founding Fathers', as I am often amused to hear) in this respect: do states elect the President, or citizens?
_________________________
Dragi "Bonzi" Raos Q#5196 MkII #080000376, 18GB green MkIIa #040103247, 60GB blue

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#235266 - 08/11/2004 17:49 Re: Electoral College [Re: bonzi]
music
addict

Registered: 25/06/2002
Posts: 456
Quote:
BTW, what is your take on what was intention of the Constitution (of 'Founding Fathers', as I am often amused to hear) in this respect: do states elect the President, or citizens?


Oh, I think it's quite clear that the Founding Fathers didn't by any means want a direct "ideal" democracy. There are so many places where they went to a lot of trouble to intersperse a layer of representation between the ignorant/naive citizen and the decision-making processes, that I can't imagine they would have wanted the presidential selection process to be any different.

Also, remember, many of these guys were ardent supporters of rule of monarchy until just a few years before the revolution. And IIRC, "Pure" Democracy was regarded as roughly akin to Anarchy.

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#235267 - 08/11/2004 20:15 Re: Electoral College [Re: bonzi]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
If we can discuss constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, then we can certainly discuss amendments to tidy up issues with voting. Also, depending on how you do it, you can certainly have Federal voting laws that don't interfere with the Constitution, including the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 or even the more recent Help America Vote Act.

If you wanted to abolish the Electoral College and adopt a nationwide preference voting system, then you'd clearly require a constitutional amendment. If you want to mandate that all state election officials be non-partisan, that all voting equipment, training, and procedures are well-specified and rigorous, that would be well within the scope of an act of Congress. The only question is how you could actually define "non-partisan".

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#235268 - 08/11/2004 20:55 Re: Electoral College [Re: bonzi]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Quote:
I always have trouble telling whether people like [Ann Coulter] are pulling our leg; I mean, nobody can actually think this, right?

No; I'm pretty sure she's certifiably insane.

Oh, BTW, here are a couple of her quotes and a picture of her:
Quote:
Anorexics never have boyfriends. ... That's one way to know you don't have anorexia, if you have a boyfriend.

Quote:
I've never had bulimia!

_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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