Electoral College
Posted by: mschrag
Electoral College - 27/09/2004 18:44
I'm not taking a stance one way or the other at the moment, but this link (which is against it) has some really interesting facts that I didn't know about the electoral college system.
http://www.presidentelect.org/art_depangher_unaccept.html
Posted by: jmwking
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 18:45
Um... Link?
edit: oh, that link...
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 19:16
Hmm. I knew all of those facts, but somehow I didn't quite put it together into the notion that it makes some states' citizens' votes more powerful than others. (He raises a number of silly notions, too, like the idea that a massive number of electors would do something other than vote for who a statewide popular vote selected.)
But the fact that there are two electors per state that are not based on population means that the states with lower populations have citizens whose votes count more is a compelling argument against the Electoral College.
But it's also an arguement for the electoral college because some states would simply be ignored by someone running for and in seat as president because those states have so few voters. I think it's a good balance and the only fair way to include states that are low in population due to either their size or population density. I know the root of this is because Bush lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote (or at least it spurred the discussion) but I can't think of any other system that would allow for equal influence for all states.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 20:07
So it's OK for Colorado residents to have three times as much voting power as Californians?
It's not perfect, but do you think it's okay for someone to be elected President if they only campaign in California, New York and a handful of other states because they have bigger populations?
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 20:35
You reminded me that I had another article that was pro electoral college:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5781897/site/newsweek/
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 20:37
It's no more fair now that they don't campaign in New York and Massachusetts as it is.
Also the notion that if I were the only person to show up to vote in NC, Kerry would get 15 electoral votes but if ten million people voted, whoever won would still only get 15 votes is compelling.
And, for the record, I had definitely been opposed to "reforming" the electoral system until I read that. There were a lot of things I hadn't considered.
Also, do people really find it compelling that a candidate shows up in their state? I don't. And having him show up in Charlotte would definitely not be impressive, as I'm not driving three and a half hours each way to see him. (Note that Raleigh and Charlotte aren't even at extremes in NC. I could easily ramp that up to 8 hours each way and remain within NC -- Elizabeth City to Murphy.)
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 20:37
I thought the thing about the vice president being a separate election within the electoral college was interesting -- I never knew that ...
By campaigning, I meant more than just showing up for speaches. Often, they promise to do certain things for certain states (or certain aspects of the economy that effect a state). I remember learning about the electoral college in elementary school and always complaining about how unfair it seemed but the fact is that there can't be a perfect system without redrawing state lines.
I'm open to other systems, but getting rid of it all together would be "more unfair" IMHO.
PS - Tony, count your blessings. If it were upto the rest of us, nobody in California would be allowed to vote anymore!
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 20:48
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It's not perfect, but do you think it's okay for someone to be elected President if they only campaign in California, New York and a handful of other states because they have bigger populations?
Hm. Seems to me that if the electoral college weren't part of the equation, they wouldn't be campaigning to specific states at all any more. They'd campaign to population centers, i.e., major cities.
Which means large swaths of the midwest would be largely left to their own devices to decide who to vote for. Okay, so they'd have to find out for themselves what the candidates stood for. Not sure that's a hugely bad thing. Not necessarily any worse than being swayed by empty campaign promises...
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 20:50
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If it were upto the rest of us, nobody in California would be allowed to vote anymore!
Funny thing is, after that last fiasco with the govenor, I'm probably inclined to agree with you all. 
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Not necessarily any worse than being swayed by empty campaign promises...
Yeah, you've got a strong point here. Yet, I find it hard to change a foundation of our country based on a point that is so cynical regardless of how accurate it is. (I live near Detroit, so all the politicians come here and promise to be easy on the auto industry, but then I hear them go to California and talk about how they are going to increase auto emissions standards. Sigh.) But some politicians only seem to stand for what's popular in the polls on that particular date, so voting on a person's character might not always work either.
Also, because of the power of mass media, local stops by politicians don't serve the purpose of "getting to know" the candidate like they used to. They tend to be speaches tailored for that particular voter block. For example, you probably get more speaches about Hispanic issues and we get more about manufacturing jobs.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 21:02
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But it's also an arguement for the electoral college because some states would simply be ignored by someone running for and in seat as president because those states have so few voters.
I can't think of a single time in my life a presidential candidate has come to Colorado to speak to us. Well, ok, beyond the non campaign visits the presidents typicially do to the military installations here. So how is the electoral college making this any different then if we used the popular vote? And Colorado has typically been a very evenly split state on who it wants, so campaigning here could easially sway the 9 votes we gave.
I don't buy the "electoral college prevents the candidates from only campaigning in certain spots" argument, since they campaign in specific spots anyhow. They also spend more money on ensuring advertisements are seen in the bigger markets. Looking at either the Bush or Kerry website, I have to say I've only seen about 6 total commercials from their massive libraries.
One thing on the ballot this year in Colorado is how to divide up our electoral votes. Option 1 is to keep the winner takes all, the second option is to change to give the same percentage electoral votes as what the voters decided in the popular vote. Had we done this in 2000, Gore would have been elected. I think option 2 is at least a step in the right direction.
That'd be intersting... we'd still have the same electoral points, but those points would more accurately represent the intentions of the voters in percentage if not number.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 21:51
But, as the author points out, doing that is left up to the states. And the states are controlled by their legislatures. And their legislatures have a majority with the party that's likely to be the presidential choice of the state. So making that change would mean that legislators would want to reduce the state's presidential vote for their party. Which isn't going to happen.
Of course, the federal government could dictate to the states how their elections will proceed, but states' rights are still an important, if perhaps outdated, element of the US Constitution. In other words, it'd require a Constitutional amendment to make it happen, and that's not going to happen because US legislators are (probably) not going to sell out their states. (I could go on a rant here about Jesse Helms and selling out states, but I won't.) It'd be just as easy, if not easier, to change the entire voting scheme, and that's not going to happen, either.
What could happen is that states could change their election processes to more mathmatically accurate voting schemes. I'm sure Mr. Wallach could fill us in on that score. Suffice it to say that our "one person, one vote" scheme is largely what sustains our terrible two-party system. If we had a more modern voting method, we could easily do away with the kinds of compromises we have to make now, like voting for Kerry despite liking Nader because you know your vote will be lost.
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but states' rights are still an important, if perhaps outdated, element of the US Constitution.
Not taking sides here, but this is one issue that liberals and conservatives tend to disagree on. Conservatives are more in favor of state's rights and having the electoral system is a way to give states a say in elections.
Good point on how the legislative body that would be in a possition to alter the law would also have the most to lose by doing so.
Perhaps, instead of having the legislature change the law, it could be a vote of the people within each state. But if I'm not mistaken, don't most state constitutional changes require the legislature to pass the bill before it's passed onto a popular vote of the people?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 23:05
True, but I'm not making a judgement on states' rights being positive or negative -- only pointing out that the Constitution holds it in high regard.
I don't know how referenda work.
Posted by: JeffS
Re: Electoral College - 27/09/2004 23:48
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But, as the author points out, doing that is left up to the states. And the states are controlled by their legislatures. And their legislatures have a majority with the party that's likely to be the presidential choice of the state. So making that change would mean that legislators would want to reduce the state's presidential vote for their party.
Not only that, but if a state decides to do this then they've effectively taken themselves off the map as far as presidential consideration goes. If only a few states split their votes this means candidates can only hope to swing the state a couple of votes one way or the other. But the states under the current system will still mean big wins or losses.
Posted by: mcomb
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 05:09
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It's not perfect, but do you think it's okay for someone to be elected President if they only campaign in California, New York and a handful of other states because they have bigger populations?
Yes, that is exactly what I believe. I had a recent discussion about this with a politically minded (republican) friend of mine and I have yet to hear him or anyone else come up with a compelling argument why someone in a smaller state's vote should count for more than mine just because I live in California (and no I didn't vote for Arnold so you can't hold that against me ). We have television, radio, the Internet, newspapers, talk shows, friends, relatives, local politicians and even this BBS to insure that any US citizen who cares can get just as much biased info about the candidates as they could if they met them face to face. The vast majority of us wouldn't set foot near a political rally anyway.
Regardless of whether or not you like Californians, New Yorkers, etc they are just as much US citizens as the people of all those little square states in the middle of the country and their votes should count equally without all the useless, middlemen, electoral college, junk that muddies what should be a simple process.
-Mike
Posted by: webroach
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 05:16
Did I miss the part of history where we found the problem with "everybody say who you want and we'll see who wins"?
I mean really, there is no reason that it shouldn't be 1 vote per person, each vote of equal weight, the candidate with (otherGuysVotes+1) wins.
Anyone saying otherwise is simply feeding the weasels.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 12:50
When the United States was founded, one of the big issues discussed was how states would relate to each other and to the federal government. As far as states relating to each other, it was noted that the northern states had higher populations but smaller areas and products. There was a compromise decided upon where there would be two houses of legislature, one that represented each state equally (the Senate) and one that represented the population equally (the House of Representatives). That concept flowed over into the states' control over the Administrative branch, too, by having the same number of electors per state as congressmen.
Remember that the world was much bigger back then. Mass transportation hadn't really been invented yet. Before the current Constitution was written, the states largely functioned as separate countries, imposing tariffs on interstate commerce, etc. The founders didn't want that to happen, but the states were still interested in being independent from each other, and that made a lot of sense then. Despite the fact that the US is physically much larger now, and has a tremendously greater population, there's much more interstate commerce and communication and the country now works much more as a unified whole than it did when it was established. State's rights may be a slightly outdated concept. After all, Europe is conglomerating in a very similar way to the way the United States are, and they're much more different there than here.
Posted by: peter
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 13:31
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After all, Europe is conglomerating in a very similar way to the way the United States are, and they're much more different there than here.
And with a very similar setup, midway between one-person-one-vote and one-country-per-vote, to the one being discussed here -- insisted on by the less-populous countries (Denmark, Belgium) to stop their voting power being swamped by the more-populous ones (Germany, UK, France).
Peter
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State's rights may be a slightly outdated concept. After all, Europe is conglomerating in a very similar way to the way the United States are, and they're much more different there than here.
That's twice now that you've suggested that State's rights might be outdated while saying you are not taking sides as to whether State's rights are good or bad. If they are good, I don't see how that could be an outdated concept. Again, it comes down to the intention of the founders of this country wanting to keep the size of Federal government as small as possible.
However, my main concern is that I don't personally care, nor do I think the country as a whole should care, how Europe is structuring itself. It seems to me that one of the main forces behind the formation of the EU is the fall of the Soviet empire and the gap it left in the number of "Super Powers". I think Madeline Albright would tend to agree here. Honestly though, I don't see any reason to model ourselves after the EU. I know there is a tendency to romanticize anything from Europe, "Oh that's a nice house! It looks so European!" but I don't buy it.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 16:45
The reason that I say it may be outdated while not taking sides is that it was obviously more relevant 225 years ago than it is now, but I don't know that it's no longer relevant at all. I have very little knowledge about interstate matters.
And I was just drawing a parallel. If anything, Europe is modelling themselves after us. I was just pointing out that someone else thinks it's a good idea, too. The US when it was conceived was a lot like Europe is now, and I think that most people would agree that it's a reasonable compromise in their case. Maybe in a couple hundred years the concept of individual countries' rights within the EU will seem an outdated notion, too. But it certainly makes sense now.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 18:43
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Europe is conglomerating in a very similar way to the way the United States are, and they're much more different there than here.
And of corse these days it's easier for an American citizen on a rented motorcycle to pass between the German/Swiss border then it is the Nevada/California border...
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Electoral College - 28/09/2004 19:24
Posted by: jimhogan
Re: Electoral College - 29/09/2004 02:37
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If they are good, I don't see how that could be an outdated concept. Again, it comes down to the intention of the founders of this country wanting to keep the size of Federal government as small as possible.
I would guess that the Founders were dealing with Carolinians, Virginians, New Yorkers and such who had fewer reasons to believe that a US/Federal government was a Good Idea (TM) and the notion of Federalism probably only got over that "good idea" hump, and only grudgingly, around 1865.
While I remain wary of the potential of abuse inherent in our government and sickened by much of the corruption (anybody watching the corporate-sponsored travel corruption coverage of Breax and many other senators/reps?) I would still have to say that I am, in ideal terms, a Federalist. Somehow, states' rights don't seem to eliminate corruption.
Anyhow, what I seem to be missing in recent times is -- given the changed circumstances since 1789 -- what is the affirmative case for states' rights? Never mind the "it keeps Federal Government small". What is the affirmative case in it's own right?
And I can only be glad that it wasn't just Wisconsin that landed in Normandy on D-Day.
Posted by: petteri
Re: Electoral College - 29/09/2004 09:49
This site has an Electoral College map that is updated daily with the latest poll numbers. He also has some info on how the Electoral college works, and info on the polls themselves.
take a look at:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Peter
Miami, FL USA
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Never mind the "it keeps Federal Government small". What is the affirmative case in it's own right?
And I can only be glad that it wasn't just Wisconsin that landed in Normandy on D-Day
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. The main roll of Federal government is to offer national security and I think you're comment on Normandy supports that.
Posted by: genixia
Re: Electoral College - 29/09/2004 11:41
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...
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Electoral College - 29/09/2004 13:24
This site is awesome. I've been looking for something like this for a while now.
Posted by: jimhogan
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 00:39
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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!)
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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").
Posted by: Daria
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 00:47
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The main roll
Yeah, you're on a roll now. "role".
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I think you're comment
I am not. What a rude thing to say
Posted by: Daria
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 01:42
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Hey, that's Bitt's job!
Ok, and?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 11:20
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.
Posted by: jmwking
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 11:52
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new job...
Congrats! Whatcha doin'?
-jk
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 12:12
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.
Posted by: jmwking
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 12:21
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
Posted by: Daria
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 12:23
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I have secret deputies.
You should see the badge it comes with....
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 12:46
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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.
Posted by: jimhogan
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 12:47
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More Unix admin for a biotech company.
Oh, very cool. That didn't take long (Whew!) Congratulations.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 12:57
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.
Posted by: jmwking
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 14:05
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two to three tears ago.
Nice typo...
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 30/09/2004 15:40
Heh.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Electoral College - 07/11/2004 18:07
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.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Electoral College - 07/11/2004 20:42
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.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Electoral College - 07/11/2004 21:24
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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.
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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.
Posted by: music
Re: Electoral College - 07/11/2004 23:15
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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.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 00:10
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.
Posted by: music
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 03:32
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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.)
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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.)
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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. 
Posted by: lectric
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 04:44
No idea where to post this, but
Here is a cool results picture.
Posted by: tanstaafl.
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 10:14
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.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 12:33
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.
Posted by: bonzi
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 15:26
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?
Posted by: bonzi
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 15:46
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?
Posted by: music
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 17:49
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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.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 20:15
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".
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 20:55
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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:
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Anorexics never have boyfriends. ... That's one way to know you don't have anorexia, if you have a boyfriend.
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I've never had bulimia!
Posted by: kayakjazz
Re: Electoral College - 08/11/2004 23:26
Anne Coulter:
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I always have trouble telling whether people like her are pulling our leg; I mean, nobody can actually think this, right?
Unfortunately, she's for real; one of the beauties of freedom of speech! We have laws about rabid critters actually biting somebody, but not against foaming at the mouth.