Antonio Oneala wrote: > The electoral college already allows candidates to withdraw their support and > give it > to other candidates.
That "support" would be non-binding on the Electors. Also, some states have passed a law requiring their Electors to vote for the state's winner. I don't believe its constitutionality has been tested in court, but until it's found unconstitutional or repealed it will act as a deterrent against Electors voting for the "right" candidate. Uncertainty about this could deter potential candidates from running, too. > Actually, this is probably one of the main reasons the founders > wanted an electoral college. The main thing that messed up here was the > at-large > allocation of votes that most states chose - therefore, a person with a > plurality > usually gets a landslide in the college, and no redistribution is necessary. -snip- Some people don't consider the Electoral College winner-take-all within most states to be messed up. Here are 2 reasons to prefer winner-take-all: 1. If states allocate their Electoral College delegates proportionally, then every state would be a campaign battleground. The cost of campaigning would be much greater. 2. There would be an incentive to ask for recounts in all states. What I propose the states do is tweak the winner-take-all formula so that instead of a sharp reversal when a candidate's total goes from 50% - 1 to 50% + 1, there'd be a linear change within the 49% to 51% region. For instance, if a candidate receives 51% or more, she'd win all the state's Electoral College votes. If she receives 50%, she'd win half the state's EC votes. 50.5% would win 3/4 of the state's EC votes, etc. With a formula like this, recounts within a state wouldn't swing the state's allocation by more than about 1 EC vote, so there'd rarely be an incentive to ask for a recount. That's not a general formulation; it assumed only 2 candidates competing. But it can easily be generalized so that the allocation of EC votes would be linear when the top 2 candidates are close to each other, and otherwise all would be allocated to the top candidate. (Apologies if I'm still being unclear.) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
