At 01:44 AM 4/27/2006, Dave Ketchum wrote: >Now disagreed: > Who is third in a state could be a serious contender in others.
Absolutely. > EVs for a minor candidate COULD be pledged as to who to vote for if >their primary candidate lost. Yes. Or, alternatively, if it is the electors being trusted by the public, themselves, rather than their pledges (pledges were *not* part of the system as designed), I would presume that a trustworthy elector would not waste his or her vote if the favorite candidate was not going to win. In my view, it is pledges which are a major part of the problem. If an elector sees that a first-ballot victory is highly likely to go to a least-favored candidate, why shouldn't that elector be free to vote for the favorite of the top two? Pledges are like pledged proxies, i.e., no better than remote voting. The point of the College was to have a deliberative process, something that was totally frustrated by the state legislatures, acting, at each time, in the interest of the majority party in the state. Cumulatively, as no action was taken to stop it, the states rather quickly fell in line; by the end, it was a *necessity* to take such action. Until and unless a better global solution came along. And a plurality party is not motivated to fix the system. It would take, as I explained, a coalition of parties and interests to do it, with measures that are designed to ultimately produce the desired effect (which is essentially a PR College) without doing harm along the way. Constitutionally, this is quite possible. All it takes is will. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info