At 02:29 PM 5/3/2006, Dave Ketchum wrote: >Presently, with a couple small state exceptions, each state awards all its >votes to the candidate doing best in that state.
Yes. >Above you propose one state volunteering to award its votes based on a >formula that could cause the winner to change from the candidate that that >state's voters voted for to a different candidate. Yes. >I would not expect any state to volunteer to obey such a formula. Such an action could be favored by a majority of voters in the state. Not in all states. I would not expect states where this was not true to adopt the reform easily. Note that there is a current reform movement that would do exactly this, it's been getting quite a bit of press, and it has Republican and Democratic politicians behind it. This is a similar proposal, but it basically bypasses the electoral college as a true part of the process; if successful, the college would become a rubber stamp for the popular vote. Almost always. This other proposal has a state decide to select its electors as pledged to vote according to the national popular vote. The problem with a single state reforming to select electors proportionally to the vote is that this could have the effect of awarding the election to a candidate who was *not* the popular vote winner. This has been the big obstacle. Both my proposed reform and the currently active reform movement (essentially a compact between states, to become effective when enough states have joined such that a majority of electors will be so generated) involve using the pledged elector system -- clearly constitutional -- to eliminate the widely acknowledged inequity in the existing system. So what if some states resist? *All it takes is enough states to create an electoral college majority.* And the reform under way, in some senses, is better than what I proposed: it is fine-grained, since it produces an election result without depending on state electoral college assignments. What remains, however, is what happens if the electors actually have to vote; for example, the winner dies before the election. Who would they vote for? Or the popular vote is unclear. How would the electors determine the vote. A good initiative would consider all these things. My preference is to keep the deliberative College as it was designed. Among other things, the College could create Condorcet results, properly constituted. But that's also possible in this popular reform, for how the winner of the popular vote is determined might not be the simpleplurality winner. What if overvoting were allowed and the winner were the plurality winner under those circumstances? But I'm not sure it would be tactically worth complicating things at this point. The point is that what has traditionally been considered politically impossible, reforming the College, actually could be relatively easy. "Relatively" is used advisedly. It is not at all clear which party, if any, would be favored by this change. Many of the sponsors are Republicans.... but I don't think this means that they think it would favor their party. >What I see below is mechanics of such volunteering, but nothing convincing >as to what would get a state to agree to do it. As an initiative, a majority of voters could implement it. This would be easier if a majority of voters were affiliated with other than the plurality party, which situation does exist in some states. And because, as constituted, the reforms do not injure the popular vote winner, many supporters of the majority party might approve of it as well. It's not really against their party, it is only against candidates winning who did not win the popular vote. It's actually pretty clear, Dave. Please tell me why, if you think it is the case, a state, under the conditions I mentioned, would *not* want to implement this? Remember the conditions under which it would make a difference: A candidate wins in the state, but loses in the popular vote. A candidate might be winning in the state with less than a majority of the popular vote, easily. And quite possibly a majority of voters would prefer the alternate winner, who only lost in that state because of vote-splitting. There is no reason to suppose that this would injure a particular party, and it would be done long in advance of an actual election. >There is a difference: > A candidate campaigns promising actions if elected - trouble enough, >but there can be hope. > An elector campaigns claiming to know how to select a satisfactory >candidate - making it even more difficult for the voter to sort out >getting the best candidate via picking an elector. An elector need not make campaign promises at all. The idea elector is simply someone who is widely considered trustworthy. Dave's thinking here is based on the idea that the voter is trying to determine, directly, the ultimate outcome. But that is actually an impossible goal. Determining a member of the set of people who then determine the winner is a more realizable goal. I actually think that candidates would make good electors. What if candidates could directly receive a state's electoral votes, as electors? (This would mean that non-state residents would have to be eligible, and it would mean that a single person might be exercising more than one state's votes, but it would solve this alleged "sorting out" problem. Vote for the candidate you prefer, your vote will not be wasted! >Another detail [in the original conception] is that it WAS NOT >POSSIBLE for candidates to have the >contact with the voters that is now expected. What a joke! How much contact does, say, GW Bush have with me? This "contact" is an illusion, a one-way presentation of a carefully crafted image.... If you actually use the College, the College could meet with the candidates, face-to-face. It could interview them. I think one of the basic defects in our democracy is the lack of deliberative process in elections.... ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info