On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 04:22:16PM -0400, Bryon Daly wrote: > My main problem with the system as it is now, I suppose, is that if > you're a Kerry supporter in, say, Alabama or a Bush supporter in > Massachusetts, your vote has zero potential for impact on the race, > *even if the race is extremely close from a nationwide perspective*.
I assume you mean to imply "close" between the leading two candidates. But what makes your "race is extremely close from a nationwide perspective" between the leading two candidates criterion special? There are more than 2 people running, but the race is not close between, eg., Nader and Bush. If you change your criterion to make it more equitable, then it would be something like, in an N candidate race, each candidate polls close to 1/N of the votes. > I don't mean this in some nihilistic "it just doesn't matter" kind > of way. What I mean is that a vote for Bush or Kerry in Iowa or PA > is infinitely more important that one in MA/AL. I'd prefer if every > person's presidential vote was of equal value regardless of which > state they lived in. A vote for Bush or Kerry is infinitely more important than one for Nader. WOuld you prefer every person's vote was of equal value regardless of which candidate whose views they share? > The root cause of that problem, as I see it, is that most states award > the winner of the state's popular vote all of the state's electoral > vote. That means that whether only one person voted for the loser or > 49.9% or the people did, its essentially treated as if 100% voted for > the winner as far as the EC is concerned. I don't think that is the root cause of your objection. If you had a nationwide popular election (no EC), and pollsters surveyed a representative sample of 100,000 people just before the election, their survey would have only a 0.3% margin of error. If it came out, say, 50.5% to 49.5%, then everyone voting for the 49.5% candidate would, in high likelihood, be voting for the loser. You could say that the problem is that in a winner takes all election that 49.5% of the votes are wasted unless the race is closer than 0.3%. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but that is very similar to what you are saying above. > It seems to me that with this system, a worst case scenario could > result in up to nearly 75% of the voters voting for the candidate that > loses. That's extremely unlikely, of course, but a possibility that > illustrates the flaw, I think. I think this objection makes more sense than your "root cause" above. I didn't check if your 75% number is correct, but if it is, I would challenge anyone to come up with a rationale for how an election would be "fair" if 75% of the votes cast went to a losing candidate. However, as you say, it would be very unlikely. To improve your criterion, we probably need to quantify it. Something along the lines of "the expected unfairness index" of an election system, which would (roughly) be the sum of (probability_i) x (unfairness_i) for all possible unfair outcomes. Probability can be calculated, but "unfairness" would need to be quantified in some manner, and offhand I don't have a simple way (unless 1 - probability_of_casting_the_deciding_vote summed over all voters would work). Although this line of thought strikes me as rather obvious -- I would bet that a number of political scientists have written papers on something along these lines. > 2) get all the states to abandon the "winner takes all" EC vote > allocation and go to something that allocates votes in a way more > proportional to the popular vote. (Either a straight proportion, or > the by-district thing). In this paragraph, I am going to guesstimate some numbers, but I'd welcome any more accurate and/or supported numbers anyone can supply if I am far off. Currently, I think the pollsters survey around 900 - 3000 people per state per week. This results in a margin of error of 1.8% to 3.3% in estimating the way the state will vote. So, if you live in a small state that is polling, say, 52% to 48%, then most people will feel that their vote "counts" because it is not possible to confidently predict the outcome of the state without surveying a lot more people. In contrast, if we adopted your proposal (2), the outcome will be very similar to your proposal (1) where the nationwide popular vote decides the election (there is a slight difference, as you say, because low population states get a little extra ooomph, but the difference is relatively small). Imagine then that these pollsters poll 100,000 people randomly selected across the country, which is the equivalent number of people as 2000 x 50 states. The result is a margin of error of only 0.3%. As I pointed out above, in a 50.5% to 49.5% race with a 0.3% margin of error, it is very likely that the people voting for the 49.5% candidate are voting for the loser. So you have 49.5% of the people casting a "non-decisive vote". It is not at all obvious that the number of people casting "non-decisive votes" will be less, in the average election, in your proposal 2) as compared to the current Electoral College system. For example, if it frequently turns out that the nationwide popular vote polls at 50.5%/49.5% or more, while many of the most populous states poll at about 51.5%/48.5% and 48.5%/51.5%, then it may be that the current system is better at minimizing the number of "non-decisive votes" than your proposed system. > I hope that clarifies things! Somewhat, but I think the key assumption is what "maximizes the fairness" or "minimizes the unfairness" of an election? It seems to me that the answer is not at all obvious, and I'm still not certain of the criteria you use to judge whether an election is fair. I know that you consider it unfair if 75% of the people vote for the losing candidate, but is that your only criterion for unfairness? -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
