At 02:31 AM 8/19/2005, Juho Laatu wrote:
US presidential elections are a strange case. I have never really
understood why one elects several people (slate) although the intention is
to give all votes of a state to one candidate. It would be so easy to
elect proportionally n candidates from one list, m candidates from another
etc. Maybe all this comes from days when the states had to send a big
group of men riding to Washington to make sure that the voice of the state
will be heard :-).
Yes. That was the intention, and that was how it worked. As far as I know,
electors may have had opinions, but they were not pledged. They still
aren't pledged to stick with their candidate beyond the first ballot, and
it is not against the law for an elector to vote differently than expected,
and it has rarely happened.
But the party system hijacked the process and made the electoral college,
quite against the clear intent of the Constitution, into a weird
rubber-stamp that in practice reflects the will of the majority party in
each state. This was possible because the Constitution left the method of
the selection of electors to each state, and the majority party in each
state gains by going for all-or-nothing. I don't know if this has ever been
challenged, but it is the true problem with the electoral college, not the
number inequities that are often the focus of criticism. Odd, don't you
think, that those who supposedly believe in original intent would probably
be in the forefront of those opposing the reform of this system?
(Not odd at all, actually. Pure self-interest that prefers to win than to
have a government with true majority support. It is not "Our way" over "My
Way" over "The Minority's Way." And this is why I've claimed that so-called
"strategic voting" is not necessarily insincere, and it is certainly not
insincere to vote Approval, ranking a less-liked candidate equally with
one's favorite.)
Now let me muddy the waters with something doable per New York law. I
will get together with other EM members from New York to put together a
slate of 31 electoral college candidates - they likely see this as the
joke that it is, and we enlist friends if needed for the total.
We file this with myself as candidate for President and someone from
outside NY as VP.
Not believable that my slate gets elected - maybe enough nasty
words get said about the other candidates. I still cannot expect
election as President since I only ran in NY, so my slate could be on
their own as to who to vote for for President.
I didn't respond to this when originally posted, so here is my comment:
Yes, one would not win the Presidency. But if one could win the state, one
would then have a block of pledged electors who might prevent a majority
winner in the first ballot. And then, as I recall, the electors are freed
to vote their consciences, or as they can negotiate. It *could* produce a
better election outcome. In 2000, who knows what would have happened?
More to the point, if voting reform comes to pass and the ways in which
states choose their electors changes (preferably to some kind of PR rather
than to district election, which would not produce as strongly this
desirable effect), then third parties would be at the table, it would
become common for the first ballot to fail, and thus the original intent of
the Constitution would be restored.
And I do not know if the voting methods for selecting electors have ever
been challenged. I think the argument for ruling all-or-nothing
unconstitutional is much stronger than the prevailing opinion that the
Supreme Court issued in 2000 to resolve the election for Bush.
All-or-nothing really does disenfranchise the minority party
state-by-state, and it has more than once resulted in mere plurality
winners and, as we saw in 2000, a winner with a popular vote minority, by a
substantial margin (about 500,000 votes?)
Agreed 100 candidates could happen - but could it be expectable enough to
rate special provisions in law?
Probably not.
The rules for getting on the ballot should not be the same as the rules for
being eligible to win. At present, you can usually vote for anyone you
please. Locally, the rules require that you put a name and address on the
ballot. I don't know if the address is actually legally required, but in
Florida, supposedly, if the intention were clear, nothing but a clear
indication of that intention would be required. However, election officials
there have been known to violate the law, and usually nothing is done about it.
(Thus overvoted ballots with the correct desired vote written in, an
explicit declaration of intent, were discarded as spoiled. Even worse,
*non* overvoted ballots that were ambiguous to some voters, it appears,
with only an additional written-in vote for the *same* candidate,
presumably to make the intention clear, were discarded. There were, I have
seen it alleged, enough of these ballots to swing the election, one more
underreported story out of Florida 2000.)
Yes, the rule of ranking unlisted candidates last is a good guess of what
voters' opinions are.
Unfortunately, it is only a guess. I've argued that it is best to so
interpret blanks, but the intention is far from clear. Blanks can simply
mean "I don't know," which is quite different from "Disliked" or a rating
of zero or "F". On the other hand, we must remember the purpose of
elections, which is to create a government by the consent of the people.
Consent is actually more important, much more important, than Preference.
And if a candidate is not known by, say, a majority of candidates, it can
hardly be said that an election which has elected this candidate because
blanks were ignored has expressed the *consent* of the people. Indeed, in
this case a majority of people (or at least a plurality) will experience a
situation where their favorite candidate lost to this relative unknown.
People have been known to revolt for less cause. Even if everyone who knows
this person thinks, as I wrote on the Range list, he is a saint and a
genius. He might never get a chance to show it!
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