Mike O wrote: -snip- >The states with fewest electoral votes are the ones with the most >electoral votes per person -snip- There's been some academic work to show that, empirically, the voters in the large states have more weight per voter. I'm not familiar with the analysis--I encountered a reference to it in a book by Judith Best which defends the electoral college. Either way, though, the electoral college causes the weight per voter to differ from state to state. Another point she made is that the electoral college bolsters the two-party system, and that academics are nearly unanimous in their support of the two-party system; in my opinion the reasons are specious or are arguments against strawmen alternatives. The only argument which seems to make some sense is that by having competition between a center-left party and a center-right party, the winning party will have a mandate to test out its new ideas, so the nation will careen back and forth between "accountable" parties-- keeping the ideas that worked and undoing the ideas that failed. I think one can accept this argument only if one believes that alternative government structures (like prop rep and Condorcet- style centrism) won't be able to experiment with new, reasonable- sounding ideas. Which is a hard case to make when you don't limit the alternatives to strawmen. ---Steve (Steve Eppley [EMAIL PROTECTED])
