Natapoff's ideas about electoral reform are little more than half-baked opinions dressed up as scholarly wisdom. He calls national popular vote legislation like that passed in Maryland unconstitutional, but anyone who reads the relevant parts of the Constitution will find that a very debatable view -- one that many legal scholars, which Natapoff is not, happen to disagree with. Otherwise, you can be sure the Maryland legislature would never have considered it, much less passed it.
As for the "mathematics of voting power," Natapoff may well have "studied" it, but his analyis is based on an extremely oversimplified view of the U.S. presidential election process and voting behavior. This is just another case of a mathematician who has little understanding of the enormous complexity of U.S. politics and the effects of electoral laws and regulations of different kinds (state and local as well as federal) making pronouncements that don't deserve to be taken very seriously by anyone, much less members of Congress. -Ralph Suter Chris Backert wrote: See this story from MIT News that begins: "If we want individuals and small groups to have the democratic power to elect the president fairly, we must score presidential elections by winner-take-all states--not in a single giant national district too large for small numbers to turn, said Alan Natapoff, a research scientist at MIT who has studied the mathematics of voting power and has testified before Congress concerning the Electoral College." http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/natapoff.html ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
