On Apr 13, 2007, at 2:37 , 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
The claims refer to both "voters" and "state". The title says that
voters win but most of the text talks about states. Maybe Florida was
proud that they decided what the outcome of the presidential election
would be, but I'm not so sure if the democratic voters of Florida
were happy with the outcome of the election.
In politics parties often want all their representatives to vote the
same way. This gives them in some sense more power. In the
presidential election example it is however probably more important
to the voters to elect the best president than to form a state policy
and then (all people of the state to) stick to that (to see the power
of their state). In the world of parties this kind of party internal
discipline could be justified by some other higher goal. If for
example the party wants to launch a revolution, then lesser
individual opinions could be sacrificed to achieve the higher goal
first (and thereby a better world where also those sacrificed
individual goals could now maybe be easily achieved). But in the
discussed case I didn't see any this kind of higher goals.
In addition to the "higher goals" the party (or state) internal
discipline may serve the needs of the party management. If all the
representatives vote as the party management tells them to, that sure
increases the power of the management. But not necessarily the power
of the representatives themselves.
The states could benefit also in other more indirect ways that just
electing the best president. The states could e.g. get some promises
during the campaign (and maybe even some more concrete benefits
between the elections). States whose opinion is considered decided
already before the election may get less promises/benefits than
states that whose opinion can still be influenced. This gives more
power/benefits to the "undecided" states, more to the big ones than
to the small ones.
It may be that the majority in each state that got all the votes of
the state is not interested in changing the current practice of that
state in most cases. But this fact and other discussion points above
do not indicate any clear reasons for the citizens in general to
support the state level "winner take all" practice.
Juho
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