At 11:34 PM 1/15/2010, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On Jan 15, 2010, at 7:51 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
> Imagine sending all your ballots nationwide to DC for manual counting
> to check the outcome of a Presidential election. We'll simply let the
> GW administration, for instance, count the results in his own IRV
> election!
That's something of a non sequitur. Anyone with all the ballot files
(every state, for example, or anyone else) could do the count.
It may depends on what office(s) are being elected. States are free,
supposedly, to select their electors by any method they choose. STV
is actually a decent method for that. This election would be
state-wide. But it ain't gonna happen unless some negotations and
arrangements are successful. There is a way to get from here to
there, but it must address the problem that the majority party in
each state will see that the all-or-nothing assignment of electors
state by state helps it, and that this is somewhat balanced and
somewhat fair when disparity, the loss of representation in the
electoral college by all-or-nothing, balances out.
So a Democratic state, for example, if it decides to generously
divide up its electors fairly, will quite accurately perceive that it
will be helping the Republican to win, and perhaps unfairly, if there
is no reciprocation. There is a way around this through conditional
implementations that only divide the electors when this actually will
produce a fair result based on overall proportional representation in
the electoral college. Otherwise it reverts to all-or-nothing, or
something in between.
I strongly dislike basing the national result on direct popular vote,
for two reasons, one of which is the election integrity problem.
Ideally, the electoral college would return to its intended role,
where electors could cast their votes *independently,* and were
elected based on the trust of the public in them *personally*. If you
want to only vote for a Green elector, fine. But let your elector
cast his or her vote in the College according to what will produce
the best result in the end, as seen by that person. Choose well.
Part of the problem with the present system is that we are electing
rubber-stamps, then we are surprised when rubber-stamp elections don't go well!
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