On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 4:17 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 love that idea Abd ul. It is a far better idea than trying to create a nationwide popular vote compact IMO for exactly the reasoning you mention below and the incredible legal finagling that could result from a close popular vote in all 50 states given the completely different election systems each state uses. I wish the creators of the popular vote compact (that IMO will never pass in enough states) had taken that approach instead, which I would think also has a better political chance of being endorsed in enough states. > > 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! > Today only NE and I think NB have allocated their electors proportionally to the vote in their states. -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
