Tie-breakers

[Steve Eppley]

Bruce A wrote:
-snip-
>EC should be as you defined it whenever there are one or more
>candidates that are mathematically capable of winning as you
>described.  However, if there are no candidates that are capable of
>winning in this manner, then EC should select all of the candidates
>running in the election as its winners.  This allows all of the
>electoral votes of the reformed states to go to their choice
>according to M.

But that complicates the definition of the function, and for what
gain?  The electoral college is deadlocked and moot no matter how the
reformed states award their delegates.  So why do you say "should"?

I note Donald's agreement with Bruce--he wrote that this would allow
the House to take the reformed states' recommended winner into account.
But the House will already be able to take the ballots of the 
reformed states into account, since part of the proposal is that
the reformed states will publish their ballots, so the 50 king-makers
members can calculate the combined recommended winner if they want, 
or do something else (like calculate each state's winner) if they want.

>Technically, I disagree with your statement that "EC is a function
>which takes as input not only the candidates and ballots 
-snip-

Right, it doesn't make use of the ballots.  It does use the candidate
list, the number of delegates already won and the number of delegates
still to be awarded. 

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)