pro electoral college _Discover_ article

[Steve Eppley]

Mike O wrote:
-snip-
>The states with fewest electoral votes are the ones with the most
>electoral votes per person
-snip-

There's been some academic work to show that, empirically, the
voters in the large states have more weight per voter.  I'm not
familiar with the analysis--I encountered a reference to it in a
book by Judith Best which defends the electoral college.  

Either way, though, the electoral college causes the weight per voter
to differ from state to state.

Another point she made is that the electoral college bolsters the
two-party system, and that academics are nearly unanimous in their
support of the two-party system; in my opinion the reasons are
specious or are arguments against strawmen alternatives.

The only argument which seems to make some sense is that by having
competition between a center-left party and a center-right party, 
the winning party will have a mandate to test out its new ideas, so 
the nation will careen back and forth between "accountable" parties--
keeping the ideas that worked and undoing the ideas that failed.
I think one can accept this argument only if one believes that 
alternative government structures (like prop rep and Condorcet-
style centrism) won't be able to experiment with new, reasonable-
sounding ideas.  Which is a hard case to make when you don't limit
the alternatives to strawmen.

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