[EM] MIT News: Math of elections says voters win with 'winner take all'

[Juho]

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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