Electoral College sw reform idea

[Steve Eppley]

The Electoral College used in U.S. presidential elections can be
reformed *without* amending the U.S. Constitution, since the 
Constitution is unspecific about how states award their delegates.

Reforming single-winner elections to use Preference Voting without
changing the way the states award their Electoral College delegates
would still leave a strong "lesser of evils" dilemma in the
Presidential voting (and hence a two-party system), since if each
state continues to award all its delegates to the candidate who wins
the state, the House of Representatives will pick the President when
no candidate wins a majority of the College.

To illustrate:  Suppose some voters in California prefer Nader most.
If Nader wins all of Calif's 54 delegates, it might prevent Clinton
from getting 270, which would mean the winner would be chosen by the
House of Representatives.  So those voters might be tempted to rank
Clinton as high or higher than their true favorite Nader to help 
ensure that Clinton wins California and reaches 270.

Here's an idea for a clause which could be included in a state's
citizens' initiative for single-winner preference voting, to
eliminate this Electoral College "lesser of evils" dilemma:

  The states which adopt this clause shall be referred to as the
  Enlightened States (ES).  The states which haven't adopted this
  clause shall be referred to as the Unenlightened States (unES).
  The total number of electoral college delegates in the ES shall 
  be referred to as ESD. 

  When awarding its delegates, the (enlightened) state will use this
  iterative method to decide which candidate wins its delegates:

  REPEAT

    Tally the preferences of all the voters in the entire ES according
    to the algorithm described earlier (Smith-Condorcet?).  This
    produces a tentative winner (TW). 

    IF (ESD plus the delegates won by TW in the Unenlightened States)
       is a majority of the electoral college
    THEN
       Award the delegates to this TW.
    ELSE
       Eliminate TW from the tallying (so the ESD delegates can be
       awarded to a less-preferred candidate who can win).

  UNTIL (the delegates have been awarded) 
       OR (all candidates were eliminated) 

  IF the delegates haven't yet been awarded
  THEN
     Award the delegates to the first TW determined above.

During the last few weeks I've done some reading about arguments
against reforming the Electoral College.  None of what I found was
written with Preference Voting in mind, so to me the reasoning was
either specious or against strawman alternatives. 

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