[EM] Action

[hager2002 at lsh107.siteprotect.com]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Narins, Josh wrote:

> I have researched 1860. It's quite a spectacle.
> 
> Lincoln pretty much cheated to get the party nomination over Seward, using
> the corrupt Chicago machine to get the Seward supporters out of the Hall
> during the third(?) ballot. 
> 
> However, without abandoning the electoral college, it appears as if Lincoln
> was the Condorcet Winner in 1860.

It seems that Lincoln was the EV winner but not the popular vote CW -- 
information that was sent me seems to validate that Douglas probably was 
the CW.  But all this means is that had AV been used, Lincoln would have 
won 16 of 33 states but had an EV majority.

> 
> He won all but seven of his electoral votes (4-CA and 3-OR) in states where
> he won over 50% of the vote. This is one election where we can seriously
> doubt that many people were favorite-burying.
>

Apparently so.
 
> This map you might find interesting.
> http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/elections/maps/1860.gif
> Except, of course, it says Texas went to Bell, when in fact it went to
> Breckenridge.

Quite.

> 
> He was also the overall FPTP winner (ignoring the electoral college).
> 
> This is an absolutely awesome telling of the story of the Civil War, for my
> time.
> The links to Horace Greeley editorials was the best part for me. I'm with
> Greeley (i.e. Lincoln should have let the 7 States go, the others would not
> have followed, and they would have probably come back, anyway)
> http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/Background/BackgroundElection.html

I'll check it out.

[...]

> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: hager2002 at lsh107.siteprotect.com
> [mailto:hager2002 at lsh107.siteprotect.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 12:00 PM
> To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
> Subject: Re: [EM] Action
> 
> 
> Has anyone thought of researching the 1860 Presidential race?  Lincoln's
> win with less than 40% of the popular vote gave us the Civil War.  His
> opposition split the vote 3 ways: Stephen A. Douglas was the Democrat,
> John Breckenridge was the Southern Democrat, and John Bell was the
> Constitutional Unionist.  The likelihood that the split would elect
> Lincoln was understood by everyone at the time -- it even led a couple of
> different state parties to "fuse" their Bell and Douglas electors so that
> people who liked either Bell or Douglas voted for the same group of
> electors.  It was the EV equivalent of approval voting introduced as a
> last minute, stop-gap measure.
> 
> Of the dozens of nations that abolished slavery in the 18th and 19th
> centuries (over 20 did it in the 19th), the U.S. was the only one that had
> to fight a Civil War.  All the rest did it peacefully.  The evidence is
> good that slavery would have ended peacefully in the U.S. as well, had the
> political system not melted down.  That meltdown was caused by the
> electoral system.
> 
> I made an attempt to check out the state-by-state voting in the 18 states
> Lincoln won, but could only find Oregon.  That state and its 4 EV's
> clearly went to Lincoln because of split vote.  There were 303 EV's at
> stake, with 152 needed to elect.  Lincoln got 180 EV's so if split vote
> gave him more than 28 EV's, it means that AV or Condorcet would have
> prevented an EV win.  Based upon the regional vote totals, it appears
> that, although Stephen A. Douglas would have been the CW in popular vote,
> Lincoln's regional strength would have thrown the election into the House
> of Representatives.
> 
> Note that the composition of the House of Representatives would have been
> very different had AV or Condorcet been used, so it is almost certain that
> in the House, Lincoln couldn't have gotten the necessary 17 states to
> secure the election.  In the House, the top 3 EV winners would have been
> the choices available to its 33 state delegations.  My expectation is
> that, based upon the regional data, the top 3 would have been Lincoln,
> Douglas, and Bell.  In the real election, the top 3 EV winners were
> Lincoln, Breckenridge, and Bell.  Split vote seemed to kill Douglas in
> both the free and slave regions of the country.  (Douglas was demonstrably
> the only candidate with broad national support.  Bell was clearly
> acceptable nationally, but his support was weaker than Douglas'.)
> 
> The Civil War is of great general interest, and a completely fresh piece
> of historical analysis would almost certainly have a lot of attention.
> It may be that Lincoln's regional strength was such that even AV or
> Condorcet would not have prevented an EV win, but I'd be surprised if that
> were so.  If it were, it would be a compelling argument that the Electoral
> College caused the Civil War, which in and of itself would make the
> research newsworthy.
> 
> My focus has to be on winning the nomination and then winning a long-shot
> third party campaign, so I'm not going to pursue this research as long as
> I'm a candidate.  Is anyone in this group interested?
> 
> Also, if anyone is interested in doing this research, please keep me in
> the loop as far as raw data is concerned.
> 
> --paul
> 
> On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Alex Small wrote:
> 
> > I notice there aren't any takers on joining a short "white paper", written
> > to generate press attention.  I doubt that the press would read the report
> > (do they ever?) but it needs to exist before we can issue press releases.
> > I still think a well-argued proposal for election reform by a group of
> > scientists who know how to sell their ideas could get some attention.
> >
> > In the past couple years research on voting machines at MIT and Caltech
> has
> > gotten some coverage.  Normally the engineers building those machines are
> > about as obscure as the people who design mousetraps.  However, right now
> > this topic has some appeal.  Let's not let it go to waste.
> >
> > I volunteer to research Eastern European elections, on the condition that
> I
> > get volunteers for the other sections:
> >
> > 1.  Abstract
> > 2.  Advantages of Approval over plurality and IRV
> > 3.  Australia
> > 4.  Prospects for reform:  States where voters can bring about local and
> > state-wide ballot measures, states where election laws are at least
> > partially local (easier for grass-roots efforts), and how many state and
> > federal races may have been influenced by a third party in 2000 (even just
> > the number of such races where nobody had a majority is OK).
> >
> > Any takers?
> >
> > Alex
> >
> 
> --
> paul hager		hager2002 at hager2002.org
> 
> "The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
> 			-- Thomas Paine, THE AGE OF REASON
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
paul hager		hager2002 at hager2002.org

"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
			-- Thomas Paine, THE AGE OF REASON