Interesting use of Borda count

[Anthony Simmons]

>> From: Forest Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu>
>> Subject: Re: Interesting use of Borda count

>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:

>> > D- The smallest States each have 3 Electoral College votes
(minimum 1 U.S.
>> > Rep seat plus 2 U.S. Senate seats-- U.S.A. Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 1)
>> > ---- even if some disaster were to reduce the State's
population down to 1
>> > voter.
>> >
>> > Thus the voters/ ECV ratios are much higher for many small States than in
>> > larger States (such as California).
>> >

>> True, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the
>> voters in the larger states are in larger blocks, and the
>> larger states do vote as blocks in the EC.

>> So in actual practice the average voters in the smaller
>> states have about one third of the voting power of the
>> average voters in the larger states.

>> See the discussion of this result at the URL

>> http://www.cs.unc.edu/~livingst/Banzhaf/#results

Hmmm, I'm a bit short on time presently, so I haven't worked
this out, but it would seem that by the same criteria, when
states are considered individual voters in the EC, that
smaller states have more power, per voter, than larger
states.  This at the same time that individuals in the small
states have less power than their counterparts in large
states.

Of course, while this might be peculiar, there's nothing
about it that requires that the power of a state be the sum
of the power of the individual voters.