[EM] electoral college/Serious thoughts

[Dave Ketchum]

On Sat, 01 May 2004 22:16:04 -0500 Adam Tarr wrote:

> Dave Ketchum wrote:
> 
>> Adam seems to dream of some magic that would make an amendment doable:
>>      His magic is not convincing.
> 
> 
> I never said That the change I suggest would make passing an amendment a 
> snap.  You made a specific point, and I responded to it.  You said: 
> [removing the EC] "requires at least some of the low population states 
> to approve a Constitutional amendment that gives them less voice in 
> electing a President."  I proposed a way to eliminate the EC that 
> preserved their current relative share of the votes.  Nothing too fancy, 
> no magic... just responding to a specific point.
> 
>>      Needs clarification as to how 3/N and 54/M are even useful in magic.
> 
> 
> Just scale the number of votes coming out of any given state so that its 
> share of the total votes case is equal to its share of the electoral 
> votes.  So California's voters, after scaling, would always be 54/535 of 
> the total vote, no matter how many ballots were actually cast there.  
> Similarly, North Dakota voters would be 3/545 of the total.
> 

Looking closer, I see that your formulas work to let low-populaiion states 
keep their voting strength, while getting in relative party strength in 
vote counts.

Seems like this would have an uphill battle, for states doing better at 
getting voters to the polls would have each vote count less than in a 
sister state of the same population that had less actual voters.


>> Adam dreams that a near tie in a popular vote national election is not 
>> worth preparing for:
> 
> 
> I never said that.  I said that I wouldn't shy away from a national vote 
> just because a tie MIGHT happen.
> 

Seems like we are hitting the same topic in different words.
      I say getting a nationwide edition of what happened to FL in 2000 
needs AVOIDING.

     You would not worry.


>>      There HAS to be a law somewhere that the bigger the problem 
>> associated with not being prepared, the greater the odds of the event 
>> happening.
>>      Remember that near tie is not an absolute number, but based on 
>> how big a change might result from a recount.
> 
> 
> Yes, of course.  Recounts are still a possibility.  But that's not 
> enough of a reason to eschew a national vote.
> 
> -Adam
> 
> P.S.  Let's remember for a moment that the EC was not implemented as 
> some high-concept method of guaranteeing small states' rights.  It was a 
> method of abstracting out the vote so that the southern states could get 
> some credit for their non-voting slave populations.  Not exactly the 
> proudest legacy left in our system of government.

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
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