[EM] Electoral College (was Re: Voting by selecting a published ordering)

[Dave Ketchum]

On Wed, 03 May 2006 15:10:41 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

 > At 02:29 PM 5/3/2006, Dave Ketchum wrote:
 >
 >> Presently, with a couple small state exceptions, each state awards all its
 >> votes to the candidate doing best in that state.
 >
 >
 > Yes.
 >
 >> Above you propose one state volunteering to award its votes based on a
 >> formula that could cause the winner to change from the candidate that that
 >> state's voters voted for to a different candidate.
 >
 >
 > Yes.
 >
 >> I would not expect any state to volunteer to obey such a formula.
 >
 >
 > Such an action could be favored by a majority of voters in the state.
 > Not in all states. I would not expect states where this was not true to
 > adopt the reform easily.


HOW do you get a majority of voters in a state to volunteer to let anyone
other than whoever they voted for become winner???

 >
 > Note that there is a current reform movement that would do exactly this,
 > it's been getting quite a bit of press, and it has Republican and
 > Democratic politicians behind it. This is a similar proposal, but it
 > basically bypasses the electoral college as a true part of the process;
 > if successful, the college would become a rubber stamp for the popular
 > vote. Almost always.


To change the law for the whole nation is a possibility - assuming a
sensible proposal can be agreed to.

Also leads to MASS RECOUNTING anytime you get near a tie.

 >
 > This other proposal has a state decide to select its electors as pledged
 > to vote according to the national popular vote.
 >
 > The problem with a single state reforming to select electors
 > proportionally to the vote is that this could have the effect of
 > awarding the election to a candidate who was *not* the popular vote
 > winner. This has been the big obstacle.
 >
 > Both my proposed reform and the currently active reform movement
 > (essentially a compact between states, to become effective when enough
 > states have joined such that a majority of electors will be so
 > generated) involve using the pledged elector system -- clearly
 > constitutional -- to eliminate the widely acknowledged inequity in the
 > existing system.
 >
 > So what if some states resist? *All it takes is enough states to create
 > an electoral college majority.*
 >
 > And the reform under way, in some senses, is better than what I
 > proposed: it is fine-grained, since it produces an election result
 > without depending on state electoral college assignments.
 >
 > What remains, however, is what happens if the electors actually have to
 > vote; for example, the winner dies before the election. Who would they
 > vote for? Or the popular vote is unclear. How would the electors
 > determine the vote.
 >
 > A good initiative would consider all these things. My preference is to
 > keep the deliberative College as it was designed. Among other things,
 > the College could create Condorcet results, properly constituted. But
 > that's also possible in this popular reform, for how the winner of the
 > popular vote is determined might not be the simpleplurality winner. What
 > if overvoting were allowed and the winner were the plurality winner
 > under those circumstances? But I'm not sure it would be tactically worth
 > complicating things at this point. The point is that what has
 > traditionally been considered politically impossible, reforming the
 > College, actually could be relatively easy. "Relatively" is used advisedly.


You write "initiative" as an available tool.  Where is this true?

 >
 > It is not at all clear which party, if any, would be favored by this
 > change. Many of the sponsors are Republicans.... but I don't think this
 > means that they think it would favor their party.
 >
 >> What I see below is mechanics of such volunteering, but nothing convincing
 >> as to what would get a state to agree to do it.
 >
 >
 > As an initiative, a majority of voters could implement it. This would be
 > easier if a majority of voters were affiliated with other than the
 > plurality party, which situation does exist in some states. And because,
 > as constituted, the reforms do not injure the popular vote winner, many
 > supporters of the majority party might approve of it as well. It's not
 > really against their party, it is only against candidates winning who
 > did not win the popular vote.
 >
 > It's actually pretty clear, Dave. Please tell me why, if you think it is
 > the case, a state, under the conditions I mentioned, would *not* want to
 > implement this?
 >
 > Remember the conditions under which it would make a difference: A
 > candidate wins in the state, but loses in the popular vote. A candidate
 > might be winning in the state with less than a majority of the popular
 > vote, easily. And quite possibly a majority of voters would prefer the
 > alternate winner, who only lost in that state because of vote-splitting.
 >
 > There is no reason to suppose that this would injure a particular party,
 > and it would be done long in advance of an actual election.
 >
 >
 >> There is a difference:
 >>       A candidate campaigns promising actions if elected - trouble enough,
 >> but there can be hope.
 >>       An elector campaigns claiming to know how to select a satisfactory
 >> candidate - making it even more difficult for the voter to sort out
 >> getting the best candidate via picking an elector.
 >
 >
 > An elector need not make campaign promises at all. The idea elector is
 > simply someone who is widely considered trustworthy. Dave's thinking
 > here is based on the idea that the voter is trying to determine,
 > directly, the ultimate outcome. But that is actually an impossible goal.
 > Determining a member of the set of people who then determine the winner
 > is a more realizable goal.


How, other than campaigning, does a voter sort out which elector
candidates qualify as "trustworthy"?

 >
 > I actually think that candidates would make good electors. What if
 > candidates could directly receive a state's electoral votes, as
 > electors? (This would mean that non-state residents would have to be
 > eligible, and it would mean that a single person might be exercising
 > more than one state's votes, but it would solve this alleged "sorting
 > out" problem. Vote for the candidate you prefer, your vote will not be
 > wasted!
 >
 >
 >
 >> Another detail [in the original conception] is that it WAS NOT
 >> POSSIBLE for candidates to have the
 >> contact with the voters that is now expected.
 >
 >
 > What a joke! How much contact does, say, GW Bush have with me? This
 > "contact" is an illusion, a one-way presentation of a carefully crafted
 > image....


Whatever you call it, Bush has a lot more possibilities than Thomas
Jefferson could possibly manage.

 >
 > If you actually use the College, the College could meet with the
 > candidates, face-to-face. It could interview them. I think one of the
 > basic defects in our democracy is the lack of deliberative process in
 > elections...


This use of the college is what would have been possible per the

Constitution - even candidates meeting with electors in multiple places.

-- 
   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.
                   If you want peace, work for justice.