[EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad

[Stéphane Rouillon]

Thanks Greg for providing the answer before I did.

An election method has no need to be summable for any efficient team to
make sure it gets the good result.

We should audit the election process. As I said earlier, STV can use 
computers but it can be overchecked easily later using pen, paper and 
phones...

>From: Greg <greg at somervilleirv.org>
>To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
>Subject: Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad
>Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 18:20:08 -0500
>
> > I.e. IRV would necessitate that the federal government be responsible
> > for counting all the nation's ballots if IRV were used to elect the
> > President - so we can expect all IRV/STV proponents to oppose national
> > popular vote for president.
>
>That is incorrect. IRV need only be centrally *coordinated*, not
>centrally counted. As they do in Australia, each state counts and
>publicly reports its first choice totals for each candidate. If any
>candidate has a majority of the first choices, then that candidate
>wins and the election is over. If no candidate has a majority, the
>federal government would direct the states which candidates to
>eliminate. The formula for determining those candidates is public
>knowledge, as are the first choice tallies obviously, so there's no
>concern the federal government would give the states an inaccurate set
>of candidates to eliminate. The states then count the ballots for the
>eliminated candidates and report their new tallies. The process
>continues until a candidate has a majority. The states do the counting
>themselves, and they can delegate to individual counties or cities and
>towns if they wish.
>
>Here's my preference order:
>
>IRV > NPV with top-two runoff > NPV > Electoral College
>
>Greg
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