[EM] NPV vs Condorcet

[Dave Ketchum]

Was:  Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

Is the Electoral College recognized as having lived ot its useful life?  If 
so, perhaps we could do up a worthwhile constitutional amendment.

Should we not desperately try to get FPTP out of this?

I suggest three parts for the heart of this:
      Like NPV we want to count a national election.
      FPTP deserves burial - USE Condorcet.
      Some states may not be up to Condorcet instantly.  Let them stay with 
FPTP until they are ready to move up.  Just as a Condorcet voter can choose 
to rank only a single candidate, for a state full of such the counters can 
translate FPTP results into an N*N array.

DWK

On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:27:50 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> 
>> All of this would be finessed by the National Popular Vote idea: 
>> http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
>>
>> It'd effectively result in a national FPTP plurality election, hardly 
>> ideal, but definitely an improvement.
>>
>> The Electoral College is, btw, a good example of a case in which an 
>> election method has a profound and obvious effect on the nature of the 
>> campaign. US presidential candidates have no motivation to campaign in 
>> California, New York, Texas, and many other states (they show up for 
>> fundraising events, but that's about it). If California is close, 
>> Obama has surely lost the election, and similarly Texas and McCain. 
>> The states in play vary somewhat over time, but I rather imagine 
>> contain a minority of the electorate.
> 
> 
> Could the national popular vote lead to a similar effect, only opposite? 
> The candidates would have an incentive to visit the cities, because they 
> could reach many voters in little time; and thus the effect would move 
> from being biased away from cities (in the large states) to being biased 
> towards them.
> 
> Better might be a weighted vote (but who'd set the weights?).
-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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