[EM] National Popular Vote & Condorcet

[Dave Ketchum]

Quoting the US Constitution:
> Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof  
> may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of  
> Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in  
> the Congress:

So, the states get to provide their electors, however they choose, and  
the electors vote as the Electoral College.

What states generally have done is to see to slates of electors  
getting nominated, and voters approving one such slate.  The compact  
is to see to it that the states will see to electors voting for the  
whoever wins the popular vote.

Seems like they have been assuming the popular vote will be done via  
Plurality - such that the national counting will be simple sums.

For the same reasons that we argue against using Plurality elsewhere,  
I argue for using Condorcet here.


On Jul 4, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Raph Frank wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Dave  
> Ketchum<davek at clarityconnect.com> wrote:
>> I assume more cooperation than this.
>
> I think we are talking "orthogonally".
>
> The NPV plan is that some of the States enter into a compact, and then
> they vote their EC votes as a single unit.
>
> You can reasonably assume that the compact States will conform to an
> agreed way of announcing their results.  However, you can't assume
> that non-compact States will be helpful.
>
> One option is to just exclude non-compact States from participating,
> so they either join the compact or they no longer influence who wins
> the Presidency.

There are two topics:
      If they cooperate as to voting their votes get counted, for the  
compact wants to be convincingly legitimate. States should want to  
cooperate on this because it becomes their only path toward helping  
control who gets elected.
      It matters not whether they join the compact - provided it has  
enough electors controlled.
>
> A more reasonable option is that you make an attempt to incorporate
> the votes from the other States.
>
> You could say that any State who won't provide a condorcet matrix of
> its results in some form is excluded from the final tally. Is that
> what you are proposing?

Not quite, for there is a reasonable conversion from Plurality.  For  
other methods the basic desire is for the state to make a better  
choice of method - or get punished by there being no reasonable  
substitute.
>
>
> Personally, I think it would be better if the compact just had rules
> for conversion into a matrix from a reasonable set of voting methods.
> This also allows the States in the compact to use different methods.

My reading is that the compact was assuming voting was done via  
Plurality - it needing nothing about voting method.

I would like to start with enough states doing Plurality plus, perhaps  
a few doing Condorcet, to encourage others to do Condorcet.  I can  
hope states thinking of IRV or Range can be convinced to join in.   
Specifically for IRV, while the voting is ranked, the method does not  
include counting suitable for my purpose - anyway, let such states  
cooperate a bit.  For Range there can be some debating as to method,  
but the hoped for result is to be rid of Range for this race.

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