<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV><STRONG>Steve Eppley</STRONG> wrote (Th. Nov.6):<BR>Hi,<BR><BR>Greg Nisbet wrote on 10/18/08:<BR>-snip-<BR>><I> The Electoral College:<BR></I>><I> This is generally regarded as a bad thing. No one really appears to<BR></I>><I> support it except as an adhoc version of asset voting.<BR></I>-snip-<BR><BR>I don't believe the EC is generally accepted as a bad thing. (I picked <BR>the Subject line above to cite a book by the same name.) Although I may <BR>have been the person who came up with the idea for how to get rid of the <BR>EC without a constitutional amendment (posted in EM many years ago), I <BR>later concluded the EC is better than a national popular vote.<BR>-snip-</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>One widespread "argument" against the EC is that it flouts the commonsense</DIV>
<DIV>fairness axiom that all votes should be weighted equally.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"A national popular vote would exacerbate polarization, since candidates <BR>could/would focus on voter turnout of their "base" instead of having to <BR>appeal to swing voters in a few close states."</DIV>
<DIV><BR>I don't see how preventing the supposed evil of "exacerbating polarisation"</DIV>
<DIV>anything like justifiies the unfairness evil of weighting votes unequally.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And in any case I don't accept the argument. Why wouldn't candidates</DIV>
<DIV>have incentive to appeal to swing voters *across the whole country*??<BR></DIV>
<DIV>Why would anyone go to the trouble of elaborating and proposing a </DIV>
<DIV>relatively complicated ranked-ballot method that is justified by meeting<BR>the Condorcet criterion and Majority for Solid Coalitions and so on,</DIV>
<DIV>and then turn around and suggest that it is desirable that weighting votes<BR>unequally should be maintained, thus ensuring that any voting method</DIV>
<DIV>cannot meet those criteria or even Majority Favourite or Majority</DIV>
<DIV>Loser?</DIV>
<DIV><BR>"A national popular vote would exacerbate the candidates' need for <BR>campaign money, since they would not be able to focus on the few states <BR>that are close. That would make them more beholden to wealthy special <BR>interests.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>A national popular vote would make for a nightmare when recounting a <BR>close election. The recounting wouldn't be confined to a few close states."<BR></DIV>
<DIV>Plenty of other countries directly elect their presidents without any EC,</DIV>
<DIV>and yet it is the US that has these problems (more severely).<BR></DIV>
<DIV>I think the counting problems would be less likely with a national popular<BR>vote, simply because it is very unlikely to be very close. The scenario<BR>that it is very close in some (using the the EC) critical states but not</DIV>
<DIV>close in the overall popular vote is much more likely than it being very</DIV>
<DIV>close in both.</DIV>
<DIV><BR> </DIV>
<DIV>Chris Benham<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR> </DIV></div><br>
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