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The Electoral College
Message posted by Robert Niles on November 9, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)
An interesting discussion on SlashDot, http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/09/1350223&mode=thread, bringing up the supposed mathematical superiority of the electoral college over popular voting. (The discussion references the article at http://www.avagara.com/e_c/reference/00012001.htm.
Any thoughts about this? Just curious....
READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)
Re: The Electoral College
Message posted by JG on November 10, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)
The electoral college favors large, diverse states and to a lesser degree small diverse states. It also isolates 'corruption' so that corrupt political organizations can only 'own' one state. Without the electoral college reform would be much more difficult and there would probably be a dozen 'florida' type scandals during every national election. Think what a political machine that has control of some population and can get out 90% of that vote might be able to do in a national election.
Re: The Electoral College
Message posted by JG on November 10, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)
Another example of 'things are not what they seen', is Bush's spoksman asking Gore to conceed the election and be a hero, while he was actually trying to demoralize the democratic party by having Gore desert his troops while victory might still be possible.
Re: The Electoral College
Message posted by JG on November 14, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)
Using Natapoff's analysis of the problem, a possible partial reform of the electoral college if for people to vote by congressional districts. That is, the candidate who wins the most congressional districts becomes president. Since we already know the vote by congressional districts, the effect of this change can be easily estimated. In fact, it is easy to find out how many congressional ditricts were won by Gore and Bush.
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