Electoral College again

Great Debates
81

My skepticism of the stated reasons people support the electoral college is growing.

People have claimed that Gore somehow ignored the small-population middle states. If he did, it would be logical to expect that he’d lose votes to the guy to his left as well as the guy to his right, but Nader did not do particularly well in small-population middle states - he did well in the same coastal states that Gore carried. The real reason the mountain and plains states went for Bush was that they preferred him ideologically.

I honestly don’t know what to make of the “land area” argument. People who occupy more land should have more votes? Certainly, I think there is an element of being fooled by pretty colors on a map. On the whole, though I think this is just another thin veil. In reality candidates have never completely ignored the middle of the country. An argument could be made that William McKinley did - his opponent, William Jennings Bryan, ran a very western-oriented campaign. Bryan also won the whole of the south, but the electoral college still allowed him to lose. Why aren’t the small-state advocates complaining? Because Bryan was a Democrat.

The last two (of three) runner-up Presidents have been Republicans, who won at the expense of Democrats who won more popular votes. So is it a coincidence that people who favor the electoral college are just GOP partisans? Of course not. The same goes for the bizarre way the House elects a President in the event that no candidate gets a majority of the electors - you favor it because it will help your man.

The EC focuses most attention not on the small states or the large states but on the states which are nearly evenly divided. Gore didn’t focus all his attention on New York, because he felt like he had that state sewn up (it went for Dukakis over Bush in 1988 and has gone the same way ever since). In truth, I’m not sure what is so great about Presidents focussing attention on states anyway. Nixon won in 1968 without carrying a single major urban area (I’ve always wondered what was the largest city he won); it’s not like he spent his Presidency ignoring the cities.

If candidates forgot about closely-contested states, would this somehow mean they were ignoring the mountain and plains states? How could it? Let’s assume the candidates talk about social security … are there social security recipients in Wyoming? Let’s assume the candidates talk about education … are there school children in Nebraska?

The argument that the EC is good because the people can’t be trusted is weakest and most telling. If you don’t want people to have anything to do with it, why are you happing with them electing electors? Just because some formula distorts the result? Wouldn’t it be better just to take voting rights away from people you think are stupid? I don’t buy it. Republicans like the EC because it is a way of shoring up the power of low-turnout Southern states which support their people. Of the five states with the lowest turnouts (as measured as a fraction of the voting age population) in 1996, four of them (Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and Nevada) went Republican in 2000 (Hawaii went Democratic). (I think these four also went Republican in 1996.) Of the five states with lowest turnouts as measured as a percent of registered votes in 1996, four went Republican this year (Alaska, Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas; Michigan went Democratic).

82

2sense –

Thank you for correcting me on the ratification process.

My reference to other “non-democratic” procedures in our government was to make the point that majority rule is not the sacred, fundamental tenent of our political system which many anti-EC arguments seem to imply. If one argues for the abolition of the EC on these grounds, one must extend the logic of that argument to include the abolition of the Senate, the abolition of the Presidential veto, significant overhaul of the amendment process – in short, a complete reworking of many of the checks and balances that make our system work. Perhaps there are some who would favor all of that. I would not.

Perhaps our dispute over “power” is a matter of semantics. Allow me to illustrate my meaning with a small example:

The nation of Beruangia – a small but beautiful land at the bottom of the Marianas Trench – consists of three states, unimaginatively named A, B, and C. Each is home to 1 million voters. There are two political parties in Beruangia: the Reds and the Blues. Imagine you are a voter in C. In a direct election for President, your vote is one voice out of 3 million. Pretty simple.

Now, imagine a districted election. (I know you’d rather not, but humor me.) Each state has 1 electoral vote. A candidate for President must therefore win two states. As a citizen of C, your vote in the districted election is one voice out of one million.

With three states, there are 8 possible ways the election could turn out (3 states, 2 parties, means 2 raised to the 3rd power, or 8 possible outcomes). In two of those outcomes, states A and B have both voted Red. It doesn’t matter what C does. In two other outcomes, A and B have both voted Blue. Again, it doesn’t matter what C does. But, in the final four possible outcomes, A and B are split. By going one way or the other, C will determine the winning coalition.

So, adding up all eight possible outcomes, we find 8 million votes coming from C, and 8 of them coming from you. 4 of your votes were cast in elections where C didn’t really make any difference; but the other 4 were cast in elections where C represented the deciding margin. Thus, you cast 4 “powerful” votes out of a total of 8 million C votes, which works out to one power-vote in two million – clearly better than one in three million. This is what I mean when I talk about “power.”

Obviously, American states are not all equal. But if you invent a country with unequal states and do the math, you’ll find the same thing: “power,” as I have defined it above, increases for all voters, in large states or in small. Granted, it tends to rise faster for smaller states than for larger ones, but see my comments a few posts back about making allowances to protect the weak.

I’ve written a spreadsheet to figure all this out. Obviously there are limits – with 50 states and the D of C, an American election can go one of 2.25 quintillion different ways, and my spreadsheet only has some 16,000 lines. And dealing with such a small number of states, it’s very easy to come up with an extreme scenario (a single state controls 40% of the EC; a state is so small it is never needed to form a winning coalition). Nevertheless, barring those extremes (which do not occur in our system), the EC always increases the power of all voters.

(An interesting side note, which I hope to explore further soon: as you add senators, the difference between large states and small states in terms of increase-in-power shrinks. Once you hit four senators per state, all states increase the same amount. I’ll have to play around with that some more.)

You made one other point about districting focusing geographic power. (The EC turns certain states into “battlegrounds,” while a direct election frees candidates to go anywhere and everywhere. Forgive me if this is an inaccurate summary of your position.) I disagree. All politics is local politics, because all voters live somewhere. Candidates will campaign where it does them the most good. In a districted election, that means “battleground” states. Those battlegrounds change every four years. (Florida was certainly not this close in '96 or '92.) Over the course of a couple decades, pretty much every state will take its turn as a must-win, and will get its share of attention.

Without districts, candidates will focus solely on large cities. Why? Another example, this one real. The greater Chicago area, which tends to go Democratic, has a little better than 2 million voters. Wyoming, which tends to go Republican, has a little better than 200,000. If I’m Bush, trailing dreadfully in Chicago 70% to 30%, where am I going to campaign? In Chicago, of course. Because getting even an extra 1% in Chicago is the same as getting an extra 10% in Wyoming. The 50 largest metro areas in the country hold well over half the population. And the list of big metro areas does not change every 4 years.

Thus, the EC forces candidates to get out to different areas of the country every four years. A direct election forces candidates to visit the same cities over and over every four years.

BorisB –

I, for one, am pro-EC yet not a Bush supporter.

If by “the people can’t be trusted” you mean the voters aren’t intelligent enough to make the choice, I don’t believe anyone is arguing that. (Well, there was one sarcastic comment about pro wrestling. I’ll give you that.) Certainly I am not, and I hope nothing I have said has given that impression.

However, we are saying that a simple majority (or, more likely, plurality) is far too often based on a simple appeal. We believe it is better for this diverse nation of ours to choose a President who can win a complex majority, winning several different elections by appealing to several distinctly different constituencies.

83

**Beruang **:

The democratic ideal is that everyone should have an equal say in what the government does. You may choose to hold this as a sacred fundamental tenet if you wish but you are not debating with wide-eyed idealists. It is understood that this is unworkable in the real world. Consulting with everyone and forming a consensus before any action is taken would be so slow and burdensome that such a system is ridiculous. So instead we choose representatives to act for us. No one here is arguing that majority rule can’t be set aside. It must be. We simply remain unconvinced that there is any reason to in this situation.

Since our votes represent our power over the government, elections are a particularly sensitive area. Since we must entrust our authority to our representatives it is important that we may do so in an equitable manner. This need not lead to further change in the way our representatives actually go about governing, though I would hope that it did. The question of who should govern is distinct from how they should govern.

I am still pondering the mathematics of your Beruangia example, but it may be beyond me. I grasp the point you are demonstrating but I’m not convinced. I did notice that you didn’t include the automatic 2 votes per state that the EC provides.

84

2sense –

I apologize if I misunderstood your or anyone else’s positions. But re-reading the posts in this thread and others, I see references to “one man, one vote” and “unequal power” popping up often enough to make the civics lesson, in my opinion, necessary.

As for Beruangia, it doesn’t much matter in this example whether you view each district as having 3 representatives and no senators, or 1 representative and 2 senators. The math works out the same: 1 million voters and 3 electoral votes per district. Playing around with other scenarios, I have found that adding “senators” tends to add power to all states, though admittedly not at an even rate.

85

2sense:

The EC doesn’t provide an automatic 2 votes per state,it provides a MINIMUM of THREE votes per State. I swear, I wish you’d at least read the Consitution before discussing the thing!

Next: None of the Congressional Districts is represented by a Senator. Get that? NONE! The individual districts are represented, individually, by ONE REPRESENTATIVE. The States are EACH represented in the SENATE by EXACTLY TWO SENATORS. It’s not that hard a concept.

86

2sense:

To use your un-GD-like vernacular, I believe YOUR assertion is bullshit.

There is not much “splittling of urban votes with the opponent” going on in this election. Gore is taking most of the city votes by a wide margin.

Look at the populations of the states in the middle of the country (the ones that all went to Bush). The population of a few of our biggest cities outnumbers them all, put together. Period.

A candidate without an EC could tailor all of his policies and spending to urban residents and go on TV saying, “I don’t give a damn about anyplace in this country with a population under 900,000,” and, conceivably, win.

Now that I think about it, isn’t that what Gore did? :wink:

As for my assertion about the county vote nationwide:

Sure sounds like residents 80 percent of the nation’s land mass supported Bush to me. Do you suck at math worse than I do? That’s saying something.

Is that counties statistic more important than the popular vote? Nope. Never said that it was. It just helps demonstrate the importance of the EC. The little states count, moreso than they would in a straight popular vote.

As one TV pundit put it, if Gore becomes president and thinks he has some sort of national mandate, he would do well to remember that, as he jets from D.C. to L.A., the entire area he is flying over supported his opponent.

87

OK, people, let’s calm down. Great Debates is just one step above the Pit, and I really don’t want to see our debate end up there.

88

Please add the missing “t” to “Consitution” to read “Constitution.” Thanks.

89

**Beruang **:

No need to apologise. I didn’t think you were misrepresenting anyone’s position. I was just trying to move the discussion along by pointing that we ( or I, at least ) could be convinced that the electoral collage is beneficial even though it is not strictly democratic.
And what is the problem with “one man, one vote”? This seems to me to be a pithy slogan to represent the democratic ideal.

Off to Beruangia. The thought experiment is designed to illuminate the election of a head of state so the number of representatives isn’t important, right? Since each state in your nation has an equal population and the same number of electoral votes then they can just be simplified to one vote per state, as you did in determining the 8 possible outcomes. Beruangia doesn’t represent the US closely enough to discuss the problem of nonproportional representation. Its representation is proportional.

I have a problem with the individual voter’s “power”. It looks like you are defining a powerful vote for an individual as one that is in a swing district. Well, which one is the swing district? If A goes for Alice and B goes for Bob then C looks like the swing district. But if C also votes for Bob then is it the swing district or is B? Both elections occur at the same time. It looks to me like the only way to have a “weak” vote is to happen to live in a state where more people vote for the eventual loser. Again, my poor math skills may be gumming up the works here but it looks kinda arbitrary to me. The “powerful” votes are powerful compared to what?
Also, if there were only one election district then wouldn’t that mean that everyone’s vote was automatically “powerful”.

90

It’s nice to hear from you again.
You’re still enjoying a comfortable retirement on your island paradise, I hope.

The electoral collage provides for 1 Elector for each congressman a state currently has ( I’m ignoring DC here ). Just to show you that I have been paying attention, here is the relevent article:

Each state has 2 Senators but the number of Representatives in the House differs. So the number of Electors voting because of that State’s Housemembers varies but each State automatically gets 2 Electoral votes for its Senators. That the minimum electoral vote per state is three is a completely seperate issue. My concern is that the Senate is nonproportional to the populations of the States and tying the election to it makes the EC nonproportional as well.
I hope this helps.

I can see by the generous use of capitalization that you think this a terribly important point but I must admit that I am baffled as to why. I will happily agree with your explanation of how things work but I don’t understand why you bother to explain it. I haven’t been discussing the Congress in this thread. Perhaps you could quote from the post where you got the impression that I misunderstood this rather obvious point.
Some context here would be welcome.

91

**Milossarian **:

You were right to call me on the point of order. I agree that I violated the netiquette of our fine forum here and I apologise. While I don’t agree that the use of “bullshit” is inappropriate in and of itself, it should be followed by a definative refutation. Alas, my passion was a bit stronger than my argument. These are interesting times. By my next post I was calm enough to moderate my characterization of your “vast swath of red” exaggeration ( which was more deserving of the term “bullshit” ).

I do see the splitting of the urban votes under a direct election. Just because it didn’t happen much in this election does not mean that it cannot. As I mentioned earlier, blacks don’t vote Republican very damn often, so that had an effect on the Gore votes. To restate one of my objections to the “urban domination” viewpoint, having those big cities be winner take all adds to their electoral power. The electoral vote represents not just those who voted for the winner but also everyone else, whether they voted or not. This is counterbalanced by the fact that the States with smaller populations have extra electoral votes but if we removed both might it not balance out?

All this talk of campaigning is really just a red herring. How manny people actually would complain that they aren’t seeing enough campaign commercials? I certainly have learned not to believe politicians when they make promises. The issue is representation. Does the candidate represent enough of your views that you can follow him/her? I don’t feel that our current governments are focussed on representing the rural areas or the cities. It is the suburbs of America that have political clout.

It depends on which few states and which few cities you are looking at.
How many cities would you have to add together to equal the population of the rest of the nation?

While I don’t doubt that a politician could be found that is stupid enough to try this, the fool would get what he deserved. If you wish to marginalize a group it is necessary to first demonize them so people have an excuse to support or ignore what is going on. That’s why conservatives often speak of “welfare chiselers”.

As I alluded to earlier in this post, your exaggeration was the “With the exception of a few blue blotches around big cities for Gore, the entire continental U.S. was a vast swath of red for Bush.” remark. My lack of understanding of math is pretty sad, though.

If a vote by counties is less important than the popular vote then I don’t understand why a vote by States should be.

True.
My problem is that those States are “little” because they have less people in them. So the residents of those States get more of a say in the election than some like me who lives in Pennsylvania.

BTW- Here is a better look at the vote by county of the continental US.

92

Just for a change, I’ll answer your questions in reverse order.

Yes, in a direct election, all votes are automatically “powerful.” My contention is that the EC makes all votes more powerful. It does this in two ways. One is to concentrate power into blocs – states – rather than diffusing it through the populace. By banding together, the citizens of a state have more impact on the outcome of the election than they would as individuals. Secondly, the EC distributes the power, giving more to smaller states (though larger states also see an increase), thus assuring that the weaker members of our republic are not drowned out by the more populous regions.

Now, what is “power”? You are correct: I define “power” as the ability to influence the outcome of the election. The algorithm I use is: add up all the electoral votes for both sides. Then, for each state, subtract its E-votes. Does either side still have enough E-votes to win? If so, then that state, by itself, is not enough to swing the election.

Let us take this year as an example. Florida, obviously, is a swing state. Whichever candidate wins Florida, wins the White House. But there are plenty of other swing states as well; Florida is just the last one to get its totals in.

Let’s say Gore wins Florida. But let’s also say that, in some bizzaro scenario, a recount gives California to Bush. Now Bush wins. So, under this definition, California is also a swing state – if it swung to the other side, it would change the outcome. New York is also a swing state. I believe Illinois, too. New Mexico is not. If Gore wins Florida, it doesn’t matter what New Mexico does. Texas is not. If Texas – or any of the Bush states – were to switch sides, it would not change the outcome.

So, I define power as being as essential part of the winning coalition. New Mexico is part of the (hypothetical) winning coalition, but by itself could not swing the election the other way, so it would not qualify as “powerful.”

Meanwhile, back in Beruangia (and the Department of Tourism thanks you for visiting, and hopes you enjoyed your stay), A has voted for the Reds and B has voted for the Blues. C is obviously a swing state. Let’s say it votes Red. This means that A is also powerful. It is also a necessary, essential part of the winning coalition. B is the only state in this scenario that is not powerful (or “influential,” or a “swing vote,” or whatever terminology we are comfortable with). It could switch sides without any impact on the outcome.

In a direct election, even one as close as Bush-Gore, an individual voter would almost never be this powerful. So Gore would win by 199,999 rather than by 200,000 – big deal. But a state switching sides can have an impact. Impsct means power, power means attention from candidates and office-holders.

You are absolutely correct: Beruangia does not adequately reflect the US of A. I purposely kept the states equal to focus on one issue at a time – in this first thought experiment, simply the way that districting increases voter power.

I have written a monster spreadsheet that can calculate all the possible election outcomes for Beruangia with up to 12 states. This is still a far cry from the US. Our largest state has just a touch over 10% of the EC; the smallest have about 1/2 of 1%. With only 12 states to play with, it’s impossible for me to duplicate all those factors. (Though if someone at Cray could get me some supercomputer time, I’m sure we could work this puppy out.) But I’ve run a few scenarios and – accepting, for the sake of argument, my definitions and my algorithms – we get some interesting results:

10 states. Each has 2 senators and 1 representative for every 250,000 voters. Range in size from 3 E-votes to 12. Total EC: 75. Total population: 13.75 million.

In the smallest state, your “average power” is 1 vote in 2.78 million. In the largest, it’s 1 in 6.34. So, in all states, you’re better off than a direct election, where you’d be 1 in 13.75; but clearly small states benefit more than big ones.

I’ve played around with a lot of scenarios which I won’t bore you with for now (plus, this post is already way long). But in all kinds of situations mixing big and small states, I consistently find that all voters have more power under an EC than in a direct election, and that small states generally do better than large ones. (Though as you start getting extremely large states, with 20% of the EC or more, their voters become more powerful and the voters in middle states start to suffer.)

OK, finally, “one man, one vote.” Again, I agree, it is a nice summation of the democratic ideal. I raised it simply to help point out that this ideal doesn’t apply in many situations. It’s beautiful, but it’s not sacrosanct.

(Actually, I have heard TV pundits say that “one man, one vote” doesn’t even refer to citizen’s voting rights, but rather, to a Supreme Court ruling which requires Congressional districts to be of the smae size.)

93

I did a quick little calculation with 1990 census figures, and found that the top 50 metro areas contain well over half the total population.

94

2sense:

I urge all to look at the national map broken down by who voted for whom for president, county by county, and judge for yourself what is “bullshit,” and what is not.

Don’t take 2sense’s word for it (or, for that matter, mine).

95

Advocates of the electoral college like to tell themselves (and the rest of us) that the EC is the product of the monolithic wisdom of “the founding fathers”. The latter, or so we are led to believe, is the collective hive-mind which bequeathed to us our current system. Never mind that the Presidential election system agreed to by the framers lasted only slightly past the disastrous election of 1800, having to be amended to make it even vaguely workable.

Moving on to reality, we find that the framers were anything but unanimous on this issue. I’ve long known that one of the main drafters of the Constitution, Gouverneur Morris (any help pronouncing his first name would be appreciated), strongly favored direct election, since the people at large were too numerous to be corrupted. Alas, thought I, the kind of people who treat “the founding fathers” as a monolothic entity, always in agreement, will never have heard of Morris. Fortunately, I found some well-indexed minutes of the Constitutional convention, which state:

“He” in this case is James Madison, a rather better-known figure than Morris.

This thread was mostly inspired by a panel I just heard on National Public Radio in which several different speakers each insinuated that (a) the framers all agreed on the EC and (b) that the current system has remained unchanged since the beginning of the Constitution. Thus, this thread is more directed at those arguments than at the arguments of SDMB posters, who emphasize the “the founding fathers said so so it must be true” argument less and the “direct voting would force/allow candidates to pitch their campaigns exclusively at California and New York notwithstanding simple math to the contrary” argument more.

96

Boris –

Thanks for the link. Too many people on both sides of this debate claim to know why the Founding Fathers did x or y, without citing any reference.

I for one never assumed that anything in the Constitution was passed unanimously. It’s all compromise. But “monolithic wisdom” makes a better myth.

I’m not surprised Madison is better known than Morris. Being elected President will do that. And I rather agree with Jimmy – the advantages of the EC, to my mind, make up for any flaws.

97

hansel, I’m not quite following why you think the American system of an Electoral College is superior at ensuring truly national parties, compared to the parliamentary system:

I would argue that requiring the parties to get a majority of the 301 seats, rather than a simple plurality of the vote in a state, requires parties to take a broader approach.

To illustrate why I disagree with you, let’s do a little thought experiment, with three assumptions:

  1. Canada decides to have a separate election for the PM and for the Commons, similar to the Israeli system.

  2. Instead of direct elections for the Canadian PM, we borrow the idea of the Electoral College from the U.S., including the “winner take all” way of allocating electoral votes per province.

  3. Each province gets the same number of electoral votes as seats in the Commons. (We ignore the Senate for the purposes of this experiment, since the number of Senate seats varies so widely and so erratically.)

So, we have an Electoral College with 301 votes, as follows:

Ontario 103
Quebec 75
B.C. 34
Alberta 26
Manitoba 14
Saskatchewan 14
Nova Scotia 11
New Brunswick 10
Newfoundland 7
PEI 4
NWT 1
Nunavut 1
Yukon 1

Majority needed to win the Prime Minister: 151.

Total electoral votes in Ontario and Quebec: 178.

How does the electoral college approach encourage parties to take a broad-based approach?

By contrast, the parliamentary system of local constituencies means that there is not a “winner take all” approach - the parties have to win riding-by-riding, and a big win in one riding doesn’t give them any assistance in winning the riding next door. The parties have to try to broaden their base in each province, and across the country.

Now, I agree that Ontario and Quebec have a huge amount of clout, but that is because they together have over half of Canada’s population. I don’t see how an Electoral College approach would alter that, and given basic democratic principles, I don’t think it should.

98

hansel hasn’t answered yet, though I trust s/he will. In the meantime, I would just say that, asuming a two-party system, and assuming that, over the long haul, each party has an even chance of winning any province, then 50% of the time the two biggest provinces would be split, one going to the Liberals, one going to the Conservatives. Each party would then be forced to win other provinces to reach the magic 151. (Actually, it would be more than 50% of the time, since in a number of elections one or the other big province would be too close to call, and the parties would have to hedge their bets and campaign elsewhere.)

The US system is much more complicated, of course. You would have to sweep the top 12 or 13 states to win an EC majority – something far more difficult than winning two provinces.

Now, if you will allow me a slight hijack, the Canadian example provides a nice ilustration for the discussion I’ve been having with 2sense…

I have taken the statistics for Canada and plugged them into my Beruangia spreadsheet. I think it may clarify my point.

I made the following assumptions: I used the 1990 estimated Canadian population of about 28.9 million. I divided that evenly among all 301 ridings, for a population of about 96,000 per riding. And, because my spreadsheet can only handle 12 provinces or states, I reunited the Northwest Territories with Nunavut and gave it two ridings. No offense intended; this is just an abstract exercise. Then I assumed two parties, each with an even chance of winning any given province.

I continue to define “power” as “the ability to change the outcome of the election.” If the winning candidate no longer wins without a given province in his camp, then that province has “power.” If the province can switch sides and the outcome of the election stays the same, then that province does not have “power,” under this definition.

There are 4,096 possible different ways for 12 provinces to split up between 2 parties. For each province, my spreadsheet calculated how often it had “power.” The results:


PROVINCE     % pop.    % power     multiple

Ontario      34.22%     70.02%     2.05
Quebec       24.92%     29.98%     1.20
British C.   11.30%     25.68%     2.27
Alberta       8.64%     18.26%     2.11
Manitoba      4.65%      8.89%     1.91
Saskatch.     4.65%      8.89%     1.91
Nova Scot.    3.65%      6.93%     1.90
New Bruns.    3.32%      6.35%     1.91
Newfound.     2.33%      4.39%     1.89
PEI           1.33%      2.64%     1.98
NWT/Nunavut   0.66%      1.27%     1.91
Yukon         0.33%      0.68%     2.06

“% pop” means what percentage of the total Canadian population resides in each province. (Remember, I’m using the abstracted assumption of 96,000 per riding.)

“% power” means what percentage of those 4,096 possible election outcomes rely on this province to help decide the winner.

“multiple” means the difference – “% power” is how many times greater than “% pop.”

Every single province saw it’s power go up – almost all of them by a factor of 2 (plus or minus 0.11). For example, British Columbia, despite having just a little over 11% of the nation’s total population, was a crucial player in well over 25% of the elections.

(One of the interesting things in this particular situation are the extremes. The biggest province, far from getting shafted, saw it’s power increase almost exactly the same as the smallest province. The lowest gain was actually the second-biggest province – it got overshadowed by #1. And the highest gain was in province #3 – a necessary member of about half the winning coalitions when #1 and #2 are split.)

Again, the US is nothing like this. The provinces range from over 34% of this hypothetical EC to 0.33% In the real US, No state has more than 10% of the EC or less than 0.56% So, if I could figure out the gagillion different combination possible here, we might very well see a more even spread.

I don’t expect you to suddenly agree with every point I’ve been making, but I hope this at least helps to clarify where I’m coming from.

99

I have a question, expanding on Boris B’s last post.

In constitutional discussions (e.g. 2nd amendment discussions) I hear many references to “the original intent”. Applying that concept to this dicussion, let me ask this:

Didn’t the proponents of the electoral college think that the electors should vote for presidential candidates independently of the voter’s preferences or party affiliations? Or did they think that the electors from the E.C. should be bound to be a passive conduit for the popular vote?

I would assume that the original intent was for the electors to vote freely for whomever candidate they preferred, and that laws enacted to force them to vote for a particular candidate violate the purpose of the EC.