Practical Plan to Abort Electoral College

[2sense]

Ravenman:
Notice that the information I posted was in response to an explicit request. States were requested so the capital district wasn’t included and neither were the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or Guam or American Samoa, and so on. I gave my cite and linked to the raw information, hardly the hallmarks of deception. Before jumping to conclusions you might want to consider reading more carefully.

I haven’t completely broken it down but the data supports my conclusion: the people in small states tend to be white and they are the ones with extra votes in the electoral college. Actually I do want look at the final figures so I think I will invest some more time into the calculations but I’m not sure when I will find the time. Care to make a wager on the outcome?

I’m not trying to be difficult, but I’m not following the argument here… I’m unclear on who you mean refer to by the term “other people.”

This argument has gotten convoluted. Originally it was about the effects of local campaigning. You offered the steel tariff as an example of what a state bought for its electoral votes. In the quote I am refering to the people who voted based on the tariff issue. I am saying that a lot of West Virginians didn’t base their vote on it and yet all of West Virginia’s electoral power went to Bush because of it. What I am getting at is it’s unfair for anyone other than the voter themself to decide which issues their vote should depend on.

My parting thought is that I really wonder if the fundamental problem that 2sense is trying to address is the existence of political boundaries within a country. I think we could all agree that there is simply no way to draw borders - whether for congressional districts, states, or whatever - that would assure perfect equality to all subdivisions.

Allow me to suggest that you would be much less confused if you stopped wasting time wondering what I might be trying to say and concentrate on what I am saying. I am saying that it is perfectly possible to give an equal vote to people if we abort the electoral college as I suggest.

I do not think that there is any significant fruit in eliminating the Electoral College, because although the system tilts slightly towards small states, I do not think that there’s it amounts to a miscarriage of justice.

There are three main ways in which EC is undemocratic. Within a state the minority voices are silenced. Voters that disagree with most of their neighbors can have no effect upon the election because all of a state’s electoral votes go to a single candidate. In effect the minority have had their votes taken away by the majority or plurality.

Between the states there are inequities as well. As MSU 1978 pointed out there are 584,614 Michiganers per electoral vote but only 208,977 Alaskans. You don’t consider less than half a vote a miscarriage of justice?

Outside the states there is no voice at all. Only residents of states get a ballot. Americans living in Puerto Rico and the other insular territories are without suffrage. Is leaving citizens completely disenfranchised somehow just?

Yes, the EC has “thwarted” perfect democracy in two out of 50-something elections. Our country still survives, the rule of law still exists.

This isn’t about “perfect democracy”. It is about holding a fair vote for president. The EC has delivered that fair vote exactly 0 times in our history. I’m not a math guy but I think that works out to something less than 48 out of 50 times.

But if we were going to elect presidents on popular vote only, I am sure the 2000 vote counts could have gone on for months…

… The EC – imperfect though it may be-- provided a way to give authoritative finality to a closely contested election, and though I dislike the result, the system worked in that regard.

This is “We had to destroy the village to save it” logic. The system failed to deliever a fair vote, as always. A fair vote can be accomplished. If the French can add up millions of votes then so can America. It’s not even complex math. It’s just addition. And of course we wouldn’t count the votes one precinct at a time so that it wouldn’t take any more time to count and recount the ballots. Are you seriously going to argue that it is beyond our capabilities to run a fair election?

[mo3]

Why do you think everyone’s vote should be equal in a federal election?

The US is a federation of states; it’s not a federation of individuals. The states are largely autonomous - this is considered a good thing.

People are treated differently based on where they live in such a system, in lots of ways. For example, if you live in Vermont, you have the right not to be put to death by the state. If you live in Texas or Virginia, you can be put to death even if you are a minor or mentally disabled. (This is an example; I will not debate the death penalty in this thread.)

So why do you think that treating people’s votes differently based on which state they live in is bad? It seems to me that it’s consistent with the principle of federalism.

[Ravenman]

*Originally posted by 2sense *
**There are three main ways in which EC is undemocratic. Within a state the minority voices are silenced. Voters that disagree with most of their neighbors can have no effect upon the election because all of a state’s electoral votes go to a single candidate. In effect the minority have had their votes taken away by the majority or plurality.

Same case with elections for senators, governors, representatives, mayors, state representatives, and student body president: the person who gets the most votes, wins.

Outside the states there is no voice at all. Only residents of states get a ballot. Americans living in Puerto Rico and the other insular territories are without suffrage. Is leaving citizens completely disenfranchised somehow just?

I agree with you. That’s a situation that seems unfair. Being a resident of DC, I’m also steamed that residents of the nation’s capital don’t have voting representation in Congress. On the other hand, residents of US territories don’t pay taxes to Uncle Sam (not to mention that the residents of Puerto Rico have consistantly rejected statehood), so they’re in a slightly different boat than those of us who live in DC, where the license plates read: Taxation Without Representation. But yes, there ought to be some mechanism by which all American citizens have their votes count toward presidential elections.

This is “We had to destroy the village to save it” logic… Are you seriously going to argue that it is beyond our capabilities to run a fair election?

Explain what vililage I have burned. I don’t get it.

And as long as you are getting indignant (“Allow me to suggest that you would be much less confused if you stopped wasting time wondering what I might be trying to say and concentrate on what I am saying”) about not addressing what arguments we are actually making, I never said that we cannot “run a fair election.”

First, I think that the EC is, overall, a pretty fair system with certain advantages. Second, what I said in my last post (“Haven’t the media outlets that have gone back to count the votes in Florida come out with several different results?”) I’ll say again in a different way: 100% accuracy is impossible, for any country, under any system. If an election comes down to tenths or hundredths of percentage points, there will always be a certain degree of inaccuracy in counting scores of millions of ballots that will call into question the results.

[Andy_L]

2sense,

What happens in your system when there is no winner of the popular vote such as occurred in 1992 where the vote percentages came out 43%, 38%, 19% for Clinton, Bush and Perot. Not one of them won the majority of the popular vote - but one of them clearly won the electoral college. Would you prescribe giving the election to the one who won the plurality (Clinton)? What if the election results were 35%, 33%, 32%?

Andy

[2sense]

*Originally posted by mo3 *
**The US is a federation of states; it’s not a federation of individuals. **

No. It’s both.

Americans often say that the US is a federation of states but we don’t use those terms in the same way as the rest of the English speaking world. Traditionally a state is a nation-state and a federation is a union of nation-states. The terms have a different meaning here in the States because of the propaganda success of “the Federalists” at the end of our revolutionary period. Here a state is as you say, a semiautonomous unit of government, and our federal government is a government with both federal and national aspects. This is made plain in the propaganda literature itself. See Federalist #39:
“The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national.”

We started with a mixed government which over time become more strongly national particularly under Lincoln and FDR. But whatever you call the government: national, federal, monarchy, worker’s paradise, whatever; when you hold an election I believe everyone should be allowed to vote and have their vote be counted equally.

Moving on to the “small state canard”, Mann and Shapley are old news. The mathematics of the voting power indexes may be compelling but when compared to results here in the real world the claim that voters in large electoral districts have extra voting power just doesn’t stand up. See Gelman, Katz, and Bafumi Standard Voting Power Indexes Don’t Work: An Empirical Study ( 2002 ). People don’t make their vote at random or in a vacuum. We have our individual preferences and there are outside factors that can influence voting strategy. The formulas used by the voting power indexes aren’t sophisticated enough to model human behavior.

Further, it is important to realize that the mathematicians tend to define a voter’s power in an election as the probability of them having the sole deciding vote. I’m not sure why they use that definition but it’s not the same thing as measuring the actual effect of an individual vote upon the election as a whole. If the winner of an election were determined by selecting one vote at random then according to the various power indexes everyone would have the same voting power. The way I see it even if everyone had even odds of being the lucky one that person has all of the electoral power and everyone else has none. I don’t propose to leave equality to chance. Under a popular vote we know everyone has a fair vote.

It looks like I won’t get to finish my replies again but today it isn’t my fault. I had some technical difficulties. The response to Ravenman will have to wait but I will quickly answer Andy L’s question.

And the answer is… I don’t know what happens if no one wins the popular vote. I’m not sure that there would be any consensus about the right path to follow. I suppose it’s most likely that the plan would fail and the states that had agreed to go along would then just assign their electoral votes based upon the votes of their residents. I’m sure that given time I could come up with some kind of plan to stave off throwing the election into the House. Actually I’m mulling one over right now but have no confidence it could gain wide acceptance. My guess is that if there were no majority the plan would just blow up.

[Bryan_Ekers]

*Originally posted by 2sense *
My guess is that if there were no majority the plan would just blow up.

Really? Well, implement it immediately! It’ll be cool!

[2sense]

Ravenman,

I challenge you to find one senator, governor, representative, mayor, state representative, or student body president that is elected by an electoral college. I know of none. In all other elections that I am aware of all the votes count toward the final tally. What I am complaining about is that under the EC truckloads of votes are discarded before the winner is decided. One candidate wins all of the votes of a state which means that anyone in that state that voted for another candidate had absolutely no influence on the vote in the electoral college. They have had their vote stolen.

Taxation has nothing to do with representation. Is it fair to give one person 2 votes because they pay twice as much in taxes as the next guy? Of course not. These are unrelated concepts that are only conflated because of the persistance of a historical sound bite. I think DC should change their license plates to read “Representation Now!” As for those living in the territories, they are Americans and like all people deserve a say in how they are governed. And contrary to popular belief, they DO pay some federal taxes such as import duties. You know, the Whigs weren’t exactly complaining about an income tax during the American Revolution.

The comment on destroying villages was in response to your assertion that “The EC – imperfect though it may be-- provided a way to give authoritative finality to a closely contested election…” I was trying to point out the futility of saving an election via a process that we know perverts it. That’s like resolving a standoff by shooting half the hostages and threatening to kill the rest if the kidnappers don’t surrender.

Obviously there will be technical difficulties. I agree that there will always be a certain degree of inaccuracy in any election. That’s another reason we should move to a popular vote as I have already explained to Bryan Eckers:

Dividing the vote, by state or by congressional districts, makes it easier to cheat. In a popular vote those few thousand votes can only effect those few thousand votes. But when you divide the vote then those same votes in the right place can multiply into a lot more by turning the balance in a state/district. In the last election for instance if we gave Gore a few thousand more votes he could have added them in Florida or West Virginia or another close state and gain enough electoral votes to win the election. If we gave those same votes to Bush there is no way he could have used them to gain a majority of the popular vote. Dividing the vote makes it easier for cheating or even honest mistakes to pervert an election.

Given all of the information in this thread, how can you still believe that the EC is basically fair?

[mo3]

Further, it is important to realize that the mathematicians tend to define a voter’s power in an election as the probability of them having the sole deciding vote. I’m not sure why they use that definition but it’s not the same thing as measuring the actual effect of an individual vote upon the election as a whole. If the winner of an election were determined by selecting one vote at random then according to the various power indexes everyone would have the same voting power. The way I see it even if everyone had even odds of being the lucky one that person has all of the electoral power and everyone else has none. I don’t propose to leave equality to chance. Under a popular vote we know everyone has a fair vote.

No they don’t.

The Banzhaf index does something like you say. But I never claimed it was any good. (I may be biased. Banzhaf was a lawyer, Shapley a mathematician. ) The Shapley value is derived from a small set of axioms - symmetry (if the populations of California and Utah were switched, so would their electoral votes be), carrier (if a state has so few people that it can never make a difference to the outcome of an election it gets no electoral votes) and linearity (external random events such as the rainfall in a given year shouldn’t affect the number of electoral votes given to a state).

As to the Gelman paper, I skimmed it and I think I see a few problems. I’m not going to be able to finish writing those up today though.

I’m not going to directly address the question in the OP, because I think your idea would do what you say - it would award the presidency to whoever won more votes nationally. My objection is to your definition of “justice”. Fairness and justice being value judgments, they need to be defined axiomatically - I don’t know if there’s really a way to prove if something is fair or not.

It appears to me that you are defining justice as “every American’s vote is treated the same”. My view is that justice means “every state’s decision is weighted by its population”. My reason for saying this is that the US constitution only assigns a certain number of electoral votes to each state - it does not specify how the state decides what to do with them. In particular, it is not required that a state hold a popular election to decide what to do with its electoral votes, and in fact South Carolina’s electoral votes used to be allocated by a legislative vote for a long time.

So it appears to me that since the constitution doesn’t really recognize individual citizens in its mechanism for choosing a president, any concept of fairness in such an election must talk about being fair to states, rather than to citizens.

[mo3]

Sorry for the double post, but I just saw this…

Is it fair to give one person 2 votes because they pay twice as much in taxes as the next guy?

It may be. It depends on what fairness means to you. Shareholders who own more stock get more votes in company elections and nobody complains.

Fairness is a moral judgment. It is not something that can be objectively defined or proven. It seems to me the weakness in your argument is that you are assuming everyone shares your definition of fairness, and this may not be true.

Until relatively recently in the United States, it was considered only fair that women not be saddled with the hassle of voting in elections. Even more recently, it was considered fair that different races live segregated, “separate but equal”. We don’t think of these things as fair any more (I consider them incredibly stupid) but I hope you see the point.

[2sense]

You’ve got me wrong, mo3. Sounds like you are a math person. My perspective is historical.

There have always been Americans without belief in political equality but from the beginning it was a powerful idea. It’s not by chance that the elites proclaimed all men created equal when they broke from Britian. They were giving their social inferiors, who were needed to do the actual fighting and dying, a reason to support independence. At first it was controvertial but as time passed its opponents were driven underground. It has been a long time since anyone hoping to remain politically viable would publicly admit to a belief that people didn’t deserve political equality.

Since that time political equality has been applied differently but the ideal has remained the same: everyone deserves an equal say. Blacks and women didn’t have the franchise before and now they do but it wasn’t the ideal that changed but rather the definition of “everyone”. Before minorities just didn’t count. It’s instructive to note that while South Carolina didn’t allow its residents to vote directly on how the state’s electoral votes would be assigned until after the Civil War it was the first state to achieve white manhood suffrage. Allowing the vote for all white men but none of the blacks reinforced the otherness of the slaves and free blacks which in turn justified their subjugation.

So you see, I’m not assuming that political equality is a universal value. I know that most Americans support it but not all. You are right in that I can not prove my case to the latter class of people. They don’t care about equality so my arguments will not move them. In my posts I’m discounting that minority opinion because, to be blunt, I doubt anyone here has the balls to fess up to a belief that people don’t deserve equality. It remains possible to prove something is fair so long as both the prover and provee agree on enough axioms to build the proof. Since everyone here will agree ( or at least pretend to ) that people should be given an equal say in things my arguments can show that the electoral college deserves to get dumped.

*Originally posted by mo3 *
**So it appears to me that since the constitution doesn’t really recognize individual citizens in its mechanism for choosing a president, any concept of fairness in such an election must talk about being fair to states, rather than to citizens. **

This isn’t a logical argument. I’m not sure if you are offering it as such but if so it would just be an Appeal to the Constitution, a logical error along the lines of the Appeal to Tradition or the Appeal to Common Practice. If you meant it merely as explanation then it can’t be a fallacy, of course. But it would still be premised upon the infallibility of the Constitution and you’ll excuse me if I don’t take seriously a conclusion based upon an axiom that is demonstrably false.

As for the math, as I’ve said it’s not my thing. If you say that Shapley didn’t define voting power as the odds of being the single deciding vote in an election I’d like to know how it was defined. I would also be very interesting in any analysis of Gelman, Katz, and Bafumi you cared to offer. To me the complex math is… well, over my head. I can see that obviously a Democrat in Wyoming doesn’t have a whole lot of electoral power. Sure they have a more favorable voter to electoral vote ratio than a person in any other state but their state is going to vote Republican no matter how they vote. I don’t know how to calculate all of those factors so I generalize and use the ratio.

[mo3]

Just a quick post… I’ve been moving house, and it’s not going smoothly, so please forgive the delays… I’m not yet done writing up that thing about the paper.

Yes I’m a math person (hence the obsession for over-analyzing everything). I also have a passing interest in Political Science. I don’t have a strong opinion on the electoral college either way, but I’m not totally convinced it needs to go now. As such, I’m mostly playing devil’s advocate here to try and clarify my own thinking about the whole deal. That said,

This isn’t a logical argument. I’m not sure if you are offering it as such but if so it would just be an Appeal to the Constitution, a logical error along the lines of the Appeal to Tradition or the Appeal to Common Practice. If you meant it merely as explanation then it can’t be a fallacy, of course. But it would still be premised upon the infallibility of the Constitution and you’ll excuse me if I don’t take seriously a conclusion based upon an axiom that is demonstrably false.

I don’t understand.

Let’s say we both accept that the Constitution, for all its goodness, isn’t perfect. Then either

1. you agree with me that the Constitution doesn’t recognize the role of individuals in the Presidential election; in this case this would be a problem in the Constitution and the proper way to fix it would be to amend the Constitution and not do an end-run around it.

2. you disagree with me and feel that the Constitution does guarantee equality to all, and therefore the EC (also a part of the Constitution) perverts the intent of the Constitution; in this case this would be something for the Supreme Court to decide - good luck getting them to abolish the EC.

Appealing to the Constitution is different from appealing to authority or common practice. People should be free to ignore any opinions or social mores that they don’t agree with, but few would argue that all people should be free to ignore any laws they find silly. For good or bad, the Constitution is the foundational document from which all our laws derive; in legal terms that does make it infallible. The only right way to fix a flaw in the Constitution is to amend it. Your OP’s proposal amounts to using a loophole to circumvent what you see as a flaw in the Constitution (one you admit you don’t have the votes to fix by amendment), and that disturbs me.

About Shapley, my previous post described how he defined voting power. To sum up, suppose we accept the three axioms of symmetry, carrier and linearity. Then given a voting scheme, there is exactly one way to distribute the votes such that these axioms are satisfied for that voting scheme. That way is the Shapley value.

You see? Simple and clean. What’s more, Mann and Shapley analyzed the EC and discovered that by happy historical accident, the distribution of votes was almost exactly according to the Shapley value (“almost” except for a slight bias towards the larger states).

[Gairloch]

“So you see, I’m not assuming that political equality is a universal value. I know that most Americans support it but not all. You are right in that I can not prove my case to the latter class of people. They don’t care about equality so my arguments will not move them. In my posts I’m discounting that minority opinion because, to be blunt, I doubt anyone here has the balls to fess up to a belief that people don’t deserve equality.”

Damning with a pretty broad brush here, are we not? And somewhat negating what might have been an argument had it ever been honestly or coherently stated, as well. A definition of ‘political equality’ might have helped the argument, but that seems provided by context.

So, eliminating the E.C. in presidential elections in favor of a simple ‘one man, one vote,’ nationwide, would make each and every vote count, if I understand the argument? And this would be an improvement in terms of ‘justice’ because it would better represent the ‘minority’ (described thus far as non-white) vote? This particular definition of the ‘minority’ becomes pointed when one states that, “I’m discounting that minority opinion.” Some minorities, then, deserve equality in this view, where others simply do not, perhaps due to their inability to snap to the goose-step of rightthink. Done stepped on your own toes there, I think. But you are not describing ‘political equality’ at all, nor properly understanding the system, are you? Equality implies that there is a game that is open to any willing player, but all must play by the same rules in order to win the same prizes. The standards for participation relate only to the game in a system of ‘equality,’ and are the same for all, regardless of personal traits or viewpoints. Pure ‘equality,’ then, favors not only the strong but the many. You seem to be against that. But nobody is pretending that ‘equality’ is not in conflict with other values, especially after all but saying aloud that the idea of the proposal at hand is to end the (asserted) unfairness of the (asserted) overrepresentation of the ‘white’ vote among the ‘small States.’ So the issue isn’t equality at all, but finding a way of negating the opinions you personally find offensive.

“To me the complex math is… well, over my head.”

Nothing complex about it, really – nor over your head, by the looks of the proposal at hand – the E.C. was designed to prevent the tyranny of a pure majority over the minority opinion, and this proposal aims at nothing more than changing the definition of the minority. Under your proposal of pure votes, the New York City metropolitan area outvotes all of Minnesota, Mississippi, Iowa, Kansas, and Louisiana; the Los Angeles metro area outvotes Oklahoma, Tennessee, and South Carolina; Chicago outvotes Georgia; and San Francisco outvotes Arkansas, Idaho, Hawaii, and Maine. So, effectively, by concentrating their campaigning and promises of allocation of the collective resources of the entire nation on the heartfelt concerns of only four cities, the politicians can easily ignore 13 entire states. But, as you say, so many of the people in those states are probably ‘white folks’ that ignoring them can hardly have any effect on the ‘political equality’ you seem to be promoting. Any further comments on that ‘justice’ agenda?

Besides (wrongly) assuming that flowery rhetoric about injustice and inequality for ‘minority’ voices is true simply by the assertion, and besides (wrongly) assuming that direct election of a President will in any way change the direction of legislative bodies, this proposal fails the simplest test of logic – if the ‘minority’ is indeed a minority, how will the few poor defenseless sheep benefit if the oppressing majority of wolves is allowed a purely democratic vote concerning what to have for dinner? What new proposal will be put forward when the other Thirty-Seven States outvote the Four Cities, frustrating the proposal to have the country ruled by the self-proclaimed ‘enlightened’ who have only been prevented from having their say by the evil of the Electoral College?

The actual guiding principle, again, is that the majority rules with respect for the minority. Even Marx did not assert that equality was an inborn right, but rather a consequence of erasing ‘class’ distinctions in favor of individual talent or usefulness. And even the larger fool Engels did not assert that all persons would be treated alike even under socialism. Further, “The real content of the proletariat demand for equality is the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity.” (Anti-Duhring, in Abernathy, pp 199-200). So, just what sort of ‘political equality’ is the goal of eliminating the E.C.?

In defense of States rights? If the majority of a State votes for one Governor, they have that Governor. Similarly, if the majority of a State votes for one federal President, they mainly have that President, a President who is charged with respecting their right as a State not to be roundly trampled by the federal government acting under the instruction of competing States. New Jersey might think that North Dakota would make a fine prison farm and landfill site, but the federal government is charged with preventing the majority from imposing that view, for example. In defense of Individual rights? How do individuals benefit from having the current system changed? Is the assumption that the attraction of huge urban areas as presumed voting blocs will further alter the political landscape in favor of urban ideals? And what happens when this backfires, since it certainly will. Would the ‘enlightened’ who put forth this proposal graciously accept the actual will of the actual majority, who do not live in cities and do not have message board educations?

It is very dangerous to underestimate the collective power of the ignorant masses, in either voting or simple mob rule, as even a cursory review of history would reveal (and which danger the E.C. was formed in the full view of). I wouldn’t be so eager to advocate the elimination of one of the better of the checks and balances in this system, unless prepared to return to the days of witch burnings. Damn. Sorry. That ‘witch-burning’ comment was deflective rhetoric. Modern people don’t burn witches. They burn bushes. Forgive me for not realizing the difference.

Gairloch

[2sense]

**mo3 **,
You won’t have any trouble getting me to accept that the Constitution isn’t perfect. What you need to understand is that it isn’t a moral authority either. A constitution decides legal and illegal not right and wrong. It is legally infallible but not morally so. By way of explanation, until the passage of the 22nd Amendment the Constitution contained no term limits at all. That didn’t mean that term limits were somehow wrong before 1951 but now are OK.

Despite having searched around some I’m afraid I don’t grasp the concept fo the Shapely value. I can see how there might be only a single solution for that value in a given system but I can’t put that solution into any kind of framework that would judge the system. By what standard is the Shapely value fair? Also I am troubled by your statement that according to the Shapely value there is a slight bias toward larger states. This leads me to wonder if it is addressing the relative influence of the states themselves or the people within those states.

Take your time with a response. I know how much work moving can be.

[2sense]

1. It is a mistake to assume my arguments aren’t honestly stated. I won’t claim they are always completely coherent but they are at least honest.

2. It is a mistake not to consider the possiblity that the problem may be in the comprehension rather than the transmission of an argument before foolishly casting aspersions.

3. It is a mistake to confuse a minority opinion with a minority cultural group. One is an idea; the other is people.

4. It is a mistake to equate ignoring an argument unlikely to be brought forth with a belief in inequality. In fact, it is difficult to understand how this could be done with a straight face.

5. It is a mistake to attempt to paint me as authoritarian particularly given the fact that I am arguing the majoritarian position here.

6. It is a mistake, or at least a redundancy, to point out that equality favors the strong and the many. If everyone is equal then the strong are the many.

7. It is a mistake to assume that nobody is pretending that “equality” is not in conflict with other values since no one here has spoken to the topic. We don’t know how anyone feels on the matter.

8. It is a mistake to assume that a move to a popular vote is designed solely or even mainly to end the less than equal representation of members of cultural minorities. The point isn’t just to make the minorities equal; the point is to make everyone equal.

9. It is a mistake to pretend to know what I find offensive after only “meeting” me in this single thread.

10. It is a mistake to assert that the Shapely value isn’t complex. It’s game theory after all.

11. It is a mistake to make assumptions about my math skills based upon my plan which uses only simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

12. It is a mistake to assume without evidence that the electoral college system was designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority. I’ve read over the records and don’t recall anything of the sort. Are there any cites for this?

13. It is a mistake to assume that my proposal aims to change the definition of the minority. My proposal is designed to establish political equality in our presidential elections.

14. It is a mistake to assume that a large metropolitan area would outvote several less developed states even though it has the larger population. Instead the city folk and the country folk would split their votes so that the winner would have some support in every area. Don’t be fooled by the “Bush Country” propaganda. It showed only who got the most votes in each county. There were millions of “red” voters hidden under all that blue and vice versa. In fact, no one has won more than Hoover’s 69% of the vote back in 1928 in Los Angeles County. The only way to gain 100% of the electoral power from an area in a contested election is by dividing it into winner take all districts. You know, like we do now. Our current electoral system enhances the possibility of regional dominance rather than diminishing it.

15. It is a mistake to assume that presidential hopefulls will ignore potential votes. Since every vote counts in a popular election politicians will have an interest in appealing to as many Americans as possible.

16. It is a mistake to make assumptions about my assumptions. I have no belief in truth in any absolute sense. I am a relativist. I believe there are relatively few absolutes. What is true for me is that political inequality is injustice. As I have already pointed out, YMMV.

17. It is a mistake to assume that I have a belief that a move to a popular vote would “change the direction of legislative bodies”. I’m not even certain what that means so I’m pretty certain I made no such claim.

18. It is a mistake to say that the adage of the wolves and sheep is a test of logic. It’s not. Analogies prove nothing about the logic of an argument. They serve as explanation and no more.

19. It is a mistake, while using the adage to explain a potential problem, to equate Americans with both the wolves and the sheep. Such an explanation would appear designed to confuse rather than enlighten.

20. It is a mistake to assume I would support another proposal because I didn’t like the results of a fair election. I am rather fond of my idea and I think I’ll pat myself on the back for it since no one else has. Why would I consider moving from a position that, judging from the evidence in this thread, appears to be unassailable?

21. It is a mistake to confuse principles of governing with principles of electing a government. This is not a discussion of how the majority should enact policy. It’s about how we will pick the president.

22. It is a mistake to think I care about the words of Marx or Engels.

23. It is a mistake not to recognize, however, that none of information offered about those 2 charactors contradicts the expectation of political equality. I’ve read neither but would be stunned to find one of them claiming The People should expect less than an equal vote.

24. It is a mistake to attempt to paint me as elitist. Again, I am the one championing majoritarianism.

25. It is a mistake to indulge in the hypocrisy of insinuating I am elitist while pontificating about the “ignorant masses”.

26. It is a mistake to believe that warning me against the “ignorant masses” will damage my trust in The People. I recognize that most folks would have no idea how to govern but I don’t believe it is a lack of ability or by coincidence. Educate them properly and they won’t be so easily manipulated by the elites. Stop lying to kids about America and you won’t end up with a bunch of adults that don’t understand how America works.

27. It is a mistake to assume that I underestimate the power of The People. I know that if we can free our minds our asses will follow.

28. It is a mistake to baldly assert that the electoral college is one of the better checks or balances without a shred of evidence or argument.

29. The biggest mistake of all is to attempt to make this debate about me instead of about my ideas. I note that Gairloch does not address a single one of my arguments prefering to engage in character assassination. I can only assume that despairing at ever producing a rational argument against my position Gairloch has chosen the refuge of a scoundrel rather than honestly facing the possibility he might be wrong.

[cellardoor]

Why would we abolish a system that works, all outcomes of this were known even what happened in 2000, hell, its even happened in the past. Does tilden- hayes in 1876 sound familiar
what about 1888 cleveland-harrison. Life goes on.

[2sense]

Slavery worked yet we abolished that.
Life would go on if I shot you in the head, for me at least.
Perhaps this question is a bit more complex than you realize.

[cellardoor]

*Originally posted by 2sense *
**Slavery worked yet we abolished that.
Life would go on if I shot you in the head, for me at least.
Perhaps this question is a bit more complex than you realize. **

yes because comparing slavery and the electoral collegeis so not avoiding the actual issue.
Its like how peta compared chickes to the holocaust, dont embaris yourself.

Perhaps the situation is a bit more complicated than you realize, considering we can go around changing the constitution whenever we feel.

I guess its just to bad your wasting so much energy on this considering its not gunna change for a long time if ever in the time that the USA exists. Closed minded people make me laugh.

[2sense]

I don’t know what your issues are, cellardoor but I was taking issue with you completely ignoring all of the information already posted in this thread about just how unfairly the electoral college works. If you would read you would see that its problems are hardly something that occur only once or twice a century.

As for the effectiveness of my plan, I’m hardly going to agree it’s unworkable just because you say so. Provide some evidence if you want to be taken seriously.

[j.c]

2sense"… student body president that is elected by an electoral college. I know of none. In all other elections that I am aware of all the votes count toward the final tally."

That must mean you are not aware of the student president elections in which the president of a class is elected by homerooms.

[2sense]

j.c.,

That’s right. I am unaware of any such system. And I would point out that if each homeroom received a single vote that would not be an electoral college. An electoral college is when the outcome of an election is decided by an independent body of electors. For a bunch of homerooms to form an electoral college they would have to select representatives to do the voting for them.