I guess I should have paid more attention in civics. I’m no longer confused, at least. Baffled, maybe, but not confused. 
So the election is a forgone conclusion before the EC actually casts their votes? Makes sense to me.
Maybe I’ll watch, if I can tap into my neighbors cable.
Again, thanks.
Peace,
mangeorge
I believe that the electors do get paid a nominal amount for making the trip to the state capital. They probably get mileage too. I hope they have enough hotel space in Sacramento for the 54 California electors, although I imagine that some of them live in the area.
If you are entrusted with the job of delivering your state’s electoral votes to Washington and you don’t do the job right (i.e., you run off to Brazil with them and sell them on the black market) you can be fined. I believe the maximum is something like $1,000.
The electoral vote count in Congress is not very interesting and I’m a government geek.
I apoligize, again, for anything that might have been taken personally by my earlier posts.
RJKUgly said
I think that has a lot to do with my inability to agree with the early posts. Of course, I should have read linked article(s).
So, I stopped by the library tonight, got the original issue of Discovery, read the article rather quickly, checked the next 5 issues for letters to the editor which might have had a bone to pick with the original article.
I still think the article has a lot of holes in it. There was only one follow up letter to the editor which had issue with the article, and a rebuttal from Natapoff which basically quashed the nitpick.
QUESTION At the time the article was published in Discover, it(the article) said that Natapoff’s original article was about to be published by PUBLIC CHOICE. This indicates to me that his theory was not yet published by any journal, and perhaps, not been refereed by any competent third parties.
My local public library didn’t have the journal Public Choice. I haven’t had the time to go to the Akron Univ. library to search. I plan on doing this. I want to know if Natapoff’s article ever got published, and what, if any, were the replys. Can anyone enlighten us?
Oh, yes. Hiveley, the author of the puff piece in Discover says that the article that is being submitted to “Public Choice” is nontechnical and skimps on the math.
Waiting for further developments…
This is clearly absurd. By the same logic, if the population was split into 100 million districts, the power of a single voter would be 100 million times greater…but 100 million districts consisting of 1 voter each is identical to 1 district with 100 million voters. =><=, as one of my math professors likes to say.
What you’re neglecting is that, while the voting power of a single increases by a factor of n in his own district when the population is split into n districts, the effective voting power of a single district is 1/n, so the effective voting power of a single voter remains the same.
All these assumptions rely on the districts being of equal size and composition. If everybody in the US was randomly assigned to one of 50 voting districts, the election would behave essentially the same as a popular vote. What makes the EC model in the US work is that the voting districts are uneven in size and demographic content, as has been remarked upon above.
UnEasyRider –
It’s happened a couple of times already. Napatoff argues that the existence of the Electoral College actually held the country together, and prevented the stuff from hitting the fan. Opinions differ.
Brad_d –
As I understand it, Napatoff’s thesis is that the best system is the one that gives voters the most power – not necessarily to turn the election by themselves. It sounds reasonable.
Bobort –
My synopsis glides over a lot of details that I admit I don’t quite grasp myself. The Hivey artile goes into great detail on the role of the candidates’ relative popularity. In a very close election, the EC may actually work against voter power, and your hypothetical example of 100 million 1-voter districts holds true. But real elections are almost never that close, and as the gap increases, the power of a voter in a nation-wide election drops far more rapidly than that of the same voter in a districted election. And Napatoff appears to have done the math to show it.
Not true. The Constitution originally left it to the legislatures of the several states to choose the electors any way they wanted. This is still in effect:
What generally happened in the early elections was that the majority party in each of the legislatures chose a full slate of electors from their party. After a while it became the practice that there would be a direct vote for the electors, but it was up to the individual legislatures to put this into effect.
Stephen Chapman in today’s syndicated column states that the ec has its virtues, discouraging the chaotic multiplicity of parties found in some countries and forcing the major parties to make broad appeals, and not appealing just to one sector of the country. “But one option might preserve the advantages of the status quo while minimizing its perverse effects. Curtis Gans, head of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, proposes allocating electoral votes by congressional district, with two electorla votes in each state going to the statewide winner…This idea has the advantage that it doesn’t reqire amending the Constitution, since states can decide ow to allot their electoral votes.”
It sounds like the purpose–or at least the result–of the EC is to force candidates and parties to “compromise” in order to win. Extremism of any flavor is unlikely to be widespread enough to thwart the way the EC works. I look upon that as a good thing.
If we accept that increasing the probability of someone’s individual vote deciding the election is a good thing (I do not), then there is an optimum size of the electoral ‘pools’ which would maximize that probability.
As a wild guess, I would say that the square root of the population, about 16-17,000 people, would be the optimum size of a voting pool.
Note that this would allow more local differences in the voting population to come into play, i.e. urban vs. suburban vs. rural.
Bill
The electoral college is by design an antidemocratic institution. Remember, as conservatives will always remind us, we do not live in a democracy, but in a constitutional republic. Not the same thing.
The “Founding Fathers” were not democrats, but more like the asristocracy and were loath to give the rabble too much power. That’s also why the Senate was originally elected by state legislatures. Originally, only men, mostly white men, of property could vote. This had a tendency to skue the political system.
Also, keep in mind that there was a fear that larger states could use their superior voting strength to dominate small states. This may seem quaint today, but was taken very seriously at the time.
Bottom line. The electoral college is an archaic institution and should be abolished. The Senate, an even more profoundly undemocratic institution, should also be abolished. Why should each voter in North Dakota have fifty times the influence in the Senate as a voter in California? Small rural states have a disproportionate influence in the government. Also, the size of the House of Representatives should be doubled. At present, each member represents around 750,000 people. At 300,000, it would be much easier for people without a lot of money to run and constituent services would be better.
None of this will happen soon. The constitution would have to be ammended. Would the Senate vote to abolish itself?
> Would the Senate vote to abolish itself?
No, because that argument doesn’t make much sense. The House & Senate were set up the way they are as a compromise between small & large states.
>Why should each voter in North Dakota have fifty times the influence in the Senate as a voter in California?
There is a way for California to increase its representation in the Senate, if it so chooses-- Split into two or more states. Since this has been about the only reason not offered to split the state and escape the tyranny that comes from Sacramento, representation in the Senate must not be that important.
>Also, keep in mind that there was a fear that larger states could use their superior voting strength to dominate small states. This may seem quaint today, but was taken very seriously at the time.
Perhaps the fact that even a state the size of California can’t dominate others politically is a sign that, rather being “quaint”, the Senate has served that purpose?
Remember, the country isn’t just made up of human beings. It also includes large pieces of real estate. There’s an assumption that people who live on that real estate should have something to say about what happens to it and to its resources. You need to skew things a bit so that everyone in California, Texas, Florida, and New York doesn’t suddenly decide to elect a pres. candidate who wants to convert those underpopulated midwestern states into landfills.
Small states can STILL be pushed around by larger states.
God, I hope not. I used to think that the Senate was an outmoded idea, like some sort of House of Lords for our allegedly non-aristocratic country. That may be, but ever since Clinton’s impeachment trial, when I actually saw how the House and the Senate operated, it’s clear to me that the House is full of rabid fanatics, while the Senators are somewhat, well, senatorial. Statesmanlike. They actually took their time and analyzed things calmly, despite the fact that the House was in chaos and calling for Clinton’s blood. I’ll sacrifice a little bit of democracy in order to get some slightly cooler heads in office.
But California does have a fair amount of power in Congress. It does have 52 representatives in the House. Their power is somewhat diluted because the majority of Califonia’s delegation is Democratic and in the minority. The head of the House Rules Committee is from California as is the head of the less important House Administration Committee.
California still contributes a lot of money to the presidential race and that’s where its power lies.