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Politics Government

Electoral College Abolition Amendment and IRV Bill 329

Posted by michael from the not-going-to-happen dept.
scoobrs writes "Two bills, H.J.R. 109 and H.R. 5293, were introduced in the US House by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL). The first is a constitutional amendment abolishing the electoral college. The latter is a bill providing for instant runoff voting in all federal elections by 2008."
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Electoral College Abolition Amendment and IRV Bill More

Electoral College Abolition Amendment and IRV Bill

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  • Thanks! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Canthros ( 5769 )
    I'll be sure to write my Congressman to vote against both!

    • Re:Thanks! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tyndmyr ( 811713 ) * on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:28AM (#10597835)
      Ditto for that!

      The electoral college does need to remove winner take all...but this aint gonna solve that.

      And why, oh why, did they choose IRV? Possibly one of the worst systems they could have chosen. Alright, you could make an arguement that it might be better than the current system, but its vastly inferior to concordent(which is unfortunately complex) and my personal favorite, Approval Voting.

      On the bright side, Im glad people are taking note of this, though I fear this will be used as a reason to ignore other pushes for election reform.

      • Re:Thanks! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Canthros ( 5769 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @11:13AM (#10598265)
        I suppose I'm a hardliner; I favor leaving the broader system as is.

        I think the electoral college works fine, and the state-level winner-take-all approach forces candidates to appeal to a broader base of voters in most states (New York and California being anomalies in which very large urban areas completely dominate the whole state).

        Likewise, I see nothing wrong with the present voting system. It's simple, and it works. While I don't disagree that this can limit national support for third party candidates in marginal situations, I am also fairly convinced that the existing style of voting works plenty well provided that there is broad enough support for the third party in the first place. Which is to say, if a third party candidate were to provide a platform that was interesting to a broad enough number of Americans, I am pretty sure that they could win the Presidency. Especially if they can cough up the funds to campaign effectively.

        • Re:Thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 )
          Third parties are always seen as spoilers, which drives down the desire to vote for them. How much more support would Nader be receiving this election if Florida did IRV in the 2000 election, and he wasn't seen as the guy who put Bush in office? It takes more than four years to put together a political party, field candidates, drum up support, etc.

          Perot was a bit of a nut, but I think the Reform Party might have gone somewhere if he hadn't been seen as sapping strength away from the '92 Bush Sr. ca

          • IRV is simple enough (just rank the candidates from favorite to least favorite) and it would keep people from having to vote tactically, thus weakening the two party system.

            While it's simple, your claim that IRV removes tactical voting is a lie.

            Yes, it means that if you /really/ do prefer Nader, you can put him as your number 1, and still not give a vote to Bush by putting Kerry as your number 2. But if you EVER expect Nader (or another 3rd party candidate) to have a realistic chance of winning, IRV can

        • Well, the barriers to entry with the existing system are high. Do you agree with this? If so, why? If not, how do you propose to change it within the existing system?

          Dependance on the Republicrats to endanger their own duopoly is nothing short of foolish, and certainly its difficult to argue that a third party needs to get 15% on polls, massive amounts of signatures in each state, huge amounts of cash, etc.... You may advocate a grass-roots effort. Thats exactly what the green and libertarian parties are

      • Support more choices in government -- vote in the primary. The general election is the runoff. The primary is the true multi-party election, with multi-person debates and a low threshold for participation. If you just started paying attention now and want to vote for someone other than the two finalists, you're several months too late.

        Instead of having multiple parties choosing sides to form a majority after a general election, we have the multiple factions choosing one of two sides before a primary elec
    • The direct voting idea is a dumb one.

      BUT the IRV is at least well intentioned and I think with enough pushing it could be changed to require Condorcet or Approval. (If we are going to spend a ton of money we might as well go all the way and use Condorcet)

  • IRV is worse than popular (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xepo ( 69222 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:21AM (#10597745) Homepage
    Why must it be *IRV*? Why can't it be condorcet or something a little less flakey than IRV?
    • Better yet, why can't Congress let the states decide how they want to elect federal officeholders?
    • Though I agree there are better things than IRV (approval voting is my favorite), IRV is better than what we have now. It allows 3rd parties to be get almost 1/3 of the vote before it screws up and reverts to the equivalent of popular vote, so at least there is a measure of what support those 3rd parties have.
      • The problems with IRV are that it can do just the opposite of what you intend in certain situations.

        Rating one candidate *higher* can actually make them lose. This should *never* happen, it's exactly the opposite of what a voting method should do.

        I'll give you sources if you can't find them on your own.

        Eventually, because of these problems, the two major politcal parties are justgoing to be saying "Put our candidate absolutely first or else you're going to be plagued byt hese problems and your vote won

    • Re:IRV is worse than popular (Score:4, Insightful)

      by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @11:52AM (#10598741) Homepage
      I tried reading the Condorcet Method [wikipedia.org] summary. It's too complicated when compared to Instant Runoff. You're not going to get any support for a voting system which confuses the electorate.

      I'm trying to imagine sitting down with your "average voter" and explaining how "A defeated B, B defeated C, C defeated A, and due to these complex and technical rules of ambiguity resolution, B is really the winner." She'll decide that the system is just picking the guy the ballot counters wanted, and never voting again.
      • Holy F****, that has to be the worst explination of Condorcet I've ever seen!

        Anyway several people have done a better job down in the discussion and I tried to compare it to Approval voting (the other method that seems to be popular).

      • Except Condorcet is no more complicated on the user end than IRV; just rank your candidates in order.

        It's only more complicated on the back-end.

        So yeah, it's hard to explain how it works, but the UI is nice, and that was enough for Windows.

  • Why IRV? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gadzinka ( 256729 ) <rrw@hell.pl> on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:22AM (#10597749) Journal
    I don't know why modern political-reformists are so fixated on IRV. Of all the technical criteria of "fair voting" [electionmethods.org] IRV fulfills NONE. In this respect it's worse even than "majority vote".

    I mean, why would you want to go with a voting scheme, that makes possible situation that adding votes for a candidate causes him to lose, and converselly, removing votes for a candidate causes him to win?

    Why not go directly with "aproval" or even "condorcet"?

    Robert

    PS Go, read the above link to find out what's exactly wrong with IRV.

    • Re:Why IRV? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kenneth_martens ( 320269 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:33AM (#10597875)
      I don't know why modern political-reformists are so fixated on IRV. Of all the technical criteria of "fair voting" IRV fulfills NONE. In this respect it's worse even than "majority vote".

      Reformists are fixated on IRV because that's what the public will actually agree to. Systems like Condorcet's Method voting [electionmethods.org] are technically superior but use a lot of math and are complicated to explain. If you can't explain it in a thirty second sound bite you won't get able to get enough popular support to get it passed.

      The other reason to support IRV is that IRV is a stepping-stone to Condorcet's Method. Current voting procedures and equipment are not able to support IRV or Condorcet's Method. Once we implement IRV we will have the procedures and voting equipment necessary to use any number of superior vote counting schemes, including Condorcet's Method. So by introducing IRV we will have built the framework to allow a move to Condorcet's Method. Then all we have to do is convince the public to support Condorcet's Method--and since we already have the equipment, no one can complain that it will be too expensive to switch.

      • Re:Why IRV? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:47AM (#10597989) Homepage
        Systems like Condorcet's Method voting are technically superior but use a lot of math and are complicated to explain. If you can't explain it in a thirty second sound bite you won't get able to get enough popular support to get it passed.

        Rank your candidates in order of preference, just like IRV. You are allowed to have ties.

        If a candidate would beat any other candidate in a one-on-one race, that candidate will win.

        If there is a group of candidates such that any candidate in the group would beat any candidate outside the group in a one-on-one race, then a candidate in that group will win.

        That's about 20 seconds. (10 seconds if you leave out the last sentence).

        I agree that IRV should make the process of switching to Condorcet simpler, though, and at least it's better than plurality.

        • Re:Why IRV? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by sab39 ( 10510 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:58AM (#10598109) Homepage
          1) IRV isn't better than plurality, it's worse.

          2) "Just like IRV" means that you require the whole thirty second soundbite explaining IRV to happen first, so you exceeded your thirty seconds that way. Actually I think IRV will fail based on that criterion too - thirty seconds is longer than any quote I've seen on the news from any of the presidential candidates, or on any other topic for that matter. I can't remember seeing anything as complex as IRV *ever* explained on the news.

          3) Approval voting: "Just like today except you get to vote for as many candidates as you like". That's less than a *5* second soundbite. Why go to all the trouble of explaing IRV in the first place, when (a) it sucks and (b) approval is so much simpler to explain?

    • Re:Why IRV? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by quadong ( 52475 )
      The table on that page does not provide a direct way of deciding whether one voting method is better than another. To say that IRV is worse than plurality (which is what you mean when you say "majority vote", I think) based on that table is silly.

      IRV may fail mathematical tests, but I haven't heard of any _realistic_ situation in which it fails. I know, as do we all, of several very important realistic ways that plurality has failed.

      That said, I don't think I would be opposed to Condorcet voting. (Howe
      • That said, I don't think I would be opposed to Condorcet voting. (However, I'd like to see an introduction to it that is presented in a less dense way than the one at electionmethods.org. You know, something I could send other people to and actually expect them to read.)

        I'll try.

        Everyone ranks their candidates: I like Alice better than Bob better than Charlie. I hate Zod so much I don't even bother to rank him at all.

        This vote can then be re-worded as a series of A/B comparisons: I like Alice better
        • Thats fine for a 2-5 person race, but imagine a 15 seat city council election, with over 25 people running, you would have a 10 page ballot.

          • Re:Why IRV? (Score:3, Informative)

            by dschuetz ( 10924 )
            Thats fine for a 2-5 person race, but imagine a 15 seat city council election, with over 25 people running, you would have a 10 page ballot.

            No, because the "A > B, B > C, C > D" comparisons are inferred from the ranking. You only need to rank them all at once.

            So a 25-person race would just have 25 names listed, and you put a "1" next to the person you like best, "2" next to your second choice, etc.

            That said, I'm not sure how Condercet works for a multi-seat election like a county council. I

            • Re:Why IRV? (Score:2, Informative)

              by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
              That said, I'm not sure how Condercet works for a multi-seat election like a county council. I guess it's just a question of ranking the final results.

              Pick the winner as per normal.
              Delete him from all ballots.
              Repeat until there are no more slots to fill.

              (The same repetitive approach can work with concordet, plurality, or IRV)
            • IMHO, I don't think people are smart enough to properly rank 1-25 for this city council. Of course I have yet to see why a simple plurality doesn't express the will of the voters either.
              • to properly rank 1-25 for this city council

                You don't have to rank them all just as many people as you want; you are allowed to rank people at the same level even.

                Actually a better way to explain condorcet uses a grid with all the candidates down the left side and then all across the top.

                The directions read: "Mark a box if you prefer the candidate in the left column to the candidate on the corresponding top row" or something like that.

                The problem is that such a ballot is complicated to print and han

        • Re:Why IRV? (Score:3, Informative)

          by the morgawr ( 670303 )
          Can anyone who's had more than 20 minutes with Condercet comment on this?

          Not the way I'd explain it but it is pass-able. Personally I prefer simplified examples.

          Why I'm NEVER going to support IRV in a National Election:

          We used to use run-off voting in our Fraternity [kettering.edu] Elections before we swapped to Condorcet. What run-off voting does is eleminate compromise candidates early on. In a national election this will favor the more extream candidates over the moderate ones.

          Example:

          We have three candidates

          • Yea, but approval voting you end up with the guy who simply says the most pleasing things and doesn't piss anyone off. Sometimes to be a good leader you gotta piss of a few people :) Just saying minimizing dissatisfaction isn't always great, anyone who is well liked would get a majority checking them off even if its not the person who would be the best in office.

            Personally I know the mathamatical problems of IRV, but if done on a state by state level for president, and then combined with Electoral College,
            • Sometimes to be a good leader you gotta piss of a few people

              That's why I like Condorcet (or perhaps we could call it Fair Voting). However it is important to admit it's short commings.

              In other words it would all balance out

              I'm not convinced.

              Personally I'd like to see three changes:

              1. An amendment requiring the states to apportion Electoral Votes such that all but two are selected in the same manner as the selection of the Representatives to the House, and the remaining two are selected in a manner

    • Re:Why IRV? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:39AM (#10597934) Homepage Journal
      I believe I could explain IRV to 50+% of the US population, and I think they could understand it. I can't say the same about Condorcet. This is a case where "even better yet" is the enemy of "better". Personally, I don't believe we could sell the US population on Condorcet or Approval at this time, due to *perceived* complexity. At the same time, I believe there is a chance for IRV. But if the proponents of voting reform get all tied up in IRV vs Condorcet vs Approval, or some other scheme, nothing will get done, at all.

      That said, I believe what we really need is a two-step process. First get IRV in place, simply because we probably could, as a first-level reform. Once the American voter is used to it, and sees that the sky hasn't fallen, perhaps 20 years down the road, go for something better. A land that renamed French Fries to Freedom Fries won't trust its voting to a system with a name like Condorcet. (I need to learn more about other schemes. I did check your link, though I don't necessarily agree with everything I read there.) Personally, I believe IRV *is* an improvement over simple majority, and that most of the stones cast against it are odd corner-cases.

      • Re:Why IRV? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dtfinch ( 661405 ) *
        Thankfully, we don't have to sell it to the population, just the republicrat legistlators who will protect their control by any means necessary.
      • Concordet is clearly complex and despite having spent some time trying to understand it, I still don't fully grok it.

        But how the heck is Approval complex? Anyone who's ever used a computer UI can have it explained in a single sentence "The ballot's a list of checkboxes instead of radio buttons". Even without that, it's pretty easy to say "Just check off as many names as you like", or "It's just like what we have now except you can vote for more than one person".

        It's actually *simpler* than the current sys

  • From the makers of the Butterfly Ballot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tdemark ( 512406 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:23AM (#10597768) Homepage
    People have a hard time with something as simple as a butterfly ballot, and now you want them to rank their choices?

    Wow, talk about being optimistic about the voting public.

    Even if IRV is the most "accurate", I think Approval [boulder.co.us] voting is lot simpler to understand, especially since it is used in many of the local elections (school board, etc), so it is familiar to most voters.

    - Tony
    • Australians have managed to rank their candidates. In place of that, you can put a "1" against the candidate you want to win, and the preferences go the way that candidate dictates. Thinking, and catering to the absolute lowest common denominator only encourages that behaviour. Pull the masses up to a higher standard, and it will become the norm. Or perhaps expecting progress is against our "freedoms".
    • The only advantage to IRV at all is that at an intuitive surface level it seems like a good idea. All of the real analysis of it that I have seen have shown that it is the only alternative voting system that is just as bad if not worse than plurality. If we instituted IRV, at best it would end up in a situation like Australia, where third parties are still weak enough to not make a difference. But at worst - if a third party candidate was nearly as popular as the two major party candidates, then the outcom

  • We're not a Democracy, so don't change it! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:25AM (#10597796) Homepage
    Abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a straight popular vote is a bad thing because it eliminates the representation from small populations. The Founding Fathers were not stupid. They devised a solution to a problem that still exists today: Ensuring that large populations do not dicate law to smaller populations.

    What I WOULD recommend is working on a better way to handle multi-party elections such as runoffs, etc.

    In addition, Congress should instead be working harder to develop better solutions to validate voters, better solutions to develop more secure, reliable voting methods, and to develop legislation that eliminates the current loopholes in campaign funding laws.

    Remember that the United States is NOT a Democracy, but a Federal Republic. To change that is to change the fundamental foundations of this country.
    • Small populations have the advantage in the senate, and even the house, and the presidency. They are favored at all levels of legistlation. They need protection, but so does the majority. I don't see a problem with giving them favor in 2 out of 3. That ought to really gum up the works, making sure that bills are favored by both small and large populations.

      I don't like the idea of making the minority candidate, who's party color is blood red, commander in chief of our armed forces while at the same time giv

      • Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kajoob ( 62237 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @12:12PM (#10598960)
        OK let me break this down for you....

        Senate - each state gets two Senators, Senators are the STATE's representative's, not the people of the states - that's the house. So, each state gets an equal 2% respresentation of the entire Senate.

        House - OK, now the House does represent the people broken up into little districts. But how on god's green earth can you say that the House gives larger representation to smaller populations? I live in Delaware, we have one Representative. That means 1 vote out of 435 in the House. California on the other hand has 56 Representatives. If it were just between us two states, California would win every time. And furthermore, Resprentatives are awarded per population (I don't have the numbers offhand, but it's somewhere around a million citizens per Representative). So as populations change, so does representation.

        President - Are you kidding me? Like an earlier post said, the founding fathers were not stupid. The electoral college is in place to even things out. My home state of Delaware has a population of slightly over a million people. We're small. Don't blink or you'll miss us. The point is, the electoral college ensures that the President is elected by the States - as in President of the United STATES (not President of the Popular Vote). If the Prez was elected by the popular vote, then the Candidates would be in California, Texas, and New York for the duration of the campaign and would never set foot in Delaware, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Vermont, et al. However, as it stands, because of the electoral college, both Bush and Kerry have made multiple stops to this little tiny dot on the map called Delaware. We only have slightly over a million people, but the STATE has 3 electoral votes so while the candidates spend most of their time in the states with the huge populations, tiny states like ours don't get a lot of attention, but the electoral college makes sure we're not forgotten.

        • Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)

          by OldAndSlow ( 528779 )
          We only have slightly over a million people, but the STATE has 3 electoral votes so while the candidates spend most of their time in the states with the huge populations, tiny states like ours don't get a lot of attention, but the electoral college makes sure we're not forgotten.

          Lets see, according to the 2000 census, Delaware's population is 738,600. US population is 281,241,906. So Delaware is 0.26% of the total population. For fairness, Deleware should have 0.26 senators, 1.14 represenatatives, and

    • Re:We're not a Democracy, so don't change it! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Some federal republic! When states like California pass medical marijuana laws that work only inside California borders, but the federal DEA goes in and busts participants in a system which is legal in California, that completely undermines states rights. When the executive branch is proposing Constitutional amendments to prevent state courts from deciding what kinds of marriages can occur within their state, that completely undermines states rights.

      The federal government has its hands in everything. They
    • They devised a solution to a problem that still exists today: Ensuring that large populations do not dicate law to smaller populations.

      And that problem's solution was the Senate and Seperation of Powers. The electoral college was a fix to the then-not-now problem of actually counting votes from a country with more landmass than half of Europe.

      Remember that the United States is NOT a Democracy, but a Federal Republic.

      While the USA may not technically be a democracy, we were concieved as a federation o

    • Re:We're not a Democracy, so don't change it! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:52AM (#10598041) Homepage Journal
      I agree mostly with this. However, I think an even better option is if every state did a split up of its electora votes in the way that Main does and Colorado is considering.

      On a side note, it is very good that congress realizes this is an issue and is amending it in the usual way. We are only two states away from a constitutional convention, and that is a dangerous and scary thing for many reasons.
      • Right now they are worth 9 votes (I believe its 8 or 9)

        If Colorado goes for a percentage based system for assigning their electorial votes Colorado will cease to exist on the radars of political parties when it comes to Presidential elections. With 8 or 9 votes margin it is useful, when its just a 1 or 2 vote difference which is the result you have on using percentages its useless.

        This type of change dilutes the power of any state which follows it. Can you imagine the hoopla that would come about should
        • "Preemptive" military action and tax cuts for millionaires when there's already a huge budget deficit break the bank to support ideals a whole lot less important than people's health. If anything ruins the US it will be poor idiots in the red states voting for people who act against their interests to help rich elitists save some money, because they refuse to join the reality-based community that neocons hate so much.
          • I still don't understand whats wrong with tax cuts for millionaires.

            1. Millionaires don't bury their money in the back yead, they spend it or they invest it. (Even putting money in the bank is investing the bank invest your money for you)
            2. When they spend money it end up generally in normal peoples pockets, so we want to encourage this.
            3. When they put money in the bank, it is usually used to provide loans for small buisnesses or for you to buy a house. Sure you get stuck paying interest, but that money g
            • If the federal government was required to balance its budget, it would need to raise taxes if it wanted to keep spending.

              The problem is that no one in Washington really seems to care about debt, and they really do act like either the debt will never have to be repaid or it's someone else's problem.

              • Its not that hard to balence the budget, it looked like we were going to have a balenced budget even with the tax cuts before the war. But you know "things happen", though I definatly agree we need to cut spending.

                Though on the whole of it all excluding loans from other coutries, if you look at the country as a whole, you can't really say we are in debt, because if the government is made of a collection of its people, then how can the government be in debt to itself? Much of the debt is also from bonds whi

        • Re:Colorado will become irrelevant if they pass th (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mrtrumbe ( 412155 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @11:45AM (#10598639) Homepage
          Don't you think there is a problem with rural voters getting more of a voice than urban voters?

          I'm all for the protection of the rights of the minority, but that isn't the same as letting the minority have a bigger say in how the country is run than the majority. And that is the current situation: rural voters have a disproportionally large say in how the country is run. There are fewer rural voters, yet they have (approximately) the same amount of pull as urban voters.

          What would happen if 95% of all Americans lived in cities? Would the 5% of rural voters still get 50% of the representation? That would mean rural voters have 20 times the influence as urban voters. 20 times! Those are going to be some hefty argriculture subsidies!

          I am left wondering why geographical boundries should determine representation. Why should 5% of the population have the same amount of say as 95% of the population? We don't have representatives based on race or religion, right? About 13% of Americans are black, yet they don't have an equal share of representation as white people. On the logic that minority groups should have equal representation, they should get their representation boosted, right?

          The question I am trying to expose (and to which I don't have an answer) is: what constitutes a minority group that should get equal representation in our legislature? It seems to me that determining a minority on the basis of population density and geography is a pretty arbitrary metric. What makes rural America as a minority group so special as to warrant higher legislative representation (or voting clout)? Why not blacks, too? Or latinos? Or Jews? Or amputees? Or homosexuals?

          It seems to me that the current system is disproportionately assigning representation based on somewhat arbitrary standards. What is a better standard? I'm not sure. But I'd be open to suggestions. Or critiques of my logic. :)

          Taft

          • State powers (Score:3, Insightful)

            by 2nd Post! ( 213333 )
            Easy. The president represents the STATES. United States.

            The State is supposed to represent and protect you.

            If we go to some form of popular vote, that means the power of the states have actually been taken away, and given to the President, in the sense that the President only has to care about big cities: the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, etc.

            Right now he has to court the 'swing states', but with popular vote, he'd court 'swing cities'. It changes the balance of power. The Founding Fathers
          • What would happen if 95% of all Americans lived in cities?

            That wouldn't change the presidential vote unless these cities were all in the same state (or a small number of states).

            Congressional districts within states are broken up roughly in terms of the same population for each. I would assume that this would mean lots of geographically small districts and a few large ones.

            Even in the extreme case you describe the system is nowhere near unbalanced as you make it out to be,

            About 13% of Americans are b
            • I wasn't really advocating the inclusion of race into the process of determining level of representation, I was just using that to make a point.

              I guess I was attacking the assumption that rural folk and city folk are so fundamentally different that we need to actively protect those groups from one another. I think there ARE differences between rural folk and city folk, but I would liken those differences to the differences between whites and blacks, jews and gentiles, etc. Everyone has a different backgr

          • Re:Colorado will become irrelevant if they pass th (Score:4, Informative)

            by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @01:28PM (#10599776) Journal
            What would happen if 95% of all Americans lived in cities? Would the 5% of rural voters still get 50% of the representation?

            The obvious question to follow up with is "Which cities?" If 95% of all Americans live in Chicago, the West Coast cities, and the stretch from Boston to Washington, D.C., (call it 12 states) then they will be under-represented. Very badly in the Senate, where they would have 24 out of 100 senators, least badly in the House where they would have a large majority of the representatives but still not 95%, and somewhere in between in presidential elections.

            Speaking as someone from a large western state with relatively few people, great scenic beauty, and rich in natural resources, let me say that replacing the current system with one that was based solely on population would be terrifying. I can easily envision the 95% who live in the 12 states (in this example) passing federal laws that do a variety of things: requiring that we strip-mine the resources; requiring that we operate massive land-fills in the non-scenic areas to dispose of waste from the urban states; requiring that we ban all development in scenic areas (even though the large majority of that 95% will never visit them); requiring energy-efficiency standards that make sense in an urban setting but are simply not practical in my state.

            One of the key issues that the Founders wrestled with in writing the Constitution was how to make it difficult for a small group of states with large populations to impose their will on the other states. I would be happy to entertain systems other than the current one. Can you suggest one that guarantees my state's ability to have a meaningful say in governing the nation that doesn't give me "over representation" relative to our population?

            • For instance the LA area which gets water from the Colorado River has a larger population than Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, combined, which the river passes through to get to LA area. If it were simply a majority vote, I'm sure that those states would become LA's bitch when it comes to the use of the Colorado River.
    • While I would not advocate the abolition of the electoral college, I do not understand its defenders. Why do country folk need to be protected from city folk more than city folk need to be protected from country folk? The disproportionate representation of small populations was what gave us prohibition. I feel like that is a *very* indicative example of the danger posed by giving disproportionate power to the wide open spaces. Why is that ok?

      Also, we liberals need to keep in mind that *both* candidates in
      • I feel like that is a *very* indicative example of the danger posed by giving disproportionate power to the wide open spaces.

        The amusing aspect is that even if you agree that low-population areas need greater political power, the current system does a horrible job. States have unequal amounts of land, yet each state gets exactly the same 2 votes for that land!

        The east coast is 14 states (28 votes), while the west coast, with about the same land area, is only 3 states (6 votes). Easterners have an unfai
      • An example of a situation where country people might not be able to be protected:

        Take some hypothetical state where everyone is elected by popular vote. Now imagine this state has a large city (say, 80% of the total). Now imagine there is a small region just outside of the city, with no more than 1000 people.

        Now, whenever there is an issue that affects the city people, you better believe that those that were elected by those 80% are going to care about it if they want to be re-elected. But what if it affe
    • Abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a straight popular vote is a bad thing because it eliminates the representation from small populations. The Founding Fathers were not stupid. They devised a solution to a problem that still exists today: Ensuring that large populations do not dicate law to smaller populations.

      It is true that the Founding Fathers didn't want election by popular vote for fear that large states would dominate. However, the framers did not have it in mind that everybody would get t
    • Remember that the United States is NOT a Democracy, but a Federal Republic.

      Thousands of people say that.

      Zero of them know the definition of "democracy".
  • IRV can eliminate the compromise candidate who's the second choice on everyone's ballots. IRV eliminates the compromises, then the extremists leaving us with an extremist winner.

    Condorcet (sp?) is practically a drop in replacement for IRV. People vote exactly the same as in IRV, but the result is more fair and favorable under a variety circumstances. They just have to decide the exact algorithm with Condorcet, since there's more than one, some slightly better than others.
  • Condorcet is better than IRV but in the short-term (~3 major candidates) it's almost the same. Besides, Condorcet is a drop-in replacement for IRV and if we can implement IRV, condorcet would be extremely easy to put in place.

    Since most people don't know about condorcet, try this link [wikipedia.org] which compares Condorcet to IRV mathematically and by way of a simple example.

  • This is a crappy way to run a country (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scotay ( 195240 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:49AM (#10598016)
    Democrats think the Electoral College cost them the presidency. We better change the constitution. Republicans think they have a potential president in a popular Austrian. We better change the constitution. 3rd parties want more votes. Better go PR, IRV, or some other method that lets people vote without "throw away" syndrome. I'm a Libertarian, and I say "Just say no" to these knee-jerk reactions. I feel the same about redistricting. We shouldn't allow ANYONE to attempt to engineer favorable outcomes. They never turn out the way we expect any way. And I say better the devil you know. As soon as we Libertarians stop running marginal candidates, more voters will be convinced to vote for us without throwing away their votes. Despite our crappy ballot access laws, we manage to do alright. When we lose, it's our fault. Let's stop blaming a system that is not half-bad and stop trying to engineer new structural outcomes. It always seems to make the mess bigger.
    • Or alternatively, we could stop viewing everything as who it's going to make win in the next election, and start viewing things in terms of how it will change the dynamic of our political system, and how these things will affect the long-term prosperity of our country.

  • Electoral College (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sab39 ( 10510 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:54AM (#10598059) Homepage
    Better than eliminating the electoral college would be to require each state to allocate its electors proportionately instead of winner-take-all for the state.

    That would completely eliminate the concept of a "battleground state" as it exists now, and "florida" situations in the future - there would never be a situation where a small increase in real votes could net you 21 electoral votes in one shot. Any recounts would be, at most, fighting over one electoral vote at a time instead of a whole state's worth, because the margin of error is never so large that it would cover more than that proportion of the state's voters.

    I think this would probably have to be federally or constitutionally mandated, because individual states that apply it to only themselves instantly *dis*advantage themselves: where they might previously have gotten lots of attention from the candidates because 20+ electoral votes were up for grabs, the candidates would now concentrate on the states that *hadn't* implemented the change.
    • It's true that there wouldn't be the "battleground states" as they now exist. However, states that are now locks for candidates (MA for Kerry, TX for Bush) could encounter fighting over that one electoral vote. All 50 states would be subject to these disputes.
    • Actually, it would turn every state into a potential 'florida situiation'. Recounts would be forced in all states where a relativly small number of votes could turn an electoral vote.
    • Fractional electoral votes would make it nearly impossible to have a Florida-like situation.

      Your system helps a lot, but there is a tiny chance that the winner is ahead by 1 vote, and they can find a state that is really close to N+.5 popular vote and argue that there were mistakes there of a few dozen and try to switch the vote.

      I think fractional electoral votes would reduce the chances of this by so much that we don't need to worry about it ever again.
    • Allocating proportionally to the popular vote would be a pretty good idea. Imagine candidates actually having to care about all of the voters, instead of being able to ignore millions of people in states like Texas and California because they know nothing they do is going to affect their electoral vote total from those states.

      The related idea, that electoral votes should be awarded based on voting in each congressional district (as they are in Maine, where it doesn't matter because it's got 2 districts t

    • No, splitting electoral college votes wouldn't eliminate battleground states, it would just move them around. Unfortunately, to my detriment, because where else but Vermont can you get 3 electoral votes with barely over 1/2 million people? I was just in Ohio last week, and the TV commercials were a pain in the (body part). I don't really want that in MY state.

      Putting it that way, I don't really think the *people* in any state want it to be a battleground, for that very reason. There is some enjoyment of st
    • The EC has the effect of giving power to the people in less populated areas. It's a hedge against the tyranny of the majority, or government by populism, in which demagogues use hot-button issues to sweep their way into power. A way is needed to separate the power among the regions of the country.

      Not to attack on Jesse Jackson, Jr., nor suggest that he is a demagogue, but he comes from Chicago. His desire is to empower the cities and more densely populated states such as his own. Disclaimer: I'm from

  • I really get the feeling this wasn't thought through well?

    SECTION 2. The persons having the greatest number of votes for President and Vice President shall be elected, so long as such persons have a majority of the votes cast.

    That's it. No provisions for how a runoff will be conducted or even IF one will be conducted. Speaking as a software designer, where's the error handling? Oh! In an unrelated piece of code that may not get implemented! Whoo!

    This bill is a publicity stunt... considering it has
    • Speaking as a software designer, where's the error handling?

      Speaking as a real person, "in the system."

      Complexity is good when you know your instructions will all be followed. When your instructions must be understood and then applied by a sentient being, the simpler the better.

    • Hey look, it's Jesse Jackson Jr. writing this crap. He isn't the brightest bulb in the pack. He gets elected because there's a pile of morons on the south side of Chicago that adore his father. I'm from Illinois/Chicago, and think that he's got no clue about anything outside of an urban environment.

      The amendment will not succeed, fortunately. In order for an amendment to be passed, it needs to be ratified by 3/4 of the states, or 38 states. The following states probably won't ratify this amendment: Ma

  • Who cares? So few vote... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mad_ian ( 28771 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @10:58AM (#10598113) Homepage
    I wouldn't mind the electoral system, if there was also a REQUIREMENT to vote and maintain your citizen ship.

    I'd rather see the entire populous vote for a gibbering idiot than see less than a quarter of it vote for the same idiot.

    ~Donald
  • IRV would really help third parties because it would get rid of the "I don't want to waste my vote by voting for someone who can't win." It would then allow the major parties to be mch more responsive to the public's desires. If (for example) The Democrats won a senate seat and the winner knew that 70% of his votes were first choice, 24% were second choice Green, and 6% were second choice Libertarian, he'd know that to shore up more votes, he'd better tack hard in a green direction. Once people saw how i
  • This system is an improvement, but each elected position should also offer the choice of "None of the Above."

    I should not have to choose the lessor of two evils.
  • There's a problem with abolishing the electoral college. The problem is that there is *a lot* of vote fraud in this country.

    Stay with me.

    The electoral college acts as a buffer against vote fraud in specific places. If you run up the vote, in, say, Chicago, or NYC, you'll only affect the outcome of the election in Illinois and NY, respectively. Without the electoral college, you can win the whole country by running up the vote in just a few places. Eliminating the electoral college would make vote frau
    • Eliminating the electoral college would make vote fraud determine the outcome of our elections.

      Backwards! WITH the electoral college, you can cheat on just 500-600 votes in the right state, and totally change the outcome.

      What you call "running up the vote in Chicago" would have to be much more blatant. Without the electoral college, it'll take millions of phony ballots to put your candidate over the top.
  • we should do them we would not be in this mess. The Constitution says we vote not for the president but for people who we want to vote for the president, each district gets 3 votes. They are to be wise people that meet in December to discuss the issues and then they vote. I say the Constitution party has it right when they say it here [constitutionparty.com] I still might not know who I am voting for this year (Peroutka or Bush) but I am Damn sure that Nov 3rd I will be sending in a change of party form, I do really like the
    • Well, there's a problem. If we had stuck with that method to begin with, or only recently diverged from it, sure it'd be viable. But if you look at the political climate in the country today...most people are already certain that they'll vote for a particular candidate. What will happen is republicans will vote for someone who they are certain will vote within the party, democrats will do the same. Due to this, the results of the system are similar to the electoral system. The good thing about it is th
      • Well if the people have to be local, maybe that could change things a bit more. who are you more likely to vote for, your neighborer who even though a different party you know and like and trust, or some unknown person in the same party.

        That the problem with the current system, tell me something about either candidate that they have not said them selfs for their opponent has said, or enemy's have said. Politics are just way to impersonal, we might as well vote for Bender for all it worth! All see is wha
  • Even if the amendment to abolish the electoral college passes in the legislature, I'd be shocked if enough states ratified it. The electoral college guarantees that small states have a disproportionately large effect on the outcome of the presidential race. There are 17 states (plus DC) with five or less electoral votes. Abolishing the EC would reduce their influence on the Presidential outcome by approximately half. You can probably count on all of those 17 states declining to ratify this amendment. Seven
  • I have a plan! We should use the voting procedure for a master server that Windows NT uses!

    Its brilliant!
  • I am quite puzzled about the reactions I read here.
    I remember reading here that the vast majority of slashdotters think the current system for electing the president of the USA is bad. Some complains that voting third party is more or less a waste. Others complain that their home state is so democrat/republican that their vote for the other party won't count. Others complain about the winner take all present in most states.

    Yet, when someone proposes a bill that tries to adress these problems, people here
  • It's my current opinion that there is another solution than getting rid of the electoral college. Why don't we do what Maine and Nebraska do for electoral votes? Go by the winner of Congressional Districts and have the state winner take the two electoral votes? In addition, what about using IRV in this method (which isn't done there I believe)?

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