Slashdot Mirror
2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes
Trillian_1138 writes "I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation of the US 2000 Presidential Election and thought Slashdot might find it interesting. Specifically, what if all states had used a proportional assignment of electoral votes, in stead of the present all-or-nothing assignment most states use? Well, here's what I found. In the end, if every state had assigned their electoral votes in a proportional fashion, Bush would have defeated Gore in 2000, 259.008 to 253.077. The system I used allowed for percentages of votes, which is very unlikely to happen, but I still think the results are interesting. Check it out, and please let me know what you think. I'm not sure if having the electoral college AND proportional assignment of votes defeats the intention of the Electoral College in the first place, and the current Electoral College system does ensure one candidate must win a majority of Electoral votes, which the system I made would fail to meet. Oh well..."
Why must every random idea hit slashdot, regardless of merit?
Here's another (actually better) idea: raffle voting. Everyone puts names in a hat. One name is pulled out. It's the *only* method that makes every vote count.
This is very interesting. I'd like to see results that are rounded out so there are no fractions of votes though, as that would probably be a more likely situation.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
By the way, this probably isn't needed because it's hosted on a .edu, but here's a mirror.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Quote from the Slashdot story: "quick analyzation"
Should be "quick analysis". Slashdot is the only publication I've seen where editors do not need to know their own language.
--
George W. Bush's brother was on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes. Family values?
Another way of tallying would be to have electoral votes selected as congessional votes are:
each state has two overall electors that are selected statewide (as each state has two Senators)
And then each Congressional District would have 1 elector (where no candidate has a majority, there would be a runoff between the two top candidates, or simply the candidate with the plurality would win). Of course, basing most of the votes on congressional districts would make redistricting and gerrymandering even more important issues than they are now.
I believe this essentially the system Colorado is considering adopting.
I'm not even sure that Presidential Electors have always been popularly elected, though I may be wrong on this. Senatora have definitely not always been popularly elected.
The whole point of the original Electoral College was to distance the choosing of the President from the population at large.
I haven't done the analysis as to how the changes I proposed would effect past elections
Excelsior,
ME
evanchik.net
... there must be more interesting ways of evaluating voting methods than determining what effect their adoption would have had on the 2000 election.
E.g., I would be curious to know what effect this system would have on voting power (i.e., the probability that a given vote is decisive). Obviously, the exact voting power would vary by state, but perhaps some interesting general statement could still be made.
What the fuck is an "analyzation"? Is it anything like an analysis?
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
Actually, as reported yesterday on WUOM (Stateside - audio archive) yesterday it is possible to have a tie in the electoral college. There are two states that do not vote as a block - one allocates two votes to the state leader, and three votes to three congressional districts. The other is similar with only two congressional districts.
When a tie happens the House of representaives votes (1 vote per state) to elect the president. If they tie then the Senate chooses a president to serve until the House comes into agreement. I can't remember the details completely, somehow the vice president candidates are involved (perhaps these are chosen to serve temporarily?)
In the last election it would have taken only two specific states changing places to cause a tie.
-Adam
You know you're a slashdotter when you read the topic as "2000 Electrons with Proportional Vectoral Waves" instead of "2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes".
Not that it makes too much sense either way.
^_^
Perhaps you might find the 12th amendment illuminating.
From amendment 12:
And from amendment 20:
As a final note; if you live in the US, be willing to read your constitution.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Didn't we already have this conversation this week?
____
no I am not new here.
no I do not welcome our electoral overlords.
and yes in Soviet Russia electoral college prolly does vote for you... oh wait thats here in the US.
Anyway, I've been taking the poll numbers from www.electoral-vote.com to do similar analysis. I'm looking at three possible systems. Winner-take-all (the current system), all electoral votes go to the winner in the state. Proportional, the state's votes are divided based on the percentage of actual votes (as the article did). And Maine-style, two votes given to the winner, the rest are divided by percentage.
From sep19 till today, the results for each system are as follows:
Winner-take-all: Bush wins 12 days, kerry wins 2 days.
Maine-style: Bush wins 7 days, the rest are tied.
Proportional: Every day is a tie.
So, unless we scrap the entire electoral college. Winner-take-all is the only way to actually have a winner and not let the congress break the tie.
A state could choose to have its electors chosen by drawing straws and their respective votes by throwing darts if they felt like it as there's no law that says the electors have to vote according to the popular vote. If states chose to use your system, the Electoral College would still be the means by which the results were transmitted to the federal government barring a significant abrogation of states' rights through a constitutional amendment.
You allocated Gore's Georgia votes to Other, add 5 to Gore's total. You counted 39,158 votes for Other in Alaska, there were only 8,747 Other votes in AK. This based on a cursory look, I am sure a closer look would find other errors.
Properly counted your method more closely mirrors the popular vote and Gore wins.
vote early, vote often.
How many people voted for Nader in 2000 knowing that their state would go to Bush anyway?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I recently did a similar calculation, but what I did was to redistribute electoral votes according to the number of people who voted as opposed to the population.
Gore would have one if electoral votes were distributed like this.
Also, this may be interesting to someone "value" of votes by state
Using a spreadsheet with the published numbers.
C - Candidate votes per state
T - Total votes per state
E - Electoral votes per state
V - Candidates percentage of electoral votes per state
V = C/T*E
Totals below are the sums of the V of each state:
Brown 0.0085
Browne 1.9848
Buchanan 2.4238
Bush 259.1812
Dodge 0.0009
Gore 258.2762
Hagelin 0.4281
Harris 0.0378
Lane 0.0106
McReynolds 0.0293
Moorehead 0.0217
Nader 14.8986
Phillips 0.5257
Smith 0.0302
Venson 0.0028
Youngkeit 0.0010
Write-in 0.1167
None 0.0218
Total: ~538
Adjusted numbers. Electoral votes are allocated based on whole number first and then on the candidate with the higher percentage. Candidates with less than 0.1 are set to 0
Ex.
State - 5 Electoral votes
Candidate 1 - 2.3000
Candidate 2 - 2.6000
Candidate 3 - 0.1000
Adjusted
Candidate 1 - 2 electoral votes
Candidate 2 - 3 electoral votes
Candidate 3 - 0 electoral votes
Bush 262
Gore 263
Nader 13
Total 538
Either way basically equal, and both less than the needed 270.
B 259.1812 G 258.2762 N 14.8986
B 262 G 263 N 13
Here is an idea for increasing the political power of people living in the most populated states:
break these states into smaller states.
Why can't this be done?
This is nothing more than a "Popular Vote" count. Our founding fathers warned us of the dangers of a Popular Vote count. Similar to three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
I used to think about this too, until my Pol. Sci. professor pointed out that in a proportional representation election, the candidates would have ran completly differently! Instead of dividing the 50 states into "safe" "swing" and "no chance" states, and only focusing dollars and time on the "swing" states, the candidates would have been forced to spend time and dollars on high population areas, where they would get the bang for their buck. You see, under proportional representation, every vote truly matters, so it make more sense to spend time where you can influence the largest amount of voters. In that scenario, low population areas like Colorado wouldn't even see the candidates! Thus, you cannot simply tally the votes and say bush or gore would have won in 2000, because the whole dynamic of the process would be different.
I mean, most democracies use direct popular vote.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There's an obvious, simple solution, which Nebraska and Maine have already adopted, and which Colorado will vote on next month. Each state has the same number of electors as they have congresspeople, plus two. You elect the extra 2 at large, and you elect the rest by congressional district. This preserves the founders' intent that small states should have a disproportionate voice, but does so without disenfranchising huge blocks of voters. And it's something we can do without a constitutional amendment.
Personally, I like the idea of using districts (like Maine and Nebraska) but then using the two at-large votes to try to fudge the state's results toward a proportional total. I think this satisfies geographic and ideological considerations nicely. Thus in NE the 20% Democrats that vote would still get 1 one of the EC votes instead of nothing. In larger states, this would put the threshold of winning an ECV in the single-digit range, which might be possible for a third party. Assuming the districts are won fairly closely to proportionally already, a third party could actually get noticed in a presidential race. It's never going to win until it can start carrying entire districts, but getting noticed is a start.
Constitutionally Correct
- it's "analysis", not "analization",
- "instead" is one word, not two, and
- "if every state had assigned their electoral votes" should be either "if every state had assigned its electoral votes" or "if all of the states had assigned their electoral votes".
Now, I realize that everyone makes the occasional typographic error (except for myslef, of course), but such blatant/ignorant misuse of the English language makes suspect the point(s) that he/she was trying to make.Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
If that's too much typing for you,(without any spaces put there by Slashdot) yields: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=analyzat
I didn't know that. It's an awkward and unnecessary usage, however.
--
Bush: Borrowing money to try to make his administration look good.
Having seen how many of the most-qualified and best people for running the government do not run for office, I've wondered if there's a way to do multiple distillation passes to increase the quality of the officeholders at the highest levels.
That is, lump citizens in groups of, say, 5, and have each group elect a "representative" who gets sent as a delegate to the next groups of 5, etc, until you end up with a single leader.
My hypothesis is that you end up with a different kind of leader than if you used the more direct method.
IIRC, the Chinese imperial government used to have a system of meritocracy, where civil servants were given jobs of increasing authority, increasing prestige and salary based on what they got on their tests.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The current system DOES NOT guarantee that one candidate will get a
majority of the electoral vote.
For example if Mr. Bush were to carry the states Maine, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Ohio,
Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas,
Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma,
Texas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska
and Mr. Kerry where to carry the rest then the electoral vote would be
split 269-269 and the vote would go to the House.
You can verify this at http://www.opinionjournal.com/ecc/calculator.htm.
The current system isn't truly winner-take-all. Two states Maine and
Nebraska (I believe) have a system in which a candidate gets one
electoral vote for each congressional district he carries and two for
the state at large.
And of course there is a referendum in Colorado this year to split the
electoral vote in a way similar to what is suggested i.e. for each
ninth of the popular vote a candidate receives he get's one electoral
vote. Can you imagine the fights over round off errors? *shudder*.
... tactics.
:( --
If EVs were allocated as the study imagines, then Gore and Bush would have behaved very differently in 2000. They'd have spent much less time working hard for a few more votes in the suburbs of New Mexico, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee, and Oregon.
In the old system, had Gore bagged 1000 more votes in Florida, he'd have swung the election by 50 evs (FL had 25 in 2000, and Gore's gain would have been Bush's loss). Under your study, an extra 1000 votes for Gore meant squat.
So... Gore acted appropriately, fighting for those 1000 votes. With proportional evs, he'd surely have acted differently.
Not only would the players (Gore and Bush) acted differently, but voters surely would have acted differently as well. To simply change the allocation of evs while ignoring the fact that the actions of all players in the game would have been different under different rules is entertaining, but not enlightening.
Cool data -- but not useful for analysis. To make the claim that "Bush would have won anyway" is simply preposterous -- and about 50% likely to be correct.
--too late for mod points
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Here's a list of some different Englishes:
Aboriginal English, American Standard English, Aruba English, Australian Standard English, Belfast, Bermudan English, Brummie, Brummy, Birmingham, Black English, Bolton Lancashire, Canadian Standard English, Carribean English, Central Cumberland, Cockney, Cornwall, Craven Yorkshire, Cumberland, Devonshire, Dominican English, Dorset, Durham, East Anglia, East Devonshire, Edinburgh, Geordie, Grenadian English, Guyanese English, Jamaican English, Liberian Standard English, Lowland Scottish, Malaysian English, Manglish, Neo-nyungar, Newcastle Northumberland, Newfoundland English, New Zealand English, Noogar, Noonga, Noongar Norfolk, North Hiberno English, North Lancashire, North Wiltshire, North Yorkshire, Northumberland, Radcliffe Lancashire, Scouse, Sheffield Yorkshire, Singlish, Singapore English, Somerset, South Hiberno English, South Wales, St. Lucian English, Sussex, Tyneside Northumberland, West Country, West Yorkshire, Westmorland, Yanito
Which of these is true English, friend? I'm afraid its your ignorance that is the problem, and furthermore, your nazi-like attitude to English. Furthermore, your argument about "suspect[ing] the point(s) that he/she was trying to make" is an ad hominem argument, anyway.
Rest easy friend.
Logic, macros, and more
This is how I understand the electoral college originally worked: Normal everyday people had absolutely no idea who even wanted to be president, so they elected a smart person in their area (who knew of canidates) who agreed with their political views, that person once selected would communicate with other electors and finnally cast a vote for whoever he wanted to be president. It was ridiculusly unfeasable for canidates to make themselves known to the common man at the beginning, so they didn't. The electoral college was the way the founding fathers devised to have an elected offical that wasn't just randomly selected by the people because they didn't know enough, while keeping the democratic ideal.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
"I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation..."
George, is that you?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Power proceeds from consent. People that don't exist can't consent. So you shouldn't get power for people that don't exist.
This should equal the popular vote, assuming electoral votes are distributed perfectly proportionally among the states. (So the farther along we go in a 10 year cycle, the farther off it gets - and 2000 is near the end of the 10 year cycle)
Try some of the district-based systems, where there is 1 elector for the winner of each congressional district + 2 that represent the statewide winner.