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..."

Comments

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[WhiteBandit]

Though this doesn't conclusively show that Bush wins, since neither candidate would receive the minimum requirement of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Ties?

[cbr2702]

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?)

Perhaps you might find the 12th amendment illuminating.

From amendment 12:

The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote

And from amendment 20:

If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified

As a final note; if you live in the US, be willing to read your constitution.

I've been doing a similar thing....

[hobo2k]

First of all, to win you must have 270 votes or more. Less than that and the CONGRESS will get to decide who wins. That is obviously not desirable.

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.

Re:Another way of tallying

[gumbi west]

Iowa has a good system that reduces Gerrymandering... here is one explanation of it scroll down...