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Electoral College Abolition Amendment and IRV Bill
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."
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 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
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.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
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. (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 advocate for IRV, but I'm really advocating against plurality.
I would _not_ go with approval because I like some candidates that I "approve of" more than others and I want to be able to express that. Approval is like plurality in that a you are constrained to vote pure "yes" or "no" for each person. I want to be able to say "I kinda like this person, but I'd rather have someone else".
Thankfully, we don't have to sell it to the population, just the republicrat legistlators who will protect their control by any means necessary.
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.
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 it worked, more and more who supported 3rd party ideals would vote for them and quite possibly elect them.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
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. campaign.
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.
I'm also against a winner-take-all approach for the Electoral College. If I live in a state where 75% of people vote Republican and 25% vote Democratic (coincidentally enough, I do), then the best way to represent the will of our state is to divide the electoral votes proportionally.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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
I tried reading the Condorcet Method 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.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
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 had a two tier system in mind: Federal power and State power, and over the past 200 years Federal power has been growing at the expense of State power, and by proxy personal power since a person has MUCH more pull in a local situation than a global situation.
GPL Deconstructed
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 black, yet they don't have an equal share of representation as white people.
This is only relevant if blacks are inherently different from whites. I don't believe that and I thought our politically correct overlords were trying to teach us all races are equal. I wouldn't vote based on race... I wouldn't even vote based on my religion (which describes me a whole lot more) because I'm Catholic and wouldn't vote for Kerry. Qualities like race, sex or geographic home, hair style, speaking style, or obnoxiousness of a candidate's spouse should not be relevant (I realize they often are). Qualities like political attitudes, philosophical stands, and history of public life (and to a large extent, personal life) should dictate how people will vote. I think the differences in racial politics are really largely based on differences in socioeconomic standing. I would expect middle-class blacks to vote similarly to middle-class whites, and the same for lower- and upper-class people. It just so happens a disproportionate number of blacks are lower in economic standing. If we help all poor people, the blacks will come into parity with other races, and their politics will probably follow suit. I don't see it as a black thing, but as a people thing. But then again I'm a pasty-white computer nerd who understands black culture about as well as I understand ancient Greek. Maybe I'm completely wrong. I just try to see people as people.
However, in answer to your question, if we somehow institutionalize race into our political system we will never rise above racism we are struggling to escape completely from today. It's bad enough as it is because treating people without regard to color isn't good enough any more.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I disagree with his argument. It sounds like he looks at voter power as a random variable with some distribution, and that under the electoral college, the expected value of a citizen's "power" is greater than without it. However, that's not necessarily a good metric. I'd argue that the variance of power could be extraordinary, and that it is in the reality of red, blue, and swing states. Basically, this corresponds to people with a fuckload of power in swing states, and people with absolutely no power in the rest of the country. Honestly, try telling anyone who voted for Al Gore in New York or California in 2000 that his or her vote made any difference in the outcome of the election.
I'll admit that as someone who does not vote in a swing state, I'm a bit biased on this matter. However, I'm really not even suggesting that I deserve more power than anyone else. I just want to have an equal amount, even if that corresponds to people having less power on average. Favoring a policy that treats everyone equally really ought to be something that everyone can agree on. It should certainly be a lot more important than making sure that at least somebody has a significant say in the outcome of an election.
That mathematical formulation makes sense only if you're a lone megalomaniac voter trying to tip the election against the statistical masses. Since it holds true for every voter simultaneously, in a single election, all it means is that no one voter can tip the election, or single unit. Without the fancy math, it means every voter has equal say in selecting the president. That's simple, and fair. What's not to like? Unless you vote in Wyoming, and get almost 4x as many votes as Californians for president. Funny, doesn't President VP Cheney vote from his Wyoming vacation house?
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make install -not war
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't count!" We'll have quite a bit of FUD, and quite a bit of scary stuff that's not FUD.
Condorcet would be much better. Heck, even approval's not bad.