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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."
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!
Reformists are fixated on IRV because that's what the public will actually agree to. 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.
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.
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.
I was for eliminating the electoral college until I read this: Math Against Tyranny. It also makes the analogy to baseball runs vs. games. Alan Natapoff has mathematically shown that voters have more power with the current system where power is defined as the ability to tip an election in any one direction. Basically, if it was purely a popular vote, the only way your vote would matter is if the rest of the voters split exactly down the middle. Given the size of the US population, the probability of this is extremely low. Especially given that people tend to lean towards one candidate or the other, the chance of deadlock is essentially nil under a popular vote. That means each voter has no power to tip an election and thus politicians have no reason to listen to them. Dividing into smaller groups means that each group is more likely to deadlock and so each voter has more power. Thus, what happened in Florida in 2000 was a good thing. In fact, the best thing to do is to re-divide up the nation into groups such that every single group would be very likely to deadlock. The winner would then take-all from each group, making it so that all politicians would have to work to win votes in every single group.