Quote:
Originally Posted by Redlemon
My point is that the each individual game of the World Series correlates to an individual state voting for President.
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That's not a bad way to think about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MSD
This is what I always try to explain to people. It's supposed to prevent something like Hitler's rise to power in Germany through what started with an election, although if someone has that much popular support there's no guarantee that the EC wouldn't also be supporters. Hopefully we won't ever have a test case.
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When I posted "tyranny of the majority", there was something else I wanted to say, but I couldn't figure out how. This helps me.
It prevents a successful "one-issue" or regional candidacy. Where in a direct-vote system enough candidates could emerge to allow one with a low percentage of the vote to emerge the winner, here the candidates have to appeal to a wide range of regions and people.
Hitler, in the 1933 election, only won 44% of the vote. Is it more democratic that 52% of the population didn't chose a winner (2000 US election) or 56% (1933 German election)?
I'm partial to increasing the democratic appeal of the Electoral College in a very simple way. Merge it with the congressional representative system in one of two ways:
1) Take the number of electoral votes per state and divide them by the percentage of the vote in the state.
Using Maryland in the 2000 election as an example, ~2,020,000 votes were cast. 1.14 million were for Gore (56%), 813,000 for Bush (40%), and about 67,000 for other candidates (4%). Under this, Gore would have won six and Bush four of Maryland's ten votes.
2) Use the popular vote in each electoral district to choose who that vote goes to, and award the two "Senate" votes to the statewide winner.
In this way, each local area can choose who they want for president, giving individuals an incentive where their vote counts, and there is also an incentive for winning an entire state.
Plus, instead of an official ceremony of vote-counting later-on, we will have a result immediately using either of these methods (excepting an extraordinary situation like in 2000).