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Re: Math and the electoral college's virtue
Posted:
Nov 12, 2000 11:24 AM
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Dan Goodman wrote:
> It's an interesting article, although I have a few criticisms of Natapoff's
> analysis. Firstly, the notion of voter power, is it meaningful? It doesn't
> seem to be to me. Secondly, assuming that it is meaningful, it seems
> (although it's not entirely clear from the article) that he is comparing the
> expected voting power of a randomly chosen individual in the two systems
> under consideration,
In addition, why is the expected voting power of a randomly chosen individual
meaningful? In fact, in every election, some (many?) states are not really
contested, so the candidates put their effort into the contested states, either
reflecting the idea that some voters have more power (defined as probability of
affecting the outcome), or thereby giving some voters more power (defined as
ability to extract something [political promises] in exchange for their votes).
So because of social things, some voters have more power than others (by either
definition).
Jon Miller
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