How Baseball, Poker, and Fermat Teach Us the Best Way to Elect the President
Alan Natapoff
Wed Jan 18, 04-05:30pm, 37-212
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
The paradox of presidential voting is that the Electoral College is more democratic than raw popular voting: It delivers massive power to individual voters in closely-contested states, but raw voting delivers none to anyone, anywhere. We can empower the 80 million impotent voters in poorly-contested states by basing a state's Electoral vote count on its total popular vote, not its population. If the opposition despises the state's dominant candidate--or greatly prefers its own--it can cast blank ballots that will not count for him: Dominant candidates must earn the acquiescence of their opposition, underdog candidates must contest states they are likely to lose, and both must campaign beyond the battleground states. We trace the paradoxes, the delicious oddities, and the resolution of Florida's deadlock in 2000 by Fermat's Rule.
Web: http://natapoff@space.mit.edu
Contact: Alan Natapoff, 37-219, 253-7757, natapoff@space.mit.edu
Sponsor: Political Science
Latest update: 15-Nov-2005
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