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IAP 2007 Activity


How Baseball, Poker, and Fermat Teach Us the Best Way to Elect the President
Alan Natapoff
Wed Jan 17, 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; raw voting delivers none to anyone, anywhere. We can empower 80 million impotent voters in poorly-contested states if we base a state's Electoral vote on its total popular vote (for all candidates) rather than on its population. If the opposition despises the state's dominant candidate--or greatly prefers its own--it can then cast blank ballots that will not count for anyone: Dominant candidates must then persuade their opposition to vote for someone,and both candidates must campaign beyond the battleground states. The same lessons apply to a democratic voting design for Iraq. We trace the paradoxes,the delicious oddities, and the resolution of Florida's deadlock in 2000 by Fermat's Rule.
Web: http://natapoff@mit.edu
Contact: Alan Natapoff, 37-219, 253-7757, natapoff@mit.edu
Sponsor: Political Science
Latest update: 20-Dec-2006


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