Alan Natapoff, Research Scientist
| Jan/20 | Wed | 04:00PM-05:30PM | 37-212 |
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
A democratic voting system must pursue unanimous consent to the president it elects. At presidential scale, simple majority voting will always be insensitive to the consent of a minority: When tried it has failed consistently over time, sometimes catastrophically. The Electoral College, modeled on the British Parliamentary system, has succeeded for centuries: It pursues unanimous consent by giving each voter large fair power over the outcome. To correct its failure in poorly-contested states we should give Electoral votes in proportion to votes cast, not to census population: A voter can then punish a dominant candidate she rejects with a blank ballot; the newly-powerful votes cast represent consent to the outcome. We calculate voting power, trace its paradoxes and oddities, examine its relationship to the design of the rules of baseball, and show how Fermat’s Rule would have resolved Florida’s deadlock in 2000—and changed its outcome.
Sponsor(s): Political Science
Contact: Alan Natapoff, 37-147, 617 253-7757, NATAPOFF@MIT.EDU