[EL] Tight Results

[Thomas J. Cares]

If this were a meritorious reason for opposing the NPV, then shouldn't
there be movements to elect governors by awarding votes to counties'
plurality winners, based either on counties' eligible voters, registered
voters, or total voter turnout?; Movements to elect mayors base in a binary
fashion, where they either get all of a precincts votes or none?

By your standard, that would be preferable, because, under those rules, if
you were to have a very-close gubernatorial or mayoral election, you'd only
have to agonize over one precinct or county, whereas under the status
quo, agonizing full recounts can be necessary.

Your argument is that NPV helps insure against chaos by isolating
controversies of closeness to individual states, but, in doing so,
it sacrifices democratic legitimacy because it makes winning 90% of a
state's vote no better than winning 51%, or even a small plurality.

In theory, you can always increase insurance against chaos, if you can get
people to accept a less-democratic process as being legitimate.

If everyone felt that coin tosses were a legitimate way to choose a
President, then we could ensure we never have a repeat of Florida's chaos
by narrowing candidates down to one, through a series of coin flips. That
doesn't mean that would be a good process, nor that the populous would be
correct in accepting that as legitimate.

In fact, there are no movements to elect governors or mayors as I've
described, because no electorate would accept such a move to clearly
diminish the legitimacy of their elections. We only accept the Electoral
College because it's a long-practiced status quo, that's also embedded in
the constitution - not because it's meritorious.


Thomas J. Cares


On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 11:10 PM, Lowenstein, Daniel <lowenstein at law.ucla.edu
> wrote:

>       At least we don't have to worry about Florida x 50, as would be
> possible if there were a national popular vote system in effect.
>
>             Best,
>
>             Daniel H. Lowenstein
>             Director, Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions
> (CLAFI)
>             UCLA Law School
>             405 Hilgard
>             Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
>             310-825-5148
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [
> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Hasen [
> rhasen at law.uci.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012 9:45 PM
> To: law-election at uci.edu
> Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/4/12
>
> The Lesson from Tonight’s Iowa Results for Election Law<
> http://electionlawblog.org/?p=27367>
> Posted on January 3, 2012 9:40 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=27367> by
> Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> Elections can sometimes be close.  Very very close (as in 5 votes close as
> I write this post).  So close that the margin of error in counting the
> votes can exceed the margin of victory.  Fortunately tonight’s results
> won’t lead to a recount (for how the non-binding caucuses work, see here<
> http://theweek.com/article/index/222942/the-idiosyncratic-iowa-caucus-rules-a-guide>);
> whether Romney or Santorum wins is more about bragging rights than anything
> else.
>
> But this could happen in a presidential election again, in a state that
> matters.  And we haven’t done nearly enough to fix the problems in our
> elections that became apparent in the 2000 Florida fiasco.  As I will argue<
> http://electionlawblog.org/?p=22990> in great detail soon, we are not
> prepared for the next election meltdown.
>
> [cid:part1.01070400.08000704 at law.uci.edu]<
> http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D27367&title=The%20Lesson%20from%20Tonight%E2%80%99s%20Iowa%20Results%20for%20Election%20Law&description=
> >
> Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18> |
> Comments Off
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120104/fa892e29/attachment.html>