For an interesting paper by Professors Jeronimo Cortina and Andrew
Gelman showing that Mexico exhibits a red-state, blue-state pattern
similar to the pattern here in the U.S., with income predicting
conservative voting much more strongly in poor states than in rich
states, see
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/07/income_a
nd_vote_1.html and
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/bgy3.pdf
Sam Hirsch
--------------------------------------------------------
Sam Hirsch
Jenner & Block LLP
601 Thirteenth Street, N.W.
Suite 1200 South
Washington DC 20005-3823
Tel (202) 637-6397
Fax (202) 661-4900
SHirsch@jenner.com
www.jenner.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu
[mailto:owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu] On Behalf Of
Lowenstein, Daniel
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 3:26 PM
To: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Cc: BreweJo@ffhsj.com
Subject: FW: Mexico and the Electoral College
John Brewer, an attorney at Fried Frank in New York, posted
the following to another listserv. With his permission, I am posting it
here.
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
UCLA Law School
405 Hilgard
Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
310-825-5148
________________________________
From: Brewer, John W.
Sent: Thu 7/13/2006 10:00 AM
To:
Subject:Mexico and the Electoral College
Michael Barone linked to state-by-state results in the Mexican
presidential race, which are here:
http://www.elecciones2006.unam.mx/PREP2006/PRESIDENTE/nacional_Pre.html
You can see a map showing the strong regional tendencies in the results
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3A2006_Mexican_election_per_state.png
.
Unfortunately the map isn't shaded to indicate strength of support /
margin of victory, because the interesting point from the numbers is
that although the race was very close nationally it was generally not at
all close locally. Some states were blowout victories for Calderon;
others for AMLO; indeed although the PRI candidate (3d place nationally)
did not win any states, he was a strong second in a number of places,
meaning that in those places one of the two leading candidates finished
third. Even where the victor did not win in a blowout the margin of
victory is generally such as to be beyond the influence of fortuitous
logistical mishaps or fraud of a level sufficiently discreet as to be
easily concealable. Only one or two states (Campeche and perhaps
Veracruz) seem at first glance close enough to think the outcome might
be within the plausible margin of error of an inherently imperfect
process. So if the Mexicans used something analogous to our Electoral
College, w!
ith winner-take-all credit for state-by-state victories, they might
have gotten a much cleaner outcome. It's possible (you'd have to assign
plausible weights to the different states after getting population
numbers) that one or the other candidate might have won a clean victory
even disregarding the handful of states with narrow margins, because his
votes were more widely distributed geographically. Or in the
alternative it's possible that you'd have a Florida-like situation where
at least you could focus your energies on fighting about alleged
irregularities in the handful of outcome-determinative localities rather
than worrying about every precinct nationwide.
[John asked me to excise his concluding comments, part of
which were specifically directed to the other listserv. He speculates
that if there was in fact significant fraud in the Mexican election (on
which he expresses no opinion), it is plausible to suppose it was
concentrated in the most one-party regions, in which case the fraud
would have been reduced in significance in an electoral college setup.
Finally, he suggests that all these points argue against the
desirability of adopting a nationwide popular vote in the United States.
Since I am paraphrasing, probably this paragraph should be attributed to
me more than to John.]
JWB
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