Seth Borenstein, a science writer at the AP who doesn't know enough to keep his scientific fingers out of politics, has written a clear, straightforward analysis of voting and the electoral college. We're heard much of this before--that the electoral college creates ripples that can cause the election to tip to the candidate who did not get the most votes.
But Borenstein gives us the clearest analysis of the problem I've seen. (And see the sidebar here.)
-Paul Raeburn
Comments
Borenstein gives a good, balanced explanation of what's wrong with the electoral college. But that's not really a science story. It's more of a high school civics/history story (and a good one at that).
The real science story is that there doesn't seem to exist a perfect voting system. Note that the quote Borenstein uses - "There's no other electoral system in the world where the person with the most votes doesn't win." - is wrong. In parliamentary systems (most of the world), where marjorities are based on seats in parliament, the person who leads the party that got the most votes doesn't automatically become the winner. Parties with fewer seats could form a coalition to select somebody else.
But even apart from that, if there are more than two serious contenders (which happened in the U. S. in both elections that Clinton won), it's not clear the the person with the most votes, though not a majority, "should" win. In preferential voting schemes, where people rank the candidates, second choices count, and that could deny election to whoever got the highest vote total. There are other even more complicated schemes. And theorists have found potential "problems" in all of them.
A realy good science story on this topic would have been nice.