[Peace-discuss] receiving multiple copies of posts

[Laurie at advancenet.net]

Robert,
I will respond to the specifics of your post below in another post in the
very near future; but for now, I wish to question why I am receiving both a
list copy and a personal email copy of this and other messages.  Duplicate
messages are a real pain; they result in taking up storage space, band
width, and time.

It would probably help if people would not just hit the reply button; but
would make sure that the message is being sent to
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net and not to any other additional addresses
as either "TO:" addresses or as "CC's."  Overtime, the messages coming to
the list will be sent out with only the list address as the reply address
and not the sender's personal private email address.

I also do not understand why I am receiving some messages as coming from
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net and some are coming from a
peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net.  Being relatively new to this
list, I find this confusing in that I have not come across this sort of
thing with respect to the many other lists that I participate in.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: naiman.uiuc at gmail.com [mailto:naiman.uiuc at gmail.com] On Behalf Of
> Robert Naiman
> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 2:57 PM
> To: Laurie at advancenet.net
> Cc: Peace Discuss
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Here is an idea
> 
> > > They can allocate them to the winner of the national
> > > popular vote. There is actually a project underway, the National
> > > Popular Vote project, to get state legislatures to do the latter.
> Note
> > > that this is different from distributing its electoral votes
> > > proportionately, but the overall result would be the same, if all
> > > states did it.
> >
> > I would find this objectionable for two reasons:
> >
> > 1) It would effectively average out any regional or local influences
> by
> > under-representing the minority candidates; it is still a winner
> takes all
> > zero-sum game in which the winner of the popular vote nationally
> would get
> > all the local Electoral votes from that state even if the majority of
> the
> > state's voters voted for a different candidate.  The most populous
> states
> > would accrue all the electoral power and run rampant over the smaller
> less
> > populated states.
> 
> The more populous states would have more electoral power (as they do
> now), but only to the degree to which they have more people - it's not
> obvious why this isn't fair. An additional vote in one state would
> count just as much as an additional vote in any other state - unlike
> the current system.
> 
> > 2) The overall result would be the same as eliminating the Electoral
> College
> > in favor of the popular vote; but it would still be a zero-sum
> > "winner-take-all" game with no representation for the minority voting
> for
> > their candidates.
> >
> > For example, according to your statement as to how it works ("They
> can
> > allocate them to the winner of the national popular vote"), if there
> was a
> > situation where candidate A gets 3 national popular votes, candidate
> B gets
> > 2, and candidate C gets 1, then each of the fifty states would have
> to cast
> > all their Electoral votes for candidate A even if that candidate got
> no
> > popular votes in the particular state.  This is not a very fair and
> > representative process.  Might as well be a one party state in which
> the
> > competition takes place in a national primary on the old southern
> model.
> > Let's make political parties illegal and have a national popular
> election
> > where people write-in the name of the person that they want without
> having
> > nominations or campaigns. Eliminate the middle men and processes! :-)
> >
> > Another question comes to mind given a scenario like my example.  In
> my
> > example, candidate A would only have a plurality of the votes of
> those
> > voting and not a majority since candidates B and C together would
> also have
> > 3 popular votes.  Would the allocation of a state's Electoral vote be
> based
> > on a national plurality or a national majority of the votes cast by
> voters?
> > Maybe we should make it a plurality or majority of the citizenry in
> the
> > country of voting age with a national voting age in play so as to
> take into
> > account those who find none of the choices acceptable for whatever
> reason?
> >
> > The point is that this scheme does not produce the same results as
> > proportional representation and cannot as long as it comprises a
> zero-sum
> > game where the winner takes all the Electoral votes based on a
> plurality or
> > even majority of the national vote which biases the election toward
> the
> > larger and more populous states.  It is further undermined by the
> fact that
> > the whole election process is rigged toward advantaging and
> recognizing the
> > main established political parties and their candidates both at the
> state
> > level and the national level to the disadvantage of the third or
> minority
> > political parties and independent non-affiliated candidates.  The net
> result
> > is that the persons elected to the offices of President and Vice-
> president
> > given the nature of the zero-sum game and the elimination of multiple
> > competitors for the positions in the election give the winner the
> appearance
> > of legitimacy and strong unified support when in fact this is not the
> case
> > but merely an artifact of the system and process.
> 
> It's true that the national popular vote, which is about electing the
> president and vice president, does not incorporate proportional
> representation. But that's true of any scheme for electing a single
> executive officer - at the end of the day, it has to result in a
> single winner, and in that sense, at the end of the day, it's going to
> be "winner take all," regardless of the intermediate steps to get
> there.. One could, however, incorporate the plurality/majority concern
> through an instant-runoff/preference voting scheme, guaranteeing that
> the "winner" would have a majority in some sense, rather than just a
> plurality.
> 
> There would be an indirect benefit of a national popular vote for
> third parties and independents, even without an IRV scheme - it would
> take away some of the heat about being a "spoiler" - the current
> set-up, as we saw in 2000, can magnify small differences at the state
> level in a close election. In a national popular vote scheme, Gore
> would have been elected president in 2000, regardless of Florida,
> Nader, butterfly ballots, hanging chads, SWP, Jews for Buchanan, etc.
> etc.