News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

Early on during the recent election it looked like Obama might win the Electoral vote while Romney might win the popular vote. It didn’t turn out that way, but it recently has (Bush-Gore, 2000). Every 4 years there are suggestions to change the way we select our president, either by abolishing the Electoral College or making some modifications in how states allocate electors. Without the electoral college my vote might have mattered more, and the candidates might have been more interested in the rest of the country besides Ohio.

One suggestion is to allocate Electors by legislative district. Arizona has 9 legislative districts, so as each district votes, one elector would also vote. The two extra electors could vote as the state as a whole votes. A couple of states do this already. But a major problem is that the legislative districts are often strongly gerrymandered, so it could be even more likely that a president could win without the popular vote. As evidence of this, it was reported that more people voted in this election for Democratic Congressmen, but more Republicans won seats.

Another suggestion is for each state to allocate electors in proportion to the vote in their state. I see merit in this suggestion. It wouldn’t guarantee that the candidate with the popular vote would win, but it would make each state more important to the candidates, and couldn’t be gerrymandered. My vote would seem more relevant. But if the proportion of the state’s count was within a few votes of moving an elector from one party to the other, it might again require a whole state recount and this might happen more often than the case where the vote is 50-50 in a state.

Neither of the above two methods would require a change to the Constitution. States are free to allocate their Electors however they wish.

The most radical suggestion is to just eliminate the Electoral College completely (which would require a Constitutional amendment) and select the president by popular vote. On the surface it’s the most fair, but in an election close enough to require a recount, the whole country would have to participate. Florida 2000 multiplied by 50.

Smaller states in general gain an advantage from the Electoral College, since the ratio of Electors to population is higher in smaller states. This is because each state gets one elector for each seat in the House, and two extra electors. So Wyoming has 189,000 citizens per elector, while California has 685,000 citizens per elector. In effect, a vote in Wyoming is worth about 3.6 votes in California.

The inertia of the current system is pretty strong. Will it ever be changed?

Most of you have probably received phone calls from Rachel before, offering to lower your credit card bill. It’s the most famous and perhaps the most irritating of all the phone scams. “This is Rachel with Cardholder Services. There is nothing wrong with your credit card….”

Well, the FTC has just announced that they have halted operations of five companies that were behind the calls.

But “Goodbye” is probably temporary only, as these not nice people quickly find other ways to perpetrate their scams.

Interestingly, the FTC has offered a $50,000 prize for anyone who can come up with a method to stop these calls. I hope someone wins the prize.

My new Ooma system has community blocklists that will block many telemarketers, but Rachel usually spoofs a continually shifting Caller ID number, so that doesn’t stop this particular scam.