Colorado: another nail in the elctral collg coffin

[elcorazon]

It just changes the method of how electoral votes are counted...not the end of the college itself...infact if all 50 states used this method Bush would have won by a larger margin in 2000...

Have you actually counted it?  I think you may be wrong.  This is not the Maine/Nebraska model; it is a proportional vote, meaning if a state like Wyoming with 3 electoral votes went  66-33 to Bush, then Bush would get 2 and Kerry 1.  I haven't gone state by state in 2000, but I doubt it would've helped Bush.  Somebody here do the math; I'm too lazy.

[elcorazon]

you are correct, but that doesn't necessarily mean Bush would have won.  Gore got more votes so in a proportional system, it would have been VERY close, I believe.  Gore won some big states by decent margins, so even though he would lose some EV's in those states, he may still win some by quite a bit (NY, e.g.).  Florida of course would have been 13-12 Bush.  I really want to do the math now, but I have no time.

OK, I decided to do the math.  I'm not sure how the rules would work, so I had to make some guesses and my VERY unscientific answer is:

Bush 267
Gore 263
Nader 8

leaving the results up to the house.  Of course, if the rules were not as I assumed, that COULD change things, but I'm guessing under any rules, no one gets 270 with proportional voting in each state.

[elcorazon]

I just gave the "extra" votes to whoever came closest to deserving them.  I multiplied each candidates by the number of electoral votes then "rounded" each to the fairest number... for example if a state had 9 EV's and the calculation came out as follows:

Bush 4.47
Gore 3.27
Nader 0.22
others less

Then I gave Bush 5 and Gore 3, even though Bush only won 4 EV's.  That's how I ended up with my totals above.

[elcorazon]

I voted no.  The numbers in this thread show why.  Can you imagine what would happen if the election was decided based on how the numbers were rounded (or truncated)?  Sheesh, it would be worse than Florida in 2000.

However, I do like the methods used by Maine and Nebraska.  That's better than winner-take-all, IMO.

Well, I actually think that those rules would be determined in advance and it would work out fine.  The problem would be no one would understand it, kinda like the primaries, where no one understands why candidates get the delegates they get.  Fortunately, the primaries are never close enough to where anyone would even care about such minutae, but the general election would be a different matter.

2000 actually wasn't such a fiasco in that regard.  

The problem would actually be that there could be WAY more states where a very small number of votes could impact 1 electoral vote, and when the election is close that could be a real pain... not to mention the lack of a clear winner if no one gets 270, which is VERY unlikely with our current system... I'm not sure that all that makes it bad, however.

Truth is, this'll never happen.  Even if Colorado approves it, they'll eventually scrap it when no one else does it... and no one else'll do it.

[elcorazon]

I don't think anything Maine or Nebraska does will make a candidate really want to stump there or even be aware of issues particular to Nebraska.  Colorado and many other states have potential leverage as "swing" states.  If Colorado is the only state with this setup, it will always be a battle for only 1 EV, while if it keeps it's current setup, it will be a battle for 9 EVs.  Maine and NE have a different setup which actually makes it "potentially" a battle for the state (2 EV's) plus a battle for individual CD's.  

Side question:  when did NE and ME go to this system?  Have they ever split their EV's since doing so?