Talk Elections

I was wondering how many of you would support the proportional method if all states used it for the Presidential elections?

No, because it means only states with an odd number of EVs would matter.

Of course.

What? ???  If it's properly set up then in a state with lets say 10 EVs if candidate A wins 51% and candidate B wins 49% then A would get 6 votes and B would get 4.  You just need to do some creative rounding to avoid evenly splitting the EVs in the case of a near tie. 

The alternative would be to divide the "House" EVs proportionally and then award the "Senate" EVs to the candidate with the highest vote percentage.  It actually creates the same result in a 10 EV state as the above example but I'm not sure if it would work that way for states with more/less than 10 EVs.

As for me, I support this method because it makes it more likely that the popular vote winner will win.

Not necessarily.  There are certain scenarios under which that would be true, but as long as the victory margins are greater in the smaller states than the larger states (as I think they tend to be right now; just look at Bush's %age margin of victory in places like ID or ND compared to Kerry's margin of victory in even NY), PR for the electoral votes would lead to an even greater shift of power towards the smaller states, which could well mean that the popular vote winner is *less* likely to win.

Look at it this way: The current EC gives the smaller states an advantage over where they would be if we had a straight popular vote system (because of the +2 EVs per state from where it would be if EVs were allocated solely on population).  However, that effect is *partially* offset by the fact that that victory margin tends to be greater in smaller states than larger states (so there are more "wasted" votes in smaller states).  But moving to PR would eliminate that effect.  I think someone worked this out for the 2000 election, and showed that under a PR EC system, Bush would have won by more electoral votes than he did in real life, even while losing the popular vote.

That's not PR. A state with an even number of electoral votes, especially a small state with an even number of electoral votes, couldn't help but split evenly in a PR system (using D'Hondt or Hare-Niemeyer) on a reasonably close result within that state. It's an incredibly bad idea, worse than the current plan.

The only system for electing the President I truly support is nationwide IRV-popular vote. Of course, abolishing the Presidency would be even better.

Only for socially conservative states as to increase the number of dem electoral votes.