The old MIT counter on the home page just rolled past the 1,000,000 mark yesterday! The counter was first placed on the web site in January of 1999. Great to see so much interest in the topic and the site.

Happy Leip, err Leap Day!

Happy Presidents’ Day everyone!

For those of you who vote strategically (i.e. – if your first-choice candidate “can’t win”, then instead of voting for your first-choice candidate, you instead vote for a less-choice candidate that may have a greater chance of winning.) Note that this type of strategy is only beneficial in a winner-take-all situation. Such rules may be applicable in the November election (although I personally discourage this practice), since most states (NE, ME excepted) allocate their electoral votes based on the state-wide popular-vote winner.

However, in the primaries, most delegates are awarded proportionally – and often by Congressional District. For example, in tomorrow’s New Hampshire Primary, there are seven delegates awarded proportionally to the candidates in each of New Hampshire’s two congressional districts. An additional eight delegates are awarded proportionally to the candidates based on the state-wide primary vote totals. A minimum of only 15% is required to receive delegates. So, a candidate receiving 23% state-wide and in each congressional district would receive five delegates out of 22 total. You should think of the primaries, not like the general election, but more like the Tour-de-France. A contestant need not win any states to obtain the nomination.

I’m back from a bit of vacation. Hope that everyone enjoyed the holidays. Its now only 15 days until the Iowa Caucus and the kick-off of the 2004 Presidential Contest. The site will, of course, be following each of the primary and caucus contests and present results. The site was also just upgraded to a higher-bandwidth server (I bought more bandwidth to accomodate the anticipated increase in traffic).
On a slightly different note, I was very entertained by the creation, on the atlas forum, of a forum fantasy election. Quite a fun idea, with some fine posts and intelligent wit. I have moved all of these topics to their own section (appropriately named, Atlas Fantasy Elections).

I’ve received a number of requests since 2000 with regard to election map posters and other such election results paraphernalia. To this end (and to help to support the cost of the continuing increase in site traffic) I have recently signed up for a web store at cafepress.com. The Atlas store is located at http://www.cafeshops.com/uselectionatlas.

I’m in the early stages of developing this and will add more items. Please let me know if there are particular items that you have an interest in! And, by the way, one of the items to be added will be the long-awaited CD-ROM version of the Atlas!

I have received several emails with regard to this article from the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal. The article makes an argument that JFK lost the popular vote to Richard Nixon in the election of 1960. The basis of the argument is not about the alleged fraud in Illinois and Texas, but rather that it is not correct to assign all of the popular votes for Alabama’s Presidential Electors to Kennedy because six of the eleven electors were officially not pledged to Kennedy. The facts of the article are mostly correct – Alabama held a primary to determine which Democratic Presidential Electors would appear on the ballot. The result, was a ticket with split loyalties – six of the eleven Electors were “unpledged” and the remaining five were “loyalists” pledged to Kennedy (this was a different situation than in Louisiana and Mississippi – where the Unpledged Electors were on a separate ticket than the Democratic Electors).

One inaccuracy in the article is the statement that the Nixon “Slate” defeated the Democratic “Slate” 324,050 to 237,981. In fact, the citizens did not vote for the electors as a slate, but actually cast eleven ballots for not more than eleven electors (if someone wanted to vote for the six unpledged electors and five of the Republican ones, they could. If they wanted to vote for just one elector, they could). The result of this voting method produced varying totals; the difference between the highest and lowest electors is about seven thousand votes (see table below).

Alabama Election Results – 1960

Summary:
Unpledged: Max: 324,050; Mean: 322,471; 6/11: 175,893
Democratic: Max: 318,303; Mean: 317,580; 5/11: 144,355
Republican: Max: 237,981; Mean: 235,345; 11/11: 235,345

So, the question is, how does one fairly allocate the popular vote in Alabama in 1960? Typically, most sources that I have seen give Kennedy 324,050, the highest total of the eleven electors. However, the elector whom received that total, Frank M. Dixon, was one of those not pledged to Kennedy. The highest vote total for a Kennedy elector was 318,303 (C.G. Allen). There are several ways that the results can be allocated with math (mean, median, 5/11 for Kennedy, 6/11 for Unpledged, etc.). These would all result in different totals and, from some perspective, be correct (its the “all-of-the-above” choice). The real total would be to determine the intent of the voters. When a citizen cast his/her ballot for each elector, was that citizen choosing Kennedy or Not Kennedy (some conservative democrat not yet named). Unfortunately, we can never know.

The point I would like to make about the national popular vote, is that it does not matter. The “game” isn’t played that way. As for an analogy, I haven’t seen anybody up in arms and complaining that the Yankees rightfully won the World Series in 2003 because they scored more runs (21 – 17). The Marlins won the most games… and are therefore the winners. The US Presidential Election is about winning electoral votes (which, today, translates to winning the popular vote within each state – with exception of Maine and Nebraska where a candidate’s electors are chosen by a plurality of the popular vote within each congressional district). The players understand this and execute their game plans accordingly. If the national popular vote was the actual metric by which they would win, then the campaigns would execute their plans very differently than they do today – leading to a different outcome.

I cast my ballot this evening! Positions for Alderman and School Board were all that were on the ballot here. The city bought new optical ballot-reading machines (each paper ballot was about 8 1/2 x 15!) to replace the old lever machines that were used last year. It felt a bit like I was taking a high-school test… filling out little ovals (albeit with a pen instead of a #2 pencil). Overall, I believe the paper ballot read by optical-scanning machines to be an excellent system. Very accurate (especially relative to punch-cards), much faster to count than standard paper ballots, and a (sizable) paper receipt in the event of a need to recount or examine the election.

Tomorrow is Election Day! Although most states do not have high-level offices up for election (exceptions being the Governor’s races in Kentucky and Mississippi. Note that the Louisiana Gubernatorial election runoff is on Nov 15th), many local races such as school board, aldermen, etc. are taking place tomorrow. Such off-elections traditionally have significantly lower turnout – and consequently individual votes can have a greater impact on the results. I encourage you to learn about the local offices up for election and the candidates interested in filling those positions – and then go to the polls! You can find information on voting in your particular state (offices, candidates, polling locations, sample ballots, etc.) at the Secretary of State (or equivalent agency) website. You can find a link to these websites on the Links page.

Yesterday, I accidentally enabled site autorization… requiring visitors to enter a password to access the site. This was an error and was corrected this morning. I apologize to those who were unable to access the material during this time.