Alaska for Obama?
 

On Jul 31, 9:16*am, rw wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:
rw wrote:

Scott Seidman wrote:

A minority-vote victory is not a failure of the Electoral College. *

That depends on whether you think that thwarting the will of the
majority of voters is a failure.

Thwarting the will of the majority is not necessarily a bad thing.
The founding fathers were justifiably terrified of mob rule and
they didn't suffer the democracy fetish with which you appear to
be afflicted.

I doubt that the founding fathers anticipated that the voters in Alaska
would be three times more competent to chose a president than the voters
in California and Texas.

--
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They're not, because there are fewer than them.

If any of you have lived in a state where there is one large
population center, and the rest is rural (Maine and Arizona come to
mind), and have watched state referendum after state referendum be
'won' by the votes of the large urban center at the expense of the
rural citizenry, you'd appreciate the value of an electoral college to
the smaller states.

--riverman

Alaska for Obama?
 

riverman wrote:
On Jul 31, 9:16 am, rw wrote:

I doubt that the founding fathers anticipated that the voters in Alaska
would be three times more competent to chose a president than the voters
in California and Texas.

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They're not, because there are fewer than them.

An Alaska voter has three times the voting power for President than a
voter in California and Texas. Period. That point is not arguable.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Alaska for Obama?
 

riverman typed:
On Jul 31, 9:16 am, rw wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:
rw wrote:

Scott Seidman wrote:

A minority-vote victory is not a failure of the Electoral College.

That depends on whether you think that thwarting the will of the
majority of voters is a failure.

Thwarting the will of the majority is not necessarily a bad thing.
The founding fathers were justifiably terrified of mob rule and
they didn't suffer the democracy fetish with which you appear to
be afflicted.

I doubt that the founding fathers anticipated that the voters in Alaska
would be three times more competent to chose a president than the voters
in California and Texas.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

They're not, because there are fewer than them.

If any of you have lived in a state where there is one large
population center, and the rest is rural (Maine and Arizona come to
mind), and have watched state referendum after state referendum be
'won' by the votes of the large urban center at the expense of the
rural citizenry, you'd appreciate the value of an electoral college to
the smaller states.

Two words from your friends in Western Mass: Big Dig
--
TL,
Tim
-------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj

Alaska for Obama?
 

rw wrote:
riverman wrote:
rw wrote:

I doubt that the founding fathers anticipated that the voters in Alaska
would be three times more competent to chose a president than the voters
in California and Texas.

They're not, because there are fewer than them.

An Alaska voter has three times the voting power for President than a
voter in California and Texas. Period. That point is not arguable.

Oh bull****, this is roff we can argue about anything.

There are about 683,000 people in Alaska, not voters, people. That
works out to about 227,000 people for each of Alaska's 3 electoral
votes. (North Dakota and Vermont, also with 3 electoral votes, have
213,000 and 207,000 respectively people per electoral vote BTW).
California's 55 electoral votes are divided amongst 36.5 million
people which is about 665,000 people per electoral vote.

Apparently you want to use those numbers to claim that Alaskans have
three times more clout in the electoral college than Californians.
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. Alaskans have over ten times *less*
clout in the electoral college than Californians and over ten times
less clout than Texans with their 34 electoral college votes.

--
Ken Fortenberry

Alaska for Obama?
 

Ken Fortenberry wrote:

Apparently you want to use those numbers to claim that Alaskans have
three times more clout in the electoral college than Californians.
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. Alaskans have over ten times *less*
clout in the electoral college than Californians and over ten times
less clout than Texans with their 34 electoral college votes.

I'm saying, and consistently have been saying, that an Alaskan has three
times the voting power of a Californian and a Texan, not that Alaska AS
AN ENTIRE STATE, has three times the voting power. Can't you ****ing read?

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Alaska for Obama?
 

On Jul 31, 7:44 am, rw wrote:

An Alaska voter has three times the voting power for President than a
voter in California and Texas. Period. That point is not arguable.

An Alaskan voter has _exactly_ the same voting power for President as
Californian voters and Texan voters, and that power is ZERO.

Ken is right, the comparison should be at the state level, because the
state is allowed to decide how its electoral college members are
decided upon, and Alaska has far far far less representation than
California in the electoral college.

But you already knew all this anyways. :-)

Jon.

Alaska for Obama?
 

rw wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:

Apparently you want to use those numbers to claim that Alaskans have
three times more clout in the electoral college than Californians.
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. Alaskans have over ten times *less*
clout in the electoral college than Californians and over ten times
less clout than Texans with their 34 electoral college votes.

I'm saying, and consistently have been saying, that an Alaskan has three
times the voting power of a Californian and a Texan, not that Alaska AS
AN ENTIRE STATE, has three times the voting power. Can't you ****ing read?

You're making a spurious argument. You want to claim that because
1 electoral vote is split between 600,000 Californians but only
between 200,000 Alaskans that an individual Alaskan has three
times more "voting power". It's like arguing that because 3 people
split an orange somebody else has more apples.

--
Ken Fortenberry

Alaska for Obama?
 

On Jul 31, 11:57*am, rw wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:

Apparently you want to use those numbers to claim that Alaskans have
three times more clout in the electoral college than Californians.
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. Alaskans have over ten times *less*
clout in the electoral college than Californians and over ten times
less clout than Texans with their 34 electoral college votes.

I'm saying, and consistently have been saying, that an Alaskan has three
times the voting power of a Californian and a Texan, not that Alaska AS
AN ENTIRE STATE, has three times the voting power. Can't you ****ing read?

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Yes, yes, yes. Of course we can read, and your point is correct, but
spurious: a single electoral vote in Alaska represents fewer people
than a single electoral vote in Texas or California. That is, of
course, because the electoral college is a compromise between the one-
man-one-vote (popular vote) and the each-state-has-the-same-number-of-
ballots-to-cast (ESHTSNOBTC vote). If the president were elected via
the popular vote (or if electoral votes were apportioned according to
population, which is the same thing), than basically California,
Texas, Florida, New York and Ohio would pretty much make the decision
unilaterally, and there would be a LOT of bellyaching from the rest of
the country. If each state got one vote...then the so-called
discrepancy that you are hating would be even more exascorbated and
skewed. The fact that a single Alaskan electoral vote represents fewer
people than an single Texas or California electoral vote is an
unavoidable result of us not having a OMOV system, as we shouldn't.

It does seem bizarre when we decry that so and so won the popular
vote, and lost the electoral vote, but we never seem to decry that so
and so won more states, but lost the electoral vote. Its the same
issue from the other side.

--riverman

Alaska for Obama?
 

On Jul 31, 12:55*pm, Ken Fortenberry
wrote:
rw wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:

Apparently you want to use those numbers to claim that Alaskans have
three times more clout in the electoral college than Californians.
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. Alaskans have over ten times *less*
clout in the electoral college than Californians and over ten times
less clout than Texans with their 34 electoral college votes.

I'm saying, and consistently have been saying, that an Alaskan has three
times the voting power of a Californian and a Texan, not that Alaska AS
AN ENTIRE STATE, has three times the voting power. Can't you ****ing read?

You're making a spurious argument. You want to claim that because
1 electoral vote is split between 600,000 Californians but only
between 200,000 Alaskans that an individual Alaskan has three
times more "voting power". It's like arguing that because 3 people
split an orange somebody else has more apples.

--
Ken Fortenberry

Besides, several states have Alaska beat for a few number of voters
per electoral vote.
Alaska has 218,478 per EV
North Dakota has 211,455 per EV
Vermont has 207,131 per EV
DC has 184,507 per EV
and Wyoming has 168,843 per EV

In fact, a single Wyoming EV represents almost four Texas EVs. I'd
think, with the propensity of Texans at high levels of our government
in recent years that the EV system would have been changed if they
felt the system was biased against them.

--riverman

Alaska for Obama?
 

On Jul 31, 11:34 am, riverman wrote:
On Jul 31, 11:57 am, rw wrote:

I'm saying, and consistently have been saying, that an Alaskan has three
times the voting power of a Californian and a Texan, not that Alaska AS
AN ENTIRE STATE, has three times the voting power. ...

Yes, yes, yes. Of course we can read, and your point is correct,

No, the point is not even correct, it is simply one way to spin the
data. I could just as easily say that since both California and Alaska
use winner-take-all for selecting electoral college members, and any
single voter might be _the_ vote that swings the whole state, then a
single voter in California has 15 times as much "power" as a single
Alaskan voter when it comes to selecting a President.

The high horse has foundered and the only thing left to do is to
humanely put it down. :-)

Jon.
I hope this doesn't lead to dart boards....