Electoral College

The voting system isn't for us to elect a leader to lead us, the people, but to elect a leader to lead the country. It's a small distinction, but an important one.

Now, if you used to be like me, you didn't really understand the electoral college. You would think that a direct vote would more accurately reflect the desires of the nation for who should lead them. But you always hear about people who say, "Why should I bother? My vote doesn't matter."

This statement is roughly true. In small systems, such as judging the Olympics, each individual vote is very important because the pool is small. As the pool of voters increases, your voter power doesn't fall linearly, but rather, exponetially.

So while I was reading /., I came across this. It's a little long, but definately worth the read. It proves, mathematically, why the electoral system works and why it is invaluable to the success of our country. There isn't any hard math in the article, so don't worry.

These insights came quickly, but it was many years before Natapoff devised his formal mathematical proof. His starting point was the concept of voting power. In a fair election, he saw, each voters power boils down to this: What is the probability that one persons vote will be able to turn a national election? The higher the probability, the more power each voter commands. To figure out these probabilities, Natapoff devised his own model of a national electorate - a more realistic model, he thought, than the ones the quoted experts were always using. Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts - such as states - than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.

After reading the article, I was thoroughly convinced that our country would not be where it is was it not for the electoral college.

I would provide a more indepth analysis, but almost everything is there in the article.