> http://www.avagara.com/e_c/reference/00012001.htm
>
> Mathematical model explains how EC delivers more power to individual
> voters.
Hm. I looked at the article - which, btw, doesn't contain much maths, and his result is non-inspiring. Here are a couple of snips:
"A general preference for one candidate over the other is like
a house advantage in gambling. "If candidate A has a 1
percent edge on every vote," Natapoff says, "in 100,000 votes
he?s almost sure to win. And that?s bad for the individual
voter, whose vote then doesn?t make any difference in the
outcome. The leading candidate becomes the house." "
and
"In a nation of 135 citizens, says Natapoff, one person?s
probability of turning an election is 6.9 percent in a
dead-even contest. But if voter preference for candidate A
jumps to, say, 55 percent, the probability of deadlock, and of
your one vote turning the election, falls below .4 percent, a
huge drop. If candidate A goes out in front by 61 percent, the
probability that one vote will matter whooshes down to .024
percent. And it keeps on dropping, faster and faster, as
candidate A keeps pulling ahead. "
In other words, if there is a tendency for the population to favour one candidate, the chance that your vote turns out to be a tie breaker is small. Well, duh! Also, from the first paragraph, Natapoff admits that a non EC system tends to allow small percential differences to make a significant impact - exactly why such systems tend to favour 'third parties' (see European proportional rep. systems for an example).
Below is the paragraph which shows how an EC system biases the system to a situation where it is more likely that a small group (e.g. a special interest group) ends up having the tie-breaker power. In other words, this article argues against its own headline - if you actually read it carefully.
"You can see this in a small electorate. If you district a nation
of nine into three states with three voters each, with each
vote a perfect toss-up, the probability of a deadlock in your
state is 50 percent. Your vote would then decide the outcome
in your state. Beyond that, the other two states must also
deadlock, one going for A and one for B, to make your
state?s outcome decisive for the nation. The probability of
that is also 50 percent. So the compound probability of the
whole election hinging on your vote is 25 percent. In a
simple, direct election, on the other hand, the national pool of
eight other voters would have to split four against four to
make your vote decisive. The probability of that happening is
27.3 percent (35/128), giving you more power in a direct
election. Districting doesn?t help this nation of nine, and it
doesn?t help any electorate of any size when the contest is
perfectly even. "
So, Natapoff is just another conservative technocrat. Got enough of those, thanks.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844