Saturday, June 19, 2004 :::
I should go to bed, but I want to say a thing or three:- A friend of mine told me tonight about a site where he writes on occasion. I neither endorse nor unendorse it at this point, but I plan to check it out later, and if you have too much free time on your hands, you may as well.
- Regarding racial silliness, I bow to my brother's comments on disparate impact. If you didn't read them, I've just given you an other chance to redeem yourself.
- We've discussed the electoral college a bit over the last day or two, and it occurred to me tonight that the golden example of the college, in the winner-take-all is the election of 1860. It's widely known (I think) that the winner got a minority of the popular vote. What's less well known is that, even if all of his (three) opponents had merged, he would have won the election without polling the House. Only a couple or so of the states that he won gave him less than a majority. Many of the states he lost didn't even allow him on the ballot, so he scored zeros. He was overwhelmingly opposed (at least in the vote, which is the only measure of democracy one should allow) in one region of the country, but generally supported in the rest, so he won the electoral college as constituted in its current, winner-take-all* fashion. In other words, he didn't win deep support, but he won broad support.
For the purposes of this exercise, please set aside your opinion of the man who happened to be elected President in 1860.
Three points if you can guess which word made me pull out my thesaurus for the first time in several years. I'd offer ten, were I thrilled with the result, but I didn't really end up much better than I started.
* "Winner take all" except for Maine and Nebraska, which is close enough. If you don't know about the Maine/Nebraska exception, and you care, email me and I'll write a brief follow-up.
::: posted by Steven at 2:46 AM
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