There’s gotta be a better way
So, we know Canada’s FPTP system is messed up – parties end up in charge based on a plurality, lacking even a simple majority. This evening, it seemed to me that the American system is not an improvement. Even with only two parties in the running (okay, there’s really more, but they’re statistically insignificant), a simple majority of 52% of the popular vote ends up with 338 electoral seats, where 47% ends up with 156 – that makes no mathematical sense to me (and yes, I know that the apportionement of electoral college votes leads to a “all the marbles” approach). This was brought home to me with a link from Kottke to this NYT piece on how it’s mathematically conceivable to win the election with 16% of the population, placed strategically because of the weighting of the votes. Something’s wrong with a system that allows for that kind of abuse.
Also, congratulations to President-elect Obama. Canada will be watching closely to see what you do with the US starting January 20th. Not to detract from his historic win, but it’s interesting to see commenters say that this outcome is pretty much the opposite of Dr. King’s dream where a man will be measured by the strength of his ideals, rather than the colour of his skin. When you have racial groups voting as a block, the first thing that suggests is that the vote is racially motivated. It’s too bad that accusations like this will dog Obama’s term in office, but it’s still interesting to see what he will do with it, given his speech on race relations earlier this year.
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