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Mark Stephen Braiman
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This is the place where I get to air my political views. If you see anything you like, please let me know!
You are welcome to quote, with attribution, anything that you find on this page, subject to one condition: the words "(c) Mark Braiman (Full text available at http://markbraiman.net)" must be viewable in the same size font, and must appear on each and every printed or computer-downloadable page in which any portion of my text is quoted.
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Select Electors in Each State According to the Nationwide Popular Vote? Not a Great Idea...
I no longer think that it's a good idea to change our Electoral College rules to give more weight to the nationwide popular vote. What changed my mind was the 2006 presidential election in Mexico, where Obrador, the loser by just under 0.6%, refused to accept the results, producing major unrest and requiring recounts at 12,000 of the nation's polling stations--nearly 10% of the total.
Having state legislatures pass laws to assign their own state's electors based on the nationwide popular vote doesn't address the problem of what will happen if (as in Mexico in 2006, and perhaps even the US in 2000) the popular vote difference is smaller than the margin of victory that most supporters of the second-place candidate fully trust. In such a case, in the more litigious US (as compared to Mexico), we can expect to see fewer marches, but many more expensive recount demands and legal challenges, possibly in every county of every state. The beauty of our Electoral College in such a case as 2000 is that it isolated the legal if not the political turmoil to a single state. Rather than abandoning this and other advantages inherent in the current winner-take-all system, there are much smaller changes that state legislatures could adopt in order to refine the rules for ultra-close elections.
A simple but effective one ould be to start requiring a politically unreproachable margin (say, 1% of the votes in a state) for the winner-take-all rule to apply, and to shift the electoral votes gradually over the range from a 50.5-49.5 to a 49.5-50.5 split. Such a minor modification would not likely affect campaign strategies, and could alter the outcome of only the very closest elections. However, if such rules had been in effect in every state in the 2000 election--or even just the 4 that had margins under 1%--then the popular-vote winner (Gore) would also have won the Electoral College by 6 electoral votes. Additionally, the outcome would have been much more reliable and stable, since a vote-counting error of even several thousand in any of the close-fought states could have shifted at most 1 electoral vote.
Of course, when more than two candidates in a race, there are more variables determining the exact percentages at which the shift of each electoral vote would need to come. It might seem difficult to come up with wording both precise and succinct that would accomplish this. Actually, however, it is possible to put down in a very few words a principle that accomplishes the essence of the goal stated above. I call it the "Rule of Thousands" because it says, in the simplest of terms, that a shift of more than one electoral vote in any state--e.g. based on a recount--would require a change of at least several thousand in the popular vote.
This is the Rule of Thousands that I would ask state legislatures to adopt as part of their procedures for choosing Presidential Electors: The difference in the numbers of electors awarded to any two candidates may not exceed one thousandth of the popular-vote difference between them, plus one. Using more mathematical language, the numbers of electoral votes (E1, E2) awarded by a state to any pair of candidates must obey the inequality
1000( |E1 - E2| - 1) < |P1 - P2|,
where (P1, P2) are the candidates' corresponding popular-vote numbers within that state.
The Rule of Thousands by itself does not unambiguously divide the electors. For example, it could allow electoral votes to be divided in linear proportion to the statewide popular vote regardless of the size of the margin. More is needed to resolve the ambiguity. In order to retain the "winner-take-all" principle for all but the closest races, the 48 states that have it now would need only write into their election law a second short rule, very close to the current winner-take-all rule: Within the requirement of satisfying the Rule of Thousands, the greatest number possible of the state's electors shall be awarded to the first-place candidate. If this is not all of the state's electors, then the greatest number possible of
the remainder that is consistent with the Rule of Thousands shall be awarded to the second-place candidate; and so on.
These two parsimonious requirements produce unamiguous assignments of numbers of electors in every possible case.
The math needed to get these assignments is simple enough for most people to do in their heads, and also pretty easy to remember. The most complex part of it--the "plus one" in the verbal rule, corresponding to the " -1" term in the mathematical inequality--is needed for states with odd numbers of electoral votes, where even a 1-vote difference in the popular vote must lead to a 1-electoral vote spread. (An exact split in the popular vote is extremely unlikely, and would unavoidably lead to one of the electors being chosen by a coin toss). However, in a state with an even number of electoral votes,such as Illinois with 22, this Rule of Thousands would require an even splitting of electoral votes if the top two candidates were within 999 votes of each other. These electoral votes would have to be split 12-10 if the margin between the top two candidates was between 1000 and 2999; 13-9 if the margin was between 3000 and 4999; and so on. In order to sweep all of Illinois's 22 electoral votes, the winner would have to be 21,000 votes ahead of the nearest competitor. For California's 55 electoral votes to be swept, the margin would have to be 54,000; for any of the small states with 3 electoral votes, the margin would have to be only 2,000. These margins are indeed roughly 1% of the number of voters in each corresponding state.
Of course, the splitting of electors described above assumes that there are not 3 candidates whose tallies within that state all lie within a range of about 1% of each other. In this astronomically rare event, the Rule of Thousands require a three-way split of a state's electoral votes.
The only remaining issue is of course how to determine which of each candidates' electors is chosen, if the state's slate of electors must be split. This is really a trivial issue, though. It can be taken care of quite easily in advance of the election when each candidate supplies the list of names of electors to the Secretary of State (or other election official). The candidates should just be required by law to prioritize their lists, so that in the event of a split, it would be those with the highest priority that get chosen.
It should be easy to see that even with the Rule of Thousands and these other accompanying rules in effect, the state-by-state winner-take-all system would still apply in almost all states, in almost all years. Individual states would therefore still have the benefit of amplifying their political clout as with the current system--but no longer to the point of nearly-chaotic instability, as occurred in Florida in 2000.
If this Rule of Thousands had been in place in all states in 2000, Bush would have been awarded 2 of New Mexico's electoral votes, 2 of Iowa's, and 3 of Wisconsin's that went to Gore. These would have been more than adequately outnumbered by the 12 electoral votes that would have swung in the other direction in Florida, where the popular vote margin in a state with 25 electoral votes was well under 1000, by anybody's count. The net result of all these switches would have been that the popular-vote winner (Gore) would also have won the Electoral College 272 to 266. More important, application of this "Rule of Thousands" would have significantly reduced the uncertainty and legal discord during the recount period. The swing of all of Florida's 25 electoral votes would no longer have been left dependent on the interpretation of a few hundred hanging chads spread out over several county election commissions.
Looking over the presidential elections since 1868 (but not as carefully as the one in 2000), it appears that the only years when different men would have become President, had this Rule of Thousands had been in place, were 2000 and 1888--the only ones where the winner of the popular vote lost in the Electoral College. Thus, this rule accomplishes the goal of increasing the likelihood that the Electoral College will indeed choose the winner of the popular vote, but without making it an absolute requirement. If you really think about it, you realize that doing the latter would actually give too much power to third-party candidates to blackmail one or both of the major candidates to adopt a particular position that may be important only to a rather small number of single-issue voters nationwide. The Electoral College has helped to minimize the number of times in our history when such political blackmail could be used.
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Merchants Err, Consumers Pay
The Need for Reform in Consumer Protection Laws Regarding Inaccurate Adverse Information Reported to and by Credit Reporting Agencies.
Here are some examples of why consumers need better protection from inaccurate information in credit reports.
The main problem is that existing law is designed mainly to protect consumers in the event of a denial of credit based on false information. In order to avoid the potential liabilities in such cases, financial institutions that rely on credit reports have increasingly avoided outright denial of credit (or of insurance, etc.). Instead, they use the credit rating to set the interest rate, insurance premium, etc. If there is adverse information in the consumer's credit report, he/she will merely be hit with an extra charge. Since this isn't an outright denial of credit, the consumer never is entitled to find out what kind of adverse--and potentially false--information is the basis for the extra cost. The consumer can get access to this information, for sure--but is not entitled to it at zero cost--he/she has to pay, generally a hefty fee! So they get you one way or another...
But what ever happened to the principle that consumers should have a right to examine their credit reports if there is a good reason to believe that someone has provided false credit information about them?
Below are just a few recent examples showing that merchants have gotten increasingly sloppy due to the lack of effective enforcement of their legal responsibility to insure the accuracy of their own information. The merchant makes the mistake, but the consumer ends up paying...
4775 EAST LAKE ROAD
December 13, 2001
Sprint PCS
P.O Box 62071
Baltimore, MS 21264-2071
AND
Diversified Adjustment Service, Inc.
P.O. Box 32145
Fridley, MN 55432-0145
Re: Sprint PCS Account Number 0026049605
I am writing to dispute the balance that you claim is due on my Sprint PCS account of $259.82. This notice is being sent to you within the 30 days allowed in the first notice from you or your collection agency, dated November 14 2001 (but actually postmarked November 15, 2001), and so I am preserving all my rights in this dispute.
The balance that you claim that I owe arises entirely from charges that were levied fraudulently by Sprint PCS. The fraudulent charges against my account started for the billing period Nov. 21-Dec. 20, 2000, over 1 year ago. This was when I switched to a new plan in response to an advertisement flyer at the local Sprint PCS store. The $34.99 per month plan clearly advertised that for that rate, 1500 "any time" minutes were included, as well as 1250 additional Night & Weekend minutes. That rate was what I signed up for.
I did not realize it until several months later, when scrutinizing my bills, that I was being charged an additional $10 per month, starting Nov. 21 2000, itemized on the bill as "1250 Night & Weekend (Off-Peak) Minutes. (See attached copy of bill dated Dec. 6 200). At the time I discovered this problem, I was furious, having felt that I was the victim of a bait-and-switch. The Sprint bills are laid out in such a confusing fashion, with this charge itemization buried way near the back of the bill, that it seemed (and still seems) likely to me that some oh-so-clever marketer at Sprint had planned this gimmick as a way of bilking customers out of more money than they had signed up for, and making it hard for those customers to discover the fraud.
I called the Sprint PCS customer service center three times in the spring of 2001. The first time, in late winter/early spring, I was promised that the error would be corrected immediately. However, no action was taken. I called again at the end of April to complain, and requested immediate termination of my Sprint PCS account. The person on the other end of the line, whose name I apparently did not take down, calmed me down enough to reassure me that all of the erroneous $10 per month charges would be reversed, and they would never again appear on my bill.
Imagine my fury, then, when on the very next bill, dated May 22, 2001 (see attached copy), there was only a $50 balance adjustment (corresponding to 5, not 6, months of the erroneous--I maintain fraudulent!--charges.) Furthermore, I was charged once again $10 for "1250 Night and Weekend (off-peak) minutes" that I never contracted to pay. I called once again to complain about the overcharges, and once again requested an immediate termination of my service. I was told that this would be done. I then paid $100.29 on June 11, which was more than enough to cover the legitimate balance of services provided, up to the date I called to terminate. This was the $110.29 that appeared on my May bill, less the $10 fraudulent charge for the period of May 22-June 22. This was actually an overpayment, since I still had not been credited for one of the 6 earlier months in which I had been billed for the extra $10.
Since that date of my requested termination, however, I have continued to be plagued by further fraudulent charges. When the June bill arrived, not only was I NOT given the promised credit of $20 for the $10 fees assessed during May and one of the earlier months, I was charged once again a fraudulent $10 fee for "Night and Weekend Minutes" that I had informed your service person clearly that I was not going to use, and that I had in fact never contracted to use even if I had maintained the account. (This time I was sure it had to be such severe and deliberate "computer negligence" that it constituted fraud).
Your service persons were so unhelpful the last 2 times that I called them, having wasted a substantial amount of my time already, I gave up on communicating with you until now. Now you are hearing from me, in a way that I think will (finally) get past the incompetents in your "customer service center" and to someone who knows what the potential consequences of your actions really are.
If you pursue this collection action, you can be sure that I will do all of the following:
(1) I will file an official complaint of bait-and-switch advertising to the Consumer Affairs Division of the New York State Attorney General's Office.
(2) I will write letters and/or appear in person, to oppose the collection action in whatever court of law you seek to bring it.
(3) In carrying out my defense against this illegitimate collection action, I will subpoena Sprint PCS billing records of all customers in New York who signed up for a similar plan as me and were charged the extra $10 per month, so that I can show the "erroneous" billing practice was indeed part of a widespread fraudulent bait-and-switch scheme.
(4) I will further write letters to the media to make sure that other Sprint PCS customers are made aware of your heinous business practices. (For example, a copy of this current letter already appears on my web site, http://www.markbraiman.net)
If you want to avoid having me carry out the above, you need to do all of the following within the next 30 days:
(1) Write me a letter rescinding all charges, and apologizing for your billing errors.
(2) Write a letter to the 3 major credit reporting agencies informing them that this matter arose entirely from
your billing errors, and that it has now been settled to your satisfaction. Send a copy of this letter to me
and to any collection agency that you have authorized to take action in this matter.
Once upon a time for over 5 years, I was a Sprint local and long-distance customer. I was a satisfied customer, and if you check your records (in Charlottesville VA, telephone number 804-296-2397), you will see that I was a good one, too. Even with Sprint PCS, I think I was a very good customer, until I started being treated so poorly at your hands. I paid you well over $1000 for services over 18 months. Right now, I would not ever consider accepting any more services with the brand name "Sprint". If you care at all about my opinion of your brand name, or of how my opinion may affect my students, my 7 siblings, or my 13 nieces and nephews (among others whom I talk to regularly about phone service), you should think again about who is at fault here.
Mark S. Braiman
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For letters I've sent to my Congressional representatives, see my other pages (links below).
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