CO Amendment 36

[Nate tha' Great]

For those who don't know, Amendment 36 would divide Colorado's electoral vote proportionately according to the percentage of the popular vote that each candidate attains. Because the election is fairly close, this will almost certainly mean that 5 of the state's 9 electoral votes would go to the winning candidate, while the other 4 would go to the losing candidate.

Suppose the following:
- You are a registered voter in Colorado.
- Your lone goal is to maximize the number of electoral votes that your state casts for Kerry.
- You believe that there is a 75% chance that Bush will receive more votes than Kerry, and a 25% chance that Kerry will recieve more votes. Your vote exerts a trivial but nonzero amount of impact on these percentages.
- You believe that other voters will address the Amendment 36 issue in the same way that you do, i.e. treating it as a way to maximize the number of electoral votes cast for their preferred candidate.

Should you vote for Amendement 36? Why or why not?

[ddollevoet]

No. I don't not want to bastardize the election process that has been in place in this country for the last 200 years.

Seriously, if everyone is going to vote in their candidate's best interest, then everyone who believes that their candidate is going to win outright should vote no (to collect all electoral votes). If they think that their candidate is going to lose, they should vote yes (to collect a portion of electoral votes).

[sam h]

Under this set of assumptions, you should vote against the amendment as it will only pass if Kerry wins the state.

[andyfox]

I don't see how you can have an election where you don't know what the rules are until the day after election day.

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
Under this set of assumptions, you should vote against the amendment as it will only pass if Kerry wins the state.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ding-ding-ding. Nothing too substantive in this, just thought it was an interesting little game theory problem.

[Diplomat]

[ QUOTE ]
No. I don't not want to bastardize the election process that has been in place in this country for the last 200 years.


[/ QUOTE ]

Do you support a ban on electricity as well?

-Diplomat

[tolbiny]

So should a bush supporter with a good handle on game theory vote for the proposition? Or should he assume that his vote won't matter either way?

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
So should a bush supporter with a good handle on game theory vote for the proposition? Or should he assume that his vote won't matter either way?

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is a summary of the outcomes. Assume that all the Bush supporters and all the Kerry supporters cast their votes uniformly with respect to Amendment 36.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Bush Kerry Winner Bush EV Kerry EV
(a) For For Bush 5 4
(b) For For Kerry 4 5
(c) For Against Bush 5 4
(d) For Against Kerry 0 9
(e) Against Against Bush 9 0
(f) Against Against Kerry 0 9
(g) Against For Bush 9 0
(h) Against For Kerry 4 5
</pre><hr />

Imagine that you are a Bush voter. You have four scenarios to ponder.

1) Kerry supporters vote For the amendment and Bush wins. These are cases (a) and (g).

If you vote For the amendment (a), your EV is 5. If you vote Against the amendment (g) your EV is 9. You should vote Against.

2) Kerry supporters vote Against the amendment and Bush wins. These are cases (c) and (e). If you vote For the amendment (c) your EV is 5. If you vote against the amendment (e) your EV is 9. You should vote Against.

3) Kerry supporters vote For the amendment and Kerry wins. These are cases (b) and (h). If you vote For the amendment (b) your EV is 4. If you vote Against the amendment (h), your EV is also 4.

4) Kerry supporters vote Against the amendment and Kerry wins. These are cases (d) and (f). If you vote For the amendment (d), your EV is 0. If you vote Against the amendment (f), your EV is also 0.

In other words, no matter how the Kerry supporters vote, and no matter how the election turns out, you cannot gain by voting For the amendment.

Note that the situations are completely parallel, so the Kerry supporters are faced with the exact same decision. The probability that one candidate or another wins the election does not matter, and I threw it out there as a red herring. Your dominant strategy, if you are a supporter of either candidate, is to vote against Amendment 36.

It is interesting to me that Amendment 36 is polling something like 70-30 against, even though the split between candidates is probably something more like 53-47. Although I'm sure that some of the Colorado voters have legimiate concerns about the motivations behind the Amendment, and its impact on future elections, I also think this is a pretty interesting emperical example of rational voting behavior. (In theory, however, the amendment should be defeated unanimously).

The commonsensical explanation is this: whichever candidate's voters carry a majority of the election will also get to dictate whether the electoral votes are split, since they will constitute a majority on this issue as well. Since their candidate has won, they should want all of the electoral votes, and therefore should vote against the amendment.

[benfranklin]

If that passes, the odds are the issue will still be in the courts at the deadline for the state to certify its Electoral College votes. I am not a lawyer, but I often give legal opinions on the internet. I see two major problems with that ballot, knowing nothing about Colorado law.

First, the application of that ballot to those election results would violate the legal principal of ex post facto. You can't make something illegal by passing a law today and then arrest someone for doing it yesterday.

Second, the US Constitution says that each state's allocation of its Electoral College votes will be determined by each state's legislature. An initiative ballot is obviously not a determination of the Colorado legislature, and whether the initiative can be considered an extension of, or legal substitute for, the legislature would be subject to court interpretation of both the Colorado and US Constitutions.

At a minimum, those unhappy with the apparent results would appeal the election on these two issues on the state and federal levels. So the next question is, under the Colorado constitution, how are the Electoral votes allocated if the election cannot be certified by the date required by the US Constitution. I believe in some states the legislature has to decide the allocation of the Electoral votes if the state secretary of state cannot certify the election. This was one of the issues in Florida last time.

So the answer is, you find out how the Electoral College votes are allocated if the election cannot be certified under the normal procedure, figure out if you like the probable outcome of that alternative, and vote accordingly.

[Cubswin]

This amendment will not pass so there is no need to pose hypotheticals. Dividing up the electoral votes, as this amendment proposes, marginalizes the power of the state in future elections. Both Coors and Salazar have come out against this amendment... this seems to be the only thing these two Senate Canidates can agree on.

cubs

[Dynasty]

Mason-Dixon Poll: CO-Ammendment 63, Against 55, For 31 (http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E64%7E2498945,00.html)

It seems very unlikely the ammendment will pass based on the most recen poll numbers.

[MtSmalls]

There are a couple of reasons that Colorado was chosen as the guinea pig for this amendment. One of them is the fact that there is a legal precendent in the state for voter referendums having the same legal position as action by the legislature, therefore, if Amendment 36 passed, it would not be subject to significant challenge by the legislature.

Secondly, its not an ex post facto issue. The ELECTORAL COLLEGE vote is different than the popular vote and takes place in December. There for the rule would be put on the books before the EC vote, not after.

The main argument against this Amendment has been, as Cubs put it, to dilute the importance of the state in the overall EC. Just how relevant has the biggest state in the country (California) been in this election with FIFTY FIVE votes??

[juanez]

FYI...polls this morning indicated this crappy Amendment is going to fail: 65% against it, 35% for it.

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
Secondly, its not an ex post facto issue. The ELECTORAL COLLEGE vote is different than the popular vote and takes place in December. There for the rule would be put on the books before the EC vote, not after.


[/ QUOTE ]

If this measure passed, there would definitely be an ex post facto challenge. On Election Day, you are not actually voting for either Bush or Kerry. You are voting for Electors who will then vote in the Electoral College for either Bush or Kerry.

[Senor Choppy]

[ QUOTE ]
This amendment will not pass so there is no need to pose hypotheticals.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no need to post anything here. Even though it won't pass, I thought the original post was fairly interesting.

[lorinda]

I don't see how you can have an election where you don't know what the rules are until the day after election day.


You had that last time too, and I'm not referring to Florida.

"Faithless Electors" are members of the Electoral College who, for whatever reason, do not vote for their party's designated candidate.

Since the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 156 faithless Electors. 71 of these votes were changed because the original candidate died before the day on which the Electoral College cast their votes. Three of the votes were not cast at all as three Electors chose to abstain from casting their Electoral vote for any candidate. The other 82 Electoral votes were changed on the personal initiative of the Elector.

Sometimes Electors change their votes in large groups, such as when 23 Virginia Electors acted together in 1836. Many times, however, these Electors stood alone in their decision. As of the 2000 election, no Elector has changed the outcome of an election by voting against their party’s designated candidate.

Despite these 156 faithless votes, and a Supreme Court ruling allowing states to empower political parties to require formal pledges from Presidential Electors (Ray v Blair, 343 US 214), 21 states still do not require their members of the Electoral College to vote for their party's designated candidate.

The 24 states that do have requirements issue a small variety of rarely enforced punishments for faithless Electors, including fines and misdemeanors.

The names, dates, and stories of these 156 votes are listed below:

(One of these was year 2000)

link to names and stories. (http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/faithless.htm)

So you only have a 99.5% or so chance (Didn't do the math) of the person you vote for voting for the person you asked him to.

Lori

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

If the amendment passes, there is probably a 75% chance that SCOTUS will strike it down, and close to a 100% chance that SCOTUS will bar it's implementation until at least '08.

Thus it will have no bearing on this election.

[ddollevoet]

[ QUOTE ]

Do you support a ban on electricity as well?

-Diplomat

[/ QUOTE ]


Ummmmm. What?