Hi William,

I presume you base your observation on the premise that Gore has won the
majority of the Popular vote?

I think this would make him the winner under an English-style
"first-past-the-post" system if the USA was considered one huge electorate.
If you considered each of the states an individual electorate then you would
need to count the popular vote in each of the states, award the state to the
candidate with the biggest popular vote then count up the number of states
won by each candidate. You would then have your winner, who would not
necessarily be the candidate with the largest nation-wide popular vote. By
the way, this system can badly under-represent smaller parties. I remember
one election in which the third-largest party won greater than 20% of the
vote but only 2% of the seats.

In Australia (for Federal elections) we have a preference system with
so-called "automatic run-off" In this system voters vote for all candidates
in order of preference.
We have about 150 electorates comprised of roughly equal numbers of voters
in each.
The party which wins teh most electorates (we call them "seats") is awarded
the privilege of forming government. This is not necessarily the party which
gathers the greatest nation-wide (or even intra-seat) popular vote. Once
again small parties are not well represented under this system.

Cheers!

Craig


-----Original Message-----
From: William Meecham [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 November 2000 06:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CHOMSKY] december column


In fact Gore has already won, and it would be so recognized in any
other country in the world.