Sorry for the delayed response, Alistair (had a lengthy illness).

Under the Electoral College (aka Florida legislature?) safe ridings/electorates
can only be safely ignored if they allow themselves to be so or if the contest
is overwhelmingly one-sided anyhow.  This is not true if there is an aggregation
of votes across all districts so that only the one candidate with the most
overall votes wins.  In this situation, small constitutencies can be safely
ignored regardless.  Note that if Bush ultimately wins the U.S. election, it
would be the tiny state (population-wise) of Wyoming that will have made all the
difference between his winning and losing.

Concerning your other point, the Electoral College does not give small
constituencies (states) the same attention in terms of time and funding as much
larger states.  Rather, it does mean that they receive some attention.  Dan

alister air wrote:

> At 11:25 AM 11/23/2000, Dan Koenig wrote:
>
> Hi Dan,
>
> >The electoral college may have its drawbacks, but consider two of its
> >strengths.  One is that it requires presidential candidates to pay
> >attention to all states rather than only the most populous states.
>
> This isn't true.  Candidates need not pay attention to safe
> electorates.  We have the same problem here - the safe electorates get
> pretty much ignored - it's assumed they'll go to the on of the
> Labor/Liberal/National Parties, so why campaign?
>
> >   If
> >it were a national popular vote in the U.S., how much attention would
> >sparsely populated states such as New Hampshire or Iowa receive?
>
> Should a sparsely populated area receive the same amount of attention in
> terms of time and funding promises as a state with ten times its population?
>
> Alister
>
> "I simply do not agree that the state, or any other system of
> organized power and violence, should have the authority to
> determine what people think or say. If the state is granted the
> power to shut me up, my counter argument is not that what I am
> saying might be valuable. That would be a contemptible position,
> in my view."  --> Noam Chomsky