Scholars ponder better ways to elect a president
The upcoming presidential election appears to be so close that either President Barack Obama or his challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, could lose the popular vote, yet still gain the White House by winning a majority of Electoral College votes. With this in mind, should the United States choose its president through the Electoral College, as it does now, or through another method, such as a national popular vote? And how should people be allowed to register and vote? Those questions formed the dual focal points of a spirited conference on election systems held at MIT on Friday, Sept. 19.“One person, one vote should be the norm of a modern democracy,” said John Koza, the Stanford University computer scientist who is a leader of the group National Popular Vote, which aims to elect presidents through a popular vote. By contrast, as Koza pointed out, the structure of the Electoral...