> Wouldn't it be more fair if, for the purpose of an election, the state was split into two "electoral states", East and West? That way, every election, both the East and the West could be heard. Votes for parties like the Green Party or the Communist Party of America or whatever would still be disregarded because the electoral college would still exist in these "electoral states". However, the amount of the vote that is disregarded would be much less than fifty percent of the population!
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> That's exactly the way we elect a Prime Minister in Canada. For the purposes of an election, Canada is divided up into 301 "Ridings", which in terms of electing a Prime Minister function similarily to the "electoral states" I've described above, except that we don't actually have electors. The winner of the popular vote in each riding gets the vote of one riding, and the candidate who wins the most ridings gets to be Prime Minister.

You know, I had a rather long reply to this all written out, but forgot to fill out the "Name" field. When I hit back, the entire textarea was reset. Really annoying.

Thanks for the well thought-out post. But I do have a few questions.

First, I still don't see what the advantage is between Ridings and States, as applied to the current political system in the United States. It seems the only differences are that the Ridings are [a] smaller and [b] more numerous. But still, looking back to your earlier comment about a state whose eastern half votes one way, contrary to the western half, couldn't this same thing happen in a Riding? Or is because this is on a smaller scale, it would be more accurate overall when looking at the size of a province?

What this sounds like, if applied on the southern side of the 49th parallel, is giving one electoral vote to each congressional district. Indeed, this will get the voting a lot closer to what the actual people represent, which begs the question "Why not have one vote per county/parish?" Which leads to "Why not one vote per person?"

In application to the current American system of government (with the executive and legistlative branches separated), it seems that Ridings would be a benefit in that they're [a] smaller, and [b] more numerous. However, we then get back to a loss of a state's identity in a national election (which I'm still not convinced would be a bad thing).

Now on to the second question.

Are Ridings fixed in place, or can the boundaries be redrawn, much the way how congressional districts in the United States can be? For instance, if Edmonton Southwest sees more working-class Edmontonians moving in, would Edmonton Southwest and Edmonton Southeast be redefined or would Edmonton Southwest just eventually become a Riding of working-class Edmontonians?

-Faux "congratulations on winning the Longest Forum Post Award" Pas