The Electoral College and Voter Participation Rates: Reply

Richard Cebula () and Dennis Murphy

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This theoretical note argues that although both gross costs and possible gross benefits from the Electoral College can be identified, they cannot be compared in such a way as to generate a case that the Electoral College yields net benefits to society. In other words, the Electoral College system, pure and simple, artificially distorts behavior in a market where household preferences are to intended be expressed; although this distortion yields apparent benefits and costs, the existence of net benefits is not established. In sum, since the Electoral College system artificially distorts geographic voter participation rate patterns, the case needs to be made w y the system should be retained.

Keywords: voter participation distortions; Electoral College; collective decision making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H89 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1981-05-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Public Choice 1.38(1982): pp. 95-96

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/51632/1/MPRA_paper_51632.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Electoral College and voter participation rates: Reply (1984)
Journal Article: The Electoral College and voter participation rates: Reply (1982)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:51632

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().