How America Chooses Its Presidents: Public Lecture on 17 June.
10 Jun 2008
Dr Alex Belenky of MIT talks about the Electoral College.
School of Mathematics
Alan Turing Building *
Frank Adams Rooms, 1st Floor
Tuesday 17 June, 5pm
ABSTRACT
Since its creation in 1787, the Electoral College has remained the most mysterious mechanism for electing a President of a country. There is no consensus among mathematicians, systems scientists, and political scientists studying the Electoral College on whether it can satisfactorily serve the U.S. in the 21st century, especially after two close elections in 2000 and in 2004. Discussions of the Electoral College in the media are mostly those on opinions about this unique election mechanism and are not based either on its established quantitative features or on its true merits and obvious deficiencies, leaving them unknown or unclear to an overwhelming majority of the American electorate.
Numerous publications in the national and international media bear evidence that reporters often offer incomplete and sometimes incorrect information about the system of electing a President in the U.S. Moreover, lack of understanding of both the origins and the quantitative features of Electoral College, especially the way it works in close elections, causes some reporters abroad even to question whether the existing rules of U.S. presidential elections are democratic.
The lecture addresses in a simple manner known features of and new findings about the Electoral College and their possible impact on the 2008 election outcome, along with several myths surrounding this controversial election mechanism many of which are widely publicized and aired every four years as the Election Day nears.
*Entrance on Upper Brook Street, Building 46 on:
If you wish to attend this event, please email:
- Joanne Gillooly, at joanne.gillooly@manchester.ac.uk by Friday 13 June 2008 (for planning of refreshments)
For more information, contact:
- Mike Tso at mike.tso@manchester.ac.uk or 0161-306-3219
-----
About Alexander S. Belenky
Dr. Belenky is the author of books and scientific articles in the fields of optimization and game theory and their applications in transportation, industry, agriculture, environmental protection, advertising, brokerage, auctioning, and US presidential elections.
He is the author of Operations Research in Transportation Systems: Ideas and Schemes of Optimization Methods for Strategic Planning and Operations Management - published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 and republished by Springer in 2004 - and adopted by many leading American Universities. He is also the author of the books Extreme Outcomes of US Presidential Elections (2003) and Winning the US Presidency: Rules of the Game and Playing by the Rules (2004). He was an invited guest on radio and TV talk shows throughout the country in the course of the 2004 Election campaign.
A visiting scholar at the MIT Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, Dr. Belenky holds a PhD in systems analysis and mathematics and DSc in applications of mathematical methods. His co-authored opinion pieces about voting systems have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times.