Footnotes

1 A tentative step in this direction was the Republican system for choosing delegates to its 2012 convention. States with early primaries had to allocate delegates in proportion to the votes candidates receive; those with late primaries had to use winner-take-all.

2 In some versions, all votes in each round above the number needed to win a seat are transferred to the remaining candidates. Just how the ballots are selected for the transfer seems ripe for corruption.

3 Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2004.

4 This section draws primarily from Fund (2008, 2012).

5 The Pikety-Saez study claiming massive inequality in US income distribution excluded Social Security and transfer payments (14.7% of personal income in 2004, up from 9.3% in 1980), non-taxable income, and treated each member of two-earner families separately. Thus, it underestimated personal income primarily in the lower deciles by $3.3 trillion, or 34%. (Reynolds 2006). Other studies of income disparity have similar flaws.

6 Abridged from an example by Russell Roberts in the Wall Street Journal.

7 Among hundreds of examples, a warning not to use a hair dryer while sleeping and not to iron clothes while wearing them. In Chicago, it is illegal to eat in a place that is on fire. In Indiana, it is illegal to go to a theater within four hours of eating garlic.