Wouldn’t it be too hard to conduct a national recount in a very close election?
Current statewide winner-take-all unit rule elections significantly increase the probability of a contentious recount due to a smaller margin of victory and larger number of elections – as much as five times according to a 2008 paper by University of Pennsylvania professor Jack Nagel. Neither the 2000 nor 2004 presidential election was remotely close enough for a national recount, but the 2000 election hung on the result in Florida and the outcome of the 2004 election would have changed with a shift of fewer than 60,000 votes in Ohio. An extremely close state election can be hard to finalize in time for the December meeting of the Electoral College, yet such a close election in a state is far more likely than a razor-thin vote in the national popular vote. FairVote’s 2007 survey of 7,645 statewide elections in 1980 to 2006 determined that statewide elections resulted in a recount once in every 332 elections (23 out of 7,645). Applied to national presidential elections, this number woul
