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California elector makes a game of Electoral College

AUDREY COOPER, Associated Press Writer
  Wednesday, November 15, 2000
Breaking News Sections

(11-15) 15:41 PST SACRAMENTO (AP) -- The jockeying for electoral votes between George W. Bush and Al Gore looks an awful lot like a game to Electoral College member John Koza.

One he created, to be exact. While a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, Koza came up with Consensus, a game in which players are candidates trying to win each states' electoral votes.

Players get more campaign time if they win a state where a special- interest group -- the farm lobby, for example -- has significant influence.

``It was only a matter of time before this happened in a real election. The possibility of one candidate winning a state by only a slim margin was lurking all the time,'' said Koza, one of California's few two-time electors.

He will head to Sacramento on Dec. 18 to vote for Democrat Gore, who won California's 54 electoral votes.

Koza's game, hunted by collectors of political memorabilia, is named after President Johnson's favorite way of describing the bipartisan mood in Washington. Only 3,200 copies of Consensus were sold nationwide between 1966 and 1971.

Koza of Los Altos Hills and a few friends from the University of Michigan still play the game using e-mail. Although the game should only take a few hours, it can take that long for the experienced players to decide each move, he said.

``It's such an obscure field that I'm not sure if it would sell now. One thing we found out is that people are only interested in politics during an election year,'' said Koza, 57.

Depending on the outcome of Florida's vote count, one candidate could win the nation's popular vote but lose the Electoral College.

``It's a roulette game. I think the popular vote now is what would make sense,'' said Koza, a consulting professor at Stanford University.

Koza teaches genetic programming, a method by which a computer can program itself to solve problems. He also founded a company after leaving graduate school that produced the first scratch-off lottery tickets.

Koza was appointed to be an elector in 1992 by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. This year he was chosen for the job by Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a Democrat.


 
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