(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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