270

Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, though not a commercial success and never brought to market due to competing similar board games, the rules of play for Landslide—though written prior to the passage of the Amendment XXIII to the US constitution of 1961 that extended the franchise residents of Washington, DC—are nonetheless a good primer for understanding America’s electoral college (see previously) and perhaps revealing that the system’s time has expired and overstayed its usefulness. Supporters of maintaining the status quo argue that it is fundamental to the ideal of federalism and promotes stability and moderate political partisanship by reserving the states’ role in the presidential election, whereas detractors call for reform and describe the departure from the standard of “one person, one vote”—like malapportionment and gerrymandering—to be antithetical to the American experiment and compels candidates to concentrate attention and resources on a few swing states.