What if the whole world could vote?

London's Economist asks, "What if the whole world could vote?" and to provide a response to the question has set up a "Global Electoral College." There's an interactive results map and an opportunity for you to cast your vote for Obama or for McCain.

The Economist has redrawn the electoral map to give all 195 of the world's countries (including the United States) a say in the election's outcome. As in America, each country has been allocated a minimum of three electoral-college votes with extra votes allocated in proportion to population size. With over 6.5 billion people enfranchised, the result is a much larger electoral college of 9,875 votes. But rally your countrymen—a nation must have at least ten individual votes in order to have its electoral-college votes counted.

There are few countries whose votes in the Global Electoral College are a foregone conclusion. So the winner is unlikely to be decided by a small number of "swing countries". Rather, they will have to cobble together a coalition of small, medium and large nations. (A campaign stop in Beijing is recommended, as well as a tour of Africa.) Voting in the Global Electoral College will close at midnight London time on November 1st, when the candidate with most electoral-college votes will be declared the winner.

Maybe the authors of the idea really believed that the winner "will have to cobble together a coalition." One also might have thought that the readers of The Economist would be tilted toward McCain. Neither assumption proves true, at least as far as the map stands now.

It's all blue...except for Georgia and Macedonia, and the latter is merely "leaning" in McCain's favor.