How to Play Majority

There are 538 Electoral College votes up for grabs in the United States Presidential Election.  Score a minimum of 270 and win!  Choose which Party to play – Democratic or Republican.

HOW TO PLAY

1. The system shuffles the cards and splits them into three equal sets of 17 cards each.
2. Each player gets one set of 17 cards, representing the LOCKED STATES of his Party.
3. The last set of 17 cards represent the SWING STATES.
4. The sum of the Electoral College votes for each Party and the Swing States represents the OPINION POLLS just before the election.
5. Your LOCKED STATES are arranged on your side of the board.
6. The SWING STATES are likewise arranged on their appropriate cells on the map.
7. Play proceeds systematically from the East Coast to the West Coast (from column A through K).
8. The system tosses for who starts. The player with the highest score on the dice starts first.
9. Start play by rolling the dice twice (if necessary, i.e. first roll fails). Play starts from East
(i.e. going from A – K) to West.

WIN A LOCKED STATE

10. TO WIN A LOCKED STATE, the numbers on the dice are read as the digits of a percentage score (BIGGER NUMBER FIRST for Locked States only!).
11. If a player scores 41% or more, he wins that locked State.  (Note that there are “unseen” smaller parties and independent candidates, hence 40% can win where these third forces are strong),
12. If a player does not score up to 41% on his first roll of the dice, it is considered a false EXIT POLL and he is given a second chance.
13. If he still does not score up to 41%, that State immediately becomes a Swing State and the card is removed from his pool of Locked States and placed on the map as a Swing State.  He passes the turn to the opponent.
14. If he does win the locked state, the card is removed from the board and the Electoral Vote recorded for him.  He also automatically has a bonus turn to contest the Swing State in that column, if any (Win One, Swing One!).

WIN A SWING STATE

15. Contest each swing state by rolling the dice alternately, TWICE per player, if necessary.  Read the numbers on the dice as a percentage score (LOWER NUMBER FIRST this time, for Swing States only!).  The first player to score 41% or more wins that State.
16. Play thus alternates between the two players.
17. Once a player has finally won all his locked states, he uses his turns to contest any swing states still available, starting alphabetically from Column A to K, i.e. East to West.
18. If a player has won all his locked states AND all the swing states have also been contested and won, the topmost locked states still remaining on the opponent’s side (if any) are released onto the centre of the board as swing states ONE BY ONE, starting from Column A to K, and are contested accordingly.
19. The player to first score at least 270 electoral votes wins the PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
20. Where the score is 269-269, the party with the greater number of seats in Congress (Senate + House of Representatives, as computed below) wins.

“COMPUTATION” OF GOVERNORSHIP, SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPS RESULTS

The Presidential Race goes side by side with Governorship and Congressional races.  The results of these races are deduced thus in the course of play (peculiar to this game only):
1. Governorship Results:  The percentage popular vote won in the Presidential contest in each state will be ”assumed” to be the same for the Governorship race, hence states in this game are won accordingly.  (Note that Washington DC has no Governor).

2. Senate Results:  For every Locked State won, the Party also wins the 2 Senate seats in the State.  For every Swing State won, the Senate seats are split one each for the Parties.  Note that Washington DC has no Senate seats.

3. House of Representatives Results:  The number 535 is the sum of the Senate seats (100) and the House of Representative seats (435) in Congress (Washington DC excluded as the Capital City).  Hence (for this game only) the player’s House of Representatives score is DETERMINED by subtracting the player’s “Senate Score” from his “Electoral College Score”, less the 3 from DC, which has no House seats (for the player who won DC).