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15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

nytimes.com

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Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#681

Post by mikekchar »

daleco wrote: post #658
ravenstine wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because using psychology to manipulate voters isn't new. And all of a sudden we're supposed to find it outrageous?

Yes, it’s not new to manipulate people, the low cost for high efficiency is new. Clinton had almost 3M more votes than Trump. It would be much more expensive to manipulate 3M (1% us population, 1.2% voters), rather than 70k (0.02% pop, 0.028% voters). If winning the election is about properly manipulating 0.04% of the voters, that’s very scary and not working as initially designed. Edit:math

Really, whether or not it's new or old is a complete red herring. As is whether or not it has historically helped on candidate or another. The issue is whether or not it's a vunlerability.

Complaining that "it's always been that way" is like saying, "We've been pwned that way for a decade. Why should we fix that security hole?"

I find it incredible that people don't look at elections with the same critical eye that they do software security systems. The other cool thing is that all of your candidates for president are chosen by proxy vote! So as long as you can subvert the people who have all the proxy votes, you can choose who can even enter the election! Heck, you can stuff up both sides just for giggles. How much is the POTUS worth? Surely billions.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#682

Post by JamesBarney »

rayiner wrote: post #644
JamesBarney wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is was my understanding it moves our nominal rates in line with the rest of the world, but this reduces our effective rates to below the rest of the world.

It’ll take a few years for the data to play out, but that’s likely not the case. A CBO study found that our effective corporate tax rate before the Trump tax cut was 18.6%. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the... . France, Australia, and Canada were from 8.5-11.2%. The Trump tax cut dropped the nominal rate by about 1/3 (accounting for state corporate taxes, which didn’t change). Assuming a pr…

Ahh ok thanks for the information and the links I appreciate it. So the tax cut brought us from the top of the pack to the middle of the pack.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#683

Post by kd5bjo »

raverbashing wrote: post #642
hyperpape wrote: post #302

There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest. If you live in Wyoming, the electora…

Well, there's a potential "easy" way of solving this: making votes in the electoral college proportional to how the electorate voted in the state

Alternatively, have each congressional district elect its own elector instead of a statewide pool. It gets even more interesting if the ballot only shows the potential electors’ names, without any party affiliation.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#684

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

daleco wrote: post #658
ravenstine wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because using psychology to manipulate voters isn't new. And all of a sudden we're supposed to find it outrageous?

Yes, it’s not new to manipulate people, the low cost for high efficiency is new. Clinton had almost 3M more votes than Trump. It would be much more expensive to manipulate 3M (1% us population, 1.2% voters), rather than 70k (0.02% pop, 0.028% voters). If winning the election is about properly manipulating 0.04% of the voters, that’s very scary and not working as initially designed. Edit:math

Maybe if Clinton had bothered to campaign in the Rust Belt, she would have won. Trump's politics was aimed at industrial workers, and Clinton thought she didn't need them to win. She bet wrong.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#685

Post by caseysoftware »

daleco wrote: post #608
hyperpape wrote: post #302

There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest. If you live in Wyoming, the electora…

Why aren't we talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal example? Another issue of the Electoral colleges is that a candidate could target only a few amount of people (70k according to the documentary) for changing the course of the election. Even if this has been fixed by Facebook. Shouldn't it be considered as a major flaw of the election system? Source: "The great Hack" - Netflix doc.

One aspect of the Electoral College is that it's a built in corruption firewall.

Right now, if an election system is "compromised" (electronically, corrupt officials, etc), it will affect that precinct, the local elections, possibly the state-wide races, and rarely the Presidential.

With a simple majority vote, a compromise anywhere in the system - adding or removing votes - impacts the system as a whole.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#686

Post by zhoujianfu »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #276
rootusrootus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's easy for a State to hit the pause button Is it that easy? It's a compact, not trivial to pull out of.

Let's see: - Enough states pass this for it to be in force in 2020. - Trump wins the popular vote in 2020. However, he would not have won an EC vote because of California and New York. - California decides to renege on the compact, and votes for Biden instead. - A bunch of red states sue California. Long before the court cases go anywhere, Biden takes the oath of office. And what then?

The compact explicitly requires a much longer notice period than the time between Election Day and Inauguration Day if you want to pull out.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#687

Post by caseysoftware »

mikekchar wrote: post #681
daleco wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s not new to manipulate people, the low cost for high efficiency is new. Clinton had almost 3M more votes than Trump. It would be much more expensive to manipulate 3M (1% us population, 1.2% voters), rather than 70k (0.02% pop, 0.028% voters). If winning the election is about properly manipulating 0.04% of the voters, that’s very scary and not working as initially designed. Edit:math

Really, whether or not it's new or old is a complete red herring. As is whether or not it has historically helped on candidate or another. The issue is whether or not it's a vunlerability. Complaining that "it's always been that way" is like saying, "We've been pwned that way for a decade. Why should we fix that security hole?" I find it incredible that people don't look at elections with the same critical eye that t…

Yes, billions is right.

That's why I've always found "the Russians stole the election with $100k of Facebook ads!" comical.

Both Facebook and Putin wish they could get that kind of ROI.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#688

Post by fastball »

ianai wrote: post #672
fastball wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a single state hold back progress in this case? Individual states can apportion their EC votes however they want. 48/50 states are all-or-nothing states (arguably the actual problem), which is decided at the state level.

Mitch McConnell

Not sure I follow.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#689

Post by caseysoftware »

rapind wrote: post #637
tptacek wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 50/50 country. It would be alarming if, after one election, which will at best be decided 60/40 in their favor, a radically different (from their immediate predecessor) President was actually enable to enact their agenda. The system we have is literally designed to prevent that thing from happening. "Volunteer network" or not, Sanders isn't passing his agenda. If he was serious about doing that, he'd stay in t…

Let's agree to disagree. I actually think big alarming changes are coming (and have already happened). I'm just a Canuck though, and not out to convince anyone. I'm really fascinated with the political changes I see happening (or think I see happening at least).

After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most of the show.

If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of them aren't new and some of them are decades old.

Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking "why?"

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#690

Post by dgoldstein0 »

mikekchar wrote: post #681
daleco wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s not new to manipulate people, the low cost for high efficiency is new. Clinton had almost 3M more votes than Trump. It would be much more expensive to manipulate 3M (1% us population, 1.2% voters), rather than 70k (0.02% pop, 0.028% voters). If winning the election is about properly manipulating 0.04% of the voters, that’s very scary and not working as initially designed. Edit:math

Really, whether or not it's new or old is a complete red herring. As is whether or not it has historically helped on candidate or another. The issue is whether or not it's a vunlerability. Complaining that "it's always been that way" is like saying, "We've been pwned that way for a decade. Why should we fix that security hole?" I find it incredible that people don't look at elections with the same critical eye that t…

in some states electors are legally bound to vote for the popular majority from the state. I thought I had read this was true almost universally though it appears some states don't have this rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...

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