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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#331

Post by gen220 »

tome wrote: post #302
dane-pgp wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to hear anybody poke holes in this idea. I really like the idea, but I'll volunteer to offer the criticism you'll probably hear. If a state can give itself more power by counting more votes, then state governments which are confident that their dominant party will win will have a lot of incentive to allow fraudulent votes, and potentially a lot to gain. For example, if the state government knows that 70% o…

And it works the other way, too. There will be a disincentive for Democrats in Texas and Republicans in California to vote. Their vote for their more favoured party would increase the congressional power of their less favoured party!

Yeah, I think the system would would have to go hand-in-hand with proportional representation (similar to how Bundestag seats are allotted in Germany).

So, if 80% of you 100-seat state votes, 80% voted X and 20% voted Y, you'd get 64 X's and 16 Y's.

This way, both parties are incentivized to vote. Instead of today.

In my opinion, it's harmful to our democracy that members of the "losing party" feel zero incentive to turn out on election day. It encourages disengagement and disillusionment, not to mention the polarization of the electorate.

In Germany, the "crazy parties" get some seats, so their voices are heard. It has a pacification affect on the mainstream parties.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#332

Post by gen220 »

dane-pgp wrote: post #298
gen220 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I hope my government teacher would be proud. :) I'd love to hear anybody poke holes in this idea. It's a recent one for me. I'm sure they exist, but I haven't come up with them yet. Obviously, there's the incentive for fraudulent votes. But there's already an incentive for fraudulent votes, and it doesn't seem to cause much of a problem.

> I'd love to hear anybody poke holes in this idea. I really like the idea, but I'll volunteer to offer the criticism you'll probably hear. If a state can give itself more power by counting more votes, then state governments which are confident that their dominant party will win will have a lot of incentive to allow fraudulent votes, and potentially a lot to gain. For example, if the state government knows that 70% o…

> then they can risk encouraging 10% of the population to cast, say, 4 extra votes (for their deceased grandparents), without worrying that the dreaded Purple Party might exploit this laxness and give Purple the win.

The calculus of voter fraud will definitely change. But I don't know. In order for an individual to commit voter fraud, they have to believe that the benefit is worth the risk them as an individual.

And, for the individual, voter fraud would only "work" to the extent that they think everyone else will do it too.

I intuitively feel that voter fraud is a much bigger bogeyman than people make it out to be.

I think the bigger fear is corruption of the election commission; such that they turn a blind eye to or even contribute to voter fraud.

Of course, no system is incorruptible, and the test for acceptance shouldn't be perfection, but improvement over the status quo (this idea of iteration is the cornerstone of our constitution).

That being said, I'm not convinced that the voter fraud risk makes this proposal more corrupt than the system we currently have. Voter fraud is an easier problem to solve than voter suppression, IMO.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#334

Post by lern_too_spel »

newacct583 wrote: post #325
lern_too_spel wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, the pollsters have an easy way to regain trust in their methodologies. They can simply reweight their 2016 data to ensure education sampling matches the population and show that they now predict 2016 correctly. Have any of them done so?

People have done this analysis repeatedly, you just aren't reading it. And polling in 2018 was generally quite good. But again, there's nothing wrong with their "methodologies". Polling errors in 2016 were in fact not far from historical norms. Numerate consensus (c.f. 538) picked a likely but not certain Clinton victory and the result was an extremely narrow loss instead. That stuff happens. Unfortunately a bunch of…

You're arguing against a straw man. I never said that polls are always wrong. My political desires don't hinge on the current polls being wrong.

I'm simply asking a question about whether the pollsters have corrected their methodologies. There was clearly something wrong in 2016 when they repeatedly failed to predict the GOP primaries and failed to predict swing states and even some states that weren't considered swing states in the general election.

You're right that I haven't read the analysis that you say exists. That's why I'm asking for it. Which pollsters have done the reweighting on their 2016 data and shown that they then align with reality?

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#335

Post by sova »

standardUser wrote: post #329
sova wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever met a pollster?

Why don't you skip the theatrics and state your point, if you have one.

Nobody's met a pollster but everyone has faith in the polls... Usually for Science people need evidence that is well-cited. It seems strange people forego this requirement when it comes to election "science"

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#336

Post by conanbatt »

kadoban wrote: post #286
conanbatt wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone gets 1 vote, but not all votes are worth the same. That is true for any voting system.

That seems like an odd claim to me. In a nationwide popular voting system, what votes aren't worth the same?

The marginal votes to win an election. Those are so valuable that define most political platforming.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#337

Post by conanbatt »

arok wrote: post #295
conanbatt wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone gets 1 vote, but not all votes are worth the same. That is true for any voting system.

To put it another way, all votes are equal, but some votes are more equal than others. That sounds vaguely familiar…

Welcome to voting systems.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#338

Post by nl »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #318
nl wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people believe more Democrats are voting via mail (Trump had been criticizing mail voting). We do know how many registered voters from each party are voting in some circumstances. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/early-voting-number... is a decent overview

>Most people believe more Democrats are voting via mail It's not necessary to "believe" anything when it comes to Florida. We have the actual hard number of ballots requested and returned, broken down by party registration. More Democrats are voting via mail. They're also voting in-person in equal numbers to Republicans, at least so far.

> It's not necessary to "believe" anything when it comes to Florida.

I think we are in agreement here. That's what my link shows.

My understanding is that not all states collect party affiliation when sending ballots though. It's possible I'm misinformed though.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#339

Post by nl »

newacct583 wrote: post #309
nl wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Election polls are almost always right for the only ultimate answer that matters: who is going to win[0]. They also accurately predict the margin of victory. This isn't true in the US. Your own link shows not a single result since the 1984 where the error was under 1% for both candidates. They are usually somewhat accurate for the overall vote, but the results on state races haven't been great. That hasn't mattered…

Even state polling in 2016 was pretty good, historically. The reason to think otherwise is that there was a specific error (non-college white voters swinging to R) that happened not to be tracked well (those voters don't respond as well to polling) nor accounted for (most pollsters didn't weight for education). And it happened to be most concentrated in a few states in the upper midwest that were close to the tipping…

> Even state polling in 2016 was pretty good, historically. The reason to think otherwise is that there was a specific error (non-college white voters swinging to R) that happened not to be tracked well (those voters don't respond as well to polling) nor accounted for (most pollsters didn't weight for education). And it happened to be most concentrated in a few states in the upper midwest that were close to the tipping point. AND it happened to be JUST ENOUGH to have predicted a very narrow (sub 1% in PA/WI/MI) win incorrectly.

Yes, this is a good summary, and I'm well aware of what went wrong. I ran a prediction project for a few years so I realise how hard this job is.

But just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize the issues.

My argument is that historically state level polls have always had issues but have rarely mattered.

> Remember that in 2012 the polls were "wrong" in the opposite direction (undercounting Obama votes by a bit) and no one cared.

Exactly my point!

If you look at the data on this, the state level polls had even worse accuracy. The average error was 1.6%, compared to 0.8% for national polls.

As you note, no one really cared.

https://www.pewresearch.org/2009/06/25/perils-of-polling-in-...

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#340

Post by jki275 »

pedrosorio wrote: post #305
jki275 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden will not win Texas. If Biden were to win Texas, the GOP would be finished forever. Polls notwithstanding, Biden has as much chance of winning Texas as Trump has of winning California.

“Polls notwithstanding” what data do you use to justify your statement regarding the outcome of the election in Texas and California? Because if you look at the polls that’s ridiculous (probability of Biden winning Texas is orders of magnitude larger than Trump winning California).

I didn't say "probability". It's not going to happen. The polls are bullshit.
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