Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

probablydance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 467 posts

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#41

Post by nanny »

Terrario wrote: post #15
DC-3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the vote also be weighted to uphold the interests of other classes of people, like young vs old, or rich vs poor, or bricklayers vs hairdressers? I consider myself more defined by my age and profession than by my hometown but in an electoral college system it is only that latter fact that affects how a vote is weighted.

But the country is not a union of people of different ages and professions, but of different states, technically. The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones. Without the electoral college, the colonies would not have agreed to unite under a shared federal government.

>The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones.

This is commonly repeated, but it's BS. What "protection" does the electoral college give to Kansas, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, or Montana? Presidential candidates don't pay any attention to any of those "less densely populated agrarian states". In addition, dense states like NJ, NY, CT, and Mass don't get attention from candidates. California doesn't get any attention either, so what gives?

The states that get the attention are the swing states with the highest number of electoral votes, simply because the electoral college incentivizes trying to swing a small number of voters in such states.

Watch some of these videos from CGP Grey for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#43

Post by Terrario »

rodgerd wrote: post #33
alisonkisk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't people in California deserve a means to influence the presidency as much as Montana or DC?

Because blacks and latinos and liberals are only worth three fifths of a person.

Blacks and latinos can live in Montana as well... Also the electoral college predates emancipation, so I dont think the black vote was a factor for its creation.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#44

Post by enjeyw »

nl wrote: post #6

Am I the only centre-left type person in the world who thinks the Electoral College isn't a bad thing (in theory at least). In the Westminster 2-house system in Australia voters vote for representation from their seat. These seats have approximately the same number of people, but they also vote for an upper-house representative and the smaller states are over-represented in terms of population. This is because otherw…

I think there's two difference that make it less problematic in Australia:

- The Australian Senate has significantly less influence on politics than the US President

- Senate seats aren't distributed per-state on a "winner takes all basis" - rather in rough proportion to the number of votes each party gets. This means that smaller states with outsized influence are still going to be electing a mix of representatives from each party. (Compare Tasmania to Victoria here [1] - 10X different in number of votes per seat - similar outcome.

Even with that said, regardless of the material impact - on principle I don't think it's fair that a person in Tasmania has 10X more voting power than a person in Victoria.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2019_Australian...

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#46

Post by maxerickson »

ve55 wrote: post #12

What I dislike about a lot of these potential fraud analysis techniques is that if a group that was performing fraud was aware of them, then they would simply perform the fraud 'properly' such that the given technique(s) don't show evidence (since they know what others are looking for and hoping to find, they simply ensure it isn't there). The same goes for similar techniques like Benford's law: once you know about t…

What 'modern improvements' can be made over paper ballots?

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#48

Post by lmkg »

Terrario wrote: post #25
alisonkisk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't people in California deserve a means to influence the presidency as much as Montana or DC?

California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence? Cali and NY make up almost a third of the electoral votes. Is it really fair for these two places to control and dictate the policies of a country spread as far and wide as the US? Hasnt the blue/red divide, not only in the country but within states themselves show that the desires and attitudes of people are heavily influenced by…

A 'place' is not a meaningful unit of civic participation.

From one direction, California and New York are populous. California has 4 individual cities that each have a higher population than Wyoming. Is it unfair that California's influence is larger than Wyoming?

From another direction, is California a single place? The Electoral College lumps together San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento into a single unit. Those are miles apart from each other culturally, economically, and demographically (and for that matter, they're hundreds of miles from each other geographically). The Central Valley's relative lack of influence at the national level is because they're tacked on to the same 'place' as Los Angeles and San Francisco, which is an arbitrary division.

The House of Representative does a much better (but not perfect) job of geographic representation, because the geographic units are more proportional, and are continuously re-drawn with community cohesiveness as an influencing factor. Much of the skew of the Electoral College comes from the +2 votes per state, when state lines are fixed for centuries.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#49

Post by maxerickson »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #32
Glyptodon wrote: post #8

Always keep in mind that however distorted the electoral college is, that distortion is tremendously magnified by the cap on the size of the US house of Representatives and the fact that the Constitution specifies a lower bound for district population but no upper bound.

I have been thinking that maybe states should get an equal number of electoral votes. We would get the protection of the electoral college and every state would have an equal say.

That would be less democratic (small d) than the current system.

Do you have some reason that Wyoming should actually have an equal say with New York or Texas or Florida or California?

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#50

Post by gfxgirl »

nl wrote: post #6

Am I the only centre-left type person in the world who thinks the Electoral College isn't a bad thing (in theory at least). In the Westminster 2-house system in Australia voters vote for representation from their seat. These seats have approximately the same number of people, but they also vote for an upper-house representative and the smaller states are over-represented in terms of population. This is because otherw…

Yes, you are correct. at least in the USA it's called the "United" States. If each state gets effectively no voice there's no reason for it to stay united with the other states.

So yes, at least theory it's not a bad thing. Bad or good is an opinion and it's a valid opinion to see giving states with less population a larger voice in exchange for staying part fo the system as a reasonable tradeoff

Post reply on HN