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512 Paths to the White House

nytimes.com

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Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#151

Post by protomyth »

If you want more campaigning in your area, then start a petition and vote for a change to your state's constitution to allocate electoral votes by house district. This is a change that could happen if your state wants it.

I believe on real problem is the state's voice is not heard in DC and a lot of crap is done that is not in the State's best interest. I wish they would repeal the Seventeenth Amendment so people would concentrate a lot more on the State's politics. Or perhaps, replace the senators with the sitting governor. Then the Senate would think about the state's budget and regulation burden before passing things.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#152

Post by outside1234 »

robomartin wrote: post #47

The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. I fully understand that the popular vote option has its issues (focusing on large population areas, etc.). However, a lot of this can be mitigated through legislation and regulation of the process. Here's a random set of ideas: - Candidates are only allowed to visit each state capital once. That's it. - Candidates a…

I know you mean well, but all of these laws would end up getting used to suppress other political parties.

Take for instance, this one:

- A candidate must post a huge bond. If he or she is found telling lies they end-up in prison and have huge financial consequences.

Laws like this, for instance, are used to great effect in Singapore to suppress alternative parties. The party in control uses the threat of bankrupting the other candidate to make it impossible for them to basically run a campaign. And god forbid they talk about the Yew family!

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#153

Post by jbooth »

skrebbel wrote: post #148
vsync wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That hardly reflects the will of the people in the context of a /national/ election. Federal.

Hmm, offtopic but I'm curious: there's a semantic difference between the two terms? So the FBI and the NSA somehow operate at different levels, tied to different entities? If so, what's the difference?

National is having to do with the nation, federal is having to do with the federal government.

National Basketball Association and Federal Bureau of Investigation obviously make sense. National Security Agency is a federal agency charged with security of the nation.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#154

Post by jbooth »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #108
waterlesscloud wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific concrete difference do you see happening in that case? What does it mean to "campaign to all people"?

One effect - economic conservatism may make a comeback. NY, CA and several other liberal states tend to have people who call themselves "conservatives" (folks like me). We tend to be libertarian leaning economic conservatives who don't identify with religious culture war stuff (war on christmas, the gays are gonna get you). We get ignored since our vote doesn't matter. This leads to national candidates who are basica…

That'd be nice, but for the record, spending a lot of money on the military and cutting taxes (Bush, Romney) is not 'basically democrats with a little bit of jesus thrown in'.

I think your beef is more with the national security conservatives than the religious ones, religion is orthogonal to economic conservatism and often employed in its favor (megachurches hating on 'socialism', etc)

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#155

Post by Evbn »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #123
cletus wrote: post #60

Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American). Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1] > The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority. Also, thi…

Most American voters do not understand what the President is which is part of why they find the Electoral College confusing. The President is not the President of the people. It is the President of the States. Only the States have a vote. In fact, for most of its history, the State governments voted directly and there was no popular vote for President. In modern times, they allowed people to have a say in who their S…

Overlooked is the fact the Federal government is extremely over involved in citizens lives, when it should be dealing mostly with the States.

If I don't vote for President, why is the President allowed to shoot my dog on suspicious of marijuana possession?

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#156

Post by Evbn »

logn wrote: post #145
hristov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are entitled to your dubious opinions but please do not try to change history. All newspapers agreed that Gore won Florida. What they said was that the Gore vs Bush decision would not have made a difference. That is because in his legal case Gore chose the wrong Florida counties where to request a recount. But if all votes were counted, Gore won. And no the electoral college does not exist to avoid deadlock. Do y…

> And no the electoral college does not exist to avoid deadlock. Do you know what the chances of deadlock are in a popular vote of about 100 million people? It might not be the intention to avoid deadlock (I have no idea). But it could definitely happen. You don't need an even split for this to occur, just enough to require a recount, which in a popular vote might mean recounting every single vote in the country whic…

We count them once, what is so hard about counting them twice? And if recounts change counts, maybe we should fix the bugs in the counting system.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#157

Post by Evbn »

robomartin wrote: post #138
jmaygarden wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is also about making it possible for anyone to run for office... Do you know how many super-smart people have the personality of a brick? I don't understand this line of thinking. Do you believe Steve Wozniak would make a better president than Steve Jobs? Leadership often requires a strong dose of charisma and moxie. Those geniuses without people skills make great advisors.

Given those two choices, I don't know. We don't know enough about their views across a wide range of topics outside of technology. You might want to go back and research presidents before television and the internet. Some of the most effective ones had pretty shitty personalities and habits. Today they'd never make it. My only argument is that we are probably keeping a lot of really good candidates from participating…

No one has Presidential expertise before becoming President.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#158

Post by Evbn »

protomyth wrote: post #150
caf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two most important electoral reforms that the US could adopt would be to switch voting to Saturday, so that most people don't have to take time off work to vote; and to put the administration of federal elections in the hands of an independent, professional, non-partisan electoral commission.

Switching to Saturday would get the US in trouble with many religions in the US that would absolutely forbid voting on a Saturday. A weekday is much safer. Having election day be a federal holiday wouldn't hurt.

Unrestricted mail in voting would solve these problems. WA and OR mail in, no problem.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#159

Post by Evbn »

mbostock wrote: post #17

A couple hidden features: 1. You can option-click on any of the buttons to see the transition in super slo-mo. (This was mainly for debugging, but it's fun to see how the transitions work in more detail.) 2. You can double-click on any part of the tree, and it will zoom in by one level. Also, we did a variation that used state-level probabilities to weight the tree. This gave a sense not just of the logical possibili…

You should weight the branch-level possibilities.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#160

Post by mayneack »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #123
cletus wrote: post #60

Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American). Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1] > The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority. Also, thi…

Most American voters do not understand what the President is which is part of why they find the Electoral College confusing. The President is not the President of the people. It is the President of the States. Only the States have a vote. In fact, for most of its history, the State governments voted directly and there was no popular vote for President. In modern times, they allowed people to have a say in who their S…

I don't think it's fair to say the president IS the president of the states. The office certainly used to work that way, but because every state elects their electors, it is no longer true.
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