Electoral College Decision Tree • Hacker News Board

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#181

Post by titanomachy » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #175

icegreentea2 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the electoral college is that opaque, or complex. It's certainly more complex then a straight popular vote. But consider that there are many many parliamentary systems in the world that have a degree of complexity and subtly on the same order as the electoral college (though the unequal sizes of states does mean the EC is more complex). I certainly don't think the electoral college is a good system for…

If you're in a safe state that's a different political leaning than you are, there isn't much incentive for you to vote. Your vote, for President anyway, is effectively meaningless.

That's true even if your state is the same political leaning as you. The only way to have a vote that matters is to live in a state which is split close to 50/50.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#182

Post by WaltPurvis » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

nick_gur wrote: post #99

dragontamer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that if Texas goes blue, I think its safe to say that Biden won the election. But I also think that Texas going for Biden is very small: Trump is still leading by 2% or so by official polls. Its important to push Texas a little bit since there's a chance for victory. In the most likely event: Texas goes red (as it has gone for the past several decades), and we're left wondering about Florida, Ohio, and P…

TX and FL going blue? Have you seen the early voting? Rs are LEADING in Miami-Dade, a Clinton county. Voter registrations are crazy for GOP in FL and the D-R voter gap is only at around 130,000 (used to be 650,000 when Bush won FL in 2000) Other than polls, I have yet to see any indication that FL will go blue despite going red in 2016 and then electing an R Governor on 2018.

> Have you seen the early voting? Rs are LEADING in Miami-Dade, a Clinton county.

Define "LEADING" please, because the actual numbers for voting in Miami-Dade county [1] as of today are:

Mail Voting

Rep 83,605

Dem 158,788

NPA 82,533 (NPA = No Party Affiliation)

In-Person Early Voting

Rep 61,273

Dem 61,548

NPA 35,296

Totals

Rep 144,878

Dem 220,336

In what way does that constitute Republicans "LEADING"?

[1] https://countyballotfiles.floridados.gov/VoteByMailEarlyVoti...

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#183

Post by beerandt » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #178

rubyist5eva wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it dumb? The House of Representatives is supposed to proportionally represent the constituencies of the various states. The Senate exists to represent the state legislatures - though the 17th amendment changed that(and I personally believe it should be repealed). It makes sense to me, as the House choosing the President is still a somewhat representation of the will of the people. It's also very similar to Wes…

How does that justify one vote per state? Wouldn't one vote per representative represent the will of the people better?

Because the constitution specifies that the several States (not the people) shall elect the president.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#184

Post by beerandt » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #143

chromaton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the House of Representatives would have an even number.

Yes, but that may not be as impactful as a tied EC. In the case of the House, it's rare that all seats are filled anyways, so it can and has functioned with the equivalent of an even split between parties. And for the most part, a delay on any given piece of legislation probably isn't as big a deal as a massively contested presidential election.

That's why the electors' votes are not bound after not reaching an initial majority, and why the decision goes to Congress upon a stalemate.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#185

Post by zachberger » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #162

BurningFrog wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1973 Sweden ended up with a 175-175 situation in parliament. After deciding 152 issues by lottery, the number was changed to 349. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Riksdag#Constit...

The US uses the Vice President instead of a lottery.

Not for the electoral college. For that the House of Representatives picks the President and the Senate picks the VP. You should also note that in the House, normal voting rules don't apply: each state receives one vote, the reps from each state will need to caucus together to determine which candidate receives that vote.

Pretty crazy.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/what-happen...

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#186

Post by beerandt » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #32

chromaton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the House of Representatives would have an even number.

We could add a senator. Give it to DC.

This is one of the 2 things in the constitution that specifically would require unanimous consent of the states to change: equal apportionment of Senators per state.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#187

Post by gifnamething » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #167

foxhound6 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would have bet the farm on the undervalued bet on the prediction markets. This is what's frustrating about sites like 538. They have Biden as an 87% chance to win. A betting site I frequent has Biden's winning odds as -180 (1.556 for Europeans). If they really believe the accuracy of their models, they should literally be betting the farm on a Biden win.

That's not how gambling works. You don't "bet the farm" on a single 87% chance event to win 1.5 farms.

That is how betting works when you hedge.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#188

Post by roywiggins » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #33

roywiggins wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You remember correctly. "538 thought Clinton had a lock on it" is a meme, but it doesn't seem grounded in anything.

538 gave Clinton an 86% chance for a brief period of time after the Access Hollywood tapes but before Comey's press conference. I wouldn't call that a lock, but maybe some would.

Yeah, and then nobody bothered to watch as her chances drifted downward every subsequent day until the election... and they drifted down because the polls changed and the model got more information. It's not really fair to say the model was wrong- it just wasn't clairvoyant.

Really, Trump won by a hair's breadth. 538 shouldn't have given him a huge chance to win- he just barely scraped through. It's a genuinely hard problem when the popular vote is very close, since the electoral college throws a huge chaos wrench into everything.,

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#189

Post by titanomachy » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #2

Nerd Me: This is a really nice use of this visualization. Human Me: I saw all this stuff in 2016 and Trump still beat the overwhelming odds. (Yes 16% chance of winning is still a chance, I get it... there's just so much deja vu with all these visualizations and articles about his campaign imploding).

The fivethirtyeight.com forecast in 2016 gave Trump a 28.6% chance of victory. It's predicting 12% for 2020. That's a pretty big difference.

If I told you "there's a 30% chance of rain tomorrow" and it rained, you probably wouldn't accuse me of being wrong (based on that one data point at least).

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#190

Post by gen220 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #156

gen220 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post-Civil War, it also incentivized voter suppression. The southern states benefited from emancipation, insofar as they gained seats in the house and electoral college (they got a 5/3 multiple on their prior proportions, which had only narrowly elected Lincoln pewar). This redistribution of postwar power led to the disaster of 1877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877 , something we're still grappling wi…

> One motivation for Jim Crow laws was to keep the southern voting-sampled portion of the south white and segregationist (in spite of the true distribution of local sentiment), while simultaneously benefiting from the larger population in magnifying their representation in national politics. In theory, there is a (somewhat dated, given other evolutions in voting rights) remedy for that in Section 2 of the Fourteenth…

I totally agree. It comes down to the legal definition of "abridged", "denied", and "crimes".

Unfortunately, in the present political climate, any reasonable interpretation of these words that hurts the representation of states with regressive voting laws would be seen as an act of politics.

The nice thing about my proposed hack, is that it also incentivizes decriminalization, or at least allowing a broader class of humans in your state to vote. In this way, it doesn't matter if the 14th amendment is well-enforced, because it changes the goal posts.

So, while it might not give felons the vote (this would violate the 14th), it will encourage the dissolution of our current "justice" system that arbitrarily incarcerates people.

If your state incarcerates people for "driving while black", it is effectively diluting its representation in the congress and electoral college.