Electoral College Decision Tree • Hacker News Board

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#351

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #349

dragonwriter wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The supreme court has said (over-simplifying here) that the right to delegate this legislative power to a popular vote is only constitutional when it adheres to 1 person, 1 vote weighting. > Taking into account votes external to that state likely violates this. I don't see anything approximating an argument that National Popular Vote violates any rule that has been applied to Presidential elections (“one person, on…

Deciding how to apportion electors falls squarely within the rights of a state legislature. There's no need for proportion of popular vote to correspond to electoral votes. What the supreme court has said, is that if any decision is delegated to a vote, then that vote must meet constitutional muster. Using votes cast in another state to determine the results of what is a state election likely violates rights of voter…

> What the supreme court has said, is that if any decision is delegated to a vote, then that vote must meet constitutional muster.

Anything any government in the US does must meet Constitutional muster. I'd like you to cite the specific decision you think indicates that a decision to assign electors based on the national popular vote would not meet such muster.

> Using votes cast in another state to determine the results of what is a state election likely violates rights of voters within that state.

Based on...what? I mean, except that it has survived so far, I can see an argument to the bare Constitution that giving unequal voting power to different voters within the state, which the two to the statewide winner plus one to the winner in each Congressional district method clearly does, violates the 14th Amendment Equal Protection rights of the voters so disadvantaged. But I don't even see a Constitutional argument, much less actual voting rights precedent, that negatively impacts on NPV.

> It's essentially extrajudicial gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is drawing legislative districts, which is normally “extrajudicial” (since federal districting is expressly a power of state legislatures, and state-level districting is usually also a power of the state legislature, not the judiciary.) And gerrymandering is often legal and in many cases not even subject to federal review. Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. ___ (2019).

So saying it's “extradjudicial gerrymandering” is all of false, adding meaningless qualifiers to make it sound significant, and not supporting your argument that it is unconstitutional.

> Separately, and coming from another angle- it likely violates the constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government.

How? Based on what argument and applicable precedent?

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#352

Post by dane-pgp » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #350

dane-pgp wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a state is one entity, it should have a single vote. Instead, there is a college of electors, and those electors should at least reflect the electoral outcome in the nominal congressional districts that they represent, as in Maine and Nebraska. (I know that's not how elector assignment generally works, but I think it's just as valid an interpretation as your "1 entity" view). Neither that per-district system, nor…

The constitution literally says the States shall choose the president. Not the people.

States are people, my friend.

(Hopefully that's a less controversial statement than Romney's famous line).

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#353

Post by pedrosorio » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #340

pedrosorio wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

You said “Biden has as much chance of winning Texas as Trump has of winning California.”

What do you mean when you say “chance”, if not probability?

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#354

Post by dllthomas » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

mrgordon wrote: post #301

dllthomas wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protecting against tyranny of the majority simply by changing the weight of votes is replacing it with tyranny of the minority, as you say. Other checks on the tyranny of the majority, like protecting the rights of individuals (in light of shared values) in the face of a majority decision to violate them is hard to characterize as tyranny at all. Requiring legislation to pass two bodies with different weights is an i…

The legislation not only needs to pass the Senate and the House, but also various committees and the president must also typically sign it. Each one of these hurdles reduces the chance of successful legislation which tends to favor the status quo. As noted by James Madison in someone else’s post, he thought the Senate should favor landowners over the majority “to secure the permanent interests of the country against…

I think I mostly agree with what you've written, but committees in particular (while they're not exactly any one thing) seem mostly to work in favor of considering (and thus, ultimately, passing) more legislation than a body could consider if each bill had to be considered by the entire body before being discarded.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#355

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #343

lern_too_spel wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 swi…

> 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 Polls don't predict anything. Poll-based forecasts are different than polls, and done by different people. The major polls in 2016 conducted close to the election were well within the MoE of the actual results, so as far as po…

> Polls don't predict anything.

Semantic nitpicking. Clearly, my comment was about how well the polls reflected reality.

> Some of the poll-based forecasts made errors like....

You're making a different statement than the person I'm responding to, who said that the polls didn't align with reality because they did not weight for education. That is something that is easy to verify. I was simply asking if it was verified by showing that weighting by education made the 2016 polls align with reality.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#356

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #341

lern_too_spel wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 swi…

Uh... polls reliably predicted Trump's win in the primaries long before anyone in the pundit class believed it. For months and months it was explained away as simple name recognition. But he was ahead the whole time. Honestly, you're misremembering this. Polls were not wrong in 2016 like you think they were. Just browse through the article history at 538, they really are the best source for this stuff.

> Just browse through the article history at 538

I did. They say the polls were wrong. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-...

You yourself said the polls were wrong because they didn't weight for education. Now you say they weren't. Are you walking back your original statement? That statement is what this whole discussion is about.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#357

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Oct 25, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #344

lern_too_spel wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 swi…

Here's the analysis.[1] It points out that (to quote): As this report documents, the national polls in 2016 were quite accurate, while polls in key battleground states showed some large, problematic errors. (which is my claim: national polling is ok, state polls aren't great). The education weighing issue is commonly accepted as the reason for the inaccuracy. The evidence for that isn't as strong as people assume. Se…

Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#358

Post by dillondoyle » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

dillondoyle wrote: post #123

dragontamer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> election night, as state results come in. Not this year. With mail-in ballots, the ballots won't necessarily be finalized until a week or more after the election. Its necessary due to COVID19. But it will be until multiple days after the election before we know the true winner. A large number of states will certainly be called on election night (because many states, such as California, are far from competitive). Bu…

If we smash Florida and have enough data in Penn it will be called quick. Despite Florida being one of the worst most disgusting states in terms of suppressing the vote - DeSantis allowed county supervisors to start counting mail ballots basically immediately. Over 3.3 million have already returned ballots and 1.3 have already voted in person. Pennsylvania on the other hand... I don't think they can count ballots unt…

Curious about why so many downvotes - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#359

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #355

dragonwriter wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Polls don't predict anything. Poll-based forecasts are different than polls, and done by different people. The major polls in 2016 conducted close to the election were well within the MoE of the actual results, so as far as po…

> Polls don't predict anything. Semantic nitpicking. Clearly, my comment was about how well the polls reflected reality. > Some of the poll-based forecasts made errors like.... You're making a different statement than the person I'm responding to, who said that the polls didn't align with reality because they did not weight for education. That is something that is easy to verify. I was simply asking if it was verifie…

> You're making a different statement than the person I'm responding to, who said that the polls didn't align with reality because they did not weight for education.

Yes, I'm disagreeing; the polls in 2016 reflected the actual outcome very well (they were off, but not unusually far; the entire idea that there was an unusual error is based on overemphasis of fairly new poll-based predictors, especially one at the NYTimes, that painted an extremely high probability of a Clinton win based on a flawed prediction methodology which was separate from any problem with the polls.)

> I was simply asking if it was verified by showing that weighting by education made the 2016 polls align with reality.

If you want to fit a particular single result you can change how you handle any factor and get a perfect match. You'd actually need to test against a different set of real data than you used to determine the adjustment to validate it, not the same single result.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#360

Post by throwawaygh » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

parsimoniousplb wrote: post #342

throwawaygh wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These pollsters explain their mistakes and changes in methodology. Read, or stop opining.

My deepest apologies for opining, comrade throwawaygh

> My deepest apologies for opining, comrade throwawaygh

Opining without doing any research is lazy and undermines good conversation. Your exchange with GP literally amounts to a "uh huh / nuh uh".

Name-calling, FWIW, is even less productive.

>> you needn't know, it was corrected

There were long reports on what went wrong (and what didn't) in 2016 polling.

For example, https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/Reports/An-Evaluat...

More importantly, there are explanations from pollsters about what they changed and they speak openly about remaining possible sources of uncertainty/error. See e.g. the quotes in this article: https://www.newsweek.com/how-pollsters-changed-their-game-af...

All of this is a quick google search away, and anyone who has actually paid attention to polling knows exactly how polling has changed in the past 4 years. It's literally impossible to read anything on this topic without knowing that polling firms openly talk about methodology changes. Therefore, your original comment was either intentionally misleading or profoundly uninformed.

NB: You can absolutely agree or disagree with their methodological choices, especially around "shy Trump effect" and whether Trafalgar-like "what do your neighbors think?" questions make sense.

But even if you disagree with their choices, _it's plainly untrue to say their attitude is "you needn't know". To the contrary, they're quite open about how their polling methodology has changed._

Are you willing to defend with evidence and reason your initial claim that pollsters haven't explained what they have/haven't done to try and correct polling methodology? Or are we just going to name-call like we're 12 year olds on a playground/irrelevant partisan zombies in the internet comment section?