Check out # 28 , and # 54 , # 56 .
Thanks, Davey Crockett.
Posted on 08/26/2016 2:51:36 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
You might already know we have a pretty weird system for electing presidents. Candidates can win with fewer votes, some states matter more than others, some votes matter more than others, and all due to an ad hoc political compromise between 18th century wigged gentlemen. Per their decision, we don’t vote for our leaders directly, but instead choose intermediaries, known as electors, who then (usually) vote for who we tell them to. Since each state is given two free electors regardless of how few people live there, voters from sparsely populated states like Wyoming are able to pack over three times the electoral punch than in large states like California. So it’s been for the past 57 presidential elections, and so it shall be this November when we decide whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should be our next Commander in Chief. But the situation is even weirder than you think. According to Professor Steven Brams, a political scientist and game theorist at NYU who has been working on electoral decision problems since the 1970s, there is a non-obvious effect that gives more power to the large states than their large populations would suggest. His research indicates that campaign resources should be allocated to states according to their electoral votes to the three-halves power. Why this is so involves advanced combinatorial math, for the initiated only, but the outcome is that if one state has four times the electoral votes of another state, rather than give it quadruple the attention and ads, it’s in a campaign’s interest to give it eight times as much, all else being equal. (It may be a dubious proposition that this is in any way advantageous to the citizens of these large states, as they get bombarded with mailers and 30-second TV ads, but it is a reflection of how valuable their votes are to the campaigns competing for them.) This isn’t just an academic result, Brams told me. Studies show campaigns actually do allocate their resources this way. If anything, they over-invest in the large states. As 1964’s Republican nominee Barry Goldwater put it, you have to “go shooting where the ducks are.” Because most states’ electoral votes are bundled into winner-take-all blocs, a large state like Ohio with its 18 electors can easily become must-win for either side. One way to understand this phenomenon is to imagine an extreme case in which a number of large states merge into an even larger one. Let’s call it New Texaflohioginia. Let’s further envision that New Texaflohioginia is worth a total of 270 electoral votes, and that all the remaining states are worth a total of 268. In this thought experiment, a candidate could safely ignore anyone living in those smaller states since whoever manages to win New Texaflohioginia will get all 270 of its votes, enough to outweigh all the other states combined, and therefore enough to win the presidency. So which states have more influence per voter then, the big states or the smaller ones? It’s not an easy question to answer since there are factors pushing in opposite directions, and they interact in ways which are asymmetrical and complex. Small states get more electors per voter, while the big states form larger blocs which cluster their influence into unignorable masses. According to Brams, “you might think the small states would have an advantage because of the plus two votes they get, but the winner-take-all aspect swamps the small state effect.” But not everyone agrees with this analysis. Professor Andrew Gelman, a statistician and political scientist at Columbia University, points to a study of his which he says shows the real-life distribution of votes following a different pattern from the one predicted by Brams et al. In his view, the theory of a large state bias lacks empirical backing and thus the “small states are slightly overrepresented because of how they all get three electoral votes.” Even if academics aren’t in agreement on the knotty ways in which the votes of small and large states interact, there is one distinction that is widely agreed on: the one between swing states and non-swing states. The system “is motivating candidates to campaign in swing states, so a few states become very important and nobody else matters,” Gelman said. In a state like New York, for instance, democrats have won by an average of 26 percent in the last five presidential elections, and always by at least 20%. Since the outcome is generally not in question, an individual vote, or even a few thousand votes, cannot alter the result. What’s more, if a solidly blue state like New York does happen to be close in a particular election, that would almost certainly indicate a national landslide in favor of Republicans, as in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won New York--and every other state, excepting only Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Most states are lopsidedly red or blue in this way. Only a very few are competitive, and candidates limit their charm offensives to these few battleground states. “In most states your vote doesn’t count. You may as well not have voted at all,” Brams said. So which states do matter? For starters, Pennsylvania. Trump recently claimed that if he doesn’t win in that state, it will be because Clinton cheated. Given the current polls, that is highly dubious, but for a while its rust belt voters seemed receptive enough to the Republican nominee’s populist message. Florida too will certainly be at the top of both candidates’ wishlists. Its importance was amply demonstrated in 2000 when a mere few hundred votes were the difference in Florida’s electoral delegation swinging to George W. Bush instead of Al Gore, thereby winning him the presidency. Trump may now be regretting the way he insulted Florida’s popular Senator “little Marco” Rubio and ex-Governor Jeb “low energy” Bush. Then there’s Ohio. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, and Democrats have managed to overturn the will of Ohioans just once. According to the nonprofit organization FairVote, in 2012 Mitt Romney held more campaign events in Ohio than in all 30 of the smallest states combined. (Ohio still opted for Barack Obama.) The New York Times reports that Ohio Governor John Kaisich was offered--and turned down--the Republican VP slot. Hillary Clinton had more luck, luring the ex-governor of Virginia, another swing state, onto her ticket. Other swing states include Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and possibly Wisconsin and Michigan. If one purpose of our grueling year-long presidential campaigns is to create a national conversation about the major issues facing the country, then most Americans are not being invited into that discussion. The current system creates the incentive for candidates to moneyball the electoral college in all its kludgy non-egalitarian intricacies. These Byzantine strategeries are both opportunity and necessity for modern campaigns. As we gear up for an election so operatic and wacky it makes House of Cards look prosaic by comparison, it’s natural that the more urgent question of Clinton versus Trump remains at the forefront of our minds. But hovering above all the targeted ad dollars and campaign stops in the same old states, we might also pause to wonder: does democracy really need to be more complicated than “most votes wins”? However, the electoral college is written into the constitution and is not likely to be amended anytime soon. Let’s hope Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida pick us a good president.
Obama is not the only one....The noble intent of the Framers has, of course, been overwhelmed by the rise of political parties. Perhaps the Framers were naïve to think that anyone could aspire to the highest office in the land without organized support, and not end up more devoted to party interests than those of the nation. Obama is the poster boy of this corruption. He is a political party president so thoroughly detached from his sworn duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, that it is often questionable just whose side he is on.
No, Article I, Section II, Paragraph 3 says that "each State shall have at Least one Representative".
Ping to post #28 very good reads on electoral college. Ping list please we need to understand this.
I think we could live the nightmare, if hellary is elected.
We are here...The people also govern well, at first. As long as there are any living who remember the days of oppression, they guard their liberties with a jealous vigor. Nevertheless, as future generations inherit the same privileges of democracy as their ancestors, yet without effort, they cease to cherish those benefits (6.9.5). Eventually individuals arise among them who, seeking pre-eminence, cater to the creature comforts of the masses, thereby hoping to win their favor. People sell cheap those liberties that have cost them nothing personally. Once the masses accept these demagogues, the cycle of tyranny begins again. This is the cycle Polybius calls a)naku/klwsij.
I see two major reasons to support a winner-take-all policy for each state.
First, as has been mentioned before, it assures that the President will have more widespread support than otherwise.
More importantly to me, though, is the fact that the majority in the larger states cannot steal votes to help their candidate. Once Hillary wins Kalifornia, stealing additional votes in Democrat controlled Kalifornia doesn't do her any good.
Instead, if Democrats are determined to steal the election, they are forced to do so in states that otherwise are controlled by Republicans.
We must keep the E.C as is or, if a change is made, go to the Congressional District system of awarding them. Had the C.D system of awarding E.Vs been in place in 2012 Romney would have won.
Statistically, in the modern day, the E.C. actually favors the Repubs. If the R candidate can come within 1% of the D candidate (49-48% for example) there is still a chance the R will win in the E.C. The reverse is not true.The Dems must win a majority of the P.V. to win the E.C as voters are generally distributed now around the nation
This happens because of the general distribution of the respective parties voters. Ds can roll up large majorities in certain states and Rs can win a number of states by slim margins, each taking the respective states E.V.s.
Bush lost the P.V by 1/2% in 2000 and still eked out a E.C. victory as an example.
http://www.fairvote.org/problems_with_the_electoral_college
“The Electoral College gives disproportionate voting power to states, favoring the smaller states with more electoral votes per person.
For instance, each individual vote in Wyoming counts nearly four times as much in the Electoral College as each individual vote in Texas. This is because Wyoming has three (3) electoral votes for a population of 532,668 citizens (as of 2008 Census Bureau estimates) and Texas has thirty-two (32) electoral votes for a population of almost 25 million. By dividing the population by electoral votes, we can see that Wyoming has one “elector” for every 177,556 people and Texas has one “elector” for about every 715,499. The difference between these two states of 537,943 is the largest in the Electoral College.”
The Rs win a bigger share of the smaller states and gain E.Vs that have fewer voters represented by those E.V.s
He has to win the small states too. One good thing about the Electoral College is that it limits vast cheating to just the state where it is being done. Chicago can’t affect anything but Illinois. Also, those that vote as a block will not help smaller states, unless they live there.
majority in the larger states cannot steal votes to help their candidate. Once Hillary wins Kalifornia, stealing additional votes in Democrat controlled Kalifornia doesn’t do her any good.
Wyoming should not have so many damn EC votes, that’s for sure. We like it now because Wyoming is Repub, but let one million illegal refugee get moved there and it would be a different tune.
Hopefully the cowboys out there would settle the immigration worries. :)
And isn’t it striking that that knowledge is 2200 years old-and yet, indeed, ‘here we are’... again.
Some times persons can change, but mankind never does.
Check out # 28 , and # 54 , # 56 .
Thanks, Davey Crockett.
Your post is true, and here we are!
Beautiful....deserves a repeat.
Every official move he's ever made is (in his own words) "to install a permanent Democrat majority."
Thank you Mrs. Smith for your post. I enjoyed the chapter about Polybius very much.
I am interested in your practical ideas for the present. I suspect that the presidency is not the thing that will matter in the long term but I wonder if you think that it would or anything else would. I can see that the RINO party must be destroyed, and that the current battle with them has no hope apart from the election of Donald Trump. Am I right?
If you do think it is all a foregone conclusion, then what will the collapse and fall look like and what historical parallel would you make? What is the time frame?
All freeper comments and teaching welcome!
BTTT
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