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How Close Were US Presidential Elections?
Mike Sheppard writes "I'm a graduate student in Statistics at Michigan State University and spent some time analyzing past US presidential elections to determine how close they truly were. The mathematical procedures of Linear Programming and 0-1 Integer Programming were used to find the optimal solution to the question: 'What is the smallest number of total votes that need to be switched from one candidate to another, and from which states, to affect the outcome of the election?' Because of the way the popular and electoral votes interact, the outcome of the analysis had some surprising and intriguing results. For example, in 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry; and in 2000, 269 votes would have given us President Gore. In all there have been 12 US Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the election would have been different."
Gore is an 8 poped collar douchebag
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
So he would have invaded pakistan ? Now that would have been just peachy.
The next president will have to deal with peak oil, so whoever it is he's going to take many people's toys away. Whoever it is, we're not going to like him anymore in 2012 and true hate is going to surface before 2016.
We have a democrat congress, so shear damage control voting would be voting for McCain. Congress and the presidency in the hands of the same bunch of nitwits has always been disastrous.
At least when they both control parts "some" stupidities cancel eachother out. (or so I hope)
You seem to have forgotten that Bin Laden's attacks on the USS Cole, Oklahoma Federal Building (suspected but not proven), and the World Trade Center happened during Al Gore's watch as Vice president. If he was not "on guard" enough to stop at least one of those, then he would not be on guard to stop 9/11 either.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Actually given Obama's track record of generally being a bad guy, I don't think he'll win. So I'd like to s/Obama/McCain/ in your post.
But otherwise, it seems quite correct.
However one thing that could change things is simple : people will see what will happen in other countries, like the EU or Russia. And the US is a *lot* better of peak-oil wise than the EU or basically any other country.
So if people compare enough to the situation abroad, and are fair (heh, fat chance of that, I know, but the media could help this), things could change.
It is admitted that the first WTC bombing in 1993 was done BY the FBI. It even came out in the New York Times and in a CBS News broadcast.
The leader of the group to blow up the WTC in 1993 was an FBI informant. They were supposed to build a phony bomb and set the other guys up. When it came time to put in the fake powder, the FBI gave him real powder! The informant was so upset about it he secretly recorded his conversations with the FBI.
Of course the NYT and CBS didn't say the FBI did it. They claim the FBI failed to stop it, although its admitted that the FBI was supposed to supply the fake powder to the informant. The news stories fail to mention that the FBI gave him real powder. But I suppose that was an accident too.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
>Second, they showed that if there been a full statewide recount of all counties, Al Gore would have received more votes than Bush.
Bullsh*t
Full recount of all the votes showed that GORE lost. The only way he could have won was by a selective recount in the counties he was winning, which is the one way Al Gore did not want to recount.
Also, Orange county was conducting an illegal method of recounting, that was not giving correct results. The Orange County superviosr demonstrated on TV. He was determining BY EYE which marksense votes he thought were not being counted by the machine. Then he was recounting them by hand. NOT using the machine to determine which votes the machine could not read. It is called vote FRAUD and it ended up netting votes for Al Gore.
Actually, Nobama was a bumper sticker I saw the other day. I thought it was cute when I saw it.
FYI, John McCain wasn't my first choice either. But given the choice between the two of them, well, no contest.
Besides, I was throwing facts out there, which seemed to be lacking in this whole thread.
My vote was threatened by one of those court cases, I paid VERY close attention to it.
And after I said anything about Clinton, I figured the first person seeing thepost was going to mark it flamebait anyway, most of /. seems to be liberals anyway.
Your facts were entirely wrong in practically every single way possible. You are a moonbat. I don`t need to quote "facts" to back this assertion up because it`s clear as day to everyone not laughably deluded as you are. Mod me flamebait, I`ve got karma to burn. Your idiocy simply BEGS to be pointed out.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
If by stronger democracy you mean stronger liberal/socialist government, then yes, absolutely. Paying someone to perform a civic responsibility makes them into an employee. It would not take long before political parties started raising these 'vote stimulii' amounts would likely gain the favor of the majority. How would we pay for it? Why lets tax the corporations some more! They're evil! Whats that? The economy is stagnating? The government needs to step in and do something. Maintain control! Well why not let them just take over the industries altogether, they already control the financial sector.
I for one, do NOT welcome our new even-more-widespread-and-invasive government overlords.
-=Bang Bang=-
If by "won" you mean "we're 2 trillion and 4000 lives in the hole and the country's GDP is still below what it was before the war", then yes.
Well just remember the american belief that it's better to have someone of SOME faith in charge then an athiest. Athiests are morally bankrupt and not capable of anything but looking out for themselves... much better to have a nation of walking bombs on the hunt for virgins in the afterlife then an evil athiest. If you put an athiest in charge he'll eat your babys for science, have police in your house saying you can't pray, and kill god when the rapture happens.
...I still say if babys didn't want to be eaten they wouldn't taste like candy.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Just because the problems they solve use 2D, simply because access to a 3D solver means a copy of Mathematica and a PC, not exactly convenient for a school, the principal of solving is the same, and in school we did linear equasions in math only, no graphical, to solve multi-variable equasions. The principal is the same once you use 3 or more variables, it just takes more time and effort to solve. 50 variables is no differnt than 3, and they teach 3 at least in high school, ususlaly just 2 in lower grades.
His inputs did not have 50 variables. The wiki article supported that complexity, but not this guy's equasions. All hes done is calculate the vote difference needed to win the election on the popular level, and also on the electoral level, then analyze the data to find the smallest nu,ber of votes in a state that by itself or in combibation with a couple of others would have swung it. This is not that hard... I wouldn't assign something like this as a nightly homework problem, or put it on a test, but there's no reason a couple of 10th graders working as a team could not design the equasion, which a computer could then have solved for them.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
There was no need there for tanks, artillery, or more than a few bombers, which is what largely went to Iraq.
People will always "wonder", but the move was not unreasonable. First of all, the "cotton bale next door" had its own, unrelated, shards, that had to be taken out — long ago.
And second, it was quite reasonable to believe, that the crafty needle would quietly move from the haystack to the cotton bale. Although Saddam's and Osama's distaste for each other was known, what was not as publicized, was Osama's earlier tensions with Mullah Omar. We only learned of it in 2004, when The Atlantic's journalist published his story:
Kicked out from Afghanistan by the US and its allies, Osama could very well have patched up his differences with Saddam, and begin a mutually-useful cooperation.
And then, of course, there was a question of moral high ground. Despite the howls of jealous "international disapproval" and the internal opposition (angry not so much at the war, as at Bush's earlier tax-cuts and reforms of the education system), ridding the world of an asshole of Saddam Hussein's caliber was a Very Good Thing (TM).
That the post-war efforts to rebuild the country were mismanaged and are only getting back on track now, is not an argument against it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Thank god we have George W Bush in office to uphold the law and protect the constitution. Who knows what a bleeding heart liberal like Al Gore would have done with it?"
Considering that he's telling his followers to do "civil disobedience" to halt new coal plant construction, gee, as President, he probably would have stopped any new power plant construction, period. I don't care what you think of Bush, if you can't see that Gore has a messiah complex, you're blind. Yeah, lets put a guy like that in the oval office, where he can "save us" whether we like it or not.
Gore is also a longtime proponent of the "living Constitution" theory... that it's "living, breathing, and evolving", and that the actual text doesn't matter, as long as we interpret it correctly "for the times".
So never mind that tenth amendment thing... the "times" say federalism is outmoded, so out it goes, baby!
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
He would have in his possession, letters from Al Gore, strongly condemning Bin Laden for the adverse
environmental impact bringing down the World Trade Center towers caused for New York.
Hmmm... still want that recount?
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett