That explains why the *primary* would have in-person campaigning... but why would a change to a national primary date mean that the subsequent *presidential* campaign would be conducted on TV?
We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.
So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*
In the election of 1792, there were 132 electoral votes available to a population of 3,741,110 (based on the 1790 census cited in your link above, subtracting out the populations of Maine, West Virginia, and Tennessee since they didn't cast electoral ballots). That's about 28,342
people per elector, whereas today, each elector represents (as a national average) about 565,167 people.
This is relevant, because several states have populations FAR smaller than 1,695,500, which is the number of people proportionally represented by 3 electoral votes (the minimum number a state can have). That was true then, also, but not to such a large degree; there were five states with populations lower than 85,025, but the smallest of them (little Rhode Island) only had an overrepresentation factor of 1.6, whereas today, Wyoming's is 3.2. (That is the "average" population per electoral vote nationwide, divided by the population per electoral vote in the state... numbers greater than 1 show overrepresentation; numbers less than 1 show underrepresentation vis a vis the ideal scenario.)
The lowest overrepresentation factor in the 2008 election was Texas, at.789; in the 1792 election, it was Maryland at.709... HOWEVER, Maryland had four available electoral votes which were not cast. Had they cast them, their representation factor would have been 1.03 (taking into account how that changes the total electoral votes available).
Now I'm curious, and I'm going to recalculate all the 1792 numbers with the uncast but available EVs... just six more, four for Maryland and 2 for Vermont, but how does this change the numbers? Let's see...
Ok, now, the magic number (3x the population per EV) is 81,328.48, and only three states fall below it. Virginia's overrep factor is.823, and that's the lowest; they're doing way better than Texas these days. The highest overrep factor is Vermont, with 1.587.
So, in spite of the higher standard deviation, the far, far lower number of people per elector makes for a far more equitable distribution of electoral votes.
Oh, geez. Is that really Interesting? I mean, thanks for the karma, but I'm not hurting for it, and I couldn't even *remember* what I'd posted. A refinement of a car analogy? I should get modded -1 Redundant!
Yeah, and if we finally got national primaries, and broke Iowa and New Hampshire's lock as the leaders, do you know what would happen? Presidential campaigns would be something that happen on TV... everywhere. The major candidates wouldn't do any personal campaigning at all, it would all be a battle for the cameras.
Hm, how do you figure? I mean, you can buy airtime in Iowa as easily as nation-wide, so why would things change so dramatically?
I think you probably *would* see more sophisticated media usage (a la the Obama infomercial), but I don't think it follows that candidates would run campaigns from their desk. I'm interested in the logic chain you're following.
What would you have happen, that your "candidate" always win so you can prove that your vote made a difference?
There's a big difference between wanting to "always win" and wanting to vote *before* someone's lost. You claimed that it's ok that my vote has only 30% the electoral impact of a Wyoming resident's vote, BECAUSE I got to vote in the California primary, and it got a lot of media attention this year. I'm simply pointing out that my vote there didn't count either. Is this such a hard concept?
This is a democracy and the way the system works.
The way the system works is, we can change the system. That's what they've done in Iowa, and I wish The Governator hadn't vetoed the same legislation when my elected state legislators passed it here in California.
I happen to think we *should* change the system, for the reasons stated above.
If you think a candidate deserves to govern, spend time on get out the vote drives, organize fellow citizens that agree with your viewpoint and try to get the message out about what is so special about your candidate.
Which I've done in the past, and given money to campaigns, and so on. But it doesn't make it OK for my vote to be effectively nullified.
Expecting democracy to be something that simply comes and serves you a buffet when you have missed all of the chances to get involved means that you are capitulating your responsibilities to others.
Ugh, self-righteous much? I work ~35 hours a week, have a four-year-old and an infant to raise, and occasionally do stuff that I find personally fulfilling or (gasp) fun. I don't think it's too much to expect that, come election day, when I do get up early and go down to the polls and wait in line for my turn to cast my ballot, that it have THE SAME impact as someone doing THE SAME thing in another state. And all the other stuff, while relevant to some election policy issues, is entirely irrelevant to this particular issue.
Should I instead be talking about the fact that, if I want door-to-door canvassing to do any good for my candidate, I have to go to ANOTHER STATE to do it? I have participated in MoveOn phone banks where we call battleground states and urge them to vote, but then you're several steps removed; you have to hope you've got a good phone number, that the person is willing to hear you... door-to-door is far more personal, and I think gets a better reception, but I honestly don't have the time to spend a weekend in Arizona or Nevada canvassing (and in those states, it would be very unlikely to affect the outcome).
By the time it gets to the ballot box, often the election is decided...
And somehow that's ok with you. I really don't understand.
you need to get involved much, much earlier in the process.
Fine, as far as that goes. But I also have to get involved many, many miles from home, because of the electoral college system.
It doesn't take that much time or money,
I call BS, based on personal experience. You can't just spend a 15-minute block here and there doing it between dishes, laundry, cooking dinner, and playing with the kids. "Much time" has a different meaning to you and me. "Much money..." Maybe $50 isn't "much money" to my family, but to some, it's the difference between making rent and being homeless.
but it does take getting out of your comfort zone and getting off your behind to try and get something accomplished. Obama would not be president if it weren't for people blogging about him, discussing his ideas, and most importantly, talking to neighbors about him in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
There, fixed that for you. I could have worked my ass off here in California, and maybe he would have gott
The California primaries in the 2008 election were huge this last year, and had an incredible amount of attention. That it was Clinton v. Obama instead of Obama v. McCain is besides the point.
It is FAR from beside the point. You see, I voted for Kucinich in that primary. By that time, he'd dropped out and it was Obama vs. Clinton. My vote didn't count.
The California primary got a lot of attention because it was moved WAY up to *try* to make it count. But it still didn't. If it had been at the same time as usual, we *still* would have been voting for Clinton or Obama, and Obama would still have gotten the nomination. California didn't nominate him. *I* didn't nominate him. (Not that I'm disappointed to see him win... but I voted my conscience, and chose the candidate who most closely matched my priorities and values in the primary, even though he wasn't there anymore.)
You're still assuming that a popular vote only would not change the amount of people who vote.
I don't think anyone's assuming that... I think that most of us ARE assuming that this would change the way voter turnout works significantly. But the argument that the electoral college somehow insulates us from the effect of urban areas concentrating population, and therefore votes, is disproved by the GP. It may dampen the effect in one way (by making a Los Angeles resident's vote count for less than a third as much as a Wyoming resident's vote), but it doesn't negate the effect within states, especially "battleground states."
The minimum number of electors a state can have is 3. That means Wyoming has 3, the District of Columbia has 3, etc. Even though there's 565,166.77 people per elector nationwide, this means that there's only 177,556 people per elector in Wyoming. Their votes are "magnified" relative to the national population by a factor of more than 3. There are six states and the DC who have their votes magnified by a factor of 2 or more.
On the flip side, there are six states whose votes count for less than 90% as much as they "should" in a more exact distribution. Less than half of the states (23 to be exact) have "representation factors" within 10% of the ideal distribution.
Citation: I used 2008 population estimates from the Census Bureau, at www.census.gov, and electoral vote assignments from the 2008 presidential campaign from fec.gov. Other than that, I used math and Excel, thusly:
total state population / state electoral votes = state representation factor Total US population / 538 = ideal distribution
ideal distribution / state representation factor = over/underrepresentation factor
Using the 2000 Census results in similar numbers, but the distribution of electoral votes has, I think, been updated since then, so the 2008 estimates are probably slightly more accurate.
I think you could hardly say that the big states like California, Texas, and New York get "zero attention". They get considerable attention.
They do? I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life, and as far as I can tell, presidential campaigns are something that happen on TV. They come here to raise money, but I can never afford $1000 a plate.
51% of the people of the country vote one way, and 100% of the people of Iowa vote the other way, Iowa's votes go to someone who no one in Iowa voted for. How the hell does that make sense to you, and how the HELL do you equate that with the relative "value" of a vote?
Ok, let's take your scenario: 51% of the popular vote in the US goes to one candidate, but Iowa mysteriously manages to vote 100% for the other candidate.
In the current system, Iowa's electoral votes go to the candidate who lost the popular vote. But, *depending on the distribution of votes in the other states,* that candidate may win OR lose. Now, here's the kicker: they can win or lose WITHOUT IOWA. Iowa has 7 electoral votes. Candidate needs 270 votes to win. That means they need to take just 11 states: Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Texas, and California. In the 2008 election, those states made up 54% of the popular vote. If a candidate won exactly 51% of those 11 states, they can be elected president with less than 28% of the popular vote.
And without Iowa.
If you *lose* all the biggest states, you have to win in 40 states plus the District of Columbia to be elected. Those states account for 49% of the popular vote, and you need less than 25% of the total popular vote to get elected by them. At least some of that is from Iowa, though.
Iowa has no voice as it now stands. Not only that, but in LARGE states that tend to be foregone conclusions, many voters don't have a say... if you're going to vote for the republican candidate in California, why did you even get out of bed this morning?
you can't even argue that giving 100% of our states votes to party Y makes the least bit of sense.
Yes you can -- if you understand why it was designed to do what it does.
States are supposed to pic a executive. The select an executive to represent the STATE. They send electors (the number of which is weighted by population) to vote for that executive. How can a state pick 51% of an executive? And 49% of another? They pick a SINGLE executive, not two, three or more.
By removing this system, you effectivly remove any executive representation to small states. Preseidents will be elected by large cities (Los Angeles, New York City, etc) of a handfull of states. Executive decisions will be based on the needs of those few zones rather than the country as a whole.
But right now, small states have FAR MORE voting power per person than large states. Why should a Wyoming resident's vote count for more than a California resident's?
Actually, when you do the math, the states that really get screwed in the current system are the mid-population states. The largest states tend to be represented proportionally, while the smallest states are over-represented, taking the share from the middling states.
To do the math yourself, go to www.census.gov and get state populations (don't forget DC). Then put those in an Excel spreadsheet next to the electoral votes for each state. Divide pop by votes, then sort those numbers. Also calculate the total population by 535, then divide the representation for each state by that number. You'll see who comes out ahead and behind.
I last did this years ago, so I don't have it to hand now, but it's very interesting. There's about one electoral vote per 700,000 people in the US, but Wyoming gets something like 1 per 500,000. California, Texas, and New York each came out at about 700,000, but states like Ohio etc. were more like 800,000.
I think the notion that the states elect the executive is somewhat outdated, given the shift to greater Federal control over individuals (while at the same time, civil rights granted by the national government have been conferred on individuals as well). Keep in mind, also, that this system predates states the size of Texas and California... it doesn't account for the idea that a single state might be large enough that they take on an unfair economic burden, as well as housing a disproportionate population.
This whole f'ed up system is why some of us would like to see California declare independence. Trade deficit? WHAT trade deficit? California exports more than it imports (in spite of housing the largest port complex in the country). There are reasons other than our gigantic population why the federal government should, now and then, have to make us happy. As it now stands, they practically never do.
If what you're saying were the crux of the problem, then such a user might have this problem one time. It wouldn't take very long to exhaustively perform a visual search of the keyboard and conclude that there is no key labelled "ANY". At that point, this theory that the prompt refers to a specific key has been falsified and it's time to abandon it. Isn't that simple?
If users' general experience with computers was that software and hardware were universally compatible and all computers had the same interface design, then it would be that simple. But what of the user who is told to use the right mouse button when he's on a Mac? Or to use the Windows key when his keyboard predates that invention? Or to use the number pad on a laptop?
Users have, sadly, been trained to jump to the conclusion that, when the hardware or software doesn't perform according to their initial expectation, there's something wrong with either the software or the hardware... or they just don't have the information they need. The idea that they may have made a *semantic* misinterpretation is pretty far down the list of the usual suspects.
I mean on *Windows*... doesn't surprise me that you can on Linux (which is good, since upgrading to Ubuntu Heron broke "traceroute" in preference to "sudo tracert"... a change that totally baffles me).
Still no cite for the 98%. But the link provided by ya really was quite edifying.
First of all, it says 90%, not 98%. But, as noted by other posters, there are some caveats on that:
Out of 86,680 cases, there were 78,042 convictions, which is 90%.
95% of those (74,226) were guilty or no contest pleads.
That means, there were 12,454 trials. Of those, 8,638 were not found guilty, which is 69.3%.
So... only 9.96% of the cases ended in acquittal, but almost 70% of trials did, which is a really low conviction rate, I think.
Furthermore... under Appeals, apparently the lower court decisions were affirmed, at least in part, in 70% of cases... which means they were completely overturned in 30% of cases. So take your 3,816 convictions, and subtract another 1,145 or so that will get overturned on appeal... now you're up to 9,783 acquittals, which is more than 3/4ths of the people who actually went to trial.
It's because more than half of economics is really applied sociology.
Not exactly... what it is is the science of decision-making. Economics really only touches on money in that money is a way of quantifying the decisions we make. As a medium of exchange, money just is a proxy for how we feel about things relative to each other, and supply/demand pricing is a way of aggregating everyone's feelings about those decisions together.
Game theory is fascinating, because it shows that feelings really *do* play a large role in what "should" be purely economic decisions. We will accept a dollar-amount cost if it means "punishing" someone who we believe has behaved unfairly towards us.
This is actually part of the reason people are so opposed to social programs. There's tons of evidence that it "works", where "working" is evaluated in many ways... GDP, standard of living, educational attainment, lifespan, quality of life, etc. But there's an intuitive sense that "it's not fair" for someone to get "something for nothing..." even if guaranteeing that minimum level of "something" leaves us ALL better off. (This is related to the Prisoner's Dilemma situation.)
My response: don't go to the parties that get busted and you probably won't hav ea problem getting busted at those parties..
Yeah, never go to a party where there might be underage drinking or pot smoking, much less anyone who's tripping. That sounds like FUN!;-)
Then again, my husband got through college that way. I had to teach him how to get drunk. That's what Engineering School will do to you. I was fortunate to be up on north campus, with lots of friends in the School of Theater, Film, and Television.
It'd probably be less stupid to just not commit crimes.
There are certain segments of our population who don't have to commit crimes to get hassled by the cops. Ever heard of someone getting pulled over for a DWB (or DWH)?
The really infuriating part of it is, then you've got kids who see no reason NOT to commit crimes... because they're treated like criminals whether or not they actually get the benefit of breaking the law.
And if after the trial there was an acquittal, that's proof that there was no probable cause to begin with.
No, that's simply not true. That just falls flat on its face.
"Probable cause" means "Gosh, it looks like this very well may have happened this way." It's the most likely explanation given what little evidence they start with. Then, they get warrants, investigate, and either the evidence supports that initial explanation or it doesn't. Maybe it leads them in a different direction, or maybe it's just a dead end. But you're not convicted yet, and you still have a chance to make your case.
Say you break up with your SO, and a week later s/he's murdered when staying late at work. A security camera saw your car leaving the parking lot about 20 minutes after the estimated time of death. That is probable cause. It's likely that you were driving your car, and being in that place at that time, given your relationship to the deceased, points in your direction.
They gather evidence; they find that it was a NASTY breakup, they find an email you sent that said "I'll f---ing kill you if you..." and then s/he did. You don't have an alibi; you were home alone at the time. (Meanwhile, you're thinking someone's altered the tapes; you KNOW you didn't drive your car there.)
But, just after your indictment, a friend of yours suddenly disappears. No one knows why. You hear rumors that this friend had certain feelings towards you. Someone closer to them than you finally mentions that s/he was SO pissed at how your ex treated you, s/he threatened to... you know. At the same time, you'd been oblivious to this person's offers to be your "shoulder to cry on," and they were getting pretty upset with YOU, too.
Did I mention that this friend had the valet key to your car? You'd forgotten about it; they borrowed your car while you were on a business trip. You live in the same building with a shared parking garage.
Yes, you were framed. But there WAS probable cause.
(Hm, maybe I should write up a script... call it "Presumed Not Guilty"... I wonder if Shia Labeauf would star in it...)
Good luck suing them for false imprisonment. They were TRYING to do their job right. And that's the ultimate bar: were they just trying to lock up someone, ANYONE, against their own policies for evidence-gathering and charging with crimes? Or did they really have reason to think that it must have been you, until you turn up evidence otherwise?
If this happened to me, I'd patiently wait until my trial was over. And if ironclad proof wasn't presented at the trial that there was NO OTHER WAY than the crime for the evidence being there, I wouldn't shut up until the Supreme Court had heard the case.
[snip]
And I'd want enough money to be set up for life from the jurisdiction that was stupid enough to let their public officials have search warrants when there was still reasonable doubt as to innocence.
"Ironclad proof" and "NO OTHER WAY" are not the same as "beyond a reasonable doubt." There's almost always some "other way" that something *could have* happened... in other words, it wouldn't violate the laws of physics. But it's so unlikely that it's not a reasonable doubt.
All this persecutor in the YANAL blog is saying is that there ain't no justice, and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, innocent or guilty they can fuck up your life.
I think the audience for the article wasn't the innocent caught in the middle, but the idiots who think they could get away with whatever because of these technical defenses. His point was, even if you might be able to mount such a defense, that defense WILL NOT interfere with gathering evidence... evidence which might blow apart your technical defense. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is required to get a guilty verdict, but not to get a warrant.
Slashdot Mirror
That explains why the *primary* would have in-person campaigning... but why would a change to a national primary date mean that the subsequent *presidential* campaign would be conducted on TV?
Convenient. But, of course, going to the source is a bit more reliable. More work, though.
We can argue what the statistics ultimately mean, but the fact remains that (according to my spreadsheet using as sources 1999 and 1790) the standard deviation of population distribution in 1790 was a whopping 5.23%, while in 1999 it was only 2.2%. This means there was an even wider spread of populations in 1790 than in 1999.
So you can argue that power is allocated disproportionately concerning population, but you cannot argue truthfully that the population is more disproportionate now than it was at the time the Constitution was written.*
In the election of 1792, there were 132 electoral votes available to a population of 3,741,110 (based on the 1790 census cited in your link above, subtracting out the populations of Maine, West Virginia, and Tennessee since they didn't cast electoral ballots). That's about 28,342
people per elector, whereas today, each elector represents (as a national average) about 565,167 people.
This is relevant, because several states have populations FAR smaller than 1,695,500, which is the number of people proportionally represented by 3 electoral votes (the minimum number a state can have). That was true then, also, but not to such a large degree; there were five states with populations lower than 85,025, but the smallest of them (little Rhode Island) only had an overrepresentation factor of 1.6, whereas today, Wyoming's is 3.2. (That is the "average" population per electoral vote nationwide, divided by the population per electoral vote in the state... numbers greater than 1 show overrepresentation; numbers less than 1 show underrepresentation vis a vis the ideal scenario.)
The lowest overrepresentation factor in the 2008 election was Texas, at .789; in the 1792 election, it was Maryland at .709... HOWEVER, Maryland had four available electoral votes which were not cast. Had they cast them, their representation factor would have been 1.03 (taking into account how that changes the total electoral votes available).
Now I'm curious, and I'm going to recalculate all the 1792 numbers with the uncast but available EVs... just six more, four for Maryland and 2 for Vermont, but how does this change the numbers? Let's see...
Ok, now, the magic number (3x the population per EV) is 81,328.48, and only three states fall below it. Virginia's overrep factor is .823, and that's the lowest; they're doing way better than Texas these days. The highest overrep factor is Vermont, with 1.587.
So, in spite of the higher standard deviation, the far, far lower number of people per elector makes for a far more equitable distribution of electoral votes.
Citation: http://www.presidentelect.org/e1792.html for 1792 electoral votes cast.
Oh, geez. Is that really Interesting? I mean, thanks for the karma, but I'm not hurting for it, and I couldn't even *remember* what I'd posted. A refinement of a car analogy? I should get modded -1 Redundant!
Yeah, and if we finally got national primaries, and broke Iowa and New Hampshire's lock as the leaders, do you know what would happen? Presidential campaigns would be something that happen on TV... everywhere. The major candidates wouldn't do any personal campaigning at all, it would all be a battle for the cameras.
Hm, how do you figure? I mean, you can buy airtime in Iowa as easily as nation-wide, so why would things change so dramatically?
I think you probably *would* see more sophisticated media usage (a la the Obama infomercial), but I don't think it follows that candidates would run campaigns from their desk. I'm interested in the logic chain you're following.
What would you have happen, that your "candidate" always win so you can prove that your vote made a difference?
There's a big difference between wanting to "always win" and wanting to vote *before* someone's lost. You claimed that it's ok that my vote has only 30% the electoral impact of a Wyoming resident's vote, BECAUSE I got to vote in the California primary, and it got a lot of media attention this year. I'm simply pointing out that my vote there didn't count either. Is this such a hard concept?
This is a democracy and the way the system works.
The way the system works is, we can change the system. That's what they've done in Iowa, and I wish The Governator hadn't vetoed the same legislation when my elected state legislators passed it here in California.
I happen to think we *should* change the system, for the reasons stated above.
If you think a candidate deserves to govern, spend time on get out the vote drives, organize fellow citizens that agree with your viewpoint and try to get the message out about what is so special about your candidate.
Which I've done in the past, and given money to campaigns, and so on. But it doesn't make it OK for my vote to be effectively nullified.
Expecting democracy to be something that simply comes and serves you a buffet when you have missed all of the chances to get involved means that you are capitulating your responsibilities to others.
Ugh, self-righteous much? I work ~35 hours a week, have a four-year-old and an infant to raise, and occasionally do stuff that I find personally fulfilling or (gasp) fun. I don't think it's too much to expect that, come election day, when I do get up early and go down to the polls and wait in line for my turn to cast my ballot, that it have THE SAME impact as someone doing THE SAME thing in another state. And all the other stuff, while relevant to some election policy issues, is entirely irrelevant to this particular issue.
Should I instead be talking about the fact that, if I want door-to-door canvassing to do any good for my candidate, I have to go to ANOTHER STATE to do it? I have participated in MoveOn phone banks where we call battleground states and urge them to vote, but then you're several steps removed; you have to hope you've got a good phone number, that the person is willing to hear you... door-to-door is far more personal, and I think gets a better reception, but I honestly don't have the time to spend a weekend in Arizona or Nevada canvassing (and in those states, it would be very unlikely to affect the outcome).
By the time it gets to the ballot box, often the election is decided...
And somehow that's ok with you. I really don't understand.
you need to get involved much, much earlier in the process.
Fine, as far as that goes. But I also have to get involved many, many miles from home, because of the electoral college system.
It doesn't take that much time or money,
I call BS, based on personal experience. You can't just spend a 15-minute block here and there doing it between dishes, laundry, cooking dinner, and playing with the kids. "Much time" has a different meaning to you and me. "Much money..." Maybe $50 isn't "much money" to my family, but to some, it's the difference between making rent and being homeless.
but it does take getting out of your comfort zone and getting off your behind to try and get something accomplished. Obama would not be president if it weren't for people blogging about him, discussing his ideas, and most importantly, talking to neighbors about him in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
There, fixed that for you. I could have worked my ass off here in California, and maybe he would have gott
I think more accurately, do license plates and the ability for police to look them up assume all drivers are breaking the law?
The California primaries in the 2008 election were huge this last year, and had an incredible amount of attention. That it was Clinton v. Obama instead of Obama v. McCain is besides the point.
It is FAR from beside the point. You see, I voted for Kucinich in that primary. By that time, he'd dropped out and it was Obama vs. Clinton. My vote didn't count.
The California primary got a lot of attention because it was moved WAY up to *try* to make it count. But it still didn't. If it had been at the same time as usual, we *still* would have been voting for Clinton or Obama, and Obama would still have gotten the nomination. California didn't nominate him. *I* didn't nominate him. (Not that I'm disappointed to see him win... but I voted my conscience, and chose the candidate who most closely matched my priorities and values in the primary, even though he wasn't there anymore.)
You're still assuming that a popular vote only would not change the amount of people who vote.
I don't think anyone's assuming that... I think that most of us ARE assuming that this would change the way voter turnout works significantly. But the argument that the electoral college somehow insulates us from the effect of urban areas concentrating population, and therefore votes, is disproved by the GP. It may dampen the effect in one way (by making a Los Angeles resident's vote count for less than a third as much as a Wyoming resident's vote), but it doesn't negate the effect within states, especially "battleground states."
Have you ever looked at how things break down?
The minimum number of electors a state can have is 3. That means Wyoming has 3, the District of Columbia has 3, etc. Even though there's 565,166.77 people per elector nationwide, this means that there's only 177,556 people per elector in Wyoming. Their votes are "magnified" relative to the national population by a factor of more than 3. There are six states and the DC who have their votes magnified by a factor of 2 or more.
On the flip side, there are six states whose votes count for less than 90% as much as they "should" in a more exact distribution. Less than half of the states (23 to be exact) have "representation factors" within 10% of the ideal distribution.
Citation: I used 2008 population estimates from the Census Bureau, at www.census.gov, and electoral vote assignments from the 2008 presidential campaign from fec.gov. Other than that, I used math and Excel, thusly:
total state population / state electoral votes = state representation factor
Total US population / 538 = ideal distribution
ideal distribution / state representation factor = over/underrepresentation factor
Using the 2000 Census results in similar numbers, but the distribution of electoral votes has, I think, been updated since then, so the 2008 estimates are probably slightly more accurate.
I think you could hardly say that the big states like California, Texas, and New York get "zero attention". They get considerable attention.
They do? I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life, and as far as I can tell, presidential campaigns are something that happen on TV. They come here to raise money, but I can never afford $1000 a plate.
What the hell are you talking about?
51% of the people of the country vote one way, and 100% of the people of Iowa vote the other way, Iowa's votes go to someone who no one in Iowa voted for. How the hell does that make sense to you, and how the HELL do you equate that with the relative "value" of a vote?
Ok, let's take your scenario: 51% of the popular vote in the US goes to one candidate, but Iowa mysteriously manages to vote 100% for the other candidate.
In the current system, Iowa's electoral votes go to the candidate who lost the popular vote. But, *depending on the distribution of votes in the other states,* that candidate may win OR lose. Now, here's the kicker: they can win or lose WITHOUT IOWA. Iowa has 7 electoral votes. Candidate needs 270 votes to win. That means they need to take just 11 states: Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Texas, and California. In the 2008 election, those states made up 54% of the popular vote. If a candidate won exactly 51% of those 11 states, they can be elected president with less than 28% of the popular vote.
And without Iowa.
If you *lose* all the biggest states, you have to win in 40 states plus the District of Columbia to be elected. Those states account for 49% of the popular vote, and you need less than 25% of the total popular vote to get elected by them. At least some of that is from Iowa, though.
Iowa has no voice as it now stands. Not only that, but in LARGE states that tend to be foregone conclusions, many voters don't have a say... if you're going to vote for the republican candidate in California, why did you even get out of bed this morning?
Yes you can -- if you understand why it was designed to do what it does.
States are supposed to pic a executive. The select an executive to represent the STATE. They send electors (the number of which is weighted by population) to vote for that executive. How can a state pick 51% of an executive? And 49% of another? They pick a SINGLE executive, not two, three or more.
By removing this system, you effectivly remove any executive representation to small states. Preseidents will be elected by large cities (Los Angeles, New York City, etc) of a handfull of states. Executive decisions will be based on the needs of those few zones rather than the country as a whole.
But right now, small states have FAR MORE voting power per person than large states. Why should a Wyoming resident's vote count for more than a California resident's?
Actually, when you do the math, the states that really get screwed in the current system are the mid-population states. The largest states tend to be represented proportionally, while the smallest states are over-represented, taking the share from the middling states.
To do the math yourself, go to www.census.gov and get state populations (don't forget DC). Then put those in an Excel spreadsheet next to the electoral votes for each state. Divide pop by votes, then sort those numbers. Also calculate the total population by 535, then divide the representation for each state by that number. You'll see who comes out ahead and behind.
I last did this years ago, so I don't have it to hand now, but it's very interesting. There's about one electoral vote per 700,000 people in the US, but Wyoming gets something like 1 per 500,000. California, Texas, and New York each came out at about 700,000, but states like Ohio etc. were more like 800,000.
I think the notion that the states elect the executive is somewhat outdated, given the shift to greater Federal control over individuals (while at the same time, civil rights granted by the national government have been conferred on individuals as well). Keep in mind, also, that this system predates states the size of Texas and California... it doesn't account for the idea that a single state might be large enough that they take on an unfair economic burden, as well as housing a disproportionate population.
This whole f'ed up system is why some of us would like to see California declare independence. Trade deficit? WHAT trade deficit? California exports more than it imports (in spite of housing the largest port complex in the country). There are reasons other than our gigantic population why the federal government should, now and then, have to make us happy. As it now stands, they practically never do.
Doesn't the underline operating system still assist with the overall security of a browser?
Only if it hasn't been upgraded to the italic operating system.
If what you're saying were the crux of the problem, then such a user might have this problem one time. It wouldn't take very long to exhaustively perform a visual search of the keyboard and conclude that there is no key labelled "ANY". At that point, this theory that the prompt refers to a specific key has been falsified and it's time to abandon it. Isn't that simple?
If users' general experience with computers was that software and hardware were universally compatible and all computers had the same interface design, then it would be that simple. But what of the user who is told to use the right mouse button when he's on a Mac? Or to use the Windows key when his keyboard predates that invention? Or to use the number pad on a laptop?
Users have, sadly, been trained to jump to the conclusion that, when the hardware or software doesn't perform according to their initial expectation, there's something wrong with either the software or the hardware... or they just don't have the information they need. The idea that they may have made a *semantic* misinterpretation is pretty far down the list of the usual suspects.
You don't own the sky above your land.
Well, not all of it... but some of it, you do.
I mean on *Windows*... doesn't surprise me that you can on Linux (which is good, since upgrading to Ubuntu Heron broke "traceroute" in preference to "sudo tracert"... a change that totally baffles me).
Still no cite for the 98%. But the link provided by ya really was quite edifying.
First of all, it says 90%, not 98%. But, as noted by other posters, there are some caveats on that:
Out of 86,680 cases, there were 78,042 convictions, which is 90%.
95% of those (74,226) were guilty or no contest pleads.
That means, there were 12,454 trials. Of those, 8,638 were not found guilty, which is 69.3%.
So... only 9.96% of the cases ended in acquittal, but almost 70% of trials did, which is a really low conviction rate, I think.
Furthermore... under Appeals, apparently the lower court decisions were affirmed, at least in part, in 70% of cases... which means they were completely overturned in 30% of cases. So take your 3,816 convictions, and subtract another 1,145 or so that will get overturned on appeal... now you're up to 9,783 acquittals, which is more than 3/4ths of the people who actually went to trial.
Or more recently, Tango & Cash.
It's because more than half of economics is really applied sociology.
Not exactly... what it is is the science of decision-making. Economics really only touches on money in that money is a way of quantifying the decisions we make. As a medium of exchange, money just is a proxy for how we feel about things relative to each other, and supply/demand pricing is a way of aggregating everyone's feelings about those decisions together.
Game theory is fascinating, because it shows that feelings really *do* play a large role in what "should" be purely economic decisions. We will accept a dollar-amount cost if it means "punishing" someone who we believe has behaved unfairly towards us.
This is actually part of the reason people are so opposed to social programs. There's tons of evidence that it "works", where "working" is evaluated in many ways... GDP, standard of living, educational attainment, lifespan, quality of life, etc. But there's an intuitive sense that "it's not fair" for someone to get "something for nothing..." even if guaranteeing that minimum level of "something" leaves us ALL better off. (This is related to the Prisoner's Dilemma situation.)
My response: don't go to the parties that get busted and you probably won't hav ea problem getting busted at those parties..
Yeah, never go to a party where there might be underage drinking or pot smoking, much less anyone who's tripping. That sounds like FUN! ;-)
Then again, my husband got through college that way. I had to teach him how to get drunk. That's what Engineering School will do to you. I was fortunate to be up on north campus, with lots of friends in the School of Theater, Film, and Television.
It'd probably be less stupid to just not commit crimes.
There are certain segments of our population who don't have to commit crimes to get hassled by the cops. Ever heard of someone getting pulled over for a DWB (or DWH)?
The really infuriating part of it is, then you've got kids who see no reason NOT to commit crimes... because they're treated like criminals whether or not they actually get the benefit of breaking the law.
And if after the trial there was an acquittal, that's proof that there was no probable cause to begin with.
No, that's simply not true. That just falls flat on its face.
"Probable cause" means "Gosh, it looks like this very well may have happened this way." It's the most likely explanation given what little evidence they start with. Then, they get warrants, investigate, and either the evidence supports that initial explanation or it doesn't. Maybe it leads them in a different direction, or maybe it's just a dead end. But you're not convicted yet, and you still have a chance to make your case.
Say you break up with your SO, and a week later s/he's murdered when staying late at work. A security camera saw your car leaving the parking lot about 20 minutes after the estimated time of death. That is probable cause. It's likely that you were driving your car, and being in that place at that time, given your relationship to the deceased, points in your direction.
They gather evidence; they find that it was a NASTY breakup, they find an email you sent that said "I'll f---ing kill you if you..." and then s/he did. You don't have an alibi; you were home alone at the time. (Meanwhile, you're thinking someone's altered the tapes; you KNOW you didn't drive your car there.)
But, just after your indictment, a friend of yours suddenly disappears. No one knows why. You hear rumors that this friend had certain feelings towards you. Someone closer to them than you finally mentions that s/he was SO pissed at how your ex treated you, s/he threatened to... you know. At the same time, you'd been oblivious to this person's offers to be your "shoulder to cry on," and they were getting pretty upset with YOU, too.
Did I mention that this friend had the valet key to your car? You'd forgotten about it; they borrowed your car while you were on a business trip. You live in the same building with a shared parking garage.
Yes, you were framed. But there WAS probable cause.
(Hm, maybe I should write up a script... call it "Presumed Not Guilty"... I wonder if Shia Labeauf would star in it...)
Good luck suing them for false imprisonment. They were TRYING to do their job right. And that's the ultimate bar: were they just trying to lock up someone, ANYONE, against their own policies for evidence-gathering and charging with crimes? Or did they really have reason to think that it must have been you, until you turn up evidence otherwise?
If this happened to me, I'd patiently wait until my trial was over. And if ironclad proof wasn't presented at the trial that there was NO OTHER WAY than the crime for the evidence being there, I wouldn't shut up until the Supreme Court had heard the case.
[snip]
And I'd want enough money to be set up for life from the jurisdiction that was stupid enough to let their public officials have search warrants when there was still reasonable doubt as to innocence.
"Ironclad proof" and "NO OTHER WAY" are not the same as "beyond a reasonable doubt." There's almost always some "other way" that something *could have* happened... in other words, it wouldn't violate the laws of physics. But it's so unlikely that it's not a reasonable doubt.
All this persecutor in the YANAL blog is saying is that there ain't no justice, and it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, innocent or guilty they can fuck up your life.
I think the audience for the article wasn't the innocent caught in the middle, but the idiots who think they could get away with whatever because of these technical defenses. His point was, even if you might be able to mount such a defense, that defense WILL NOT interfere with gathering evidence... evidence which might blow apart your technical defense. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is required to get a guilty verdict, but not to get a warrant.