You can trace back to an account, yes. But you can't trace directly to the user. After all, there's always the stolen password defense (for example). On a publicly-used terminal, there's no way to prove or disprove that conclusively, unless you were to install security cameras and monitor the tapes.
And also, don't forget that logs can be tampered with, if someone has the know-how. Chances are there's at least one person like that in every school, and there's no way to tell who that is short of catching them in the act. ----------
Re:If our county can afford to do it right...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
I like that "abstain" feature idea. Another way to make sure people don't mess things up.
It would also be interesting to see not just how many votes people got, but how many voters abstained from the vote for whatever reason. That could have some interesting ramifications. ----------
...well, the main one is assuring anonymity while also taking out any chance of fraud.
In addition to the suggestions you recommend, I would add this:
A voter comes up to the front of the line. They provide the necessary ID, and the electoral official marks their name off of the list (computerized, of course). Then the official gives the user some kind of token, perhaps a cheap smartcard-like device, with no identifying information.
This done, the user steps into the voting booth. The first thing they have to do is insert the token into a reader. This is why I prefer the smartcard approach; the reader can take the token completely into the machine, where the user cannot get it back by force without attracting a great deal of attention.
The user then punches in their vote and confirms it, like you said. Once they confirm, the token is rendered invalid (for example, a magnetic signature could be wiped) and then given back to the user. Because the token is now invalid, it cannot be used to vote again. And because you must get the token from an electoral official, who knows whether or not you've already gotten one, this prevents people from sneaking into the booth for another vote while preserving the secret ballot.
As an addition, the user can cancel their vote at any time before confirming it. In this case, the token is not rendered invalid. This gives the user the opportunity to request help from an official, perhaps because the "ballot" is not offered in any language the user can understand. Once you've confirmed the vote, though, there are no second chances. ----------
I'm not so sure this is an invasion of privacy. The reason: although you can trace access back to a terminal, you cannot reliably trace it to a user. In other words, it can be found that someone accessed www.1337pr0n.com at such-and-such time, but it cannot find who that was.
Mind you, I don't want this kind of thing getting into the hands of bookburners, as would be the case here. But I'm not sure there's anything illegal about his request. ----------
The directory appears to be empty. It's been up there for ages now as it is.
Frankly, I hope this isn't a sign of an impending release. NS6 is not ready. It needs another month; that's all it would take to fix the very few remaining standards bugs (need I remind some of you here that it doesn't even quite get DOM Level Zero right; even Netscape4 could do that). ----------
by "the wrong way" i most certainly do not mean me, i am not even a citizen of florida. what i meant was the electoral votes should reflect the expressed wishes of the people of florida . personally i think that since the people are obviously divided, so should the electoral votes (13-12) but like i said, i am not a floridian and it is not up to me.
But it will be this way, regardless. The people of Florida voted, and while it was a close decision they said they wanted to send someone to the White House (just who is arguable at the moment, though it does seem that Bush is likely to win this).
That's the thing people don't realize about "the election." It is not a nationwide election, but rather it's 50 statewide elections. This is done in such a way as to balance out the effects of varying population density in the states so that small states still get a significant voice in the election.
neither deserves them all.
Frankly, neither deserves the Presidency. But barring some truly extraordinary events that's unescapable at this point. Given that, we may as well let the system run its course. Don't forget, either one can still win. ----------
19,000 votes from a heavily democratic county would be interesting to know who those people actually wanted to vote for, i would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way.
However, there is no way to know this now. Remember, ballots are cast secretly. This is a very important feature of elections, as it preserves the right to vote without being harassed.
However, since we don't know exactly who cast those ballots, we have no way of asking them. Trying to figure it out using some arcane mathematical formula is equally wrong; statistics break down when your subjects are sentient. So, as there's no way to find out in any fair way who these people were trying to vote for, there's nothing we can do but disregard them completely. It's nothing more than the fault of the people who cast the ballots without reading the directions; stupidity is no excuse.
By the way, who defines "the wrong way" for electors to cast their ballots? I hope you weren't going to say you, since you're only one voice among millions, with only your own beliefs backing you and not any hard data. I also hope you weren't going to say the people who cast those 19,000 ballots, since we will never know who they were and thus cannot fairly state who they would have picked. ----------
First, we have the 3500 ballots from Palm Beach County that may need to be recast, due to the VERY confusing layout of the ballot that may have given the votes for gore to buchanan.
Have you actually seen those ballots? I have. A sleeping hedgehog in a wet paper bag could have figured out which hole was for which candidate; there were great big arrows pointing from each candidate's name to the hole. Basically, you would have to be blind not to see that (and I would imagine that the Braille ballots are designed differently anyway). Not to mention that this ballot was posted in newspapers and magazines for weeks ahead of time (Florida law requires this so everyone can see what the ballots look like long before the election), and no complaints were ever lodged. While the large Buchannan turnout does seem something of an anomaly, there's no rational reason to believe it was the layout of the ballot that caused this.
Some electoral college votes voted OPPOSITE of their affiliation in both 1972 and 1960. In addition to that, if everything is as projected in the electoral right now (and bush took florida), if just *eleven* bush electoral votes in other states change their minds, Gore would win.
If you wonder about those electoral college votes, you should. They have a federal right to vote their opinion. Some states do have penalties against changing their stated vote, but the federal overrides the state, and -- it would go to a federal judge.
You are correct. But don't forget, this can work both ways. Electors in Gore states can change their minds too. Also, I don't think you realize how rare it is for an elector to not vote with their state. The last time this happened was in 1988, where only one elector voted against the state (the elector went for Lloyd Bentsen instead of Dukakis). That shows just how rare this is. And eleven must change their minds for Gore to win. It only takes two to keep Bush from getting the majority, in which case it goes to the House.
Unless I'm mistaken, when the House votes for President each state gets one vote (the members of each state must convene and decide among themselves). This is also bad for Gore, however. Consider that Bush took most of the swing states, and the House is controlled by Republicans at the moment. So if the states Bush won in the electoral vote all go for him (a likely possibility), he wins.
Bottom line: If Gore wants to win this, he has to win Florida. If he doesn't, the chances for eleven electors changing their minds is statistically zero. Even the odds of two Republican electors changing their minds are pretty slim. If less than two change their minds, Bush wins. If more than more than one but less than eleven change their minds, it goes to the House where Bush probably wins. If any Democrat electors change their minds (just as likely as Republican electors, which is still damned slim), it becomes even harder, because two Republican electors must swing (one to cancel out the Democrat's switch, and one more to actually count towards the needed eleven).
In other words, unless Gore wins Florida, it's basically over. Even if he does, there's the possibility of Democrat electors swinging (though this is even more unlikely, as there would have to be many more in order to even take it to the House).
Now, what are his odds? Frankly, not too good. The allegations of tempering fraud from both sides are likely to cancel out if they're true, so none of it has a significant impact. If the absentees split 50/50, Bush wins, and the odds are stacked against Gore anyway because absentees tend slightly towards conservative. ----------
Clue time: that's impossible. Voting power is relative; if you increase one voter's power it is necessary to decrease another voter's.
This is true. However, in a direct-popular system, densely populated areas will naturealy have more influence than sparsely-populated ones, to the point where only large states will have any real power at all.
So you are correct that increasing a voter's power in North Dakota would seem to decrease a voter's power in California. But in the end, because California was alrealy so powerful, you've balanced things out. ----------
You're actually right. Lincoln did a lot of unconstitutional things -- like suspend the writ of habeas corpus, issue paper money, replacing the re-united states' constitutional, elected legislatures with appointed ones and denying southerns states representation, and, of course, preventing the withdrawal of states from the Union through use of force. Actually, some of those things you said were constitutional. For example, habeas corpus can be suspended in "times of rebellion or emergency" (which was certainly the case). Also, the paper money was constitutional because it still had the backing of gold (and, if you wanted, you could actually go to the government and trade the paper money for the gold that was backing it); the paper slips were nothing more than a proxy. The US didn't actually go off the gold standard until the 1960's (breaking an international treaty as well as the Constitution in the process, I might add), and by then Lincoln was long dead.
The rest of your statement I'll give you, but I thought I should point those two out. ----------
No. When everyone gets exatly one wote regardless of were they live thats super duper fair. Now take your example and move people around randomly to new states: The guy who got most votes still wins, and each and every woter is eqal regardles of where in the land they live. _That's_ fair, i can't belive you missed something so simple!
Except for one little problem: people don't move like that. In almost all cases, people will stay in one area for long periods of time, several elections at least. Further, consider that over periods of time, people in a given area will start to have similar political views; this is why some states are traditionally Republican, others traditionally Democrat. That has to be balanced out, or you get the "ruling party syndrome," where only a single party has any say at all. This is hardly a fair way to do things. ----------
but under the electoral college system, a vote from North Dakota counts as much as two point nine votes from California
Except that under the electoral college system, popular votes within a state are only counted against other votes from within that state, so one vote always equals one vote. Because the popular vote is decided on a statewide and not nationwide level, things even out.
You rightly claim that someone only taking 100% of the vote in the 10 largest states would win in a direct election, but miss the entire point that this is 50% of the people in the country.
Except that that 50% lives in a comparatively small part of the nation. Further, under current conditions, the vast majority of that 50% lives in urban areas, which leads to a rather unfair as. That has to be balanced out by some means, or the election is not fair.
And should some intransigent individuals in one of those ten states vote for the other candidate, depriving our "big-state" candidate of his majority, then votes in the small states are equally as important as their colleagues in the big states.
Nope. Then, if you want to keep following statistics, it goes to the 11th largest state. Then to the twelfth. And so on, and soforth, until you hit the needed majority, and none of the votes in any of the states smaller than that mean a thing.
A single voter in a small state can affect the outome of the election, even if the rest of the state votes for the other candidate.
Only in truly exceedingly rare circumstances. Take even this current election. Were it done by popular vote now, all of the votes in Florida that have yet to be counted would be totally meaningless. But because the election is decided state-by-state, they still have a chance to mean a great deal.
Each vote means more when it's in as small an election as possible. That's simple statistics. The electoral college is a way of breaking up one large election into many small elections (one per state), so that each individual vote means as much as possible in that state. But this is balanced by the fact that the number of electoral votes each state gets is based on its population.
For example, let's look at our North Dakotan vs. our Californian. In the statewide election, the North Dakotan's vote has 2.9 times the clout of the Californian's. However, the North Dakotan's vote will only influence three electoral votes, while the Californian's vote will influence many more than that. In the end they balance out, so that the North Dakotan's vote means as much as the Californian's did. And thus, we come back full-circle to a one-man, one-vote system, where no one vote can mean more than any other, regardless of geographic location.
And yes, occasionally we do get an anomaly where the electoral and popular votes disagree (I call this an "electoral hiccup.") The rate of them, assuming Bush wins, will be slightly less than 10%, and we've actually been long overdue for one if you look from the statistical point of view. That's not a perfect system by any means. Neither, though, is the case where 20% of the states decides the whole election; that's an even more severe hiccup. Further, as more and more states enter the Union, the rate of hiccups decreases dramatically (this is the only one in over a hundred years). The whole point of an electoral system is to minimize these hiccups. You can never get rid of them, no. But this is the fairest system I've seen yet.
Hey, there are far worse systems out there. What if the party that got the most votes took all the seats in Congress, for example? Some systems do it that way. ----------
Why not? While it has never been tested in the case of a presidential election, it is common knowledge that when you forfiet any kind of competition, you lose all rights to whatever you might have won. This has been tested countless times in myriad other competitions; a presidential election is no different. ----------
If you take the 39 smallest states you can win in the electoral college with 20% of the popular vote.
Yes, and you do so having gained a truly overwhelming cross-section of the people's support. Also note that this particular scenario is extremely unlikely.
If you take the 12 largest states you can win in the electoral college with 30% of the popular vote.
And again, you win having gotten the support of a large segment, if not a large fraction, of the population. Look up those states on a map and you'll see.
The electoral college disenfranchises 50% of the population.
Your math is extremely poor, I'm afraid. You say the twelve largest states hold 60% of the population. You need 51% to win, and no state has as much as 10%, so we can safely knock off one, and more likely two. So we're down to 10 states with over 50% of the population. In a direct-popular vote, these states rule the roost, the the entire populations of eighty percent of the states have basically no voice at all. So we "disenfranchise" half the population of each state with an electoral system, or everyone in 80% of the states with a direct-popular system. Which one looks fairer now? The electoral college was set up to balance out the votes in the states, such that a vote from North Dakota counts as much as a vote from California, in terms of importance to the election.
And one final note: you claim that fifty percent of the population are "disenfranchised," essentially because their candidate doesn't win. However, that's the definition of an election; if we go by majority rule (and a majority is required for a victory; a plurality will not suffice), then in an average election 50% of the population will vote for the loser. So you have lost nothing. All you've done is leveled the playing field by offsetting the effects of varying population density. ----------
It's time to strat question the electoral college and it's role here. Blaming Nader is missing the point. The fact is that Gore has the popular vote so if the election goes to Bush then it is the system that is faulty not that NAder stole votes.
Actually, no; if one can win the popular vote based on the outcome of a single state (California) but still lose the election, then the system is working perfectly. Let me explain:
Let's take four states: A, B, C, and D. A has several huge cities in it; its total population is five million people. B has one large city; its total population is two million. C and D are mainly rural, and each has about one million people.
Let's take a direct popular vote, and take an extreme example of that: everyone in A votes for Bush, but everyone in B, C, and D votes for Gore. That's 5 million for Bush and 4 million for Gore, so Bush wins. But only the people in State A actually wanted him; the other three states voted unanimously against them. But because A's population is so large, it unfairly controls the election. B, C, and D have no real voice. This is hardly "the will of the people" that the Constitution mandates be put into office.
Now, let's add an electoral system. The number of electoral votes a state has is equal to its House seats plus its Senate seats. Let's say for the sake of argument that for every million citizens or fraction thereof, a state gets a House seat (states always have two Senators). So A gets a total of seven electoral votes, B gets four, and C and D each get three.
Now, let's look at our scenario again. Bush won the popular vote in A, so he grabs those seven. Because he only won one state, that's all he gets. But Gore, having won three states, gets 3+3+4=10 votes, and takes the election. This is certainly an unusual case, and wouldn't happen often. But this proves that not only did many people vote for Gore, but people from many regions of the country voted for him. Thus, he would seem a better representative of the will of the people, having been chosen by a wider, if not larger, base. And thus, the three "little guys" can still be heard even if the "big guy" tries to drown them out. This is what true freedom means.
This is how the electoral system works. And as you can see from this, the idea is to get a good snapshot of what all the people want, not just those packed into dense areas and therefore more likely to vote as a block.
And yes, occasionally it can come up with a wierd-looking flub, like this election may well turn out to be. But find a map of how the votes went, and look at where Gore won his votes versus where Bush won his. You'll see a situation much like my simpler example: Gore had densely-packed areas (the northeast, northern midwest, and California), but Bush had more of the nation taken as a cross-section. If you in fact put one person from each state for each electoral vote and had them vote as their electors did, keeping in mind that electoral votes are proportional to state size, Bush would win. So this is fair. ----------
While you are correct in that the elected person doesn't have to declare himself a candidate, it's also true that a person can decline the offer (much as the President can resign). No judge would dispute that withdrawing from any sort of competition also implies declining anything one might otherwise win. ----------
Um, the definition of "concede" means, in this case, withdrawal. In such a case, since all Gore electoral votes would then be for a candidate no longer in the race, they would be rendered meaningless.
That considered, if Gore were to win Florida after conceding, Bush would not have the majority, so it'd probably go to the House, where they'd pick from the candidates (keeping in mind Gore had already withdrawm). ----------
The point is, what the hell was Gore doing conceding the election in the first place, before the hard data was in? Particularly when it was made clear in no uncertain terms that the media were bungling their estimates of Florida the whole night?
Either Gore is monumentally stupid for prematurely conceding the election (even Bush wouldn't have been that dumb), or he's classless for rolling the dice, losing, and then trying to grab them back.
Frankly, I do agree that he should technically be allowed to retract the concession, classless though it may be, since the winner was never formally announced. However, that doesn't make him less of an imbecile for going on baseless conjecture, and someone else's conjecture to boot, before actually getting the hard numbers. ----------
Although your statement covers the idea of the EC, it doesn't account for the implementation. Why, for example, is the vote based on population (number of House seats + number of Senate seats, which is always two)? If it were only about distrust of the common voter and giving the states more power, one would think the states would each get an equal vote. Instead, though, they chose to maintain a set of votes based on population, thus allowing for varying population densities. This makes sure that the vote stays consistent with the idea of checking distribution of votes in addition to sheer numbers.
Is that only a side effect? Perhaps. But even if it is, it's certainly an interesting one, and one which betters our nation. ----------
However, what if a hybrid system were to be used? Such a method would combine the instant-runoff system with the electoral college. For example, the way this would work might be that the candidates are ordered according to the percentage of votes each candidate got in that state. This allows for the "all votes count" aspect of instant-runoff, while still accounting for distribution as well as sheer numbers, a unique and rather important feature (or side effect, depending on who you ask) of the electoral college.
It sounds like a good plan to me. Opinions? ----------
Frankly, I wouldn't be happy to see either candidate win (though I do think Bush-as-president would probably be easier to survive with our rights intact than Gore-as-president).
But hey, there's room for humor. Any trolls here want to start a campaign for the goatse.cx guy next time around?
I can see it now: "Vote Goatse! At least we can say our candidate has nothing to hide!" Hey, I'd take him over Bush or Gore. Now, what platform should he run...
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Meanwhile, far away, Satan and his infernal minions were becoming concerned about the distinct record low temperatures in their domain. They eventually traced the cause to a single event: Millennium actually agreeing with the Slashdot trolls. ----------
You know, looking at this election, I think I finally understand why the Constitution set up the Electoral College, and I must say, I'm in favor of it.
Before I start the explanation, please understand that I don't like any of the candidates, and chose to remain neutral this election.
Now, head over to CNN.com, ABCNews.com, or any other place with a map of how the electoral votes came out, and take a look. Gore has the popular vote, but look at the states he won. You'll notice they're concentrated in three major regions: the noetheast, the southwest (particualrly California), and the upper midwest.
Contrast this with the states Bush won: many smaller states, but generally spread out to cover the nation as a whole.
This, I think, is what the Framers were tryting to get at with the College: a system which takes not only sheer number of votes into account, but also the distribution of those votes. By winning more states, you prove that you not only represent many people, but people from many different regions of the nation. In the end, that truly is a fairer system. Not perfect by any means, but consider this: more people in the US live in urban areas than rural. Is it fair, then, that the urban votes could, at least in theory, control elections while rural voters, outnumbered by their urban counterparts, are never heard? ----------
Slashdot Mirror
You can trace back to an account, yes. But you can't trace directly to the user. After all, there's always the stolen password defense (for example). On a publicly-used terminal, there's no way to prove or disprove that conclusively, unless you were to install security cameras and monitor the tapes.
And also, don't forget that logs can be tampered with, if someone has the know-how. Chances are there's at least one person like that in every school, and there's no way to tell who that is short of catching them in the act.
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I like that "abstain" feature idea. Another way to make sure people don't mess things up.
It would also be interesting to see not just how many votes people got, but how many voters abstained from the vote for whatever reason. That could have some interesting ramifications.
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What will it be called anyway? OAS-ROM (Obscene Amounts of Storage Read Only Memory)?
Or maybe MS-ROM, because this'll probably be the only thing big enough to hold a full installation of Windows 2010.
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...well, the main one is assuring anonymity while also taking out any chance of fraud.
In addition to the suggestions you recommend, I would add this:
A voter comes up to the front of the line. They provide the necessary ID, and the electoral official marks their name off of the list (computerized, of course). Then the official gives the user some kind of token, perhaps a cheap smartcard-like device, with no identifying information.
This done, the user steps into the voting booth. The first thing they have to do is insert the token into a reader. This is why I prefer the smartcard approach; the reader can take the token completely into the machine, where the user cannot get it back by force without attracting a great deal of attention.
The user then punches in their vote and confirms it, like you said. Once they confirm, the token is rendered invalid (for example, a magnetic signature could be wiped) and then given back to the user. Because the token is now invalid, it cannot be used to vote again. And because you must get the token from an electoral official, who knows whether or not you've already gotten one, this prevents people from sneaking into the booth for another vote while preserving the secret ballot.
As an addition, the user can cancel their vote at any time before confirming it. In this case, the token is not rendered invalid. This gives the user the opportunity to request help from an official, perhaps because the "ballot" is not offered in any language the user can understand. Once you've confirmed the vote, though, there are no second chances.
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I'm not so sure this is an invasion of privacy. The reason: although you can trace access back to a terminal, you cannot reliably trace it to a user. In other words, it can be found that someone accessed www.1337pr0n.com at such-and-such time, but it cannot find who that was.
Mind you, I don't want this kind of thing getting into the hands of bookburners, as would be the case here. But I'm not sure there's anything illegal about his request.
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The directory appears to be empty. It's been up there for ages now as it is.
Frankly, I hope this isn't a sign of an impending release. NS6 is not ready. It needs another month; that's all it would take to fix the very few remaining standards bugs (need I remind some of you here that it doesn't even quite get DOM Level Zero right; even Netscape4 could do that).
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by "the wrong way" i most certainly do not mean me, i am not even a citizen of florida. what i meant was the electoral votes should reflect the expressed wishes of the people of florida . personally i think that since the people are obviously divided, so should the electoral votes (13-12) but like i said, i am not a floridian and it is not up to me.
But it will be this way, regardless. The people of Florida voted, and while it was a close decision they said they wanted to send someone to the White House (just who is arguable at the moment, though it does seem that Bush is likely to win this).
That's the thing people don't realize about "the election." It is not a nationwide election, but rather it's 50 statewide elections. This is done in such a way as to balance out the effects of varying population density in the states so that small states still get a significant voice in the election.
neither deserves them all.
Frankly, neither deserves the Presidency. But barring some truly extraordinary events that's unescapable at this point. Given that, we may as well let the system run its course. Don't forget, either one can still win.
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19,000 votes from a heavily democratic county would be interesting to know who those people actually wanted to vote for, i would hope that the florida electoral college would like to know who they wanted to vote for before casting their electoral votes the wrong way.
However, there is no way to know this now. Remember, ballots are cast secretly. This is a very important feature of elections, as it preserves the right to vote without being harassed.
However, since we don't know exactly who cast those ballots, we have no way of asking them. Trying to figure it out using some arcane mathematical formula is equally wrong; statistics break down when your subjects are sentient. So, as there's no way to find out in any fair way who these people were trying to vote for, there's nothing we can do but disregard them completely. It's nothing more than the fault of the people who cast the ballots without reading the directions; stupidity is no excuse.
By the way, who defines "the wrong way" for electors to cast their ballots? I hope you weren't going to say you, since you're only one voice among millions, with only your own beliefs backing you and not any hard data. I also hope you weren't going to say the people who cast those 19,000 ballots, since we will never know who they were and thus cannot fairly state who they would have picked.
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First, we have the 3500 ballots from Palm Beach County that may need to be recast, due to the VERY confusing layout of the ballot that may have given the votes for gore to buchanan.
Have you actually seen those ballots? I have. A sleeping hedgehog in a wet paper bag could have figured out which hole was for which candidate; there were great big arrows pointing from each candidate's name to the hole. Basically, you would have to be blind not to see that (and I would imagine that the Braille ballots are designed differently anyway). Not to mention that this ballot was posted in newspapers and magazines for weeks ahead of time (Florida law requires this so everyone can see what the ballots look like long before the election), and no complaints were ever lodged. While the large Buchannan turnout does seem something of an anomaly, there's no rational reason to believe it was the layout of the ballot that caused this.
Some electoral college votes voted OPPOSITE of their affiliation in both 1972 and 1960. In addition to that, if everything is as projected in the electoral right now (and bush took florida), if just *eleven* bush electoral votes in other states change their minds, Gore would win.
If you wonder about those electoral college votes, you should. They have a federal right to vote their opinion. Some states do have penalties against changing their stated vote, but the federal overrides the state, and -- it would go to a federal judge.
You are correct. But don't forget, this can work both ways. Electors in Gore states can change their minds too. Also, I don't think you realize how rare it is for an elector to not vote with their state. The last time this happened was in 1988, where only one elector voted against the state (the elector went for Lloyd Bentsen instead of Dukakis). That shows just how rare this is. And eleven must change their minds for Gore to win. It only takes two to keep Bush from getting the majority, in which case it goes to the House.
Unless I'm mistaken, when the House votes for President each state gets one vote (the members of each state must convene and decide among themselves). This is also bad for Gore, however. Consider that Bush took most of the swing states, and the House is controlled by Republicans at the moment. So if the states Bush won in the electoral vote all go for him (a likely possibility), he wins.
Bottom line: If Gore wants to win this, he has to win Florida. If he doesn't, the chances for eleven electors changing their minds is statistically zero. Even the odds of two Republican electors changing their minds are pretty slim. If less than two change their minds, Bush wins. If more than more than one but less than eleven change their minds, it goes to the House where Bush probably wins. If any Democrat electors change their minds (just as likely as Republican electors, which is still damned slim), it becomes even harder, because two Republican electors must swing (one to cancel out the Democrat's switch, and one more to actually count towards the needed eleven).
In other words, unless Gore wins Florida, it's basically over. Even if he does, there's the possibility of Democrat electors swinging (though this is even more unlikely, as there would have to be many more in order to even take it to the House).
Now, what are his odds? Frankly, not too good. The allegations of tempering fraud from both sides are likely to cancel out if they're true, so none of it has a significant impact. If the absentees split 50/50, Bush wins, and the odds are stacked against Gore anyway because absentees tend slightly towards conservative.
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Clue time: that's impossible. Voting power is relative; if you increase one voter's power it is necessary to decrease another voter's.
This is true. However, in a direct-popular system, densely populated areas will naturealy have more influence than sparsely-populated ones, to the point where only large states will have any real power at all.
So you are correct that increasing a voter's power in North Dakota would seem to decrease a voter's power in California. But in the end, because California was alrealy so powerful, you've balanced things out.
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You're actually right. Lincoln did a lot of unconstitutional things -- like suspend the writ of habeas corpus, issue paper money, replacing the re-united states' constitutional, elected legislatures with appointed ones and denying southerns states representation, and, of course, preventing the withdrawal of states from the Union through use of force.
Actually, some of those things you said were constitutional. For example, habeas corpus can be suspended in "times of rebellion or emergency" (which was certainly the case). Also, the paper money was constitutional because it still had the backing of gold (and, if you wanted, you could actually go to the government and trade the paper money for the gold that was backing it); the paper slips were nothing more than a proxy. The US didn't actually go off the gold standard until the 1960's (breaking an international treaty as well as the Constitution in the process, I might add), and by then Lincoln was long dead.
The rest of your statement I'll give you, but I thought I should point those two out.
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No. When everyone gets exatly one wote regardless of were they live thats super duper fair. Now take your example and move people around randomly to new states: The guy who got most votes still wins, and each and every woter is eqal regardles of where in the land they live. _That's_ fair, i can't belive you missed something so simple!
Except for one little problem: people don't move like that. In almost all cases, people will stay in one area for long periods of time, several elections at least. Further, consider that over periods of time, people in a given area will start to have similar political views; this is why some states are traditionally Republican, others traditionally Democrat. That has to be balanced out, or you get the "ruling party syndrome," where only a single party has any say at all. This is hardly a fair way to do things.
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but under the electoral college system, a vote from North Dakota counts as much as two point nine votes from California
Except that under the electoral college system, popular votes within a state are only counted against other votes from within that state, so one vote always equals one vote. Because the popular vote is decided on a statewide and not nationwide level, things even out.
You rightly claim that someone only taking 100% of the vote in the 10 largest states would win in a direct election, but miss the entire point that this is 50% of the people in the country.
Except that that 50% lives in a comparatively small part of the nation. Further, under current conditions, the vast majority of that 50% lives in urban areas, which leads to a rather unfair as. That has to be balanced out by some means, or the election is not fair.
And should some intransigent individuals in one of those ten states vote for the other candidate, depriving our "big-state" candidate of his majority, then votes in the small states are equally as important as their colleagues in the big states.
Nope. Then, if you want to keep following statistics, it goes to the 11th largest state. Then to the twelfth. And so on, and soforth, until you hit the needed majority, and none of the votes in any of the states smaller than that mean a thing.
A single voter in a small state can affect the outome of the election, even if the rest of the state votes for the other candidate.
Only in truly exceedingly rare circumstances. Take even this current election. Were it done by popular vote now, all of the votes in Florida that have yet to be counted would be totally meaningless. But because the election is decided state-by-state, they still have a chance to mean a great deal.
Each vote means more when it's in as small an election as possible. That's simple statistics. The electoral college is a way of breaking up one large election into many small elections (one per state), so that each individual vote means as much as possible in that state. But this is balanced by the fact that the number of electoral votes each state gets is based on its population.
For example, let's look at our North Dakotan vs. our Californian. In the statewide election, the North Dakotan's vote has 2.9 times the clout of the Californian's. However, the North Dakotan's vote will only influence three electoral votes, while the Californian's vote will influence many more than that. In the end they balance out, so that the North Dakotan's vote means as much as the Californian's did. And thus, we come back full-circle to a one-man, one-vote system, where no one vote can mean more than any other, regardless of geographic location.
And yes, occasionally we do get an anomaly where the electoral and popular votes disagree (I call this an "electoral hiccup.") The rate of them, assuming Bush wins, will be slightly less than 10%, and we've actually been long overdue for one if you look from the statistical point of view. That's not a perfect system by any means. Neither, though, is the case where 20% of the states decides the whole election; that's an even more severe hiccup. Further, as more and more states enter the Union, the rate of hiccups decreases dramatically (this is the only one in over a hundred years). The whole point of an electoral system is to minimize these hiccups. You can never get rid of them, no. But this is the fairest system I've seen yet.
Hey, there are far worse systems out there. What if the party that got the most votes took all the seats in Congress, for example? Some systems do it that way.
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Why not? While it has never been tested in the case of a presidential election, it is common knowledge that when you forfiet any kind of competition, you lose all rights to whatever you might have won. This has been tested countless times in myriad other competitions; a presidential election is no different.
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If you take the 39 smallest states you can win in the electoral college with 20% of the popular vote.
Yes, and you do so having gained a truly overwhelming cross-section of the people's support. Also note that this particular scenario is extremely unlikely.
If you take the 12 largest states you can win in the electoral college with 30% of the popular vote.
And again, you win having gotten the support of a large segment, if not a large fraction, of the population. Look up those states on a map and you'll see.
The electoral college disenfranchises 50% of the population.
Your math is extremely poor, I'm afraid. You say the twelve largest states hold 60% of the population. You need 51% to win, and no state has as much as 10%, so we can safely knock off one, and more likely two. So we're down to 10 states with over 50% of the population. In a direct-popular vote, these states rule the roost, the the entire populations of eighty percent of the states have basically no voice at all. So we "disenfranchise" half the population of each state with an electoral system, or everyone in 80% of the states with a direct-popular system. Which one looks fairer now? The electoral college was set up to balance out the votes in the states, such that a vote from North Dakota counts as much as a vote from California, in terms of importance to the election.
And one final note: you claim that fifty percent of the population are "disenfranchised," essentially because their candidate doesn't win. However, that's the definition of an election; if we go by majority rule (and a majority is required for a victory; a plurality will not suffice), then in an average election 50% of the population will vote for the loser. So you have lost nothing. All you've done is leveled the playing field by offsetting the effects of varying population density.
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It's time to strat question the electoral college and it's role here. Blaming Nader is missing the point. The fact is that Gore has the popular vote so if the election goes to Bush then it is the system that is faulty not that NAder stole votes.
Actually, no; if one can win the popular vote based on the outcome of a single state (California) but still lose the election, then the system is working perfectly. Let me explain:
Let's take four states: A, B, C, and D. A has several huge cities in it; its total population is five million people. B has one large city; its total population is two million. C and D are mainly rural, and each has about one million people.
Let's take a direct popular vote, and take an extreme example of that: everyone in A votes for Bush, but everyone in B, C, and D votes for Gore. That's 5 million for Bush and 4 million for Gore, so Bush wins. But only the people in State A actually wanted him; the other three states voted unanimously against them. But because A's population is so large, it unfairly controls the election. B, C, and D have no real voice. This is hardly "the will of the people" that the Constitution mandates be put into office.
Now, let's add an electoral system. The number of electoral votes a state has is equal to its House seats plus its Senate seats. Let's say for the sake of argument that for every million citizens or fraction thereof, a state gets a House seat (states always have two Senators). So A gets a total of seven electoral votes, B gets four, and C and D each get three.
Now, let's look at our scenario again. Bush won the popular vote in A, so he grabs those seven. Because he only won one state, that's all he gets. But Gore, having won three states, gets 3+3+4=10 votes, and takes the election. This is certainly an unusual case, and wouldn't happen often. But this proves that not only did many people vote for Gore, but people from many regions of the country voted for him. Thus, he would seem a better representative of the will of the people, having been chosen by a wider, if not larger, base. And thus, the three "little guys" can still be heard even if the "big guy" tries to drown them out. This is what true freedom means.
This is how the electoral system works. And as you can see from this, the idea is to get a good snapshot of what all the people want, not just those packed into dense areas and therefore more likely to vote as a block.
And yes, occasionally it can come up with a wierd-looking flub, like this election may well turn out to be. But find a map of how the votes went, and look at where Gore won his votes versus where Bush won his. You'll see a situation much like my simpler example: Gore had densely-packed areas (the northeast, northern midwest, and California), but Bush had more of the nation taken as a cross-section. If you in fact put one person from each state for each electoral vote and had them vote as their electors did, keeping in mind that electoral votes are proportional to state size, Bush would win. So this is fair.
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While you are correct in that the elected person doesn't have to declare himself a candidate, it's also true that a person can decline the offer (much as the President can resign). No judge would dispute that withdrawing from any sort of competition also implies declining anything one might otherwise win.
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Um, the definition of "concede" means, in this case, withdrawal. In such a case, since all Gore electoral votes would then be for a candidate no longer in the race, they would be rendered meaningless.
That considered, if Gore were to win Florida after conceding, Bush would not have the majority, so it'd probably go to the House, where they'd pick from the candidates (keeping in mind Gore had already withdrawm).
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The point is, what the hell was Gore doing conceding the election in the first place, before the hard data was in? Particularly when it was made clear in no uncertain terms that the media were bungling their estimates of Florida the whole night?
Either Gore is monumentally stupid for prematurely conceding the election (even Bush wouldn't have been that dumb), or he's classless for rolling the dice, losing, and then trying to grab them back.
Frankly, I do agree that he should technically be allowed to retract the concession, classless though it may be, since the winner was never formally announced. However, that doesn't make him less of an imbecile for going on baseless conjecture, and someone else's conjecture to boot, before actually getting the hard numbers.
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Although your statement covers the idea of the EC, it doesn't account for the implementation. Why, for example, is the vote based on population (number of House seats + number of Senate seats, which is always two)? If it were only about distrust of the common voter and giving the states more power, one would think the states would each get an equal vote. Instead, though, they chose to maintain a set of votes based on population, thus allowing for varying population densities. This makes sure that the vote stays consistent with the idea of checking distribution of votes in addition to sheer numbers.
Is that only a side effect? Perhaps. But even if it is, it's certainly an interesting one, and one which betters our nation.
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You do have a point.
However, what if a hybrid system were to be used? Such a method would combine the instant-runoff system with the electoral college. For example, the way this would work might be that the candidates are ordered according to the percentage of votes each candidate got in that state. This allows for the "all votes count" aspect of instant-runoff, while still accounting for distribution as well as sheer numbers, a unique and rather important feature (or side effect, depending on who you ask) of the electoral college.
It sounds like a good plan to me. Opinions?
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Frankly, I wouldn't be happy to see either candidate win (though I do think Bush-as-president would probably be easier to survive with our rights intact than Gore-as-president).
But hey, there's room for humor. Any trolls here want to start a campaign for the goatse.cx guy next time around?
I can see it now: "Vote Goatse! At least we can say our candidate has nothing to hide!" Hey, I'd take him over Bush or Gore. Now, what platform should he run...
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Meanwhile, far away, Satan and his infernal minions were becoming concerned about the distinct record low temperatures in their domain. They eventually traced the cause to a single event: Millennium actually agreeing with the Slashdot trolls.
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You know, looking at this election, I think I finally understand why the Constitution set up the Electoral College, and I must say, I'm in favor of it.
Before I start the explanation, please understand that I don't like any of the candidates, and chose to remain neutral this election.
Now, head over to CNN.com, ABCNews.com, or any other place with a map of how the electoral votes came out, and take a look. Gore has the popular vote, but look at the states he won. You'll notice they're concentrated in three major regions: the noetheast, the southwest (particualrly California), and the upper midwest.
Contrast this with the states Bush won: many smaller states, but generally spread out to cover the nation as a whole.
This, I think, is what the Framers were tryting to get at with the College: a system which takes not only sheer number of votes into account, but also the distribution of those votes. By winning more states, you prove that you not only represent many people, but people from many different regions of the nation. In the end, that truly is a fairer system. Not perfect by any means, but consider this: more people in the US live in urban areas than rural. Is it fair, then, that the urban votes could, at least in theory, control elections while rural voters, outnumbered by their urban counterparts, are never heard?
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My bad. But I suppose WinME is more exemplary of the "crap OS with no functionality" that our troll friend was ranting about than Win2K is.
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Fuck KDE, fuck Gnome. If you're going to use a crap OS that has no functionality then why not just give up entirely and go all CLI all the time?
:)
Because Win2K and WinME don't let you boot into DOS anymore
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