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Really cool use of data visualization! Nice work! What ever happens I just pray we don't hit one of the paths ending in a unfilled circle.

jstanley 6y ago
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Yes, but that would require adding a Congressperson (#EC = #HofR + #Senate + 3 for DC).
  - chromaton 6y ago
    Then the House of Representatives would have an even number.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      We could add a senator. Give it to DC.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        DC doesn't need a Senator: https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/The_Capitol https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/The_Capitol
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > We could add a senator. Give it to DC. That's literally the one thing you cannot do, even by Constitutional Amendment (though arguably you can by two, but that's definitely hacking around the clear intent to exploit a possible loophole in the wording.) OTOH, you could just explicitly give DC an extra electoral vote (or give either one or three or any other odd number of electoral votes to US citizens not resident in a state or D.C., or to any other particular US territory whose resident citizens are currently unrepresented in Presidential elections.)
      - SllX 6y ago
        Only way I’m on board with DC representation is if we give it to Maryland. Maryland would in effect gain a House seat during the next redistricting after. Easier solution? Kill the cap on the House seats. Doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, doesn’t make a State out of DC (although I’m still onboard with returning it to Maryland, there is precedent for this as DC used to have part of Virginia), and it evens out representation in both the House and the EC without wrecking the Senate and the EC altogether. Give the States a number of House seats per 50,000 people (preferably: per citizen), actually make it a range between 30K and 50K to make the number of seats as even as possible and always keep it an odd number. You get a House of 6Kish or so members, but the way I see it, that’s Congress’ problem. You even out representation between the States so no one State is over or under represented in the House. You increase the cost of lobbying Congress. You effectively solve gerrymandering, it can still exist on the fringes but when medium to large cities can have between 4 and 9 Reps all to themselves it is much less of an issue and unlikely to have much of an impact on the election. You bring the House closer to operating on coalition politics. Fringe benefits include the necessity for dorms and uniforms and satellite chambers for the House that members can vote from. You can even verify their identities through a combination of simple security measures and biometric sensors, similar to TouchID and FaceID. Then for every additional House member, you also add one to the Electoral College. It’s not perfectly even because the Senate throws the equity distribution off, but it severely dilutes the EC count that correlates to the Senate.
        jedberg 6y ago
        If you combine DC and Maryland, it makes Maryland go from the 19th largest state to the 10th. DC is bigger than 19 states, why not let it have its own representation? Edit: I mixed up DC and Puerto Rico. Forget what I said.
        Simulacra 6y ago
        I think you don’t understand how large the district of Columbia is. You can drive across it in about 15 minutes. The district of Columbia is tiny, there are not 19 states that are smaller, and I challenge you to list them
        6y ago
      - vulcan01 6y ago
        What if we had a senator that represented all of the territories? It would be a better situation than we have right now...
      - beerandt 6y ago
        This is one of the 2 things in the constitution that specifically would require unanimous consent of the states to change: equal apportionment of Senators per state.
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      Yes, but that may not be as impactful as a tied EC. In the case of the House, it's rare that all seats are filled anyways, so it can and has functioned with the equivalent of an even split between parties. And for the most part, a delay on any given piece of legislation probably isn't as big a deal as a massively contested presidential election.
      - beerandt 6y ago
        That's why the electors' votes are not bound after not reaching an initial majority, and why the decision goes to Congress upon a stalemate.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  In 1973 Sweden ended up with a 175-175 situation in parliament. After deciding 152 issues by lottery, the number was changed to 349. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Riksdag#Constitutional_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Riksdag#Constit...
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    The US uses the Vice President instead of a lottery.
    - zachberger 6y ago
      Not for the electoral college. For that the House of Representatives picks the President and the Senate picks the VP. You should also note that in the House, normal voting rules don't apply: each state receives one vote, the reps from each state will need to caucus together to determine which candidate receives that vote. Pretty crazy. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/what-happens-if-trump-and-biden-tie-in-the-electoral-college/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/what-happen...
      - divbzero 6y ago
        It is pretty crazy. The equal-by-state House vote that you mention is particularly mind bending, an odd exception to population-based representation in the House. Furthermore, the District of Columbia would not have a vote in the tiebreaker, despite having 3 votes in the Electoral College.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility? Technically, no, because it's possible for electoral votes to be split among more than two candidates, or for electoral votes to be invalid and not counted, etc.
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  It'd make it harder, but not prevent it. It's still a problem if no candidate gets plurality but not a majority.
- daveFNbuck 6y ago
  Making it an odd number wouldn't prevent this possibility, as electors aren't limited to vote for only 2 people. In 2016, there were 7 different people who received electoral college votes for president.
- sleepybrett 6y ago
  step back and think about the math. Eliminating the possibility of a tie in a system where electoral votes are awarded based on population (kinda)... I'm not sure it's even possible.
- jedberg 6y ago
  There is no way to make it an odd number because it's always an odd number (number of reps in the House) plus an even number (number of Senators) plus an odd number (minimum number of EC votes possible for a state, which is how DCs EC votes are defined). If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. If you gave DC fewer EC votes, then that just gives them even less representation, and they are already underrepresented.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC. You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D.C. has now. Or adopt D.C. statehood, in which case then you have an odd number in the House + an even number in the Senate + zero.
    - jedberg 6y ago
      > Or adopt D.C. statehood That would only add two, unless you also had a reapportionment act. Same with adding Puerto Rico as a state. Edit: As pointed out below, this is wrong. Since DC already has 3, it would actually lower the number by one, so this would in fact give an odd number. > The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC. Yeah, but when that happens, they just vote again. The are never deadlocked from a tie. > You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D.C. has now. It would make sense to do this for Puerto Rico, whose population is greater than 20 states. But all the other territories are smaller than the smallest state, and that would give them outsize power.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > > Or adopt D.C. statehood > That would only add two, unless you also had a reapportionment act. Absent a change to the fixed number of seats of full House members, it would subtract one; D.C. currently has zero Senators out of 100, zero members of the House included in the apportionment of the fixed 435 seats (it has a delegate, which is separate), and 3 electoral votes. Absent a change to the legislated size of the House, with D.C. statehood it would have 2 senators out of 102, 1 member of the House within the fixed 435 total seats, and 3 electoral votes. The total size of the EC would be reduced by one seat.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  It seems even more dumb that in the event of a tie the House of Representatives is supposed to vote one vote per state as if it were a dumber Senate. The compromises that led to that setup are weird mistakes. I guess it is good that it is a rare event when the Electoral College ties.
  - rubyist5eva 6y ago
    Why is it dumb? The House of Representatives is supposed to proportionally represent the constituencies of the various states. The Senate exists to represent the state legislatures - though the 17th amendment changed that(and I personally believe it should be repealed). It makes sense to me, as the House choosing the President is still a somewhat representation of the will of the people. It's also very similar to Westminster-styled parliamentary democracies choose their Prime Ministers.
    - titanomachy 6y ago
      How does that justify one vote per state? Wouldn't one vote per representative represent the will of the people better?
      - beerandt 6y ago
        Because the constitution specifies that the several States (not the people) shall elect the president.
        naivedevops 6y ago
        Just make the vote of each state proportional to the number of people who voted in that state. Or change the Constitution.
        WorldMaker 6y ago
        The electoral college is as much of a mess as it is in part because it already includes the proportional ratios of the House into consideration (and as pointed out in related threads, a large reason why it would ever tie in the first place, and isn't just some odd number derived from the number of states). Surely in the case of an EC tie, leaving the House to vote as the House, proportionately representative, is no less a representation of the votes of the states than the electoral college itself at that point?
deleted 6y ago
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jstanley 6y ago

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?

alistairSH 6y ago
Yes, but that would require adding a Congressperson (#EC = #HofR + #Senate + 3 for DC).
- chromaton 6y ago
  Then the House of Representatives would have an even number.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    We could add a senator. Give it to DC.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      DC doesn't need a Senator: https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/The_Capitol https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/The_Capitol
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > We could add a senator. Give it to DC. That's literally the one thing you cannot do, even by Constitutional Amendment (though arguably you can by two, but that's definitely hacking around the clear intent to exploit a possible loophole in the wording.) OTOH, you could just explicitly give DC an extra electoral vote (or give either one or three or any other odd number of electoral votes to US citizens not resident in a state or D.C., or to any other particular US territory whose resident citizens are currently unrepresented in Presidential elections.)
    - SllX 6y ago
      Only way I’m on board with DC representation is if we give it to Maryland. Maryland would in effect gain a House seat during the next redistricting after. Easier solution? Kill the cap on the House seats. Doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, doesn’t make a State out of DC (although I’m still onboard with returning it to Maryland, there is precedent for this as DC used to have part of Virginia), and it evens out representation in both the House and the EC without wrecking the Senate and the EC altogether. Give the States a number of House seats per 50,000 people (preferably: per citizen), actually make it a range between 30K and 50K to make the number of seats as even as possible and always keep it an odd number. You get a House of 6Kish or so members, but the way I see it, that’s Congress’ problem. You even out representation between the States so no one State is over or under represented in the House. You increase the cost of lobbying Congress. You effectively solve gerrymandering, it can still exist on the fringes but when medium to large cities can have between 4 and 9 Reps all to themselves it is much less of an issue and unlikely to have much of an impact on the election. You bring the House closer to operating on coalition politics. Fringe benefits include the necessity for dorms and uniforms and satellite chambers for the House that members can vote from. You can even verify their identities through a combination of simple security measures and biometric sensors, similar to TouchID and FaceID. Then for every additional House member, you also add one to the Electoral College. It’s not perfectly even because the Senate throws the equity distribution off, but it severely dilutes the EC count that correlates to the Senate.
      - jedberg 6y ago
        If you combine DC and Maryland, it makes Maryland go from the 19th largest state to the 10th. DC is bigger than 19 states, why not let it have its own representation? Edit: I mixed up DC and Puerto Rico. Forget what I said.
        Simulacra 6y ago
        I think you don’t understand how large the district of Columbia is. You can drive across it in about 15 minutes. The district of Columbia is tiny, there are not 19 states that are smaller, and I challenge you to list them
        6y ago
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      What if we had a senator that represented all of the territories? It would be a better situation than we have right now...
    - beerandt 6y ago
      This is one of the 2 things in the constitution that specifically would require unanimous consent of the states to change: equal apportionment of Senators per state.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    Yes, but that may not be as impactful as a tied EC. In the case of the House, it's rare that all seats are filled anyways, so it can and has functioned with the equivalent of an even split between parties. And for the most part, a delay on any given piece of legislation probably isn't as big a deal as a massively contested presidential election.
    - beerandt 6y ago
      That's why the electors' votes are not bound after not reaching an initial majority, and why the decision goes to Congress upon a stalemate.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BurningFrog 6y ago
In 1973 Sweden ended up with a 175-175 situation in parliament. After deciding 152 issues by lottery, the number was changed to 349. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Riksdag#Constitutional_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Riksdag#Constit...
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  The US uses the Vice President instead of a lottery.
  - zachberger 6y ago
    Not for the electoral college. For that the House of Representatives picks the President and the Senate picks the VP. You should also note that in the House, normal voting rules don't apply: each state receives one vote, the reps from each state will need to caucus together to determine which candidate receives that vote. Pretty crazy. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/what-happens-if-trump-and-biden-tie-in-the-electoral-college/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/10/21/what-happen...
    - divbzero 6y ago
      It is pretty crazy. The equal-by-state House vote that you mention is particularly mind bending, an odd exception to population-based representation in the House. Furthermore, the District of Columbia would not have a vote in the tiebreaker, despite having 3 votes in the Electoral College.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility? Technically, no, because it's possible for electoral votes to be split among more than two candidates, or for electoral votes to be invalid and not counted, etc.
banana_giraffe 6y ago
It'd make it harder, but not prevent it. It's still a problem if no candidate gets plurality but not a majority.
daveFNbuck 6y ago
Making it an odd number wouldn't prevent this possibility, as electors aren't limited to vote for only 2 people. In 2016, there were 7 different people who received electoral college votes for president.
sleepybrett 6y ago
step back and think about the math. Eliminating the possibility of a tie in a system where electoral votes are awarded based on population (kinda)... I'm not sure it's even possible.
jedberg 6y ago
There is no way to make it an odd number because it's always an odd number (number of reps in the House) plus an even number (number of Senators) plus an odd number (minimum number of EC votes possible for a state, which is how DCs EC votes are defined). If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. If you gave DC fewer EC votes, then that just gives them even less representation, and they are already underrepresented.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC. You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D.C. has now. Or adopt D.C. statehood, in which case then you have an odd number in the House + an even number in the Senate + zero.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    > Or adopt D.C. statehood That would only add two, unless you also had a reapportionment act. Same with adding Puerto Rico as a state. Edit: As pointed out below, this is wrong. Since DC already has 3, it would actually lower the number by one, so this would in fact give an odd number. > The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC. Yeah, but when that happens, they just vote again. The are never deadlocked from a tie. > You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D.C. has now. It would make sense to do this for Puerto Rico, whose population is greater than 20 states. But all the other territories are smaller than the smallest state, and that would give them outsize power.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > > Or adopt D.C. statehood > That would only add two, unless you also had a reapportionment act. Absent a change to the fixed number of seats of full House members, it would subtract one; D.C. currently has zero Senators out of 100, zero members of the House included in the apportionment of the fixed 435 seats (it has a delegate, which is separate), and 3 electoral votes. Absent a change to the legislated size of the House, with D.C. statehood it would have 2 senators out of 102, 1 member of the House within the fixed 435 total seats, and 3 electoral votes. The total size of the EC would be reduced by one seat.
WorldMaker 6y ago
It seems even more dumb that in the event of a tie the House of Representatives is supposed to vote one vote per state as if it were a dumber Senate. The compromises that led to that setup are weird mistakes. I guess it is good that it is a rare event when the Electoral College ties.
- rubyist5eva 6y ago
  Why is it dumb? The House of Representatives is supposed to proportionally represent the constituencies of the various states. The Senate exists to represent the state legislatures - though the 17th amendment changed that(and I personally believe it should be repealed). It makes sense to me, as the House choosing the President is still a somewhat representation of the will of the people. It's also very similar to Westminster-styled parliamentary democracies choose their Prime Ministers.
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    How does that justify one vote per state? Wouldn't one vote per representative represent the will of the people better?
    - beerandt 6y ago
      Because the constitution specifies that the several States (not the people) shall elect the president.
      - naivedevops 6y ago
        Just make the vote of each state proportional to the number of people who voted in that state. Or change the Constitution.
        WorldMaker 6y ago
        The electoral college is as much of a mess as it is in part because it already includes the proportional ratios of the House into consideration (and as pointed out in related threads, a large reason why it would ever tie in the first place, and isn't just some odd number derived from the number of states). Surely in the case of an EC tie, leaving the House to vote as the House, proportionately representative, is no less a representation of the votes of the states than the electoral college itself at that point?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]