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“We have this fiction in our minds that voting is perfectly accurate: that even a differential of a few votes is meaningful. In reality, elections have error ra
by nverno 3y ago
“We have this fiction in our minds that voting is perfectly accurate: that even a differential of a few votes is meaningful. In reality, elections have error rates every step of the way, and a very close election is a statistical tie."
I'm curious about the error rates he mentions. What causes them in practice?
This reminded me of another article on hacking voting machines - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-elections-russia-hack-how-to-hack-an-election-in-seven-minutes-214144/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-electio...
- bombcar 3y agoI would guess things like - theoretically perfect election where every eligible voter votes instantly and magically in an instant, and then determine all the things that detract from that: late registration, sickness, distraction, and then add up all the tallying errors and such (none of which even considers if people are making the “true” decision they’d make if they had perfect knowledge and foreknowledge of the outcomes). Elections are basically an emergency valve and a way to get people to not complain too much.
- nverno 3y ago> all the tallying errors and such These are the types of errors I assumed he was considering there- I guess calling a close election a statistical tie makes even more sense if you're accounting for people not voting/having voted without 'perfect knowledge' as well.
- harvey9 3y agoEven with perfect knowledge and mandatory voting, if you are trying to determine the will of the people then giving a choice of (usually) two quite similar parties doesn't really capture that.
- bombcar 3y agoI suspect you end up with two or three or ten similar parties because of the vast majority of the people don’t basically agree on most things, you can’t have a democracy and instead have a civil war instead.
- creato 3y ago> Elections are basically an emergency valve and a way to get people to not complain too much. No, they're a collective agreement that we compete with votes instead of on a battlefield. Instead of getting recruited to be in some politician's army, you get recruited to be their voter.
- hedora 3y ago[flagged]
- joekrill 3y ago> The above two paragraphs are stating easily verifiable facts. I won’t bother editorializing. If they are so easily verifiable can you provide some citations?
- rhn_mk1 3y agoThose facts are not as easily verifiable as you might think. "Some academic articles about exit polls and vote tallies in swing districts" does not bring any relevant on the search engine I tried. Your claims are extraordinary, so could you duly provide the extraordinary evidence?
- mandmandam 3y agoAre they really such extraordinary claims? Witness: the 2000 election. The voting machines that were hackable with a screwdriver and USB. The fact that even now, many states lack any paper trail. The termination of exit polls after double digit discrepancies in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_the_Unite... has many sources and stories for you to have a look at. It's ... Extraordinary. While election shenanigans may not be as clearly, obviously bad as the flagged (!) GP claims, they are far from what I would call a basic minimum standard.
- hedora 3y agoHuh, Google Scholar is significantly crappier than I remember (at least for this topic) Here’s one from 2004: https://ia903008.us.archive.org/9/items/files-all/rnc-election-plans/exit-polls-2004-edison-mitofsky.pdf https://ia903008.us.archive.org/9/items/files-all/rnc-electi... Search terms (ddg): academic study of exit poll discrepancies 2004
- flangola7 3y agoPeople underestimate how accurate voting is. We can know how millions of people voted with an error rate in the hundreds or even dozens. That's almost six nines accuracy.
- mandmandam 3y agoA bold statement, when we're discussing a country where many states have no paper trail whatsoever. Where exit polls can be off by over 12% in those states. And where the result of those discrepancies was to stop doing exit polls.
- LgWoodenBadger 3y agoHow does one even begin to approximate the accuracy of a process like anonymous voting, let alone claim 6 nines of accuracy?
- gadders 3y agoI'll bite. Vote harvesting and being able to vote without ID.
- dao- 3y agoIt's a fallacy to think (or deflection to claim) that errors could corrupt the system when even without errors, the system is inherently corrupt and riddled with antidemocratic rules. Think gerrymandering, the fact that election day in the US isn't a national holiday, Citizens United, the joke that has become the Supreme Court, the list goes on and on. US democracy is a farce.
- nverno 3y agoI don't think any of those things you mentioned, aside from the Supreme Court, are inherently part of the 'system', and I don't think the design of the US democratic system is inherently corrupt - in fact, most of the rules in place were designed with the intent of discouraging the inevitable corruption. Individual problems can be attacked without dismantling the whole thing. Gerrymandering, especially, seems like it could have an outsized effect on the error rates of some elections.
- neuralRiot 3y agoTo me democracy is like asking a bunch of 6 year olds what they want for dinner. It’s based in the assumption that people know the candidates and vote for the policies they agree with, a bit of contemporary history can tell us how well that works.