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>putting the result of the election into the hands of a small minority of voters Are you referring to the final 538 electors who actually make the final vote?

>putting the result of the election into the hands of a small minority of voters Are you referring to the final 538 electors who actually make the final vote? Most of them are bound to vote based on who their state voted for. Aside from some rare exceptions (like that WA elector that voted for Chief Spotted Eagle in 2016 as some sort of weird protest). Or are you trying to claim that only swing voters in swing states are responsible for the outcome of the election? Because that's a fallacy I've seen a lot of people make recently that I'm just going to start calling "the tiebreaker fallacy". If you have a panel of 101 voters where 50 people vote one way, 50 vote the other way, and one person is the tiebreaker, you can not make the claim that only the tiebreaker's vote counts. All 101 voters were part of the process. At any time, any of the other 100 voters could have changed their votes and the outcome would have changed.

coldpie 2y ago
> At any time, any of the other 100 voters could have changed their votes and the outcome would have changed. This is where your analogy is getting tripped up. The EV outcome for the vast majority of states is certain. California's EVs were never going to go to Trump in any possible reality. Louisiana's EVs were never going to go for Harris. These states cannot "change their votes." If the makeup of the 50-50 split voters in your scenario is fixed and known with certainty ahead of the election, then it really is the case that only that 101st vote matters and the other 100 people have to live with that 1 person's vote. This is how the EC works. The EV outcomes for most states are fixed and known ahead of time. The only votes that matter for the presidential election are those in the ~7 or so states that we call "swing states," because the outcome of the election in the other ~43 states is known with certainty ahead of time. Note: I'm using "fixed" here to mean "unchangeable," not something like "rigged".
- weberer 2y ago
  >The EV outcome for the vast majority of states is known ahead of time. There's a world of difference between being predicatively partisan and not being able to vote at all. >only that 101st vote matters and the other 100 people have to live with that 1 person's vote No, its actually that 50 people have to live with 51 people's votes. That one person is not voting alone. Your post is the perfect example of the tiebreaker fallacy.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    This seems like a distinction without a difference. It is still the case that the only people influencing the election outcome are the voters in the swing states. The outcome will always be "40% + swing-states" versus "40% + other-swing-states." If you're in one of those 40%s, your vote does not matter to the result, because your state's result is already determined. This is unlike your analogy, which supposes that no votes are fixed.
- Izkata 2y ago
  > California's EVs were never going to go to Trump in any possible reality. California was reliably Republican in the 80s, so no, you can't really say that for certain. All states shifted to the right in this election. Illinois for example has been reliably Democrat, but if it shifts as much in the next election as it did in this past one, it would become a swing state.

coldpie 2y ago

> At any time, any of the other 100 voters could have changed their votes and the outcome would have changed. This is where your analogy is getting tripped up. The EV outcome for the vast majority of states is certain. California's EVs were never going to go to Trump in any possible reality. Louisiana's EVs were never going to go for Harris. These states cannot "change their votes." If the makeup of the 50-50 split voters in your scenario is fixed and known with certainty ahead of the election, then it really is the case that only that 101st vote matters and the other 100 people have to live with that 1 person's vote. This is how the EC works. The EV outcomes for most states are fixed and known ahead of time. The only votes that matter for the presidential election are those in the ~7 or so states that we call "swing states," because the outcome of the election in the other ~43 states is known with certainty ahead of time. Note: I'm using "fixed" here to mean "unchangeable," not something like "rigged".

weberer 2y ago
>The EV outcome for the vast majority of states is known ahead of time. There's a world of difference between being predicatively partisan and not being able to vote at all. >only that 101st vote matters and the other 100 people have to live with that 1 person's vote No, its actually that 50 people have to live with 51 people's votes. That one person is not voting alone. Your post is the perfect example of the tiebreaker fallacy.
- coldpie 2y ago
  This seems like a distinction without a difference. It is still the case that the only people influencing the election outcome are the voters in the swing states. The outcome will always be "40% + swing-states" versus "40% + other-swing-states." If you're in one of those 40%s, your vote does not matter to the result, because your state's result is already determined. This is unlike your analogy, which supposes that no votes are fixed.
Izkata 2y ago
> California's EVs were never going to go to Trump in any possible reality. California was reliably Republican in the 80s, so no, you can't really say that for certain. All states shifted to the right in this election. Illinois for example has been reliably Democrat, but if it shifts as much in the next election as it did in this past one, it would become a swing state.