4 ms·

A purely popular vote system has its own flaws. In particular, national elections would be reduced to politicians catering to voters in a few high-density regio

by gwright 14y ago

A purely popular vote system has its own flaws. In particular, national elections would be reduced to politicians catering to voters in a few high-density regions rather than attempting to appeal to a geographically dispersed electorate.

nitrogen 14y ago
There are other voting systems that should yield less catering to the extremes: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
drewrv 14y ago
So what? Why should some peoples vote matter more than others?
- leif 14y ago
  It's all about what kinds of questions get discussed and addressed during campaigns. The point of the campaigning process is chiefly to elect new representation, but secondarily (and closely so) to debate and test competing theories on the primary problems of the time. In the electoral college model, the concerns of the swing states get the most attention, for reasons which are far too numerous and obvious to go in to. This is unfair to people that don't live in the swing states. In the popular model, it's a bit subtle. At first, you think "well everyone's vote counts equally so everyone's concerns get counted according to the proportion of the constituents with those concerns." But this is not correct when you get down to the details. If you're a candidate, you have to spend your resources in the most efficient way possible. Politicians do this (spend resources) by paying for messaging, spending their time campaigning in person and with volunteers/staffers, and by adopting policy positions (this is a resource in the political landscape). In the electoral college model, the best return on your time, money, and issue consideration is found in the swing states, because everywhere else you have basically zero probability of success, which cannot be balanced out by any weight that electoral votes afford. In the popular model, the best return is to target the largest population possible. People get divvied up into geographical regions no matter what---be it by local news network, regional speaking venue, or major political issue---and it's to these regions that our votes then become divided. In the popular model, the only places worth considering are those places with the largest populations, that still stand a chance of being easy to target with a single message, TV ad, or speaking appearance. If you're in a rural town, a candidate coming to speak to you only gets to speak to you, not to the nearest million voters. But in a city, the candidate that comes to you does get an audience of a million or more. So in the popular model, candidates will only bother to work for the concerns of those who live in population centers. You get skewed either way. Personally, I think skewing toward regions with lots of people, even if they may not be the overall majority, is the best thing to do, but that's just my opinion, I don't have an optimal solution. The problem is that "optimal" means that everyone's concerns get addressed in an equal manner, not necessarily that everyone gets an equivalent vote. The game theory involved is subtle and the emotions on all sides even more so.
  - lbarrow 14y ago
    The game theory is not complicated at all for a first-past-the-post election with two candidates: candidates will cater to the median voter. There's even a theorem proving it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem "Skewing" a democratic political system towards regions with more people in them would be vastly, vastly preferable to our current system. A number of big warts in US policy can be explained, at least in part, by the biases and misincentives introduced by our election system. Probably the most obvious is the federal government's support of corn ethanol: supposedly it's done in the name of energy independence, but in reality it's done because almost all US Senators believe that they're going to run for President one day, and none of them have to try to win an Iowa caucus with a vote against corn ethanol on their record.
    - nitrogen 14y ago
      From the article you quoted: The assumptions include a majoritarian election system in which political views are along a one-dimensional spectrum. Political views are not along a one-dimensional spectrum. As soon as you add another dimension, FPTP elections favor extremism according to the visualizations I linked to elsewhere in the thread (http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/).
      - Zakharov 14y ago
        Adding another dimension doesn't make a difference; adding another candidate does.
        Evbn 14y ago
        What is the median point of a polygon?
        nitrogen 14y ago
        The existence of only two candidates is a side effect of assuming that political opinions lie on only one dimension. The Median Voter Theorem also seems to ignore the polarizing effects of our two-party primary system.
raldi 14y ago
Most of the country doesn't live in high-density areas. If you only catered to urban voters, you'd lose in a huge landslide.
- rayiner 14y ago
  More than half the population lives in an urbanized area of > 200,000. This includes suburbs of larger cities but not rural areas or small cities.
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  You aren't kidding! I was skeptical about this, so I checked. Given the list of urban population areas from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_are... and a U.S. population estimate of ~312m, you run out of urban centers with >1m people (at #42, Salt Lake City) before even reaching half of the U.S. population (131,980,346)! To put this into some perspective, San Juan, Puerto Rico would be an attractive stop for an aspiring U.S. President (at 2.1m people), if they had the right to vote! Suddenly, U.S. transportation & communications infrastructure problems make a lot more sense. I knew the U.S. was a big place, but I vastly underestimated how spread out our population was.
- gwright 14y ago
  I think the problem would be that the focus would not necessarily be on urban voters (they are pretty dependable Democratic votes) but on very specific swing-voter geographies. This is also an issue with the existing Electoral College but is mediated by the fact that the smallest geographical unit (in most cases) is an entire state. The Electoral College also helps to avoid a national recount should the popular vote be very close.
  - raldi 14y ago
    Statistically, the odds of an election being close enough to require a recount is infinitesimally smaller with a single nationwide pool of 300 million voters than it is with 50 smaller pools. In other words, getting rid of the Electoral College would make recounts far less likely.
rayiner 14y ago
So you're saying that even the election system artificially subsidizes sprawl in this country?
- lbarrow 14y ago
  It's not so much that it subsidizes sprawl as much as it subsidizes low-population states. They aren't quite the same thing: Delaware is reasonably densely populated, but it benefits quite a bit from the electoral college.

by gwright 14y ago

nitrogen 14y ago

There are other voting systems that should yield less catering to the extremes: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

drewrv 14y ago

So what? Why should some peoples vote matter more than others?

leif 14y ago
It's all about what kinds of questions get discussed and addressed during campaigns. The point of the campaigning process is chiefly to elect new representation, but secondarily (and closely so) to debate and test competing theories on the primary problems of the time. In the electoral college model, the concerns of the swing states get the most attention, for reasons which are far too numerous and obvious to go in to. This is unfair to people that don't live in the swing states. In the popular model, it's a bit subtle. At first, you think "well everyone's vote counts equally so everyone's concerns get counted according to the proportion of the constituents with those concerns." But this is not correct when you get down to the details. If you're a candidate, you have to spend your resources in the most efficient way possible. Politicians do this (spend resources) by paying for messaging, spending their time campaigning in person and with volunteers/staffers, and by adopting policy positions (this is a resource in the political landscape). In the electoral college model, the best return on your time, money, and issue consideration is found in the swing states, because everywhere else you have basically zero probability of success, which cannot be balanced out by any weight that electoral votes afford. In the popular model, the best return is to target the largest population possible. People get divvied up into geographical regions no matter what---be it by local news network, regional speaking venue, or major political issue---and it's to these regions that our votes then become divided. In the popular model, the only places worth considering are those places with the largest populations, that still stand a chance of being easy to target with a single message, TV ad, or speaking appearance. If you're in a rural town, a candidate coming to speak to you only gets to speak to you, not to the nearest million voters. But in a city, the candidate that comes to you does get an audience of a million or more. So in the popular model, candidates will only bother to work for the concerns of those who live in population centers. You get skewed either way. Personally, I think skewing toward regions with lots of people, even if they may not be the overall majority, is the best thing to do, but that's just my opinion, I don't have an optimal solution. The problem is that "optimal" means that everyone's concerns get addressed in an equal manner, not necessarily that everyone gets an equivalent vote. The game theory involved is subtle and the emotions on all sides even more so.
- lbarrow 14y ago
  The game theory is not complicated at all for a first-past-the-post election with two candidates: candidates will cater to the median voter. There's even a theorem proving it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem "Skewing" a democratic political system towards regions with more people in them would be vastly, vastly preferable to our current system. A number of big warts in US policy can be explained, at least in part, by the biases and misincentives introduced by our election system. Probably the most obvious is the federal government's support of corn ethanol: supposedly it's done in the name of energy independence, but in reality it's done because almost all US Senators believe that they're going to run for President one day, and none of them have to try to win an Iowa caucus with a vote against corn ethanol on their record.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    From the article you quoted: The assumptions include a majoritarian election system in which political views are along a one-dimensional spectrum. Political views are not along a one-dimensional spectrum. As soon as you add another dimension, FPTP elections favor extremism according to the visualizations I linked to elsewhere in the thread (http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/).
    - Zakharov 14y ago
      Adding another dimension doesn't make a difference; adding another candidate does.
      - Evbn 14y ago
        What is the median point of a polygon?
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        The existence of only two candidates is a side effect of assuming that political opinions lie on only one dimension. The Median Voter Theorem also seems to ignore the polarizing effects of our two-party primary system.

raldi 14y ago

Most of the country doesn't live in high-density areas. If you only catered to urban voters, you'd lose in a huge landslide.

rayiner 14y ago
More than half the population lives in an urbanized area of > 200,000. This includes suburbs of larger cities but not rural areas or small cities.
thaumaturgy 14y ago
You aren't kidding! I was skeptical about this, so I checked. Given the list of urban population areas from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_are... and a U.S. population estimate of ~312m, you run out of urban centers with >1m people (at #42, Salt Lake City) before even reaching half of the U.S. population (131,980,346)! To put this into some perspective, San Juan, Puerto Rico would be an attractive stop for an aspiring U.S. President (at 2.1m people), if they had the right to vote! Suddenly, U.S. transportation & communications infrastructure problems make a lot more sense. I knew the U.S. was a big place, but I vastly underestimated how spread out our population was.
gwright 14y ago
I think the problem would be that the focus would not necessarily be on urban voters (they are pretty dependable Democratic votes) but on very specific swing-voter geographies. This is also an issue with the existing Electoral College but is mediated by the fact that the smallest geographical unit (in most cases) is an entire state. The Electoral College also helps to avoid a national recount should the popular vote be very close.
- raldi 14y ago
  Statistically, the odds of an election being close enough to require a recount is infinitesimally smaller with a single nationwide pool of 300 million voters than it is with 50 smaller pools. In other words, getting rid of the Electoral College would make recounts far less likely.

rayiner 14y ago

So you're saying that even the election system artificially subsidizes sprawl in this country?

lbarrow 14y ago
It's not so much that it subsidizes sprawl as much as it subsidizes low-population states. They aren't quite the same thing: Delaware is reasonably densely populated, but it benefits quite a bit from the electoral college.