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Math Against Tyranny or Why We Should Keep The Electoral College (1996)

13 points by llambda 14y ago

btilly 14y ago
OK, I read it through. It was long. And interesting once you got past the fluff. But the theorem proven has a dubious connection to reality. If you want to maximize voter's voting power, the absolute best way to do it is to randomly select a single vote to be the deciding one. This is much better than the electoral college. And yet, would anyone seriously prefer that system? And let's make it worse. According to demographic projections, starting in 2024 we should expect Texas to flip to the Democratic side of the ledger. Until something fundamental changes, after that point it will be virtually impossible to elect a Republican President despite the closeness in popular support. That means that the electoral system will serve to deny everyone the possibility of having a meaningful role in selecting the President, rather than just denying it to most of us as happens now.
- bitwize 14y ago
  That means that the electoral system will serve to deny everyone the possibility of having a meaningful role in selecting the President, rather than just denying it to most of us as happens now. There's still the Democratic primaries... It's not the electoral system's fault that the Republicans can't field a candidate that inspires the goodwill that Obama did. Or that they're rapidly losing touch with reality. Or that they've squandered the nation's trust with cold strategizing like the Southern strategy.
  - TallGuyShort 14y ago
    You're missing the point of the discussion completely. The starting point here is that the electoral college does not accurately represent the popular vote. If "the Republicans can't field a candidate that inspires the goodwill that Obama did", can you explain the tiny gap in popular votes between either candidate, or that by number, the vast majority of geographical divisions voted for Romney? There's a compromise between all states being equal and proportional representation, and the point is that Texas becoming a blue state would throw that balance even further away from the popular vote (regardless of that being a good or bad thing). In any case, there have been repeated discussions on HN lately about the theories behind why each party will simply change their platform to get as close to 50% of the vote as possible. Please don't take the chance to rag on your opponent-of-choice. I'm not a Republican either, but this is just not classy discussion. edit: If you're still unable to discuss this without bias, think about the 2000 election - same problem.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > If you want to maximize voter's voting power, the absolute best way to do it is to randomly select a single vote to be the deciding one. Hold on. How is this true? I thought that the theorem was maximizing all voters' voting power, not just one. Am I misunderstanding?
  - btilly 14y ago
    He defined a voter's voting power as the odds that YOUR vote decided the election. My claim is that the odds that you individually will be selected by the lottery that I describe and then wind up with decisive power exceed the odds that the election will be so finely balanced that it comes down to one vote, in one state, and that vote is yours. This is just the logical extreme version of dividing voters up into blocks called "states", and then dividing up politics so that one state is likely to decide it. Back to the state version, in a million coin flips, a standard deviation is of size 500, and it is virtually impossible to deviate from the true average result by more than 1500 votes. Therefore unless the popular vote in the deciding state is almost exactly balanced, and all other states are balanced, it is very difficult for any vote to truly be deciding. The closest that the USA has ever come to what he describes as ideal is Florida in 2000. However when it came down to a handful, was that good for democracy? Not really. There were endless arguments about who meant to vote for whom. It is certain that an illegal voter purge changed that election result. It is also certain that correlations between voting machine problems and socioeconomic status did as well. (Please tell me a legitimate reason for a voting machine to have a switch - set differently in different precincts - where one setting immediately tells you if your ballot is spoiled so you get a second chance to vote, while the other silently accepts the ballot and discards the vote. And then it was set to the "silently not count you" in black precincts which therefore had a much higher incidence of spoiled ballots.) This is all ancient history at this point. But none of it is good for democracy.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      > This is just the logical extreme version of dividing voters up into blocks called "states", and then dividing up politics so that one state is likely to decide it. Erm. There isn't a logical extreme to dividing voters up into blocks. Both extremes are simply a popular vote. Unless you're talking about infinitely sized blocks, in which case I'm not sure he's the one whose connection to reality is more dubious. > Therefore unless the popular vote in the deciding state is almost exactly balanced, and all other states are balanced, it is very difficult for any vote to truly be deciding. It seems like you disagree with his definition of a voter's voting power. How would you define it instead? > It is certain that an illegal voter purge changed that election result. How is that relevant to the question of an electoral college? I'm not questioning whether or not it happened, but you haven't actually demonstrated a link. I mean, of course voter disenfranchisement is harmful to democracy; isn't that sort of obvious?
- solarmist 14y ago
  And this is how new parties form. As a party expands to include more and more of the center eventually fissures in the party grow and eventually they split off to form a new party (See http://xkcd.com/1127/ http://xkcd.com/1127/ Show the leaning of congress since the start; parties follow a similar constant churning). Do you really think it's been democrats vs republicans since the USA was founded?

13 points by llambda 14y ago

OK, I read it through. It was long. And interesting once you got past the fluff. But the theorem proven has a dubious connection to reality. If you want to maximize voter's voting power, the absolute best way to do it is to randomly select a single vote to be the deciding one. This is much better than the electoral college. And yet, would anyone seriously prefer that system? And let's make it worse. According to demographic projections, starting in 2024 we should expect Texas to flip to the Democratic side of the ledger. Until something fundamental changes, after that point it will be virtually impossible to elect a Republican President despite the closeness in popular support. That means that the electoral system will serve to deny everyone the possibility of having a meaningful role in selecting the President, rather than just denying it to most of us as happens now.

bitwize 14y ago
That means that the electoral system will serve to deny everyone the possibility of having a meaningful role in selecting the President, rather than just denying it to most of us as happens now. There's still the Democratic primaries... It's not the electoral system's fault that the Republicans can't field a candidate that inspires the goodwill that Obama did. Or that they're rapidly losing touch with reality. Or that they've squandered the nation's trust with cold strategizing like the Southern strategy.
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  You're missing the point of the discussion completely. The starting point here is that the electoral college does not accurately represent the popular vote. If "the Republicans can't field a candidate that inspires the goodwill that Obama did", can you explain the tiny gap in popular votes between either candidate, or that by number, the vast majority of geographical divisions voted for Romney? There's a compromise between all states being equal and proportional representation, and the point is that Texas becoming a blue state would throw that balance even further away from the popular vote (regardless of that being a good or bad thing). In any case, there have been repeated discussions on HN lately about the theories behind why each party will simply change their platform to get as close to 50% of the vote as possible. Please don't take the chance to rag on your opponent-of-choice. I'm not a Republican either, but this is just not classy discussion. edit: If you're still unable to discuss this without bias, think about the 2000 election - same problem.
saraid216 14y ago
> If you want to maximize voter's voting power, the absolute best way to do it is to randomly select a single vote to be the deciding one. Hold on. How is this true? I thought that the theorem was maximizing all voters' voting power, not just one. Am I misunderstanding?
- btilly 14y ago
  He defined a voter's voting power as the odds that YOUR vote decided the election. My claim is that the odds that you individually will be selected by the lottery that I describe and then wind up with decisive power exceed the odds that the election will be so finely balanced that it comes down to one vote, in one state, and that vote is yours. This is just the logical extreme version of dividing voters up into blocks called "states", and then dividing up politics so that one state is likely to decide it. Back to the state version, in a million coin flips, a standard deviation is of size 500, and it is virtually impossible to deviate from the true average result by more than 1500 votes. Therefore unless the popular vote in the deciding state is almost exactly balanced, and all other states are balanced, it is very difficult for any vote to truly be deciding. The closest that the USA has ever come to what he describes as ideal is Florida in 2000. However when it came down to a handful, was that good for democracy? Not really. There were endless arguments about who meant to vote for whom. It is certain that an illegal voter purge changed that election result. It is also certain that correlations between voting machine problems and socioeconomic status did as well. (Please tell me a legitimate reason for a voting machine to have a switch - set differently in different precincts - where one setting immediately tells you if your ballot is spoiled so you get a second chance to vote, while the other silently accepts the ballot and discards the vote. And then it was set to the "silently not count you" in black precincts which therefore had a much higher incidence of spoiled ballots.) This is all ancient history at this point. But none of it is good for democracy.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > This is just the logical extreme version of dividing voters up into blocks called "states", and then dividing up politics so that one state is likely to decide it. Erm. There isn't a logical extreme to dividing voters up into blocks. Both extremes are simply a popular vote. Unless you're talking about infinitely sized blocks, in which case I'm not sure he's the one whose connection to reality is more dubious. > Therefore unless the popular vote in the deciding state is almost exactly balanced, and all other states are balanced, it is very difficult for any vote to truly be deciding. It seems like you disagree with his definition of a voter's voting power. How would you define it instead? > It is certain that an illegal voter purge changed that election result. How is that relevant to the question of an electoral college? I'm not questioning whether or not it happened, but you haven't actually demonstrated a link. I mean, of course voter disenfranchisement is harmful to democracy; isn't that sort of obvious?
solarmist 14y ago
And this is how new parties form. As a party expands to include more and more of the center eventually fissures in the party grow and eventually they split off to form a new party (See http://xkcd.com/1127/ http://xkcd.com/1127/ Show the leaning of congress since the start; parties follow a similar constant churning). Do you really think it's been democrats vs republicans since the USA was founded?