The titanic Biden-Trump election likely will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states, top strategists in both parties tell us.
I mean… how long has it been this way though, and we are only just now deciding to care?
Put this another way, if it was deciding between valid candidate A vs. valid candidate B, who would even care who wins?
Even so, ranked choice would solve a lot of our current ills, so we should get on that.
Ranked Choice Voting -RCV - check out https://represent.us/ to learn more and get involved.
IMO - RCV increases the power of voters while decreasing the power of the 2 major parties. With “first past the post” voters only get to choose between lesser of 2 evils.
If your electoral system is so complicated and convoluted to the point where elections representing 300 million people are decided by only 6% of the population who will more than likely be influenced by those with 99% of the wealth … why bother referring to it as a democracy?
6% of six states. Because of the Electoral College, any majority wins all of a states votes (for most states), regardless of 51% or 75%. The only states that matter are where the election is even enough where that states electoral votes can go either way.
Of course I’ll vote for whoever is more likely to improve society, but my state has historically overwhelmingly voted for one party, so adding my vote to that doesn’t affect anything — this is where you’ll read complaints that for quite a few recent elections, the declared winner was NOT the one with the most popular votes
6% of six states. Because of the Electoral College, any majority wins all of a states votes (for most states), regardless of 51% or 75%.
… and America is supposed to represent the standard for the rest of the world’s democracies?
In that system, people have absolutely no power other than to feel good about themselves while having a confused look on their face.
Fwiw, America started to make its democracy prior to the French revolution, i.e. it is old as fuck. The USA has encouraged democracy all around the world, ostensibly even serving as a role model to its parent the UK that at the time the USA broke away was still fully a monarchy under King George III, but in all that time it has not updated its own system processes.
Nor did it really see a need - e.g. a few decades ago the two sides were more similar than they had ever been previously (obviously not in their talking points but in their actual actions after being elected) - but recently people have revealed how easily the system is to game.
And even deeper than that, the forces of automation and globalization seem to have pulled the wealthy away from having a sense of investment in the nation doing well, to now no longer caring. So while before, they worked alongside the nation to accomplish all of our shared goals - e.g. to not be nuked by Russia during the cold war - now they just (ab)use its populace until robots can manage to replace them, without paying in anywhere close to what they take out. The CGP Grey video Rules for Rulers really opened my eyes, and supremely depressed me, to learn how that works.:-(
But anyway no, I would not look to the USA as the epitome of democracy in today’s era. It is loud, it has Hollywood, it has nukes, it supplies weapons to other places and has the world’s largest economy, but as far as democracy, it greatly lags behind the likes of the EU, with significantly healthier processes.
… and America is supposed to represent the standard for the rest of the world’s democracies?
I’m pretty sure nobody outside America thinks that.
America likes to think that hard enough to have some of thought left over for everyone else though.
Sadly, I live in the Canadian province that seems to think this
Well put.
Fwiw, this article title & description, like every other media source in existence in our current capitalistic hellscape that as it chases profits to the exclusion of all else, somehow converts even true statements into false ones (literal heroes like Ian Danskin’s Innuendo Studios aside ofc, although that’s probably why it struggles to find funding, b/c it doesn’t “enrage” more than it informs).
Thus, that statement “the election will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states” is the tiniest bit true, more than 99% false, and any way you slice it, is designed to make you angry. And therefore talk about and share it. As we are doing now.
Rest assured, all the votes will be counted (barring some other event where that somehow does not happen - meh, it’s been known to occur before, see e.g. Bush in Florida where his brother was in charge of the counting process - but why would we think that a conflict of interest could be there!?), from all of the voters.
It is just that there is this statistical model that the authors are using, whereby states that usually tend to vote one way, are thereby expected to vote the same way that they have in the past - there is nothing guaranteed about that, though it is indeed likely. And that model predicts a tie in many states. Which will be broken by a much smaller number of voting entities than the full 100%. As is always the case - that’s just what “tie-breaking” means.
A much more informative title would have been a lot more boring, with caveats scattered all throughout every part of it, and would say something like “Based on our statistical modeling predictive algorithm that even we did not bother to look at but our interns who work hard for very little pay, haha j/k it is no pay at all, tell us that we should be making forward predictions into the next quarterly review and are you even still reading fuck you all but also if you could send us money that would be great…”.
But if they did that then their website could not use your click as the product to sell to the advertising executives, so that they can buy a thirtieth summer home.
TLDR: tie-breakers gonna tie-break, same as always. Probably. Maybe. They think. We’ll see.
Edit: you also happen to be correct and the USA is not a democracy - we are rather a plutocracy where monied interests subvert the election process and get their way regardless of who wins - but that is a separate matter from the one that this article was trying to get us to click on and read.
Edit 2: I also entirely skipped over the Electoral College system, since that refers to the form of democracy, not whether a democracy exists in the first place. You can, and probably should, argue that it is a very bad form, that is less democratic “in spirit”, but at least technically it does lie within the purview of democratic systems.
You’re being overly pedantic. Nobody thinks that only 6% of the votes in six states will be counted- the issue is that those votes are enough to swing the election. If something like 80,000 voters in the right states had voted the other way, Biden would have lost the 2020 election. Biden’s margin of victory was over 7 million and yet all it would have taken was 80k people voting the other way.
And that’s why the US isn’t democratic. That the President can be elected without the consent of the majority or that the Senate doesn’t (and was never intended to) represent the majority of Americans is a problem the GOP have no intention of fixing, because they’d never win another election again.
Probably, but the person I was responding to said:
In that system, people have absolutely no power other than to feel good about themselves while having a confused look on their face.
And I was pointing out that it’s not that their vote won’t be counted, it’s just that it is balanced by a nearly equal and opposite force on the other side. But… that’s just how “democracy” works?
We saw an example of that two elections ago, when people did protest voting by putting them into third-party candidates, which allowed Clinton to lose and thereby Trump to “win”. Those votes were counted, and if they had been put towards opposing the greater evil, really would have kept Trump from winning that election.
That shows that votes, far from having “absolutely no power”, are actually EXTREMELY powerful! i.e. they are “necessary”, even though they are not “sufficient”. In fact, making people think that their votes don’t matter is one tactic that Republicans use to try to “win” - but just b/c they say that, does not make it TRUE!:-(
I did say that I support changing the form of democracy in the USA. I am being pedantic in saying that we have a democracy though, b/c I feel like that detail matters. i.e. don’t just vote, but DO vote!
Playing devils advocate here, wouldn’t progressive states using progressive voting systems water down their chances versus republican states who would not have them?
Maybe, depending on the system, although if a state is truly progressive, then it may be less likely to ever vote that way in the first place?
One such system that is gaining popularity is to state that whoever wins the popular vote across all of America will win that state’s electoral votes - essentially abolishing the entire electoral college system, although just for that coalition of states. They basically are saying that they don’t want the outdated electoral college system, and that whoever wins the popular vote truly deserves their votes. Plus again, Democrats tend to always win the popular vote lately so… it’s not that big of a risk, although in the future I suppose that could change, and yet, still it is a nice gesture to lead the way in doing the correct thing, even if not everyone chooses to follow.
Another system that is even better at giving us real, actual choices (yay!) is the “ranked choice” system - the normal system btw is often called “first past the post”, and tends to devolve into voting against the other side, rather than taking a risk on picking someone who will actually step up and DO well… anything at all. I put links in there - the suggest ordering is the second one (normal voting) first, then the alternative system.
This one at first glance seems to have few risks for the “other side” winning, since it would mainly apply to the primary elections where the chief candidate for each of the two parties is selected - i.e. “the” Republican and “the” Democrat candidate, who then subsequently go head-to-head in the main election. One huge caveat though is that someone could e.g. vote for a third-party candidate, followed by the candidate that they think has a better chance of winning the election. Even if we took it as a given that the third-party candidate is guaranteed to lose, they still can influence the election and have major impacts on politics overall. Which sadly, seems naively to explain why even liberal states don’t want to switch to it: they don’t want to lose their power to Republicans, but if they do, they know that they can turn around and use that to fuel people’s anger and resentment and thereby win the next election more readily. But what they CANNOT condone is someone splitting from their power base and going off to do wild things on their own - why, they might even do something as radical as (gasp!) “tax the wealthy”!?! Don’t forget that even liberal politicians are just as slimy, self-serving, power-hungry, greedy, corrupt, etc. as conservative politicians. Well, perhaps not AS much, but they are no shining sainted angels either. Maybe, MAYBE if the literal fate of democracy itself was on the line, they might at least consider doing the right thing… but I would not bet on it. They will do whatever they think serves their interests best, that’s it and that’s all. The rest is a mere academic discussion in theory.
I think you didn’t get the idea, but posted a copy pasta?
I mean I’m all for more modern voting systems, and ranking (with low entry bars) is probably the best I have heard of today.
The idea the devils advocate posted was; if a swing state decides to do ranking voting (for the precedency) and they select Sanders, it would make Bidel lose out vs Trump.
I know it’s because your voting system is like european 1850 though.
There are multiple ways to interpret what you said.
If one state uses RCV only for their primaries, then they could do something like vote for Sanders - let’s say that e.g. 42% of votes do that - but then unless Sanders got the top vote, redistribute all of the votes that would have gone to him to someone else. So if, say, Biden got 45% of votes, then Biden now wins, but still there was value in allowing people to vote for Sanders who otherwise would have been too afraid that a vote for him would have split the vote away from Biden and towards some crazy candidate instead. Also, being able to see those stats can be really helpful for the next election, if Sanders were to run again, or even for the current one to let Biden know that he should perhaps adjust his stance to court those other voters.
But the above is to use it purely for the primaries, and yet RCV could also be applied to the general election too. Although really, what need do you even have for a primary anymore, since you could just use RCV straight from the start? If the Dem vs. Repub voters are split 50/50, then 42/2=21% of voters picked Sanders, and 22.5% picked Biden, yet with the latter as the 2nd choice on all votes for the former, Biden would get rather 43.5% of the vote overall, and the same with the other Dem candidates, and similarly on the other side as well.
RCV is all about increasing choice. According to the devil’s advocate argument you put forth:
wouldn’t progressive states using progressive voting systems water down their chances versus republican states who would not have them?
No, b/c Biden would still get all 43.5% of the votes that he would have before. So according to this, nothing would be lost?
Although that ignores what would happen if people were not divided solely into two camps: if a bunch of Dem voters picked Sanders as their first choice, and a bunch of Repub ones did the same, then that is where something could get “lost” - Biden in that case could have lost to Sanders!! In that case, yes something gets “lost”, but that is the very intent of the design, to allow voters to choose such a scenario in the first place!?!?
Whatever the people want, that’s what they should get. As opposed to right now where you have to make a guess about who you think is more likely to win, regardless of who you want. No matter how you slice it, RCV increases choice.
With one exception, which I mentioned: if a progressive state gives up their vote to whatever the will of the country is overall, then they lose some of their power. However, (a) the candidate would have to win the popular vote - which in some sense means then that they should deserve that vote?; (b) lately liberals always win the popular vote, so it is not much of a risk. But it is an - admittedly odd - way to go about setting up a RCV-like system, where a state could e.g. vote for Sanders, but then if Biden overall won the popular vote, then switch it over to him. So there, people still end up not having to play that “guessing game” where they pick whoever they think can win, b/c with that fallback mode engaged, they can afford to be more risky, and e.g. vote for Sanders. Again, the risk would be if Trump somehow won the popular vote instead but… that seems extremely unlikely, and yet if he did, then wouldn’t he “deserve” that vote? Yeah this one is a bit round-about and backwards, but it does work towards the same goal… if I am understanding it correctly, which I may not?
I just wanted to highlight that voters aren’t stupid so today the overwhelming majority will vote for biden or trump, not for a third party.
With a better progressive voting system, better candidates will be elected, but only in progressive states. Whereas in the other ones trump will be elected.
Only if the RCV was applied solely at the primary level, whereas if it is applied rather at the level of actual elections, e.g. the last scenario i mentioned, then the only way for a better candidate to be elected is if they won overall across the entire USA. Otherwise the next candidate would get the votes - e.g. Biden in that example, unless somehow Sanders won the popular (plurality) vote.
Pollsters have continuously & spectacularly failed over the past 8 years to account for the overturn of Roe vs. Wade At this point it’s either on purpose or they are incredibly incompetent.
I always compare polls to the photo finish of horse races, which we had two of this last weekend. At best, polls are only an indicator of opinions in a brief moment in time. At worst, the sample size is incorrectly constructed or the question is in a way to skew results.
Wouldn’t it be more akin to a snapshot during a race? Anything can change after that until the finish. A photo finish strikes me more as final night counting of actual votes. And “too close to call”
Correct. Thanks for the analogy refinement
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What a great county this is where the dumbest of the dumb get to decide who leads. If you are “undecided “, I would suggest you aren’t paying attention.
Undecided are as dumb, uninformed or malicious as Republicans.
This is like saying that when the Senate is split 50-50, one person (the Vice President) gets to decide whether legislation passes or not. In fact, the 100 other people are equally important to the vote. We’re just assuming they can only ever vote one way.
I am almost absolute in that there aren’t undecided voters. Especially today. Ok, maybe like 3 in the whole country that live in a literal cave like a hermit and only popout to vote, where they’ll decide quickly.
It’s all embarrassment. Just like you can’t like McDonalds, you can’t like your preferred candidate anywhere you exist. Whether that’s being a red hatted MAGA on Fire Island, or a Bernie Bro working on an oil rig. If you say you’re undecided, the other person attaches their bias. If you say you are for the wrong team, you can lose friends, family, and careers.
I wasn’t on an oil rig but I was around a lot of blue-collar MAGA dudes in 2016 who outright told me they liked Bernie because he also hated billionaires and that he was trustworthy, even though they didn’t agree with him on everything.
And I’m so jealous of undecided voters. Imagine how peaceful it must all be, for politics to be some distant topic that doesn’t affect them. To not get breathless texts from the DNC screaming for money because your name is on a list. To get online and see no politics anywhere, or maybe just subconciously blur it out.
Makes me want to take a ball peen hammer to my forehead, just to find that kind of peace.
I am almost absolute in that there aren’t undecided voters.
I would guess there are a bunch of undecided voters who are undecided between “Trump or no vote” and “Biden or no vote” rather than “Trump or Biden”. I would guess it’s hard to poll for that, especially if they are mixed, so while a single person may not ever flip between Trump and Biden, a mid-sized group of people could, by changing who votes and who stays at home.
The thing I’m seeing without ever having seen the US up close is that the Dems seem to think there are a bunch of the latter people staying home because they think Biden is too far to the left, while the internet seems to suggest those people stay at home because he’s too far to the right.
Ok, maybe like 3 in the whole country …
It should now be evident that people are far stupider than we can imagine.
Maybe being complete and total assholes to Muslims in Michigan who are upset about the party’s genocide support wasn’t the best idea.
and I’m one of them
