[daleco]

Why aren't we talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal example? Another issue of the Electoral colleges is that a candidate could target only a few amount of people (70k according to the documentary) for changing the course of the election. Even if this has been fixed by Facebook. Shouldn't it be considered as a major flaw of the election system?

Source: "The great Hack" - Netflix doc.

[ananonymoususer]

Why is it that the Cambridge Analytica "hack" is even an issue? The reason is because the data was used to get an "evil" republican elected. The exact same tactics were used to get Obama elected, and nobody seems to be complaining.

[SyneRyder]

Indeed, the system Harper Reed built for the 2012 Obama campaign was widely hailed at the time for how it personalized campaigns to each individual voter, by building a big data store about every voter in the US:

"Those apps include sophisticated analytics programs like Dreamcatcher, a tool developed to "microtarget" voters based on sentiments within text."

"All of the data collected through various volunteer interactions and other outreach found its way into Narwhal's data store, where it could be mined for other purposes. Much of the data was streamed into Dreamcatcher and into a Vertica columnar database cluster used by the analytics team for deep dives into the data."

[1] from Ars Technica: Built to win: Deep inside Obama’s campaign tech https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/built...

[daleco]

It’s harder to manipulate millions of people rather than 70k.

You’re right, it was also used to get Obama elected. It’s still wrong.

[curiousgal]

> The Great Hack

I found the title to be self-fulfilling. That documentary was awful! It's just a tag along the journey of a smart narcissist to cover her ass.

[daleco]

I didn’t like the lady either, she’s was definitely doing it for the money.

[caseysoftware]

One aspect of the Electoral College is that it's a built in corruption firewall.

Right now, if an election system is "compromised" (electronically, corrupt officials, etc), it will affect that precinct, the local elections, possibly the state-wide races, and rarely the Presidential.

With a simple majority vote, a compromise anywhere in the system - adding or removing votes - impacts the system as a whole.

[twblalock]

Other democratic countries are doing just fine without an electoral college.

[ravenstine]

Because using psychology to manipulate voters isn't new. And all of a sudden we're supposed to find it outrageous?

[nerdponx]

The problem is the relatively small number of voters that need to be convinced.

[daleco]

Yes, it’s not new to manipulate people, the low cost for high efficiency is new. Clinton had almost 3M more votes than Trump. It would be much more expensive to manipulate 3M (1% us population, 1.2% voters), rather than 70k (0.02% pop, 0.028% voters). If winning the election is about properly manipulating 0.04% of the voters, that’s very scary and not working as initially designed.

Edit:math