A couple hidden features: 1. You can option-click on any of the buttons to see the transition in super slo-mo. (This was mainly for debugging, but it's fun to see how the transitions work in more detail.) 2. You can double-click on any part of the tree, and it will zoom in by one level.
Also, we did a variation that used state-level probabilities to weight the tree. This gave a sense not just of the logical possibilities, but of the likelihood of each, which I liked. However, the FiveThirtyEight state-level probabilities are not fully independent, so you can't multiply them together to compute conditional probabilities. Perhaps next election!
I like the graph, but it's a pity that the weighted version is not available :(. It was the first thing I looked for. It's more difficult to explain, but it much more useful that only counting the number of branches.
(I don't mind if it would use only the naive approach and just multiply the probabilities. But it could be a problem if the final probabilities are very different when they are estimated with the correct method and the naive method.)
Thanks Jeremy, Shan and Mike. I'm continually blown away by the data journalism you're doing over at nytimes on the election. It's truly an inspiration.
The argument that the EC is there to the avoid a deadlock situation is quite inaccurate. In fact, given there are only 538 EC votes to distribute, the likelihood of a tie (269-269) is much, much higher than the likelihood of a tie in the popular vote (where in 2008 both candidates received > 50 million votes). Nate Silver's 538 blog estimates the current chances of a EC "deadlock" at 0.2% -- small, yes, but not so small as to ignore the possibility entirely.
The "solution" under this scenario? If the election doesn't produce a candidate with 270 or more electoral college votes, the race gets decided by the House of Representatives. Can you imagine the reaction if Obama won the popular vote, but only received 269 EC votes and then the (Republican) House awarded the election to Romney?
There is precedent for this, of course. The 1824 election saw Andrew Jackson getting a plurality in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, but not a majority in either. Ultimately, a Congress hostile to Jackson would award to the Presidency to his arch-rival, John Quincy Adams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...
In terms of worrying about deadlock, a simple popular vote total is far superior than any permutation of the Electoral College.
I think this is a great way to explain to someone who's not intimately familiar with electoral politics why people think Obama is going to win despite razor thing polls. Predictions mean nothing of course but:
If Obama wins Florida, Romney has exactly 1 path to victory: winning every other swing state. If Obama wins Ohio, Romney has only 11 ways to win. If Obama loses Florida, Virginia, NC, and Ohio he could still potentially win if he wins the rest of the swing states, all of which he's slightly ahead in in recent polling.
Election day will be interesting, but that's what makes it hard to pundits to predict a Romney victory.
Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American).
Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1]
> The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view.
Translation:
> It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority.
Also, this isn't just an election for president. There are Senate (in 2 out of 3 elections) and Congressional races, probably local races too.
But let me address the common "solution" for this "problem": the popular volte (for president). That is a terrible idea.
The electoral college doesn't only exist for the reasons of state rights (although that's a pretty big part of it). It exists to avoid a deadlock. The delegate almost without exception vote as their state did. The possibility of no decision coming out of the electoral college is practically zero.
For those of you who were paying attention in 2000, just look at what a mess Florida became. Now watch me get downvoted into oblivion (but that doesn't make me any less right) but the optional nature of the US voting system has resulted in:
- the left buying votes (cigarettes to homeless people, that sort of thing); and
- the right trying to disenfranchise groups that tend to vote left with such measures as removing the right of felons to vote (and even people who aren't felons).
HOWEVER, by the rules that were in place at the time of the election Florida was always a Bush win (seriously, please don't downvote siimply because you disagree). Even extensive analysis (by the likes of the New York Times, etc) after the fact supports this.
My point was that Florida turned into a circus of trying to change the rules after the fact (eg what constitutes a vote, the whole dimpled and pregnant chad business). You just can't do that.
Imagine that circus on a national level with an incredibly close popular vote.
On a personal note, as someone who resides in New York, one of the most expensive media markets in a state that is safely blue, I appreciate the minimal amount of election ads.
Anyway, the electoral college is not the problem here. There are however two glaring problems (IMHO):
1. Voting is optional;
2. Elections are first-past-the-post ("FPTP").
The argument for (1) is that mandatory voting leads to uninformed people voting. I assure you that uninformed people are already voting.
Voter turnout nationally is something like 50% (IIRC). Of those 40% always vote Democrat, 40% always vote Republican and the 20% in the middle decide the election. So 10% of the population is deciding the election even key states.
The problem with optional voting is it creates the wrong incentives. Measures like voter ID, removing felons right to votes are a consequence of this. If voting were mandatory (as it is in Australia) then a lot of these problems go away. Also, in many parts of the US it is hard to vote with long lines. It should be moved to a Saturday but this difficulty is, in many places, a natural consequence of voting being optional. Election officials are partisans too so you shouldn't be surprised if a right-leaning official under-resources an area with a lot of poor people.
As for (2) the problem is that this reinforces a two-party system. A vote for a minor party is often a vote for the other side (eg voting for the Greens is a vote that would probably otherwise go to a Democrat so is effectively a vote for the Republicans).
Australia has a preferential voting system. Given a field of 5 candidates you number then 1 to 5. When votes are counted you allocate all the "1"s. The candiate with the least number of "1"s is eliminated and their votes are distributed to the "2"s. This continues until something has more than 50% of the vote.
This means you could vote [1] Green [2] Democrat [3] Republican and protest the Democrat candidate without losing your vote.
One last point, as much as people focus on key states deciding the election, the reality is that the states are on a spectrum based on the popular vote. If a Republican wins the popular vote by 8% or more they'll probably carry California, otherwise they won't. A Democrat will have to win by 5-8% to carry Texas. When the popular vote is close, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin are in play. Were it not close they wouldn't be.
Over time states change their "bias". For example, Florida is becoming more Democratic with retirees from blue states in the Northeast. California used to be a safe red state but is now safely blue. These changes aren't sudden and the variations possible are actually quite small.
Whatever the case, the popular vote at the national level would be a disaster.
Most American voters do not understand what the President is which is part of why they find the Electoral College confusing.
The President is not the President of the people. It is the President of the States. Only the States have a vote. In fact, for most of its history, the State governments voted directly and there was no popular vote for President. In modern times, they allowed people to have a say in who their State government votes for but it is still only people controlling the vote of their State. They have no say in how people in other States choose to vote for President.
When people complain about the Electoral College, what they are really saying is that they want to eliminate the concept of States voting for President. For better or worse, the idea of the President being the Executive of the States is so foundational to the US Constitution that you'd basically have to throw out the US Constitution and start over. The only representative in Federal government people were supposed to have is their Representative; in recent decades people vote for other Federal positions as well but it is only to decide how their State will apportion its votes rather than voting for the Federal position directly.
You are entitled to your dubious opinions but please do not try to change history. All newspapers agreed that Gore won Florida. What they said was that the Gore vs Bush decision would not have made a difference. That is because in his legal case Gore chose the wrong Florida counties where to request a recount. But if all votes were counted, Gore won.
And no the electoral college does not exist to avoid deadlock. Do you know what the chances of deadlock are in a popular vote of about 100 million people?
Oh and can you show me any documented case where someone gives homeless people cigarettes to make them vote for someone? How would that even work? You know you usually have to register before hand.
There are problems with FTPT, but all voting systems are simply compromises between certain mutually exclusive criteria, all of which are generally desirable. You can't have all the desirable characteristics at the same time, as demonstrated by Arrow's impossiblity theorem and the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem. Sure, FTPT has some disadvantages, but trading it for something like instant run-off voting introduces some new disadvantages. It's insufficient to argue that FTPT is strictly inferior. You really just have to argue for which criteria you think are more important. The third link is a great comparison of many different voting systems and criteria.
"> The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view.
Translation:
> It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority."
You appear to be writing this off as a minor issue. It is not. If Mitt Romney wins 49.999% of the vote in any state, and Obama wins the rest, Obama is awarded ALL of that state's electoral votes. That hardly reflects the will of the people in the context of a national election.
IMO the solution, assuming there is a reason to keep the electoral college at all, is for each state to award to each candidate a percentage of its electoral votes commensurate with the percentage of votes that each candidate received in that state.
How can you say that the EC avoids deadlock, and then immediately start talking about Florida? The popular vote in that case was not a deadlock, and would have made for a clear winner with no disputes. The EC is the only reason that Florida's mess even mattered. How many times has the popular vote been close enough to cause such a mess? Zero. How many times has the EC caused such a mess when none needed to exist? More than zero.
Plenty of other countries use a straight popular vote and they somehow manage to avoid all of the problems that EC proponents say the popular vote would cause. It seems obvious that if we were building the country from scratch today, the EC would never even be considered, let alone enacted.
What do you mean? Tight popular votes at most require a runoff between the two most popular candidates. If anything, this [1] 2004 NYT article gives the traditional reason:
"The Electoral College's supporters argue that it plays an important role in balancing relations among the states, and protecting the interests of small states."
But it goes on to convincingly counter:
"A few years ago, this page was moved by these concerns to support the Electoral College. But we were wrong. The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate, which more than looks out for their interests. And there is no interest higher than making every vote count."
For the record, I'm not American either, but if I were I'd feel much better and meaningful during presidential campaigns living in, say, Ohio or Florida, instead of New York or Texas.
Please don't talk about how your post will be “downvoted into oblivion”, or plead with readers “don't downvote siimply because you disagree”. Just say what you are going to say, and let the chips fall where they may.
In any case, as I read this, you have the top comment on this thread. It'd look better in that spot without the obsession about how people vote on it.
> The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view.
The Constitution doesn't mandate how electoral votes are allocated. Maine and Nebraska, for example, distribute the electoral college votes by congressional district. So the winner take all policy of most states isn't due to the electoral college itself, but how the states choose to implement it.
> 1) The argument for (1) is that mandatory voting leads to uninformed people voting. I assure you that uninformed people are already voting.
I'd argue that passionate people are more likely to vote. Arguably, they deserve to be heard, since they care so much about politics. On the other hand, they may be brainwashed idiots.
It also creates a lot more divisive candidates. Obama is a far-left (by US standards, in Australia or Europe he'd be center-right). Bush was far-right. You need to be extreme to win the primaries, and need to stay extreme to get your base excited enough to vote. Polarising candidates encourages debate (which is good), but also encourages group-think.
> As for (2) the problem is that this reinforces a two-party system. A vote for a minor party is often a vote for the other side (eg voting for the Greens is a vote that would probably otherwise go to a Democrat so is effectively a vote for the Republicans).
Once again, this makes it hard for a compromise candidate to win, and makes it hard for extreme groups to win anything more than a small percent. It's the worst of both worlds - less debate, and more extreme Presidents.
The two most important electoral reforms that the US could adopt would be to switch voting to Saturday, so that most people don't have to take time off work to vote; and to put the administration of federal elections in the hands of an independent, professional, non-partisan electoral commission.
You cannot mandate voting in the U.S. because the sovereign right to rule originates with the people. The government simply does not have the legal authority to mandate such a thing, any more than it has the legal authority to force people to speak if they don't want to.
> One last point, as much as people focus on key states deciding the election, the reality is that the states are on a spectrum based on the popular vote. If a Republican wins the popular vote by 8% or more they'll probably carry California, otherwise they won't. A Democrat will have to win by 5-8% to carry Texas. When the popular vote is close, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin are in play. Were it not close they wouldn't be.
It is always the states near the middle that matter. This is because if you are going to lose the election anyway, losing by a smaller electoral college margin doesn't help, and conversely, if you are going to win anyway, winning by a larger electoral college margin doesn't help. Candidates campaign to maximize the probability that they reach 270 electoral votes. That is why Obama and Romney are campaigning a more in Ohio than they are in Florida even though the polls are closer in Florida than they are in Ohio. Florida is a toss-up, but if Obama wins Florida, he probably also wins enough slightly bluer states like Ohio to win without Florida.
Also, California or Texas flipping would require an absolutely massive popular vote landslide. Probably at least a 15% margin.
Everything sounded great up to this point: "There are however two glaring problems (IMHO): 1. Voting is optional;"
When people have to vote, they will vote for things they are undecided on and it is likely that stupid things will play into the decision, like what the name looks like and whether it seems familiar. It doesn't make them any more likely to be informed about the candidates.
And if they have been "informed" about the candidates, the most likely corruptive force is our news media, which is biased (on both sides). Each radio and television station provides a "range of views" that on average lean toward their candidate or are carefully edited. If you can't trust the media to be unbiased (not that they ever were), who can you trust to give you the "real" scoop on the candidates? No one that I know of.
If people don't care enough to vote, they don't have a strong enough opinion on how things are going, then leave them alone. I don't want them choosing pretty names, and it is already bad enough that our views are so manipulated.
At least those that choose to vote are probably somewhat swayed by how well the government is doing, and how it is treating them and those they care about. Those that would be forced to vote aren't, or it is an even draw.
All of that said, I admit that I am an "undecided voter". I lean conservative, but I don't know who to vote for because I disagree strongly to some of the views of the conservatives. So, I might not vote this election, and I still care about the outcome.
FWIW Brazil has mandatory voting and many parties. Two of them are dominant, but there is a much greater level of awareness for other parties than here in the US.
If you don't vote in Brazil a lot of the things you normally do involving the government become complicated until your pay a fine and fix your status. Anything involving government issued IDs to social security and unemployment benefits are cut off until you "regularize" your status by paying the fine for not voting.
My biggest complaint is that the system forces even Brazilians living abroad to vote, which is a big pain in the ass when you are abroad since you aren't aware of elections (it's easy to forget) and you need to find the nearest consulate and figure out how to vote. Every time I've returned to Brazil I've had to go and fix my status by paying the fine for not voting in the elections that occurred while I was out of the country.
The chances are very low that a national popular vote would be so close that counting or not counting dimpled/pregnant chads would make a difference. Lets also not make the assumption that the same people would vote in an electoral election as in a popular one. I think more people would vote, especially in non-swing states, where their vote usually doesn't matter as much in a presidential election
The main problem I see with the electoral college is that it forces the candidates to focus on winning the votes of just a few swing states, instead of the entire country. If the president is supposed to represent the needs/wants of the whole country, shouldn't everyone's vote count equally to decide who takes office?
This --and the statement you refer to and mangle-- has nothing to do with me (or proponents of an alternative approach) getting their way. You almost make it sound like a childish whine to which I take offense.
This is about having fair and intelligent elections. Elections today feel like you are watching five-year-olds blame each other for who broke Mom's flowers. It's idiotic at best.
Candidates should not be allowed to engage in stupidity. Talk about your platform, ideas and approach. Leave the other guys alone. Let me decide based on who you are and what you say you are going to do.
This is also about making it possible for anyone to run for office. I said in another reply that someone like Stephen Hawking has zero chance to run for office today. In this media-driven election system we seem to have looking good, speaking well, being able to crack a joke, sing and dance seems to be a requirement. Do you know how many super-smart people have the personality of a brick? Maybe not that extreme, but I hope you get the point.
And, how about money. If you don't have or can't raise a billion dollars, forget it. Again, tons of incredibly gifted people don't stand a chance. They wouldn't even get off the line. That is wrong.
The electoral college also means that Independent candidates have an almost zero chance of winning the presidential election. Zero. States like California have a significant number of independent voters. I was talking to one the other day and he said something akin to "My vote really doesn't count. In order to feel like it counts I have to choose to vote for either a Republican or Democratic candidate.". How fair is that system.
A popular vote, devoid of state lines and with rules aimed at reducing the bullshit factor would allow the very real possibility of having more than two choices. It should allow almost anyone to run and be heard.
There's no reason why it couldn't start on a website where candidates --hundreds of them, thousands of them-- stated their platform and start being filtered two years in advance of the election. Don't have a computer? Want to participate in the process? Go to a library and use on of the computers there. I find it funny to note that some of these purportedly disenfranchised voters are walking around with iPhones, driving SUV's and watching satellite television on their 50 inch LCD TV's.
I agree with you on the point about mandatory voting. I lived in Argentina for a number of years and watched how mandatory voting is twisted and turned there for candidates' benefits. They'd literally buy votes through all sorts of giveaways. What's worst is that the people being manipulated are the poor and uneducated. The ugly truth is that they just follow the carrot.
The opposite of this is that absolute morons are allowed to vote in either system. Voluntary voting does not guarantee that informed people will vote any more than it guarantees that votes are not being bought. I've had conversations with people who absolutely floored me. One guy was in absolute awe of the government because, as he put it, "they are so smart that they can predict eclipses and shit like that. Anybody that can do that is incredible". Another person, who happens to be the daughter of a friend of mine who has a PhD in Physics didn't understand and couldn't get her head around what the national debt means to her. She obviously didn't follow in her fathers footsteps, at least in the math department.
How do you fix this? I don't know. I know it isn't popular to say that not everyone should vote. If people are required to pass a test to obtain a driver's license, why shouldn't they be required to pass a test every year in order to be able to vote? They can actually kill more people with their vote than by not knowing how to drive a car. Not so? How about the religious morons who vote across hard religious beliefs and against issues of health, science and progress that could save millions of lives? Before anyone goes off for this comment, I am not a Democrat or Republican. I hate aspects of both parties and like aspects of both.
The electoral college is just not good any more. The same is true of the way we allow these campaigns to be run and funded.
If you want more campaigning in your area, then start a petition and vote for a change to your state's constitution to allocate electoral votes by house district. This is a change that could happen if your state wants it.
I believe on real problem is the state's voice is not heard in DC and a lot of crap is done that is not in the State's best interest. I wish they would repeal the Seventeenth Amendment so people would concentrate a lot more on the State's politics. Or perhaps, replace the senators with the sitting governor. Then the Senate would think about the state's budget and regulation burden before passing things.
They're pretty low likelihood events. Wikipedia appears to have a pretty solid writeup of the electoral college system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_State... ) which includes the various mechanisms states use to select their electors.
The vast majority of the states are winner-take-all, which presumably reduces but doesn't eliminate the possible ways to split 538 down the middle, but some states either only have a single electoral vote or use mechanisms which can divide their electoral votes between the candidates.
So, yeah, every election has this chance. Probably isn't going to happen though. This is conjecture, but I'd hazard a guess that a Bush v. Gore style dispute over a single large state which holds the balance of the election is way more likely than an actual numerical tie where the House would choose the president and the Senate the VP.
Dunno why that would be scary. Ties (or really, any allocation of electoral votes where no candidate gets to 270) are resolved in the House of Representatives, and this was common practice in the early 19th century. If it were to happen now, there would be a lot of complaining, but overall it would be less of a constitutional crisis than the 2000 election. If anything, it might be a spark for true electoral reform.
If you're sufficiently convinced by this, the 538 model, or your favorite electoral vote map, and you are willing to bet your beliefs (and you are in a jurisdiction that has not regulated prediction markets out of existence), Intrade contracts on an Obama victory were trading around $6.70 today.
I'm not sure why Nebraska's second congressional district isn't included. According to FiveThirtyEight, Obama's chance (14%) of winning one vote from Nebraska is higher than Romney's chance (11%) of winning Nevada. As a matter of fact, the last FiveThirtyEight visualization I saw linked here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4657826) didn't include the one electoral vote Obama won in 2008 from Nebraska either.
The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view.
I fully understand that the popular vote option has its issues (focusing on large population areas, etc.). However, a lot of this can be mitigated through legislation and regulation of the process.
Here's a random set of ideas:
- Candidates are only allowed to visit each state capital once. That's it.
- Candidates are not allowed to trash the other candidates. They are only allowed to discuss their views.
- Candidates are awarded an amount of money to run their campaigns. No external contributions from any source whatsoever. None.
- Candidates must participate in detailed interviews for a period of several weeks. Some of these interviews are aired in national networks and the rest made available online.
- Candidates are obligated to participate in detailed debates
- Television networks are prohibited from endorsing or communicating bias
- The publication of poll data is illegal
- A candidate must post a huge bond. If he or she is found telling lies they end-up in prison and have huge financial consequences.
- Campaign promises are recorded and signed in a document that is publicly available. A politician that does not deliver on promises made is exposed to financial and criminal liability. Don't make promises you can't keep.
- Public endorsement of any candidate is illegal. They have to float and survive on their platform and track record.
- The incumbent is not allowed to campaign in any way at all. His or her opponents cannot trash him/her. The incumbent can only rely on having done a good job and kept promises. People will vote and want to keep someone who is doing a good job. The only thing they are allowed to do is announce their running for office and participate in scheduled debates or interviews.
- Politicians are limited to serving in public office for a certain period of time, perhaps ten years. After that they must return to private life --no connection whatsoever to government and politics-- for five years before they can run for office again. This is to infuse balance and perspective and not have a race of politicians, by politicians and for politicians.
There are probably a number of other interesting ideas out there. What we have it horribly broken in many ways. It'd be nice to see real dialog and actions to change it.
This is interesting, but it leaves out Pennsylvania. Penn is a long shot for Romney, but the Romney campaign's internal polling must indicate that it's in play, otherwise they wouldn't be spending time in the final weekend campaigning there.
I LOVE this. I have always wondered what such a visualization might look like. Now, when the results come in, I can be my very own 'electoral college pundit' and be right :)
This is all window dressing. Elections do not decide who wins. Funding does. And as long as corporations can outspend private citizens companies decide elections.
If you wanted to reform elections in the USA then you would have to start to curb the direct influence of corporations on the elections, compared to that the electoral college is a minor detail.
You're just translating the problem one level, you're not actually addressing the root problem. The problem isn't that money is allowed to be spent in elections, or even that corporations can outspend individuals or truly grass roots organizations (unions are a big part of the top political donors, for example). Ultimately, buying a TV spot or radio advertisement does not constitute "buying" a vote.
The problem is that the whole system is too shallow. And that starts at the electorate and extends to political pundits and the media. If you magically sucked money out of the system tomorrow then we'd be absolutely no better off. Neither individuals nor the media would suddenly decide that it's important to discuss the real issues and be open and honest. No, it would still be the same old popularity/celebrity contest and the same old "gotcha" game.
[+] [-] mbostock|13 years ago|reply
Also, we did a variation that used state-level probabilities to weight the tree. This gave a sense not just of the logical possibilities, but of the likelihood of each, which I liked. However, the FiveThirtyEight state-level probabilities are not fully independent, so you can't multiply them together to compute conditional probabilities. Perhaps next election!
[+] [-] raganesh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gus_massa|13 years ago|reply
(I don't mind if it would use only the naive approach and just multiply the probabilities. But it could be a problem if the final probabilities are very different when they are estimated with the correct method and the naive method.)
[+] [-] 001sky|13 years ago|reply
This is interesting, are they linked in some manner to national polls, or is their something more nuanced?
[+] [-] Evbn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cedrichurst|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextstep|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cincinnatus12|13 years ago|reply
The "solution" under this scenario? If the election doesn't produce a candidate with 270 or more electoral college votes, the race gets decided by the House of Representatives. Can you imagine the reaction if Obama won the popular vote, but only received 269 EC votes and then the (Republican) House awarded the election to Romney?
There is precedent for this, of course. The 1824 election saw Andrew Jackson getting a plurality in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, but not a majority in either. Ultimately, a Congress hostile to Jackson would award to the Presidency to his arch-rival, John Quincy Adams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...
In terms of worrying about deadlock, a simple popular vote total is far superior than any permutation of the Electoral College.
[+] [-] tomasien|13 years ago|reply
If Obama wins Florida, Romney has exactly 1 path to victory: winning every other swing state. If Obama wins Ohio, Romney has only 11 ways to win. If Obama loses Florida, Virginia, NC, and Ohio he could still potentially win if he wins the rest of the swing states, all of which he's slightly ahead in in recent polling.
Election day will be interesting, but that's what makes it hard to pundits to predict a Romney victory.
[+] [-] cletus|13 years ago|reply
Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1]
> The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view.
Translation:
> It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority.
Also, this isn't just an election for president. There are Senate (in 2 out of 3 elections) and Congressional races, probably local races too.
But let me address the common "solution" for this "problem": the popular volte (for president). That is a terrible idea.
The electoral college doesn't only exist for the reasons of state rights (although that's a pretty big part of it). It exists to avoid a deadlock. The delegate almost without exception vote as their state did. The possibility of no decision coming out of the electoral college is practically zero.
For those of you who were paying attention in 2000, just look at what a mess Florida became. Now watch me get downvoted into oblivion (but that doesn't make me any less right) but the optional nature of the US voting system has resulted in:
- the left buying votes (cigarettes to homeless people, that sort of thing); and
- the right trying to disenfranchise groups that tend to vote left with such measures as removing the right of felons to vote (and even people who aren't felons).
HOWEVER, by the rules that were in place at the time of the election Florida was always a Bush win (seriously, please don't downvote siimply because you disagree). Even extensive analysis (by the likes of the New York Times, etc) after the fact supports this.
My point was that Florida turned into a circus of trying to change the rules after the fact (eg what constitutes a vote, the whole dimpled and pregnant chad business). You just can't do that.
Imagine that circus on a national level with an incredibly close popular vote.
On a personal note, as someone who resides in New York, one of the most expensive media markets in a state that is safely blue, I appreciate the minimal amount of election ads.
Anyway, the electoral college is not the problem here. There are however two glaring problems (IMHO):
1. Voting is optional;
2. Elections are first-past-the-post ("FPTP").
The argument for (1) is that mandatory voting leads to uninformed people voting. I assure you that uninformed people are already voting.
Voter turnout nationally is something like 50% (IIRC). Of those 40% always vote Democrat, 40% always vote Republican and the 20% in the middle decide the election. So 10% of the population is deciding the election even key states.
The problem with optional voting is it creates the wrong incentives. Measures like voter ID, removing felons right to votes are a consequence of this. If voting were mandatory (as it is in Australia) then a lot of these problems go away. Also, in many parts of the US it is hard to vote with long lines. It should be moved to a Saturday but this difficulty is, in many places, a natural consequence of voting being optional. Election officials are partisans too so you shouldn't be surprised if a right-leaning official under-resources an area with a lot of poor people.
As for (2) the problem is that this reinforces a two-party system. A vote for a minor party is often a vote for the other side (eg voting for the Greens is a vote that would probably otherwise go to a Democrat so is effectively a vote for the Republicans).
Australia has a preferential voting system. Given a field of 5 candidates you number then 1 to 5. When votes are counted you allocate all the "1"s. The candiate with the least number of "1"s is eliminated and their votes are distributed to the "2"s. This continues until something has more than 50% of the vote.
This means you could vote [1] Green [2] Democrat [3] Republican and protest the Democrat candidate without losing your vote.
One last point, as much as people focus on key states deciding the election, the reality is that the states are on a spectrum based on the popular vote. If a Republican wins the popular vote by 8% or more they'll probably carry California, otherwise they won't. A Democrat will have to win by 5-8% to carry Texas. When the popular vote is close, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin are in play. Were it not close they wouldn't be.
Over time states change their "bias". For example, Florida is becoming more Democratic with retirees from blue states in the Northeast. California used to be a safe red state but is now safely blue. These changes aren't sudden and the variations possible are actually quite small.
Whatever the case, the popular vote at the national level would be a disaster.
[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4736105
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|13 years ago|reply
The President is not the President of the people. It is the President of the States. Only the States have a vote. In fact, for most of its history, the State governments voted directly and there was no popular vote for President. In modern times, they allowed people to have a say in who their State government votes for but it is still only people controlling the vote of their State. They have no say in how people in other States choose to vote for President.
When people complain about the Electoral College, what they are really saying is that they want to eliminate the concept of States voting for President. For better or worse, the idea of the President being the Executive of the States is so foundational to the US Constitution that you'd basically have to throw out the US Constitution and start over. The only representative in Federal government people were supposed to have is their Representative; in recent decades people vote for other Federal positions as well but it is only to decide how their State will apportion its votes rather than voting for the Federal position directly.
[+] [-] hristov|13 years ago|reply
And no the electoral college does not exist to avoid deadlock. Do you know what the chances of deadlock are in a popular vote of about 100 million people?
Oh and can you show me any documented case where someone gives homeless people cigarettes to make them vote for someone? How would that even work? You know you usually have to register before hand.
[+] [-] baddox|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrows_impossibility_theorem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%E2%80%93Satterthwaite_t...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_runoff_vo...
[+] [-] downandout|13 years ago|reply
You appear to be writing this off as a minor issue. It is not. If Mitt Romney wins 49.999% of the vote in any state, and Obama wins the rest, Obama is awarded ALL of that state's electoral votes. That hardly reflects the will of the people in the context of a national election.
IMO the solution, assuming there is a reason to keep the electoral college at all, is for each state to award to each candidate a percentage of its electoral votes commensurate with the percentage of votes that each candidate received in that state.
[+] [-] mikeash|13 years ago|reply
Plenty of other countries use a straight popular vote and they somehow manage to avoid all of the problems that EC proponents say the popular vote would cause. It seems obvious that if we were building the country from scratch today, the EC would never even be considered, let alone enacted.
[+] [-] eze|13 years ago|reply
What do you mean? Tight popular votes at most require a runoff between the two most popular candidates. If anything, this [1] 2004 NYT article gives the traditional reason:
"The Electoral College's supporters argue that it plays an important role in balancing relations among the states, and protecting the interests of small states."
But it goes on to convincingly counter:
"A few years ago, this page was moved by these concerns to support the Electoral College. But we were wrong. The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate, which more than looks out for their interests. And there is no interest higher than making every vote count."
For the record, I'm not American either, but if I were I'd feel much better and meaningful during presidential campaigns living in, say, Ohio or Florida, instead of New York or Texas.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/opinion/making-votes-count...
[+] [-] charlieok|13 years ago|reply
In any case, as I read this, you have the top comment on this thread. It'd look better in that spot without the obsession about how people vote on it.
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
The Constitution doesn't mandate how electoral votes are allocated. Maine and Nebraska, for example, distribute the electoral college votes by congressional district. So the winner take all policy of most states isn't due to the electoral college itself, but how the states choose to implement it.
[+] [-] wisty|13 years ago|reply
I'd argue that passionate people are more likely to vote. Arguably, they deserve to be heard, since they care so much about politics. On the other hand, they may be brainwashed idiots.
It also creates a lot more divisive candidates. Obama is a far-left (by US standards, in Australia or Europe he'd be center-right). Bush was far-right. You need to be extreme to win the primaries, and need to stay extreme to get your base excited enough to vote. Polarising candidates encourages debate (which is good), but also encourages group-think.
> As for (2) the problem is that this reinforces a two-party system. A vote for a minor party is often a vote for the other side (eg voting for the Greens is a vote that would probably otherwise go to a Democrat so is effectively a vote for the Republicans).
Once again, this makes it hard for a compromise candidate to win, and makes it hard for extreme groups to win anything more than a small percent. It's the worst of both worlds - less debate, and more extreme Presidents.
[+] [-] caf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexMennen|13 years ago|reply
It is always the states near the middle that matter. This is because if you are going to lose the election anyway, losing by a smaller electoral college margin doesn't help, and conversely, if you are going to win anyway, winning by a larger electoral college margin doesn't help. Candidates campaign to maximize the probability that they reach 270 electoral votes. That is why Obama and Romney are campaigning a more in Ohio than they are in Florida even though the polls are closer in Florida than they are in Ohio. Florida is a toss-up, but if Obama wins Florida, he probably also wins enough slightly bluer states like Ohio to win without Florida.
Also, California or Texas flipping would require an absolutely massive popular vote landslide. Probably at least a 15% margin.
[+] [-] felanthropop|13 years ago|reply
When people have to vote, they will vote for things they are undecided on and it is likely that stupid things will play into the decision, like what the name looks like and whether it seems familiar. It doesn't make them any more likely to be informed about the candidates.
And if they have been "informed" about the candidates, the most likely corruptive force is our news media, which is biased (on both sides). Each radio and television station provides a "range of views" that on average lean toward their candidate or are carefully edited. If you can't trust the media to be unbiased (not that they ever were), who can you trust to give you the "real" scoop on the candidates? No one that I know of.
If people don't care enough to vote, they don't have a strong enough opinion on how things are going, then leave them alone. I don't want them choosing pretty names, and it is already bad enough that our views are so manipulated.
At least those that choose to vote are probably somewhat swayed by how well the government is doing, and how it is treating them and those they care about. Those that would be forced to vote aren't, or it is an even draw.
All of that said, I admit that I am an "undecided voter". I lean conservative, but I don't know who to vote for because I disagree strongly to some of the views of the conservatives. So, I might not vote this election, and I still care about the outcome.
[+] [-] malandrew|13 years ago|reply
If you don't vote in Brazil a lot of the things you normally do involving the government become complicated until your pay a fine and fix your status. Anything involving government issued IDs to social security and unemployment benefits are cut off until you "regularize" your status by paying the fine for not voting.
My biggest complaint is that the system forces even Brazilians living abroad to vote, which is a big pain in the ass when you are abroad since you aren't aware of elections (it's easy to forget) and you need to find the nearest consulate and figure out how to vote. Every time I've returned to Brazil I've had to go and fix my status by paying the fine for not voting in the elections that occurred while I was out of the country.
[+] [-] netfire|13 years ago|reply
The main problem I see with the electoral college is that it forces the candidates to focus on winning the votes of just a few swing states, instead of the entire country. If the president is supposed to represent the needs/wants of the whole country, shouldn't everyone's vote count equally to decide who takes office?
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
Translation:
> It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority.
Nonsense!
The least you should have done is actually reply to my post rather than do a drive-by with your own imaginary conclusions. Here it is:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4736105
This --and the statement you refer to and mangle-- has nothing to do with me (or proponents of an alternative approach) getting their way. You almost make it sound like a childish whine to which I take offense.
This is about having fair and intelligent elections. Elections today feel like you are watching five-year-olds blame each other for who broke Mom's flowers. It's idiotic at best.
Candidates should not be allowed to engage in stupidity. Talk about your platform, ideas and approach. Leave the other guys alone. Let me decide based on who you are and what you say you are going to do.
This is also about making it possible for anyone to run for office. I said in another reply that someone like Stephen Hawking has zero chance to run for office today. In this media-driven election system we seem to have looking good, speaking well, being able to crack a joke, sing and dance seems to be a requirement. Do you know how many super-smart people have the personality of a brick? Maybe not that extreme, but I hope you get the point.
And, how about money. If you don't have or can't raise a billion dollars, forget it. Again, tons of incredibly gifted people don't stand a chance. They wouldn't even get off the line. That is wrong.
The electoral college also means that Independent candidates have an almost zero chance of winning the presidential election. Zero. States like California have a significant number of independent voters. I was talking to one the other day and he said something akin to "My vote really doesn't count. In order to feel like it counts I have to choose to vote for either a Republican or Democratic candidate.". How fair is that system.
A popular vote, devoid of state lines and with rules aimed at reducing the bullshit factor would allow the very real possibility of having more than two choices. It should allow almost anyone to run and be heard.
There's no reason why it couldn't start on a website where candidates --hundreds of them, thousands of them-- stated their platform and start being filtered two years in advance of the election. Don't have a computer? Want to participate in the process? Go to a library and use on of the computers there. I find it funny to note that some of these purportedly disenfranchised voters are walking around with iPhones, driving SUV's and watching satellite television on their 50 inch LCD TV's.
I agree with you on the point about mandatory voting. I lived in Argentina for a number of years and watched how mandatory voting is twisted and turned there for candidates' benefits. They'd literally buy votes through all sorts of giveaways. What's worst is that the people being manipulated are the poor and uneducated. The ugly truth is that they just follow the carrot.
The opposite of this is that absolute morons are allowed to vote in either system. Voluntary voting does not guarantee that informed people will vote any more than it guarantees that votes are not being bought. I've had conversations with people who absolutely floored me. One guy was in absolute awe of the government because, as he put it, "they are so smart that they can predict eclipses and shit like that. Anybody that can do that is incredible". Another person, who happens to be the daughter of a friend of mine who has a PhD in Physics didn't understand and couldn't get her head around what the national debt means to her. She obviously didn't follow in her fathers footsteps, at least in the math department.
How do you fix this? I don't know. I know it isn't popular to say that not everyone should vote. If people are required to pass a test to obtain a driver's license, why shouldn't they be required to pass a test every year in order to be able to vote? They can actually kill more people with their vote than by not knowing how to drive a car. Not so? How about the religious morons who vote across hard religious beliefs and against issues of health, science and progress that could save millions of lives? Before anyone goes off for this comment, I am not a Democrat or Republican. I hate aspects of both parties and like aspects of both.
The electoral college is just not good any more. The same is true of the way we allow these campaigns to be run and funded.
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
The only problem with this nifty tree is that it must be followed in order to determine the outcome.
Oh wait, I didn't realize the boxes at the top were selectable. I guess that allows out-of-order traversal.
Only thing I'd like to see added to this is using url hash to bookmark the result set so I can share it.
[+] [-] protomyth|13 years ago|reply
I believe on real problem is the state's voice is not heard in DC and a lot of crap is done that is not in the State's best interest. I wish they would repeal the Seventeenth Amendment so people would concentrate a lot more on the State's politics. Or perhaps, replace the senators with the sitting governor. Then the Senate would think about the state's budget and regulation burden before passing things.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ianstormtaylor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knowtheory|13 years ago|reply
The vast majority of the states are winner-take-all, which presumably reduces but doesn't eliminate the possible ways to split 538 down the middle, but some states either only have a single electoral vote or use mechanisms which can divide their electoral votes between the candidates.
So, yeah, every election has this chance. Probably isn't going to happen though. This is conjecture, but I'd hazard a guess that a Bush v. Gore style dispute over a single large state which holds the balance of the election is way more likely than an actual numerical tie where the House would choose the president and the Senate the VP.
[+] [-] mlinsey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
Barring external events, you can probably put a fork in it.
[+] [-] ecmendenhall|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaar333|13 years ago|reply
Sadly, if you don't already have money there, your transfer is unlikely to go through until after the election.
[+] [-] trueluk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agildehaus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistercow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
I fully understand that the popular vote option has its issues (focusing on large population areas, etc.). However, a lot of this can be mitigated through legislation and regulation of the process.
Here's a random set of ideas:
- Candidates are only allowed to visit each state capital once. That's it.
- Candidates are not allowed to trash the other candidates. They are only allowed to discuss their views.
- Candidates are awarded an amount of money to run their campaigns. No external contributions from any source whatsoever. None.
- Candidates must participate in detailed interviews for a period of several weeks. Some of these interviews are aired in national networks and the rest made available online.
- Candidates are obligated to participate in detailed debates
- Television networks are prohibited from endorsing or communicating bias
- The publication of poll data is illegal
- A candidate must post a huge bond. If he or she is found telling lies they end-up in prison and have huge financial consequences.
- Campaign promises are recorded and signed in a document that is publicly available. A politician that does not deliver on promises made is exposed to financial and criminal liability. Don't make promises you can't keep.
- Public endorsement of any candidate is illegal. They have to float and survive on their platform and track record.
- The incumbent is not allowed to campaign in any way at all. His or her opponents cannot trash him/her. The incumbent can only rely on having done a good job and kept promises. People will vote and want to keep someone who is doing a good job. The only thing they are allowed to do is announce their running for office and participate in scheduled debates or interviews.
- Politicians are limited to serving in public office for a certain period of time, perhaps ten years. After that they must return to private life --no connection whatsoever to government and politics-- for five years before they can run for office again. This is to infuse balance and perspective and not have a race of politicians, by politicians and for politicians.
There are probably a number of other interesting ideas out there. What we have it horribly broken in many ways. It'd be nice to see real dialog and actions to change it.
[+] [-] ninetax|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbarrow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amalag|13 years ago|reply
Intrade http://electoralmap.net was pretty accurate in 2008. Also predicting an obama victory.
[+] [-] pjscott|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seldo|13 years ago|reply
1. Give the democrats Wisconsin (I don't know why people are treating it as a swing state)
2. Give the democrats Ohio
3. Give the democrats any other state (except New Hampshire)
Basically, as long as Obama takes Ohio, Obama wins.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] marcamillion|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tisme|13 years ago|reply
If you wanted to reform elections in the USA then you would have to start to curb the direct influence of corporations on the elections, compared to that the electoral college is a minor detail.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|13 years ago|reply
The problem is that the whole system is too shallow. And that starts at the electorate and extends to political pundits and the media. If you magically sucked money out of the system tomorrow then we'd be absolutely no better off. Neither individuals nor the media would suddenly decide that it's important to discuss the real issues and be open and honest. No, it would still be the same old popularity/celebrity contest and the same old "gotcha" game.