Political musings
Nov. 30th, 2020 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqI was playing around with the numbers form the latest presidential election south of the border, looking at some "what if" scenarios if the system more closely matched the actual will of the voters.
This is not an attempt to point fingers at a broken system, since our own system has its own serious failings. In fact, I think the single biggest failing in both systems is the nature of first past the post and winner takes all nature of them.
Since they just had an election, though, I'm going to focus on the US system.
If you look at the national results (there are still some absentee/overseas/military counts happening, but this is based on the numbers at the time when I write this).
While the college votes match the popular vote to the extent that the successful candidate got the majority of both, the actual numbers make the winner's total look much more decisive. If one were simply to divide up the electoral college votes proportionally to the overall percentages, the winner would still be the same in this case, but it would no longer effectively disenfranchise the 2% who voted for neither of the main candidates, and it would do a better job of showing how close the election actually was.
On the other hand, if you were to break down the electoral votes by having each state award them based on the proportion of votes in that state, you would get something more along this line.
The effects of first past the post are mostly felt in US elections by the fact that the contests have, over time, been reduced to two parties. On the other hand, 52 of the electoral votes were decided in states where the winning candidate finished with a negative margin (that is, a majority of the voters in that state voted against the candidate). While the second and third tables show that it would not have been sufficient change to affect the results of the election, it still effectively disenfranchised roughly 8,670,097 voters in those states who voted against the candidate who won their state.
The difference between the second and third tables shows how the results skew toward the smaller states when the counts are handled on a state-by-state basis, resulting in 90% of the people who voted for a third candidate having their votes nullified versus going with national counts. The shifting of 3 votes away from the winning candidate also illustrates how there is an imbalance of electoral votes between the states, with smaller ones having disproportionally more votes than they should. (Not to get into partisan politics, but this is also why the side who currently benefits from this has been working to sabotage the national census.)
What's the solution? I don't know - the system is pretty convoluted, and it is baked into a constitution that would be almost impossible to change under the current, polarized conditions in the country.
The fairest solution would be to award electoral votes based on the national counts.
A suboptimal solution - that is still better than present day - would be for the states to award their votes proportionally based on their state counts.
One might argue that the disproportional power given to smaller states was intentional to offset tyranny by the majority, but my (from an outsider, obviously) understanding was that this was accomplished by giving states 2 votes in the senate, regardless of their population.
The senate is another can of worms. I don't think the original architects of it anticipated the vast population differences that would start to build over the years, or they'd have realized that they were substituting a tyranny of the majority for a tyranny of the minority. I just find it odd that a vote in Wyoming should hold the same weight as 68 votes in California, or a vote in Vermont should have the same weight as 46 votes in Texas. Solutions might be to reduce the power of the senate a bit, or award senators to states based on a more equitable formula where it's based on their population's standard deviation above or below the median.
Anyway, it's fun to analyse an electoral system that's almost as flawed as our own. On the balance of probabilities, I can envision the system sliding into an authoritarian dictatorship before I can see it ever being patched to make it more equitable. Just my $.02.
I am fascinated by urban decay. This was a shot I took when we were out for a walk yesterday.
This is not an attempt to point fingers at a broken system, since our own system has its own serious failings. In fact, I think the single biggest failing in both systems is the nature of first past the post and winner takes all nature of them.
Since they just had an election, though, I'm going to focus on the US system.
If you look at the national results (there are still some absentee/overseas/military counts happening, but this is based on the numbers at the time when I write this).
| Candidate | Total | Percent | Votes |
| Trump: | 73,967,466 | 47 | 232 |
| Biden: | 80,259,147 | 51 | 306 |
| Other: | 2,887,049 | 2 | 0 |
While the college votes match the popular vote to the extent that the successful candidate got the majority of both, the actual numbers make the winner's total look much more decisive. If one were simply to divide up the electoral college votes proportionally to the overall percentages, the winner would still be the same in this case, but it would no longer effectively disenfranchise the 2% who voted for neither of the main candidates, and it would do a better job of showing how close the election actually was.
| Candidate | Total | Percent | Votes |
| Trump: | 73,967,466 | 47 | 253 |
| Biden: | 80,259,147 | 51 | 275 |
| Other: | 2,887,049 | 2 | 10 |
On the other hand, if you were to break down the electoral votes by having each state award them based on the proportion of votes in that state, you would get something more along this line.
| Candidate | Total | Votes |
| Trump: | 73,967,466 | 265 |
| Biden: | 80,259,147 | 272 |
| Other: | 2,887,049 | 1 |
The effects of first past the post are mostly felt in US elections by the fact that the contests have, over time, been reduced to two parties. On the other hand, 52 of the electoral votes were decided in states where the winning candidate finished with a negative margin (that is, a majority of the voters in that state voted against the candidate). While the second and third tables show that it would not have been sufficient change to affect the results of the election, it still effectively disenfranchised roughly 8,670,097 voters in those states who voted against the candidate who won their state.
The difference between the second and third tables shows how the results skew toward the smaller states when the counts are handled on a state-by-state basis, resulting in 90% of the people who voted for a third candidate having their votes nullified versus going with national counts. The shifting of 3 votes away from the winning candidate also illustrates how there is an imbalance of electoral votes between the states, with smaller ones having disproportionally more votes than they should. (Not to get into partisan politics, but this is also why the side who currently benefits from this has been working to sabotage the national census.)
What's the solution? I don't know - the system is pretty convoluted, and it is baked into a constitution that would be almost impossible to change under the current, polarized conditions in the country.
The fairest solution would be to award electoral votes based on the national counts.
A suboptimal solution - that is still better than present day - would be for the states to award their votes proportionally based on their state counts.
One might argue that the disproportional power given to smaller states was intentional to offset tyranny by the majority, but my (from an outsider, obviously) understanding was that this was accomplished by giving states 2 votes in the senate, regardless of their population.
The senate is another can of worms. I don't think the original architects of it anticipated the vast population differences that would start to build over the years, or they'd have realized that they were substituting a tyranny of the majority for a tyranny of the minority. I just find it odd that a vote in Wyoming should hold the same weight as 68 votes in California, or a vote in Vermont should have the same weight as 46 votes in Texas. Solutions might be to reduce the power of the senate a bit, or award senators to states based on a more equitable formula where it's based on their population's standard deviation above or below the median.
Anyway, it's fun to analyse an electoral system that's almost as flawed as our own. On the balance of probabilities, I can envision the system sliding into an authoritarian dictatorship before I can see it ever being patched to make it more equitable. Just my $.02.
I am fascinated by urban decay. This was a shot I took when we were out for a walk yesterday.
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Date: 2020-11-30 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-01 01:39 pm (UTC)