Not a single person answered the question, which is WHERE they should eat, not what.
You’re assuming that there isn’t a pizza store called “Pizza!” and a restaurant called this old shoe that serves shoes.
The electoral college is a weird vestige of an earlier time. Each state gets apportioned a vote equal to the number of senators and congressmen they get; so the least populous states get an outsized voice in appointing a President.
When the law to cap the size of the US house to 435 representatives was passed in the very early 1900s - the US population was only ~90m. If instead the size of the elected body was allowed to grow in line with population, the US would have something closer to ~1,600 representatives currently, and as a result the electoral college would be much more equitable.
Please tell me votes from certain states aren’t worth more than votes from other states in America…
Not in a straightforward manner, no. One vote is just one vote. Most states are winner takes all, so the simple majority winner of, say, California takes all the electoral votes in California. It just so happens that California has less electoral votes per capita than states like Wyoming.
Well the senate is composed of 2 legislators from each state, so technically and in practice smaller states can band together effectively and distort policy that a majority of the people would be for. Theres a strong argument that my vote in Maine carries more political weight than a vote in california when it comes to the senate. This has allowed the southern states to drag their feet on policy over the years, and caused a lot of questions about representation in the country. So moving down the line, our presidential elections use an electoral college where house seats (which are restricted and tied to the population + senate seats = EC votes) So when it comes to electing presidents a state like maine with 1M people is punching way above its representation weight compared to california. Most of the EC votes are winner takes all which is the reason why california votes blue and alabama votes red for the president. Its also the reason why Nebraska and maine split their votes to offer people fair represenation in their districts.
TLDR: Yes and its mathematically supported
Rhode Island
Even i forget they are a state sometime.
votes from certain states aren’t worth more than votes from other states in America
There you go. Though, for the record: votes from certain states are worth more than votes from other states in America.
This would only make since as an example of the Electoral College if you adding something to adjust for everyone’s theoretical impact on the meal.
If every voted but Liz was also paying a larger percentage of the bill than everyone else then it would make sense that her opinion outweighs everyone else.
We need the electoral college because without it the ignorant masses might elect an dangerously unqualified reactionary demagogue they saw on a reality TV show.
Thank goodness that will never happen
Well maybe it’d happen once. but certainly not twice. Right?
That sounds like the plot of Idiocracy.
That’d be insane if it actually happened. Could you imagine!?
Don’t worry, there are more than sufficient checks and balances in place to make sure that kind of situation could never occur!
Stop. This was one comment too far. . . we aren’t currently living idiocracy /s. I have chicken thighs from may. I’m safe
I almost missed the sarcasm lol. Woooosh
🤣
This makes the most sense as a “who to vote for” in the [private] primary systems we use to determine who to vote for in our very openly rigged two party system. We/the “two parties” purposely drag the parties to extremes by having their primaries in certain states and candidates are driven to court extremes and we pretend that’s good as many valid candidates are “weeded out” that way. (Again, it’s a private system, So even non-centrist candidates, famously Bernie, can just be ignored as the party chooses who they want)
Now do the US Senate.
Ed: Where should we eat? I say pizza.
Ann: Pizza!
Ty: Pizza!
Liz: Pizza!
Ed: Alright, pizza it is! Oh, right, I forgot we have to figure out what the voters will eat. I guess they can have this old shoe. Now, back to pizza!
Bravo!
The Senate was never designed to be proportionate to a state’s population. The House was.
It’s fine to be against the idea of the Senate, but you should at least make sure you understand why it was created in the first place. That is, to create a union of states where each one has a certain level of autonomy.
The Senate is meant to represent each state’s individual interests in a national legislature.
Sometimes the interests of a local municipality don’t perfectly align with the interests of a state writ large. Which is why we have two houses: one to represent each state, and one that’s proportionate to population and represents the districts within a state.
The real issue, in my opinion, is the Reapportionment Act of 1929 that put a hard cap on the number of members of the House of Representatives at 435 seats.
It was created because the founders didn’t trust democracy. Shay’s Rebellion had them nervous about too much democracy taking wealth from the ruling class.
To be fair if you had stolen a bunch of land you’d also be worried someone would eventually steal it back.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of bringing this up.
you should at least make sure you understand why it was created in the first place. That is, to create a union of states where each one has a certain level of autonomy.
The Senate is meant to represent each state’s individual interests in a national legislature.
…
The real issue, in my opinion, is the Reapportionment Act of 1929 that put a hard cap on the number of members of the House of Representatives at 435 seats.
IMO the real reason the Senate is broken is the 17th Amendment (having Senators be directly elected by popular vote instead of chosen by state legislatures). That’s the point when it ceased to be fit for its original purpose (representing the State as its own entity in a way materially different from the House, maximising separation of powers) and should’ve just been abolished entirely instead.
I agree with you that the House is broken by the Reapportionment Act because there are just too damn many constituents per legislator, but that issue is separate from what’s wrong with the Senate.
but that issue is separate from what’s wrong with the Senate.
I’m not sure that it is. We have a bicameral legislature, you can’t really separate them completely. Together they are “Congress”.
I think the Senate would be fine as it is if we actually had a proportionate House of Reps.
And maybe the Senate shouldn’t be the “upper house” as I think “The People’s House” (in this scenario, actually proportionate) should be considered more important.
But I think calling for the abolishment of the Senate entirely is misguided. I like the idea of a federation of states, each with a degree of autonomy. And given the nature of the US being a nation of immigrants (and it’s sheer size), I think it fits our culture very well.
The senate has too much veto power, see the entire Biden presidency
Dont forget 8 years of Obama. Thats when this trend really got started.
The senate was designed to represent capital over people.
If you want to see the US without the Senate, watch The Hunger Games. It’s called “Panem”.
12 numbered districts whose collective population is a minority of the total, controlled from afar by a single district comprising the majority. Whatever that distant, popular majority wants, it commands the minority districts to provide.
The solution to the inequities in Panem is a Senate with the power to veto the whims of the Capitol district.
Instead you let a minority control the majority
Veto powers should be limited to that which directly impacts each state materially, not simply everything including things happening afar
Instead you let a minority control the majority
Myth. The House vetos the minority from controlling the majority. That’s the purpose of the House.
Veto powers should be limited to that which directly impacts each state materially, not simply everything including things happening afar
If the majority wants to enact something without the consent of the Senate, they are free to enact it at the state level: For themselves, rather than imposed against a minority populace that would reject it for themselves.
If that is not a viable option, then the federal government has too much power and needs to be reined in.
The purpose is not what it is doing anymore.
if the majority wants to enact something without the consent of the Senate, they are free to enact it at the state level
Then the veto should not apply to (more than a representative percent of) federal budgets. A shared project which states want to coordinate should not be vetoable by non-participants.
If that can still be vetoed then the vetoing states have too much power and must be reined in
A shared project which states want to coordinate should not be vetoable by non-participants.
Rejected. Individual states are free to establish contractual arrangements with eachother. They can create and fund joint commissions for such shared projects.
Where these “shared projects” are conducted and controlled by the federal government, there are no “non-participant” states. As participants in the federal government, these states have an interest in the budget of that government.
Lmao you do know there are many other forms of democratic government in the world that aren’t the USA right? You don’t have to resort to ham-fisted YA fantasy.
Also I need to confirm with you: you know the hunger games is fiction and not real life, right?
Fiction widens the contrast, bringing the problem into stark relief. It makes the pattern easily recognizable, so more subtle intrusions don’t go overlooked.
There are, indeed, many other forms of democratic government in the world that aren’t the USA. Some better. Many far, far worse. The best have strong factors differentiating them from simplistic, populist governance.
Many are worse? My guy, we’ve literally devolved into a fascist dictatorship. How much worse can it get?
The Senate made more sense when the US was less centralized and different states were like different countries and there weren’t a bunch of states populated by 100 cows for every person.
In the modern era, it’s a simple tyranny of the minority. Wyoming has like 500,000 people, but those 500,000 have the exact same power in the more important chamber of Congress than do the 40,000,000 of California or the 30,000,000 of Texas.
If we take it to an extreme, imagine if there were only two states in the Union. Hawaii and the entire Continental US. Would we share equal power with Hawaii? Of course not.
If we’re really married to the idea, there should be a requirement for roughly equal population by state, and let’s be honest, we have that with House districts and they gerrymander it. (We should also move to proportional representation to fix that.)
We should also move to proportional representation to fix that.
Nailed it. Gerrymandering is impossible to fix so long as we rely on geographical districts. In a state with 20 districts, 45% voting Democrat, 45% voting Republican, 5% voting Pirate, and 5% voting Ninja, we should have a congressional delegation of 1 Ninja, 1 Pirate, 9 Democrats, and 9 Republicans. Instead, we get 12 Republicans, 8 Democrats, no ninjas, and no pirates.
Nah, the senate represents the state. That’s the problem, always has been.
Let’s let the class decide what type of pizza to get.
Counting the votes, pepperoni wins.
Counting the votes at each table, then each counting the winner per table, pepperoni wins.
Arbitrarily dividing each table into “groups” of students, then adding those groups up to determine which choice won the table, then counting the tables… anchovies wins!
My second grade teacher did the Jane Elliot experiment in our class. I was in tears because I couldn’t talk to my best friend anymore.
Like, I don’t think I’ve ever been that upset in my life. This was like 35 years ago.
A shitty thing for a teacher to do to a second grader…but damn if it didn’t stick with me.
So, too, would something like this.
…same teacher, during the Great American Smokeout, called down to the office and told them we were going to do an “experiment” in the class. She lit up a cigarette in front of all of us, took a few deep drags, then put the cigarette on some plastic + foam model of the lungs, to show them getting soaked with tar.
The 90s were a wild time. Teachers smoking cigarettes and in class in front of 7yo’s and performing social experiments on casual racism. And people wonder why millennials need so much more mental healthcare than previous generations. We’re the last ones who sat on the rug, Indian Style.
A better analogy
Counting the votes- pepperoni wins.
There’s a lot of vegetarians but they don’t make up an absolute majority so their needs are ignored.Counting the votes at each table- cheese wins, because even the two huge tables want pepperoni, many of the smaller tables are mostly vegetarians who don’t eat pepperoni.
This is why the electoral college is still relevant- to ensure that urban voters don’t bowl over suburban or rural voters who deserve to have a say in government too.Dividing each table into groups then adding them together- that’s a scam by a pepperoni fan because they will ensure every group has 5 known pepperoni lovers and 2 others.
Okay, but cheese does not win in this system because pepperoni lovers can tolerate it while vegetarians cannot eat pepperoni. Nor does it win because minorities are getting more representation in general. Cheese wins here purely because you’ve arranged the voting system to give more power to the ones you wanted to win.
Dividing each table into groups then adding them together- that’s a scam by a pepperoni fan because they will ensure every group has 5 known pepperoni lovers and 2 others.
If it’s possible to ensure such majority of pepperoni lovers in every single group, then pepperoni lovers have an overall majority. They don’t need scams to win. In fact - you’d need scams to prevent them from winning.
Cheese wins because we don’t ignore small tables, as a simple majority system would do. I think small tables deserve to have a voice for their needs, even if there are fewer of them. It’s not right to ignore an entire group of tables simply because fewer people sit at them.
If it’s possible to ensure such majority of pepperoni lovers in every single group, then pepperoni lovers have an overall majority. They don’t need scams to win. In fact - you’d need scams to prevent them from winning.
Not necessarily.
Let’s say you have 100 people. 60 want cheese, 40 want pepperoni.
You need to split this 100 people into 6 tables, each table will vote and submit their overall request. Whichever kind of pizza most of the tables request gets ordered.
You assign seating as follows:
Table 1- 10 pepperoni, 6 cheese
Table 2- 10 pepperoni, 7 cheese
Table 3- 10 pepperoni, 6 cheese
Table 4- 10 pepperoni, 7 cheese
Table 5- 17 cheese, no pepperoni
Table 6- 17 cheese, no pepperoniThere we go. I’ve just ‘fairly, evenly’ divided 100 people into 6 tables of 16-17 people each.
And thus with my ‘simple and unimportant’ job of assigning table seating, I’ve guaranteed that pepperoni will be ordered even though a majority of the people want cheese. Tables 1-4 will vote and pepperoni will win, tables 5-6 will unanimously agree on cheese, and when we ask the tables what they want 4 out of 6 tables will vote pepperoni. And thus the minority wins because the table seating was a scam.
If the tables were assigned randomly, or if a computer grouped the tables by similar interest, age, etc, we’d get something more like a fair vote.
Cheese wins because we don’t ignore small tables, as a simple majority system would do
Why do small tables deserve this special protection from being ignored? No other minority group is getting such protection. Minority races are ignored. Minority cultures are ignored. Minorities with special dietary needs - like vegetarians, the very minority you have used to justify inflating the voting power of the small tables - are ignored. What’s so special about being seated in a smaller table that warrants silencing the majority just so that you - a minority - won’t be ignored?
And yes, I understand that this is just an allegory, and in real life there can be reason to give this protection to small states, reasons that are not reflected when we think of them as tables. But please remember that the real reason in real life was to allow slavery states to utilize their slaves’ voting powers without actually allowing them to vote.
Not necessarily.
[…]
Note that I said “in every single group”, and I said you because you said “will ensure every group”.
I should have emphasized it…
If the tables were assigned randomly, or if a computer grouped the tables by similar interest, age, etc, we’d get something more like a fair vote.
Another way to “get something more like a fair vote” is to count the votes by person and not by table. Actually, this is not just “something more like” a fair vote - it’s the very idea (as in “Plato’s Theory of Ideas”) of a fair vote. This what we compare any drawing of district lines to determine how fair it is.
Great response. This is the sort of intelligent conversation Reddit used to have and I love it.
Why do small tables deserve this special protection from being ignored?
Because the office is made up of both introverts and extroverts, and both make major contributions to the company. Both ways of life should have a voice, ignoring either one in favor of the other harms the whole company.
Quantity wise there’s more extroverted boisterous sales reps and middle managers (who sit at large tables) than there are introverted, socially awkward product engineers and IT people (who sit at small tables), but without those engineers and IT the company has no product to sell nor access to email. And without the sales people and their managers, the product is being developed but nobody will buy it. Both groups rely on each other, therefore both groups should have a roughly equal seat at the table.
That analogy holds up pretty well to the real world IMHO- without rural people we have no farms, no crops, no food, and (back before we sent it all to China to increase shareholder value) no manufacturing. Should we tell those who feed our nation that their voice doesn’t matter because there’s fewer of them spread out over a larger area?
No, I believe both ways of life- rural and urban- both make major contributions to society and to our nation. Ignoring either one in favor of the other harms us all.
And besides, there’s the old ‘do un to others’-- if the total rural population was greater than the urban population, would you want them imposing rules that make good sense out in the middle of Nebraska on a major city? Of course not. The reverse is also true- policies that make sense in cities often don’t work in the countryside.
A perfect example here is guns. In a major city with police on every block and a drug problem, you might not want people walking around openly carrying pistols and rifles. At the same time in a rural area it might be extremely unwise to go for a hike without an readily accessible high caliber weapon, as the woods are full of bears and other predators that might consider a human a tasty snack and consider a few 9mm rounds motivation to eat quickly rather than any sort of real threat. Two different areas, different needs, neither one should get to impose policy on the other IMHO.
The beauty of the Constitution is how it formed as a compromise of interests. Yes, slave states were pushing for extra representation, but so were small states. And the result was a compromise of interests.
Of course we dun fucked it up. The problem isn’t the strategy, the problem is how we execute it today: (from your link)Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68, published on March 12, 1788, laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone, for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election. Hamilton explained that the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint “the great body of the people” in their selection.
I don’t think the Framers imagined, or would have wanted, anything like the two-party duopoly we have today. The reality is we have a party-run legislature, a party-run executive, and a permanent body (RNC / DNC) that ARE influenced by all kinds of interests, foreign and domestic.
Because those parties have become corrupt, and it’s essentially impossible to get elected without them, the corruption is spread nationwide.
Another way to “get something more like a fair vote” is to count the votes by person and not by table. Actually, this is not just “something more like” a fair vote - it’s the very idea (as in “Plato’s Theory of Ideas”) of a fair vote. This what we compare any drawing of district lines to determine how fair it is.
Going to the pizza analogy- let’s say each table puts forward one representative to serve on the Lunch Committee, which decides on the menu and food vendor selection. This involves a lot of minor decisions, like it doesn’t make sense to poll the entire company about which vendor should operate the cafeteria; it makes more sense to have a smaller committee that will review contract proposals and stand up for the needs of their table in vendor selection and menu creation.
However, ‘tyranny of the majority’ is a thing. Majority rule only works when something protects the legitimate interest of the minority. For example let’s say the company is in Texas- you’ve got 98 people who love BBQ, one person who can’t eat pork for religious reasons and one vegetarian. If you don’t force their needs to be considered, lunch will be pulled pork every day and those two get disenfranchised.
Or do you suggest we just poll all 100 people ‘what do you want for lunch’ and go with the result of ‘pulled pork every day’?
Because the office is made up of both introverts and extroverts, and both make major contributions to the company. Both ways of life should have a voice, ignoring either one in favor of the other harms the whole company.
- I can understand why you’d want to give extra representation to minorities with special dietary requirements, but not how said people find themselves in the smaller tables.
- I can understand how introverts find themselves in the smaller tables, but not why you’d want to give them extra representation when it comes to picking the pizza.
That is, of course, assuming we are still using the same analogy. If the analogy changes to “running the company” - then companies are not democracies. All departments are heard, but the CEO has the final saying. Voting does happens higher up, at the board, but there the representation is based on shares, which is supposed to represent their investment in the company. Under capitalism, that is - no one here on Lemmy is going to agree that these shares represent any kind of contribution whatsoever. But at the very least it’s a principled way (even if you disagree with the principles) to distribute the voting power.
And besides, there’s the old ‘do un to others’-- if the total rural population was greater than the urban population, would you want them imposing rules that make good sense out in the middle of Nebraska on a major city? Of course not. The reverse is also true- policies that make sense in cities often don’t work in the countryside.
This is not an argument in favor of letting the minority decide on the majority. This is an argument in favor of shifting power to local government. In the analogy - letting the people of each table decide what they want to order for their table. Sheer madness.
Going to the pizza analogy- let’s say each table puts forward one representative to serve on the Lunch Committee, which decides on the menu and food vendor selection. This involves a lot of minor decisions, like it doesn’t make sense to poll the entire company about which vendor should operate the cafeteria; it makes more sense to have a smaller committee that will review contract proposals and stand up for the needs of their table in vendor selection and menu creation.
But there are not “lots of minor decisions”. The Electoral College makes one major decision - who will be the President. As simple as a ballot can get.
But even if you did need a committee - there are enough method to elect a committee that’ll proportionally represent the populace. The methods that yield better representation require a more complex ballot (because they involve ranked voting), but even the simpler ones are better than intentionally skewing the representation.
However, ‘tyranny of the majority’ is a thing. Majority rule only works when something protects the legitimate interest of the minority. For example let’s say the company is in Texas- you’ve got 98 people who love BBQ, one person who can’t eat pork for religious reasons and one vegetarian. If you don’t force their needs to be considered, lunch will be pulled pork every day and those two get disenfranchised.
The Electoral College is replacing a tyranny of the majority with good old tyranny of a minority - the minority who got the extra representation. Although I’d argue that the real power is held by the people who decide which minority gets extra representation.
There are much better ways to deal with the tyranny of the majority - ways that don’t require picking a minority to be the tyrant instead, such as:
- Institutions that protect humans and civil rights - e.g. courts.
- Shifting power to local governance, allowing said minorities to decide on themselves.
- The right to secede - if the minority is abused, they can start their own country.
No method is perfect, and some of them raise farther question - e.g. how do you prevent the courts from becoming the new tyranny? But at least these are general fundamental questions, and not “which minority we want to be the upper caste that decides everything?” (a question that’s always answered according to the current balance of power)
Vegetarians need more campaign skills. Really gotta convince the pepperoni people that their meat is played out.
Like, really, what’s so great about meat on a pizza? Especially pepperoni. Pepperoni is so played out. I could see like, maybe Buffalo chicken, or barbecue chicken, or sausage + peppers…but pepperoni? We gonna go to Starbucks after and get a PSL?
Not to mention, we had pepperoni last time and we all got sick, remember? We were stuck at home for like a whole year.
Anyways as a vegetarian, my vote would be for the Mediterranean pizza anyways. With the feta, spinach, kamalata olives…this place even puts on a balsamic drizzle. Way more interesting and flavorful.
That’s a good pizza. Variety of flavors. Pretends to be healthy and exotic. Not available at Chuck E. Cheese.
See, this way, not only did I pitch the preferred pizza, I also introduced additional contenders on the other side of the aisle. This will hopefully serve to split the vote enough to force a run-off. It’d probably still be between Pepperoni and Mediterranean, but now, hopefully enough of the Never-Peppers will realize that Pepperoni is the basic-bitch of meats, and if they can’t have buffalo then why even have meat?
Unfortunately, the vegan is like “Fuck all ya’ll, all of these options are supporting animal genocide, how could I vote for any of these?” and abstains, and manages to convince another Never-Pepper stand alone choosing salads for everyone. And then the rest of us all end up with Pepperoni. Again. And everyone gets heartburn, while me and the vegan starve. And the pigs still get slaughtered, and the cows still get raped, and we end up supporting the animal genocide even more. And the following year, the salad has cyclospora.
Happens all the damn time.
Isn’t the House and the Senate already skewed in rural areas favor? Do urban voters really need to be kneecapped all across government?
That’s the whole point of the House-Senate split- that the more populous urban areas get more representation in the House, but proportionately less in the Senate.
That said- gerrymandering has fucked that up hardcore. The solution though is to stop gerrymandering, not to give urban areas universal control over the Presidency.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
If you make the Presidency a popular vote only, then candidates will campaign in every major city and won’t give a fuck what rural areas want.
You may not be wrong but with the current system candidates pretty much only campaign in swing states. If you’re in a reliably red or blue state you likely arent getting a visit from a candidate.
Okay you hit on a much bigger issue- swing states. IMHO the fact that ‘swing states’ are a thing is a problem that we should fix. Why isn’t EVERY state a ‘swing state’? Why is the voting outcome of certain states essentially prewritten? THAT is a problem. EVERY state should be in play.
Some of that blame rests with lazy voters who will blindly vote red or blue without consideration of the actual candidates.
A bigger blame though rests much deeper in our electoral system. It’s not the electoral college that takes blame, it’s first-past-the-post voting (IE simple majority).
FPTP voting heavily rewards coalitions who rally behind a single candidate. So for example if fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarians all say ‘let’s elect the Republican’ while liberals (for example, hypothetical) split up into the Democrats and the Greens, the Republican will win EVERY time.
This is a problem because it means more often than not you’re not voting FOR someone, you’re voting AGAINST someone.
Recent DNC nominees have been a perfect example. Look at Kamala- she was polling at 2% before she got nominated, but she still got a huge % of the vote simply because she wasn’t Trump. DNC could have put forth a keg of stale beer as their candidate and it’d have gotten 30% of the popular vote because those people were voting AGAINST Trump, not FOR the DNC. And THAT’s a problem, because it’s forcing people to vote for someone they don’t actually support.
The solution is dump FPTP and switch to something like Instant Runoff Voting. In most suggested flavors of IRV, you don’t have a primary- you have a large ballot with everyone who gained enough signatures to be on the ballot. Ideally there’d be 8-10 candidates. You then vote for as many or as few as you like in order of priority. Thus you can vote FOR the guy you actually want, without losing your vote AGAINST the guy you don’t want.
To count the votes, all the #1 votes are added up and you see if a candiate got 50%. If none did, you find whoever voted for the least popular candidate, tear off all their #1 votes and reallocate their ballots based on the #2 votes. Again you look for 50%. Repeat as many times as necessary until you have a winner.
The senate sure is. The house get reapportioned after every census to stay more or less proportional to population differences.
There are better ways to achieve local representation while still respecting the nationwide percentages. See Germany’s federal voting system for example.
I bet Liz from Wyoming votes to eat the shoe at like 90% of meals, but argues that she’s totally different from all the other shoe eaters.
Hold on now, Liz only wants everyone else to eat shoes - she still wants pizza for herself! That’s what she’s gonna get, right? …Right?
She already has pizza before they even asked the question.
Land doesn’t vote. People do. End the Electoral College now.
Landowners vote though. Giving the plebs the right to vote was a mistake.
You forgot the ‘/s’
I thought it was obvious enough to not need it, ahh well.
Ah! In these times? There are people who ACTUALLY think weird things…
Where
pizza
shoe
Me, off-camera: these people are idiots
“I’m so tired, I could eat a horse”
I think you mean ‘at horse’
This has been the electoral college
Could a voting bloc of Democrats move to Wyoming pretending to be Republican and then swing the vote before the RNC has any idea what happened. If they are so sparsely populated it can’t be that hard to outvoted them.
Sure but who the fuck wants to move to Wyoming?
Well almost 200k people would need to move there. Making Puerto Rico a state would probably be easier.
TIL pizza is a where.
Implies the restaurant names were Pizza, and This Old Shoe.
as a senator she would have alot more voting power in congress.
Yes the Electoral college sucks but popular vote isn’t a utopia either without some adjustments.
CGP Grey’s “The Voting System That’s Actually Too Good for Politicians to Allow” -
I feel like rank choice is the way
Ranked choice. Rank choice would just smell bad.
There’s a part of that I don’t quite understand. So it said white tiger got 65% of the vote. It doesn’t need 65 it only needs 33 so anything over 33 was taken off and their second choice got picked instead. But how is that done exactly? I mean did all 65% that voted for white tiger have the exact same ballot? Every last one of them picked the other tiger second? What if some of them hadn’t? What if some of them picked the Silverback Gorilla second? How do we choose which of those 65% go to another person? That’s the part I don’t understand.
If I understand correctly, after each round, at least one name will be removed from everyone’s ballot. If anyone meets the threshold, their name will be removed (and they win a seat). If nobody reaches the threshold, the lowest name will be removed. Either way, after the name is removed, every ballot will be counted again in the next round.
That voting system is indeed too idealistic. The ideal is that if 65% of a voting population votes for the more popular candidate of Party A, everything above the cut off would go to the next highest candidate that belongs to Party. That way 65% of the voting population is ideally represented by the same political Party.
There are a bunch of problems with this of course. What if the 2nd candidate is under investigation for eating babies? Or who is to guarantee Candidate 2 will make the same policy decisions? No one would ever vote opposite of their party’s position! \s
I believe Australia had an incident were almost no one voted for a politician but they still won. Vaguely remember that was ~20 years ago and a lot of people were not happy with that.
This is a problem with all party-based systems. Political party should not be part of election logic it’s objectively awful every single time it’s done.
So if I understand you what you’re saying is they don’t actually look at those ballots. They just assume anyone who voted for the white tiger in this scenario would automatically have picked the other tiger second? So they just ignore the rankings on the ballots entirely?
Yeah that sounds nuts. What would even be the point of having ranked choices then?
i went back and rewatched the video. It sounds like Grey implied everyone voted White tiger as 1st pick and the other tiger as 2nd. No explanation of how that would work tho.
The system in the video is used in my state. It’s implicit that single transferrable vote is used with ranked choice. Else how could we tell who is the voter’s next preference?
That was possibly Ricky Muir in 2013 from the Australian Motor Enthusiasts Party. He was running in Victoria for the nathional Senate. He got 0.5% of the primary vote in but because of a feature called Group Voting Ticket a lot of minor parties sharing preferences so he kept getting preferences until he reach quota. GVT is no longer used in the national Senate
EDIT: I’m describing single winner elections.
Every round, you count one new step of rankings, and eliminate the lowest candidate.
Round one starts with simply counting all 1st rank votes first.
Everybody’s vote counts once, to one person. It goes to that voter’s highest still-in-the-running candidate.
In the first round, if some candidate already gets 50%, they win directly. If not, you eliminate the person with the lowest votes.
(some variants pre-filter all candidates with too few total votes to have a chance, especially people who didn’t even get ranked by most, or only low ranks)What happens now is that people whose 1st vote was for the eliminated person gets redirected to their next highest person still in the running for the next round on the ballot which they cast. So in round 2 that’s your rank 2 on your ballot. Each remaining candidate now has their 1st rank votes from round 1 plus also their 2nd rank votes from all ballots which had been cast to the now-eliminated candidate.
Note that in each consecutive round, all votes which was already counted to a person who still in the running in that round remains untouched. So all who picked a 1st which is still in are still getting counted to that person. You don’t look at your 2nd rank yet if your 1st is still active.
So now in round 2, after the redirection to second choices, if that puts somebody over 50% they win. If not you eliminate yet another person, the lowest one every time. Every vote counted to that eliminated person, either 1st’s or 2nd’s, now gets redistributed again to that voter’s next highest person still in the running on their cast ballot - if your 1st is eliminated now, it goes to the 2nd if that person still is in, if not it goes to your 3rd. If you were already on your 2nd and that person is eliminated, it also goes to your 3rd. If somebody’s 1st and 2nd are eliminated AND they don’t have a 3rd, their vote gets ignored in the rest of the tallying process.
In round 3 and on you just keep going, until somebody gets 50% or all but one is eliminated. You may force a revote in many places if that person is beneath some threshold.
Please rewatch the video from about 4:40. Your comment doesn’t address the “White Tiger”, 65% issue.
Ideally, white tiger, purple tiger, and green gorrilla would be elected, as this is the outcome most proportional to voter intent.
But under the logic you describe, purple tiger, with the least votes, would be eliminated after the first round. 2/3 of the populace have indicated they want tigers, but we’re about to empanel one tiger and two gorillas.
In actuality, we are not removing the least popular candidate in each round. We are only removing the least popular option if the most popular option does not exceed the mathematical threshold for locking a seat. If they do exceed that threshold, we are removing the top candidate - not the bottom - before we count the next round. The top candidate gets the first seat, and the remaining candidates are competing for the second and third seats.
I was describing single winner, you’re describing multiple winner
Those are implemented very differently.
You can guarantee that popular choices gets represented (assuming enough seats for all popular choices) if you do pre-filtering rounds where you give weighted scoring to candidates based on their accumulated ballot rank positions. This would quickly sort out many last rank choices and few-first choices. Then you can proceed with the rounds of eliminations.
Practically speaking, perfect fairness is mathematically proven impossible. You have to make tradeoffs and pick a system that will likely get a good enough result
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260801042812.htm
No I’m sorry I don’t think you watched the same video I did or you didn’t read my comment very carefully. You’re basically describing ranked choice voting which is very simple yeah. That was not my question.
