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The R Word - Not unlike Jed Bartlett's on air gaffe about the intelligence of governor Richie, Obama's offensive remark the other night just seems a little too perfect....15 years ago
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10 comments:
This is so frustrating! Something has to be done to correct this terrible system. But, I admit, I have no good solution to offer...
I think that this is merely a flaw we must accept as a standard to our democratic system. If we truly wanted to determine the winner of an election, we could just take a random sampling of a population.
MCW: Um, because counting is imperfect, we should instead adopt random sampling, an even more imperfect method of determining all voters' wishes? What am I missing??
I hope this idea makes sense to all of you-
If perhaps there would be a way for one to vote for a candidate without those that count the ballots being able to know who they voted for. In other words, using a ballot with multiple ballot versions. That way there would be no bias in determining who the vote was cast for and the judge would only determine the "number" the voter was voting for. That would in turn be reinterpreted by the canvassing board and would count that number to the proper candidate. Just an idea...
well Cranky. Your argument is predicated on the assumption that random sampling is an even more imperfect method than counting. If anything that we've seen so far is clear is that Nate Silver does a hell of a lot better job than county election officials.
i will grant u it doesn't have the same sort of..um... democratic appeal.
"Nate Silver does a hell of a lot better job than county election officials." Really?
Let's say we miscount 1% of votes cast. I think that this a conservative estimate. But, let's say this for arguments sake.
Nate Silver predicted an Obama victory of 348.6 to McCain 189.4. The actual result was 365 to 173.
Now, if we look at the state of Indiana. There were roughly 2.6 million votes cast. Let's say we miscounted 26,000 of them. McCain might have won bringing the total electoral margin to 354 to 184.
Now let's talk about the Nebraska 2nd. Obama won by a mere 2,000 votes out of a total of 260,000, well within the 1% margin of error.
353 to 185.
Missouri was also in the margin of error.
Nate's prediction might have actually been the right call. We, of course, can not base anything though off of this speculation. Yet, do we need an accepted and expected margin of error in our voting process? Are we going to continue to blindly believe that every vote is actually counted correctly? Is there even a correct way to count votes?
I think that, if anything else, this little excersize in speculation has made it clear that those questions must be answered. Or else why not random sample?
I like the idea of a Vote Count Margin of Error (VCME) as a way to acknowledge this reality, and like the way you lay out the case.
So, let's say this: Nate predicts Franken wins by 27 (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/projection-franken-to-win-recount-by-27.html).
If Franken wins by exactly 27, we forthwith suspend all elections and turn it all over to Nate Silver. . . . . .
Nate Silver and a bi partisan oversight committee.
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