The Iowa Caucus, Pseudo-Events, and Hyperreality | Hacker News Reader

The Iowa Caucus, Pseudo-Events, and Hyperreality

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

48 pointslongdefeat20 comments

Can't say I fully got it. Probably because at this point I am tired of paying attention to train wreak American elections are. Why, why oh why are American elections ALWAYS screwed up in some way? How come every other rich country manage to run elections fine, but not the US? They can send a man to the moon, but they cannot run elections: Either ballot boxes go missing. The lines of voters go around the block, it closes before people can vote or the voting machines are broken, hacked, failed or whatever.

It is almost morbidly fascinating how there is some new way every election where things get bungled somehow.

The vast majority of electoral voting in the US works basically as intended. Most polling places don’t have long lines except perhaps right when they open because people lined up ahead of time. Most states have some sort of paper ballot that is machine counted to save time (which IS a legitimate concern in a general election with 130mm votes or so cast). Before yesterday every state has for many election cycles run primaries or caucuses without this sort of snafu.

I’m assuming you aren’t American based on your comment. You only read about the snafus because “everything went well yesterday in our city’s/state’s election” isn’t news for us. It’s normal.

I would also add in the complexity of US elections. Depending on the year you have multiple federal, state, and local positions. Add to that ballot initiatives and it’s not difficult to have a ballot that is both sides of an A2 sheet of paper.

Even with all that, I’ve never had to wait more than 30 minutes.

Also, while Election Day isn’t a federal holiday, ~40 states have a legal requirement that employers give employees time off to vote. (Not in the OP’s initial list, but something people generally bring up without knowing the facts on the ground)

I assume it goes fine in most states. That is not the point. The point is that you simply don't get these stories from other developed countries. While in the US there are stories about election irregularities almost every election.

I saw a documentary about Cory Booker running for Mayor in New Jersey. That was epic in how screwed up it was. I was quite shocked that elections could be so corrupt in a modern democracy.

> The vast majority of electoral voting in the US works basically as intended. Most polling places don’t have long lines except perhaps right when they open because people lined up ahead of time.

Areas with minorities seems to quite frequently have it. Voter suppression is done quite widely in the US judging by reports, statistics and observations.

And lets not forget machine politics. Listen to Richard Ojeda of West Virginia tell how corrupt the whole political process was there. I mean he got physically attacked because he was going up against the establishment.

Of course it does not mean every place in the US is like that. But the frequency of extreme cases points to larger underlying problems.

The problem IMHO is that Americans are so used to this and think it is like that everywhere so they don't see the problem. I have many American friends at home and many tell the same stories about how so many things from home got normalized that they did not realize how screwed up it was until they lived outside the US for an extended period. Unless you lived in different countries you cannot view your own country through an objective lens.

There were also "app problems" and late results in the 2016 Iowa Caucuses.

Linked from the article:

https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-low-tech-high-stakes-iowa-... https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/how-iowa-democrats-co...

True. And yet... I see news photos from various other countries where there are soldiers guarding the polling places with guns. In the US, the polling places are guarded by grandmothers.

I suppose I'm comparing the US to third-world countries, which is not a standard that the US should have trouble meeting. You're comparing it to first-world countries, and while the US should also be able to meet that standard, it seems to have trouble doing so...

I think the US is the only country in the world where you don't need ID to vote.

Banking? Need ID. Getting a job? Need ID. Doing anything with the government? Need ID. Driving? Need ID.

But voting? No way, we'll take your word for it because one party has convinced everyone that asking for ID would be racist.

I mean even if there were some conspiracy to make sure one group does not get ID, the solution is to get that group ID, not cripple them in society by leaving them ID-less but able to vote.

The US is such a weird place.

The largest factor in this continual chaos is that US national elections are actually 50 (plus territories and the military) separate elections, all run completely independently without any real national standards and with only state-level (or sometimes only county-level) funding.

> They can send a man to the moon, but they cannot run elections

Well, we could send people to the moon 50 years ago. Today, I doubt it.

> Why, why oh why are American elections ALWAYS screwed up in some way?

Because the people currently in power benefit from making it harder for people to vote.

> Because the people currently in power benefit from making it harder for people to vote.

Interestingly, this is usually an attack leveled at Republicans, but in this case the Republican caucus went off without a hitch and it was the Democrats that messed up.

I was surprised to see it mention this 1962 book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-e...

certainly you find many books in history circa the 1960s that take it for granted that American culture has been full of BS from the very beginning, but that book clearly dates before the surge in French Theory, TV News as we know it, ...

>Yes, he’s right, that assumption is not warranted. We don’t need to know immediately and the desire for immediacy is part of the problem, but that no longer matters. It hasn’t mattered for years. In the currently-existing media-political environment, waiting a day or a week is unthinkable.

This premise seems at least somewhat disagreeable. Let's say I live in New Hampshire and am equally partial to two candidates, and dislike the front-running candidate.

It's advantageous for me to know as soon as possible which of my two favorable candidates best competes against the front-runner, so I can focus my donations and support on them asap.

Am I missing the point?

Your example is coherent, but you don't make an argument about the magnitude of the advantage.

If we take the week between the Iowa mountains and the New Hampshire primary, donating 24 or 36 hours earlier is likely to be worth essentially nothing.

>Your example is coherent, but you don't make an argument about the magnitude of the advantage.

Admittedly there's no data that exists to support a large magnitude of advantage. Likewise though, the author has none either yet is making the claim that it "doesn't matter". It's purely theoretical.

It would be like saying that whoever wins the jump-ball at the start of a basketball game is irrelevant, because the other team gets the ball at half anyway. Yet strangely enough, we find it gives a 3.5% win rate advantage.

https://kenpom.com/blog/the-value-of-ben-gillery/

The passage you quoted reminds me of those pseudo-intellectuals who, when met with (say) a pothole on the street, launches a treatise on how modern society is addicted to speed, and how our lives could be enriched if we could just stop and admire our surroundings, instead of trying to drive from point A to B so goddamn fast.

I'll bet most of these people never had to bring their kids from kindergarten while buying groceries for a family.

The machine needs to be fed.

Multiple 24-hour news channels need to put something on the air to sell ads, as do the network news programs. To say nothing of print and the web.

Honestly its information pollution.

The information vacuum was pretty palpable this morning.

The programming was all set up assuming there would be new information for people to talk about. Guests were lined up. Alternate stories were shelved or delayed.

Then there was no new information. But they still had time to fill. Plus they had special coverage last night with no information to report.

I do not envy the reporters put in that position.

These pseudo-events are almost necessary in our first-past-the-post system, to build consensus among two wings and avoid the spoiler effect. With its air of legitimacy it creates a schelling point (or two) so that a bunch of strangers can cooperate in a very strange game. It doesn't really matter what schelling point you choose, just that you're able to choose the same one, and your expected payoff will be higher.

A weird article, but the title reminded me of this documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

I think everyone should watch it.

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