Why are close elections so common? | Hacker News Reader

Why are close elections so common?

scientificamerican.com

30 pointsbeardyw69 comments

It's not a democratic process. The gerrymandering, electoral college, all of it is trash.

Not to mention the core parts of the system such as identification are completely outdated.

We should have had ranked choice voting years ago at the very least.

The electoral college is one of the ways we protect the rights of the minority. Without it, we’d be a democracy and that wouldn’t be good.

What stops the electrical college from giving the majority an advantage?

AC does that, without the electrical college it would just be DC all the time with ever increasing polarisation.

Only the rights of the minority which live in less populated states and thereby the rights of the others are subdued. So those people don't deserve equal weight to their votes?

The EC was never supposed to represent the minority. It only does today because the number of congressional representatives is unfairly capped.

I don't know where you're getting this idea since one of the main goals of the Electoral College was to protect smaller states from more populous states dominating presidential elections.

Boudreaux, Paul. "The Electoral College and Its Meager Federalism." 88 Marq. L. Rev. 195 (2004). Available at Marquette Law Review.

It was enacted so that the minority of slave owners could get their 3/5 slave representation without letting their slaves vote.

I personally prefer approval voting over rank choiced voting. Simpler and gets most of the way there. Also, ranked choice voting is incompatible with the electoral college. As much as I despise the electoral college, a constitutional amendment to correct it is seemingly impossible. Not sure how ranked choice voting would work with an interstate compact though.

Same here. Way more people will understand how approval voting works when compared to rank choice. Not to mention, it incentives candidates to behave with more tact, rather than be so adversarial. You see this in how approval voting elections have less adversarial, negative ads.

Also because ranked choice has multiple rounds, it allows for splitting the vote in unexpected ways. This happened recently in France (I think) where the majority would have approved of either of two candidates, but the third was the one that won because of how the second choices were split after the first round. That can't happen with approval voting.

Also, with approval, there's an additional much more hidden advantage: There's no limit to how many you can vote for, so you can vote for your ideal candidate and an acceptable moderate without feeling like you're throwing away your vote. It makes it more likely for moderates and third parties to win over the more extreme candidates.

People always complain about those structural things but don't actually want to exercise the immense power they have right now: voting in primary elections. Primaries have abysmal turnout rates, and given the geographic self-sorting and gerrymandering, serve as the de facto election in most places. Politicians know their real constiuencies are the 10% of people who turn out in primaries. Those are the folks they're afraid of. Everyone else is ceding that power by not participating.

In a lot of states, primaries require registration/party membership to participate in. Effectively more gatekeeping. Additionally, the two parties have no interest in breaking the two party power struggle.

To the best of my knowledge, party registration in closed primary states is just an additional question on the voter registration form. It's not exactly an onerous cost unless you're someone who regularly switches which party's primary you want to vote in.

That said, even in open primary states, primary election participation is low outside of presidential contests. I served as a poll worker once for a US House/Senate primary, and my precinct got about 7% turnout, and I'm in an open-primary same-day-registration state.

More than that, though I agree with everything you're saying, is nobody even considers congresspeople in these discussions. Everyone focuses on the president and how they appoint the judicial, congress is where everything (read: nothing) happens.

Sometimes they just annoint a candidate without having a primary at all.

No way! Something like that would only happen in a third world country! /s

In terms of services the government provides, overall quality of life, etc, I'm not sure how much/if the US is ahead of, say, Botswana. I know that we're basically the wealthiest of the unhealthy (excluding tiny oil states like Bahrain), and it wouldn't shock me if you could describe the US as the wealthiest country in the world with a third world standard of living, especially as the lines between first and third world get blurry.

I don't have the data or time offhand, but if you're interested, have a look at ourworldindata.org; they probably have many relevant things.

Oh my, I did truly laugh out loud - you're not sure about the difference in overall quality of life between the US and Botswana. Thank you for this.

From Wikipedia's entry on George Santos:

"Santos ran as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 3rd congressional district, against Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi, launching his campaign in November 2019.[24] Normally, the Nassau County Republican Committee, known for the tight control that its leadership exercises over often competitive races for its nominations, would have discouraged an unknown candidate with such minimal experience. However, Suozzi was expected to win the race easily, and no other candidates had put their names forward."

If you otherwise meet the requirements for the seat--citizen (usually), resident , not a felon--you too can find a ballot line for a contest a party expects to lose.

I should add that I have no idea whether Santos actually was on the primary ballots.

They could just choose blanket primaries, like California has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary After the blanket primary, the final election is between the top-two, regardless of their party affiliation.

The effect in California seems to have been to make the state even bluer, but arguably that's because rather than being forced to choose between Republican and Democratic standard bearers, the system returns some advantage to more moderate candidates, just within the field of Democrats (increasingly many of whom were once registered as Republicans). Unless you want to run on stereotypical Republican issues (abortion, religion, etc), your best bet strategically where the electorate is already majority Democratic is to run as a Democrat, regardless of your policies, which is not an option where candidates have to worry about being "primaried".

Ranked-choice is even better, of course, but I think you can see a similar dynamic wrt the candidate pool shifting Democratic.

I'd argue Alaska's system is even better. They have a top-4 jungle primary. Everyone focuses on the ranked-choice voting general election they have that follows, but I think letting 4 candidates advance out of the primary is an improvement because it weakens the primary electorate's power to eliminate candidates early. And as mentioned, the primary electorate is tiny and probably not representative of the population as a whole.

People are - but then they run into the same corruption that has warped general elections [1]. They also run into the issue that primary elections in the US are arranged by the political parties which are also part of the corruption.

The problem is our electoral system is a sham. Not just the mechanics (FPTP aka plurality voting is one of the worst systems) but the concept of "money=speech" which is really "money>speech". The 2 party system actively disenfranchises 30-50% of the electorate. The electoral college narrows the Presidential election to a half-dozen states. Gerrymandering warps whose votes actually matters. The list goes on and on. And most of these problems are present in primaries as well.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2024/05/03/portland-aipac-susheela-...

I 100% agree. It’s always disheartening to see how different the spread is between the popular vote and electoral vote.

It’s such a sham and we should move to ranked choice voting, but sadly I don’t think it’ll ever happen with the current political layout.

> We should have had ranked choice voting years ago at the very least.

If we could somehow "fix" voting (in many or all cases this is a constitutional modification, no simple task), why would we even keep voting at all? Voting's just bad. The things that you and everyone else like about democracy, ironically, have nothing to do with voting. You like the idea that any small child, boy or girl, can grow up to become president. That there is no ruling caste, and so on. That we have peaceful transitions of power from one administration to the next. That there is some sort of time limit on how long one can hold office.

All these things are achievable in a superior system: sortition. Everyone who qualifies (35 and up, no a felon, natural born citizen) has an equal chance at becoming president (similar for other offices). We do 20 or 30 drawings so that if anyone rejects, we go on to the next.

Trying to fix voting when the fundamental flaw with it is that all of us, to the last, is simply not intelligent enough to cast a vote wisely, can't be fix with vote diddling and runoffs and ranked choices and whatnot. The defective portion of the mechanism's still there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Sortition also helps with the whole "those who crave power should be the furthest from it".

In the US system, I'd be in favor of just having the House of Representatives by done via a sortition process. I have a hard time imagining the Senate and President being done that way... but maybe it actually wouldn't be any worse than the status quo!

This would ruin the political parties. The only way they survive is that any rep or senator who says "screw you, I'm in office now and you can't make me do anything" finds that the party withdraws campaign support next go round.

With no one (hardly ever) getting a second term in office, without there being campaign money, parties die. Maybe the polarization dies too.

Oh, and no need for term limits anymore. Sort of baked in, without needing to be explicit.

I'm undecided on whether we'd get more ijit populism or less.

Quite honestly, I think senators should be picked by the states... the 17th was a mistake. It made a bicameral Congress essentially unicameral.

i would like a better voting system in the US.

but e.g. Australia has a great voting system (on all levels from the voting rules to the election day administration), yet they still seem to have fairly screwed up partisan politics.

i think it might improve things but wouldn't help make politics fundamentally better.

A more democratic process doesn't in any way guarantee better government. I guess we all ideologically believe that, on balance, over the log run, democracy tends to produce better outcomes than the alternatives, but it's very noisy. Sometimes (not too infrequently, in fact) the people want the screwed up partisan politics.

Yeah.

Honestly, while I 100% agree that the electoral college and gerrymandering are trash, I feel people do use them as mechanism to avoid dealing with the fact that someone like Trump is just genuinely really popular. Next Tuesday he has a decent shot of being the choice of more than 50% of voting Americans. Ultimately any fair system would still give him the presidency in this case.

This is largely due to the media environment (Murdoch) being full of disception. Also, many Australians are politically unengaged. Even the highly educated ones. I have friends and family who are engineers (like myself), lawyers, medical professionals and don't even read the news, have no interest in politics. It's a form of parochialism. The attitude is "so long as I'm doing fine, why do I need to pay attention". I find it very depressing.

That would have no impact on elections being close. There'd still be a marginal voter and the candidates would still vie for their vote. The reason for tight margins is because modern polling and statistical techniques are both so good. It is easy for people to figure out when they are losing and change their tactics. Changing the voting system doesn't alter that dynamic.

We don’t even need to ditch the electoral college, but "just" get the states to more proportionately assign their electors, as Nebraska and Maine have done. But good luck with that, too. Can you imagine trying to convince, for example, California to proportionally allocate their 54 votes in this political climate and give Trump 40%?

If everyone else (and specifically Texas) went proportional, then why not. Until then, CA changing the votes would be a massive give-away to Republicans.

BTW, people are overlooking that Nebraska doesn't allocate proportionally, they allocate the votes according to the outcome of each congressional district, which are probably gerrymandered. The overall winner gets the 2 votes for the senate seats.

You'd probably need a critical mass of states to agree to do it at the same time; as you say it would ~never make sense for a state to be the _first_ (or, well, first big state) to do this.

TFA is about elections (and also binary referenda) generally, not anything to do with the USA.

No, the electoral college seems to be mostly OK to me since without it the elections would be forever determined by a few densely populated coastal cities - which is also where the politicos would turn all their attention to. The rest of the USA would be treated as those districts in those Hunger Games books, as regions from where the stuff you eat and the stuff you build stuff with comes from but otherwise uninteresting and unimportant.

Ranked Choice is also a bad idea because it is too complicated, just do what many sane countries do to great effect: paper ballots, filled in with a pencil, deposited in a ballot box under the eyes of a staff member. One ballot per person, mail-in voting restricted to those who absolutely need it. Voter ID for everyone, no exceptions. Early voting is mostly OK as long as the ballot boxes are kept under watch ALL THE TIME, no exception.

After the polls close the ballots are hand-counted in the polling locations, then sent off for an automatic machine recount. Mail-in votes are counted beforehand and the results of that count are made available when the last polling booth closes - this is important because 'late mail-in votes' can be used to 'fill in the gaps' which is not what should be happening in free and fair elections. Provisional results will be available on the same day as the elections are held, those provisional results will become final after all results are in and the machine re-count is finished. The only technology needed is a scanner and a tabulator, Herman Hollerhith [1] could have supplied these.

So: paper ballots, hand counted, verified through machine counting. Voter ID like all civilised countries use, no exceptions. Mail-in voting only for those who absolutely need it. Early voting on polling locations OK but the ballot boxes should be guarded 24/7 in an open and verifiable manner, no exceptions allowed. Results available on election day.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/money/Herman-Hollerith

Take a look at the map of campaign stops for the Trump and Harris campaigns. Not exactly covering the broad country. The electoral college sure doesn't seem to be making sure that broad swathes of the country are not ignored.

People vote. In a world with a national popular vote it wouldn't be cities deciding elections, it would be people. Every single person would have precisely the same say in the outcome.

What really matters are the policies they enact while in office. Without the electoral college, they could ignore the needs of most of the country as long as they satisfy the coastal cities.

It seems like with the electoral college, the needs of most of the country are being foresaken for the satisfaction of the coastal cities, if Trumpism is to be believed.

[citation needed]

The entirety of Trumpism is a tirade against the coastal elites.

Voter ID should only be introduced where you have a cheap (ideally free), universal way of proving ID, and multiple ways of establishing identity (what if I’ve just been mugged on the way to the polling station?)

It’s also solving a problem which probably doesn’t exist. The number of arrests / convictions for voter impersonation are next none.

It was introduced recently in the UK, and in the next election, the prime minister at the time the legislation was introduced managed to get caught without ID when trying to vote: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68947834

Have you ever looked at how many things actually require showing an ID? The list is endless. Nothing is ever heard about that by those who oppose voter ID, why is that?

I live in Sweden where I have to show my ID when I vote. I lived in the Netherlands where I had to show my ID when I voted. Everybody has to, everybody does it, nobody - and I mean nobody - has any problems with this because everybody understands the need.

I have spent most of my life in the UK, which has no national ID card and does not typically require one to prove/verify identify on a regular basis. Prior to the introduction of voter ID laws in 2023, typically one would simply need to give their name/address at the polling station, who would have a list of eligible voters for that specific region (in the UK one has an assigned polling station, of which there are around 30.000 total for a population of 70.000.000)

If you require voter ID in such a state (and I believe the US is comparable), you run the risk of systematically disenfranchising groups of people - generally the most poor who are less likely to drive, take vacations requiring a passport, etc.

And, as I mentioned, in the UK at least vote fraud is not, and has never been a problem. You can see the recorded instances of electoral fraud in the UK here: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/research-reports-and-... - e.g. in 2022 (before vote ID) there were 13 alleged cases and 1 conviction.

Here's 22 things you need a photo ID for in the USA [1]:

1: buying alcohol

2: opening a bank account

3: applying for food stamps

4: applying for Welfare

5: applying for Medicaid and Social Security

6: renting or buying a house

7: buying or renting a car

8: flying on an airplane

9: getting married

10: buying firearms

11: adopting a pet

12: applying for a hunting licence

13: checking in to a hotel

14: applying for a fishing licence

15: buying a cell phone

16: getting prescription medication

17: entering a casino

18: holding a protest or rally (in some places)

19: donating blood

20: buying X-rated video games

21: buying tobacco

22: applying for unemployment benefits

> If you require voter ID in such a state (and I believe the US is comparable), you run the risk of systematically disenfranchising groups of people - generally the most poor who are less likely to drive, take vacations requiring a passport, etc.

Those people already need a photo ID to apply for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, social security, getting prescription medication and to apply for unemployment benefits. Photo ID (Real ID and Enhanced ID (for those who need to cross over to Canada) are available at U.S. state or territory’s DMV or equivalent agencies, tend to be valid for 8 years and cost between $30-$60.

[1] https://www.stilt.com/immigrants/22-things-that-require-a-ph...

This works better in countries with a national ID. The US doesn't have one, and what is acceptable voter ID is often heavily restricted.

Ireland doesn't have a true national ID, and you can be asked for ID when voting; however this has never really become an issue, because practically _anything_ is acceptable as ID. That is very much not the case in some US states which require id to vote.

They SHOULD be determined by those cities. It's not like Wyoming gets a say with the EC. Instead, who's nominated is decided by Iowa and the presidency is decided by six suburban housewives in Pennsylvania. It would be a huge improvement if Los Angeles and NYC were actually were rallies were held.

No, the local elections should - and will - be determined by those cities, the state elections should be determined by the inhabitants of the states and the federal elections by 'the states' in a weighted manner so as to make sure less densely populated states also have a say in all things federal. If you think this gives too much power to the less densely populated states I'd suggest this is caused by the idea of the federal state having too much power, not by the electoral college or anything related to it. Don't want to have people from 'fly-over states' to have a say in ${issue}? Make sure ${issue} is handled at the state or local level and those rednecks, deplorables, 'garbage' and hillbillies don't get to have a say in it while thanking you for keeping out of their affairs.

As a Pennyslvanian whose entire household has voted, I'd really appreciate if the political ads were spread more equitably across the country.

Bearing in mind Arrow's impossibility theorem, why do you believe ranked choice is an obviously better voting mechanism?

I fully agree with you on gerrymandering and electoral college, but when 45-50% of voters think Trump is a viable candidate, this isn't something that can be fixed at the election system level. Society is broken at a deeper level.

This seems like an overly elaborate explanation. If you have polling data that shows you are 10 points behind, you change your positions to close the gap. There's no sense in sticking to principal and losing.

But no one is changing positions in the way you describe. Maybe they are changing tactics to APPEAR they are changing positions but actually aren't.

And I have issues with this idea, that we can know the populations well enough, to slice and dice and shave population groups until we have a 51% winning vote. That doesn't seem real.

> But no one is changing positions in the way you describe. Maybe they are changing tactics to APPEAR they are changing positions but actually aren't.

True. There's no telling if any of the promises or language will translate into action once governing. In normal times, breaking campaign promises would carry consequences for reelection of the candidate (or the candidate's party), but it's anyone's guess if that applies now.

A candidate _actually_ changing positions vs _appearing_ to change positions are the same thing from the perspective of the voter.

Exactly right. Candidate positioning/messaging is a highly dynamic process.

Candidates stake out an initial position (or affiliation) and then court voters at the margins of that initial position, often by modifying that initial position (edit: or by modifying their messaging around that initial position).

This seems like a reasonable explanation until you look at the dynamics of the current Presidential race where Harris has been nonstop HITLER HITLER HITLER and Trump doing the same pro wrestling character he's been playing since the 80's. There's no dynamism on either side.

A simpler explanation would be equally effective campaign management for each party. If both sides were optimally competent at adjusting their message to attract voters, they would tend toward equal portions of the vote. Of course, that's less interesting than modeling voters as a spin glass.

Median Voter Theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem

Propaganda. The elections are close because the media industry depends upon the advertising spend of political parties and political issues, and if they do not exist the media industry creates them. This is true for all popular controversy, it exists elevated in the media because it shakes the click revenues money tree, and that is the only reason. The media industry could not care less about the ramifications of their revenue generating media. They think they can just leave when a country becomes too hostile to live within.

They're less common than they are newsworthy. So they get our attention and we think they're more common than they really are.

The title is misleading.

They're so uncommon that they have their own Wikipedia list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_close_election_results

To what degree are elections close because many of the eligible voters are making mental trade-offs - between the hassles of actually voting, and the seemingly-microscopic chance that their vote will make an actual difference. In elections where all the media coverage gives them a strong sense of knowing how the election will turn out?

Because the undecided voter, or the one who switches party affiliations, is practically extinct. If in the past about 10 percent of voters were tossups, or even just not 100 percent confident, today a much smaller portion are. So as party lines grow firmer, margins grow narrower.

"Politics is about cutting things in half."

> Nevertheless, the behavior of large groups of people can be described quite well using mathematical models.

The whole article is amusing. What absolute fucking puffery lmao.

psychohistory

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