Let's build a better electoral system with math

Okay... no shitposting about the election. This isn't about being butt-blasted about >muh popular vote or anything else like that. I want to start a serious think-tank about using math to design a better electoral system in the United States.

I've been curious over the last several days if there is possibly a more efficient and "fair" voting system in America. A lot of people are seriously considering abolishing the electoral college in favor of a purely popular vote. I believe Veeky Forums can think up some more logical, fair systems based on simple mathematical principles.

Is there a better system out there? There are a lot of smart people on this board, so let's get a brainstorm going. The main concerns so far, at least the ones I can see, are:

-How to make sure every vote gets counted. For example, republican votes in California mean literally nothing.
-How to make sure every state and county within is weighted fairly, regardless of size.


Note: feasibility can be thrown out the window here. Obviously some systems that might work could never be implemented due to complexity/resistance from political parties. Let's focus purely on the most fair system possible and the maths behind it.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE
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A state's electoral votes are proportionally divided according to the proportion of votes a candidate received.

>"fair" system
You know there's only one thing that is fair in this world.

in a dictatorship, every citizen's vote is of equal worth

so clearly it is the best option

How about just fucking counting the votes like in every other country?

Four posts in and the autism is already off the charts

>I believe Veeky Forums can think up some more logical, fair systems based on simple mathematical principles.
this is why no one likes STEMlords. you are basically trying yo do philosophy with math, while rejecting philosophy. you are scum and should kill yourself asap

This post is so reddit it fucking hurts.

The electorate system is based off of the majority of the votes in a state and is a winner take all situation. Look up faithless electors.

because its less prone to rigging, which does happen due to the extreme polarization between views. It also means that the 50% of the population that lives in 1% of the USA doesnt dictate what the other 50% of the population living in the 99% of the USA does. This is the same reason people want to leave things up to the state because things vary dramatically between state to state.
Also, lefties in big states tend to pressure everyone else to vote left through violence and misinformation, so its best that theyre worth less :3

>any threads that aren't blatant shitposting are reddit
>civilized discussion scares me

because its less prone to rigging, which does happen due to the extreme polarization between choosing figureheads. It also means that the 50% of the population that lives in 99% of the USA doesnt dictate what the other 50% of the population living in the 1% of the USA does. This is the same reason people want to leave things up to the state because things vary dramatically between state to state.
Also, righties in big states tend to pressure everyone else to vote left through violence and misinformation, so its best that theyre worth less :3

1) Take all the votes for the candidates get in each state.
2) Divide it by half.
3) The person who has the highest vote wins the state and EC.

Flo: 1.1K Guy A , 1K Guy B
Flo: 550 Guy A, 500 Guy B
Guy A wins Florida.

Alternative.:

The guy who wins the most counties in a state wins the state and the EC.

"Hello 'leddit, the mandela effect has an outdated name, lets think of a new one!"
"We did it leddit!"


How can we make X better
What should we do to improve X
I don't agree with X, lets change it
X works just fine, but it could be better

The second one doesn't address the issue of drastically random population distributions across counties. Michigan for instance, has a shit load of small counties and one or two massive ones that hold the majority of the populace. So I can see it not being elegant to give the state to the candidate with more counties. I think a working system would need to normalize each county.

For example, arbitrarily assuming each county has the exact same number of people equal to the state population divided by the number of counties. Then, awarding 1 point to a candidate every time he/she receives that number of votes.

State population = 1000 people
Number of counties = 20
Number of votes needed to earn one point = 50

>I like X
Fuck you you Xtard and your Y-phobic dumb cancer. Go back to your X and stay there.

am I doing it right ?

You can't "fix" anything without fundamentally changing the nature of government (i.e. from a presidential system to a parliamentary system).

Any system which converts a 49-51 split to a 0-100 split is fundamentally broken by design, and tinkering with how you decide which way the 0-100 split goes doesn't change that.

Even more fundamentally, you're stuck with the fact that, on one hand each individual is just one person out of a few hundred million, while on the other that individual will, to themselves, be more important than the other hundreds of millions combined.

If you live in a city your vote counts for half as much as a vote from someone who lives in a rural area. City is defined as having a population of 500,000 or greater. So if a candidate got 400,000 votes in NYC it would be adjusted to only 200,000 votes so the city dwellers don't overrule the rest of the state which is rural every election. For a candidate to win they should have to win the majority of the city vote AND rural vote.

Perimeter squared over area of the district MUST be less than 20.

fucking electoral college is rigged. its literally made for republicans to win NON STOP

It already exists it's called single transferable vote or runoff voting whichever you prefer.

You don't vote for one candidate you rank them by order of most to least preferred. If your #1 choice candidate didn't get enough votes to win then your vote gets transferred to your #2 candidate and so on and so forth. Obviously I'm simplifying massively but that's the general gist of the system.

It wouldn't work in current America. It would still come down to just the leaders of the two major parties and a tally of the popular vote. For a truly fair system to work it should give third parties a decent chance at winning.

Almost no country aside from the UK (which in itself has tons of problems with gerrymandering and two partyism) does straight FPTP popular vote you retard.

Because it's shit.

Including the 3 million votes from illegals? What could go wrong?

I wouldn't write it off that fast. The voters would need to be educated on how the new system works and that should start up to a few years before a major election. The system should also be trialed in local elections where there is less at stake. Resources regarding and explaining STV should be easily available to the public and should be easily available especially as a major election draws closer.

While STV does tend to drift towards a two party system it's no worse than our current system and has a major plus in it's favor compared to FTPT. No spoiler effect.

>The voters would need to be educated on how the new system works

Then it's already doomed. The last thing I would expect the US people to do is learn about what they're voting on or how, and I say that as an American. There really needs to be a test we should pass before being given a ballot.

>votes from illegals
what kind of retarded system lets random people vote? dont you have to actually register to vote in the us?

Not if you live in California.

to legally vote, yes. Of course, it's racist to require documentation/ID/proof of citizenship from voters. Anyone can just walk up and write a name to cast a ballot of their choice.

california doesnt decide for the union. get over it.

>lefties in big states tend to pressure everyone else to vote left through violence and misinformation

>am I doing it right ?
yes

I would say divide CA into two states but that would solve nothing. Whether it's 55 electoral votes or 35 and 20 it'll go blue either way.

They should really find a way to (fairly) lower the number because most of the midwest only get 4-7 and it takes over half the country just to balance out CA's share.

make all the congressional districts have equal amounts of population
they all equal 1 EC
you win by congressional district, Electoral college voters are mandated to vote for who their district votes for.

>make all the congressional districts have equal amounts of population

But how? Someone will have to redraw the lines and there's a huge risk of gerrymandering abuse.

This is the correct answer

>stuff you said

The current system is fine. The electoral college is a compromise where by states with large populations have a check placed on their influence over the federal government.

The States being sovereign require fair representation for themselves at the federal level.

Having a number of electoral college voters corresponding to the number of house and senate representatives for each state is just fine.

In fact you could already say that the system is skewed to heavily in favor of states with large populations.

Is it really fair to Montana that California gets to have a greater influence over who will be the president of the government at the federal level? The answer is probably no, but that's the compromise that makes most sense.

Let's just build a better country.

make a computer do it

if the programmers put a bias in there to favor a party someone can simply check the code

What?

Looks pretty neat. But two things: 1) what happens if there's a 25/25 tie, and 2) what happens to the boundaries when enough people move?

The role of the Electoral College was not to have weighted voting, but to lessen the chances of populist candidates from deluding the uneducated masses. It quickly turned into a weighted voting system, that is not unpopular enough to be gotten rid of. And as far as a populist candidate deluding the masses... Welp.

The senate is the branch that is suppose to give weighted representation based on State.

The two party system is the result of winner takes all mechanics. The only way to be a winner is by falling in line with on of the two poles.

Bipolar systems that are balanced will diverge over time. In other words polarization, which often leads to civil war.

1) President is elected on popular vote.
2) House of Representative is ranked choice, percentage distribution voting.
3) Supreme Court is ranked meritocracy.

Eh, it's an autistic exercise, really. What happens if Puerto Rico becomes a state? Etc.

Here's another one...

PREFERENTIAL VOTING

That looks a little more reasonable but the problem I always see when someone tries to split CA is they do it horizontally which one change anything. The western coast is very liberal compared to the valley and eastern parts which mostly vote Republican. To make a split worthwhile it would have to be a vertical bisection of the state.

>doesn't want to vote for a major party
>ends up having to vote for a major party

So what is the difference? In the end his vote was thrown away just the same. Is just like Dems and Reps dominating things here.

Presidential election is one man one vote.
All congressional districts are drawn by a non-partisan committee run by the federal government.
States can opt in to have their districts drawn by this federal committee

In 20 or so years after people calm down over this "drastic" change, then you can start talking about ranked voting to break up the big parties

I can imagine a Texan looking at this chart and seething over with anger. That, or simply replying with a flat, confident

"No."

>Presidential election is one man one vote.
actually it isn't. But its fine anyways. see

People bitching about how California should be nerfed in the electoral college should actually look at the math and realize that it already is and they're just failing to realize how big the state is.

If you count number of people a state has compared to the electoral votes it gets, those Midwest states often end up with half as many voters per electoral vote as California does. So one vote in that state has literally twice the sway as a vote in California. I don't recall the numbers off the top of my head but there are some states where the disparity is is such that a vote there is worth nearly five times what it would be in California. If you were to make it truly "fair" for each voter California would end up with at least a half dozen more votes than it already does.

As a Californian, it irks me that my vote counts for a fifth of some fuckwit in the midwest's vote does.That said I don't think my state deserves more Electoral Votes because every State should be able to have a say in the Election rather than it be dominated by the large ones.


Personally I'm in favor of changing the system so that all the states award the Electoral Votes they get for their representatives proportionately (Based on total population and not per district to avoid gerrymandering.) After that whoever gets the most votes statewide gets the last two.

no initially Beremy had a plurality, but Plom won because he was the one most people were content with. Plom must also adapt and not alienate the Wakkun voters next time to get re-elected as the Wakkun voters liked him better than Beremy, making him win.

>mad over the fact people acknowledge California's over-representation
>As a Californian
lmao

They should just put a cap of 30 EV on California. No matter how many more people move there it's at the point where it is staying blue forever. New residents should just accept that fact their extra votes won't matter just as California Republicans have to accept their votes will never matter either.

Rate my prediction map based off this election's results

>Kansas City on Missouri
>Oklahoma City on Kansas

stop m8

Kansas City is in Missouri in real life my dude

>California's over-representation
>Votes literally count less
>people want it to count even less
>literally arguing for landmass based voting
>Rule by majority is bad
>so instead, we will have rule my minority

Mind numbing.

the Union wasn't founded with democracy on mind, it was with the "no taxation without representation" mindset.

>-How to make sure every vote gets counted. For example, republican votes in California mean literally nothing.
This isnt a problem of the system, this is why it works.
>-How to make sure every state and county within is weighted fairly, regardless of size.
This is already done by weighting by population.

The problem is people feel tyranized because their votes seem meaningless when the majority in their district votes against their ideals.

The simple solution is this: you either add more representatives in the government and cut the existing districts into smaller slices, so more people can properly be represented in Washington, or you keep things the way they are and increase states rights while limiting Federal power to defending, taxing, and funding the states, and not exerting explicit social law over them. This way, social law demanded by some guy in Alabama can't be forced upon someone in California and vice versa.

The system works, we either just need more of it, or less of it, depending on your tastes, to adjust for our growing population.

Had The Terminator been US born and eligible to be POTUS he would have won his home state.

The electoral college was not founded for the sake of giving rural states more representation. This new rural weight is a POST HOC bullshit.

There was never an argument about landmass based voting. The Senate is the closes thing to that, and it is also not landmass based voting.

It is was never used a justification until recently because it is fucking stupid.

Hey too many white people, make their votes count less.
Hey too many protestants make their votes count less.
Americans literally make up 100% of the electorate, might as well give them no vote.

What's wrong with popular vote? Not everything needs to be complicated.

actually this

>What's wrong with popular vote? Not everything needs to be complicated.

this

People in Missouri don't want people in California to interfere with their theocracy. Even though people in St Louis, don't want people in Fort Lost in the Woods, to impose their theocracy.

>cap Cali
That makes no sense. If more people move there, then it should get more EV. If it doesnt, then you would effectively be tyrannizing the people who don't get a say there as a result of the unfair cap not corresponding to population like it does for the other states.

Ok, so lets just cut out the votes from states that don't have an overall contribution to taxes, and weight states that contribute most to taxes.

Simple popular vote can be rigged by simply rigging the machines or omitting ballots from the count. By making the system complex and having states self report their winners to everyone, it becomes harder to rig the election.

I'll admit my bias. But the state is not over represented. If the state was actually over represented than the 3 million Californians that vote red would actually had an impact on elections. If you go by raw vote count, California had the 3rd highest number of votes for Trump. As it stands right now those 3 million votes would literally have had just as much of an impact on the election if they'd been tossed in the garbage. That's hardly over representation.

I've always been conceived that the only reason people bitch about it being over represented is because it always votes blue rather than the fact that voters here have any impact on the election.

Then the states that don't have an overall contribution also don't pay taxes because you are reducing their representation due to taxation

They don't care. They just don't like the fact that California has a say in anything, because they are SJWs.

Im no expert but id say that each county rather than state is appointed a certain number of votes so that way its based on a smaller proportion meaning that smaller places in big states can get their voice heard too.

Your statement makes no sense.

I am advocating that federal welfare states that steal from the rest should not get any votes.

Electoral College gives the smaller states the ability to not have their voices steamrolled by people in the larger, more urban states.

The only issue with it is that 98% of the states allocate the votes based on winner takes all rather than giving each candidate a share based on their share of the votes, with the winner getting a few extra.

Let's decrease the power of government so the system to choose them doesn't matter so much and then no one will be mad about it.

This is bordering on "MUH CALI OVER REPRESENTATION" levels of stupidity.

>Electoral College gives the smaller states the ability to not have their voices steamrolled by people in the larger, more urban states.

This was never the intention purpose or justification of the EC. Maybe the Senate, but not the EC.

thanks for correcting the record.

I don't think California is over represented. It is probably under represented in our current system. I'm just saying that I agree with the idea of the EC because pure popular vote is easier to rig than something with several layers of complexity. We want a complex system precisely because it's hard to figure out and keep people in power indefinitely.
We should make it more complex of anything by doing what i said in
with adding more representatives in the house based on smaller population based district sizes for each state. Each district must have equal population and we'd have to ensure the lines are drawn arbitrarily. Make the house a clusterfuck. In turn, it is harder to also gerrymander the districts inside the states. And lastly it would be a good idea to make all states divide up their electoral votes based on their district subvoting instead of giving 100 percent of their votes to one person.

youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

These videos do a good job of breaking it down

Benevolent dictators would be the best system tbqh

can confirm this is how a lot of Texans react to things of this nature.
t. Chicagolander living in Yeehawland

Range voting is better yet.

>Yeehawland
I don't kno wwhy I find this so funny
Sides are in orbit

...

Well you know the thing about chaos. It's fair.

>A made-up entity called a state getting treated fairly is more important than the bigger made-up entity named the country. Also it's more important that the state have a fair voice than that individuals within that state get a fair voice.

Why is it that the vast majority of people who flock to the banner of states' rights live in welfare states that contribute less than average to GDP and take more in tax money than they give?

Because they don't want anyone else's voice to count. Never forget it.

I like this idea. Sort of a mini-electoral college for each state to decide who wins, then that state gets its votes in the nationwide vote.

These videos are cute. I like them. Thanks.

>they don't want you to have a voice that is shouting 'throw money at them'
This is just noise, detrimental policy, regulations on business and old people all contribute largely to the numbers presented in the slew of "new articles" made to push that narrative. The states that are hurt the most by the federal government also contest it, and they need the welfare for a reason.
Those also did not take into account
>infrastructure investment
>preferential population-center focused business deals and opportunities
>energy and "grant" cost
>education/bail-out subsidies, equity
>welfare and employment provided by state governments at massive detriment and bailed out by federal policy
I lurk Veeky Forums for a variety of reasons but this level of conspiracy theory (the states are just suicidal, I swear) makes me think I took a turn for /x/.

Keep the college but make two changes

1. Electors no longer exist, state electoral college votes are cast automatically according to the result of the election

2. State EC votes are split proportionally according to the proportion of votes each candidate gets in the popular vote

What's stopping gray areas from ruling over blue areas? They have exactly the same voting power.

Actually if you do the math, some of those grey areas have more voting power than much of the blue.

That maps is a little misleading. The blue areas of the cities almost always do vote democrat, but the grey areas are not guaranteed to 100% vote republican (though many do). Overall there's much more risk of some grey areas siding with blue than the cities ever siding with red so it still gives the advantage to democrats.

just go to a popular vote but ban the false dichotomy we have now.

The only problem with a popular vote is voter participation rate, if we have more realistic choices I feel more people would vote.

T. trump voter

Popular vote should never happen until many new safeguards are in place to reduce fraud as much as possible. Just some quick ideas:

Mail in voting only. You get two ballots, you fill them out identically, and mail one to counting facility A and the other to counting facility B. There are bar codes on the envelope and ballot to track it and once its read that fact is entered into a computer to confirm it. Why two counts? To make sure no funny business goes on in one. At the end of the tally they compare values and they better damn well be the same within a very miniscule margin of error. Both counting facilities would be party independent and audited and investigated thoroughly before and after each election. Also needless to say there has to be a system in place to verify ballots are only sent to legal US citizens and printed on paper that cannot be copied or forged, like it has to have a watermark that the counting machine needs to read to verify it.

There's probably more things that need to be done but that's at least a start.

The problem with 'fairness' is that it is a matter of opinion.

Direct popular vote is still bad, it directly leads to a 2 party system

If you are going to use the popular vote you should have a transferable vote

Fraud is so small scale as to be meaningless

Some reports say 3 million illegals got to vote this last election. The difference between Trump and Clinton was 700,000 last I saw. It could have a huge effect, especially when each vote actually matters in a popular vote system. If people think they can get away with it they will.

Get actual proof of that and then we can talk

Besides which voter turnout is abysmally low, if people though their vote actually mattered turnout would be higher and fraud would matter even less