Imagine arguing bitterly with your friends about which magazine photos to cut out and paste together
only to have some stranger do it for you once you'd made up your minds.
The result?
An electoral collage.
Vivaldi's "Spring" rudely interrupted by a loud THUNK (There were no Tubas at the time this was composed, only Serpents, and that's kind of sad)
I'd like to talk about some things related to the recent twenty-sixteen presidential election:
Why it seems that the world has gone crazy, no matter who you voted for,
Why the Election results have spawned mass protests,
Why America's electoral system is partially responsible for both phenomena,
and what we can do to fix it.
But first; let's look at this cute puppy.
(A dachshund stares silently, accusingly, at the camera and then turns away)
Okay.
Let's do this.
I've talked a little before about in-group bias,
a hardwired problem with human brains that distorts our perception in measurable ways
whenever we're divided up into teams.
If you sort a roomful of people into two groups they'll show a clear behavioral preference for members of their own group
This happens even when the division is obviously arbitrary.
So you can imagine what happens when people think it's actually meaningful.
The two primary political parties in the United States shamelessly exploit this psychology.
Voters are repeatedly encouraged to feel as though even a slight hint of allegiance for the red or the blue team is a matter of US vs. THEM
Of reasonableness vs. insanity.
Of Good vs. World-ending Evil.
In-group bias is intrinsic to how these parties continue to operate.
And Importantly, one of its primary effects is making members of the "opposite" team seem homogeneous and monolithic.
This is partially why accusations of hypocrisy are rampant in politics.
Blue team members don't see one person who voted republican suggesting that Michelle Obama's manner of dress is inappropriate
and another person who voted republican suggesting that Melenia Trump would be a good first lady.
They just see this single, stupid, red blob that contradicts itself all the time.
In that light, a close presidential election like this one seems apocalyptic-- for everybody.
So many voters for the other team, half the country doesn't even care that their chosen candidate is transparently corrupt or bigoted
They'll vote for them anyway. We're obviously doomed.
I don't want to minimize the concerns that many people rightfully have over Donald Trump's totally inappropriate remarks or the discriminatory policies hinted at by his campaign.
Now is absolutely a time for anyone who cares about religious rights
or minority rights or gay rights or women's rights or the like to be vigilant and clear.
Whether or not he meant any of it, the American people will not abide any violation of such.
But-- the ballots for this election did not say "Bigotry" and "Not Bigotry" on them.
They didn't say "Corruption" and "Anti-Corruption" either. (He pronounces this eether instead of eyether and I want you to know he's wrong)
The platforms, and the candidates representing them, were multi-faceted.
And so were the motivations of the people who voted for them.
For a significant portion of those one-hundred and twenty million Americans who voted,
those factors made both candidates equally despicable.
Workers who earn their living in dying manufacturing industries,
parents who need Obama Care to take care of their kids,
people who feel alienated and disenfranchised from their government:
All these factors and countless more played an important role in how those millions of Americans voted.
But-- thanks to in-group bias-- our skewed perception would have us believe that everyone who voted for the "other team"
Simply did not care about that singular thing that was most important to us.
An incredible number of voters are disappointed, or worse, with the candidate that they backed,
and wish that they had had another option.
That they were simply too scared, or outraged, at what they imagined would happen if the other candidate won.
Now that one candidate has won, that fear and outrage has driven huge protests in numerous cities.
But it's not the only reason.
These weird, edge case elections have drawn attention to all of the truly stupid problems the U.S. electoral system has built into it.
And many people are rightly pissed.
For example this marks at least the fourth time in American history that the popular vote has been subverted by the system that we use to elect our president.
That means that the majority of American citizens are dissatisfied with the result of a vote, which is just bananas.
For people outside of the U.S., who are understandably confused how someone can be elected by a minority of voters:
We have a weird legacy system here in the U.S. called the Electoral College.
Where each state has its own mini-election to send either a set of Democratic or Republican voters to Washington D.C. in December.
For the REAL election.
Those electors then-- usually-- vote the way that their state tells them to vote.
Either all red or all blue
Because of the way those electors are broken down by state, which is complicated,
more Americans might want Hillary Clinton to be president,
but because they're concentrated in fewer states,
they control fewer electors and so Hillary loses with a popular majority of the vote.
As envisioned by the founding fathers, this system seemed like it would be a good idea to get candidates to campaign in,
and cater to, non-populous states.
Rather than spending all their time in big cities, they'd be forced to appeal to voters in every state to court all those electoral votes.
Unfortunately, that's not really how things worked out.
Instead, swing, or battle-ground states
which have a decent number of electoral votes and a population that's split more or less evenly between the two parties, get ALL the attention.
Like Texas contains fifteen million registered voters and a whole slew of electoral votes and neither candidate lifted a finger to campaign to any of them
Because Texas simply isn't a variable in the electoral equation.
In fact, thirty-nine states aren't.
Just eleven states.
That's where these candidates spent the vast majority of their time, money, and energy,
and that's who gets to decide the future for everyone else.
If you don't live here, your vote for president has no practical effect on who gets elected.
No wonder people are pissed.
Another issue-- Remember back when I said this:
Those electors then-- usually-- vote the way that their state tells them to vote.
Oddly, there's no federal law mandating that the electoral college vote in any particular way.
They might be instructed to vote red or blue by their state's election but they don't really have to. (last four words are slightly sing-song)
There have been one-hundred and seventy-nine faithless electors in U.S. history.
Members of the electoral college who voted against their state's wishes.
No such renegade has ever changed the course of a presidential election, but it's definitely possible.
Especially if the race is particularly close-- and one of the candidates isn't particularly well-liked by his party.
Just thirty-seven people could simply decide come December that Hillary Clinton gets to be president.
That would be quite an upset with some very different protests, despite the fact that it's one-hundred percent legal under federal law.
Trump supporters probably aren't really happy with that thought.
Another part of the problem is that the American electoral process is based on a plurality, or winner takes all-system.
As we've discussed, this sort of electoral system encourages strategic voting, rather than honest voting
If you voted for either Trump or Clinton, not because you agreed with all their policies,
but because they were your best chance at stopping the other one,
you're a victim of this system.
A huge number of Americans do not vote for who they actually want to be president because they can't afford to let "them" elect the other guy.
How many people do you think would have absolutely loved to support a Bernie Sanders or Gary Johnson ticket if it were feasible?
Now, amending the constitution to mitigate any of these problems is a pretty tall order.
Especially with swing states not too keen to give up their favorite position.
But-- there are two bits of pretty easy to pass state-level legislation that could change the entire American electoral process for the better.
Ranked-Choice voting systems and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Ranked-Choice voting, or RCV, is very simple. Rather than checking one box for who you want to president,
You rank candidates from your most to least favorite.
If your first choice doesn't receive enough votes to be elected, your vote is safely transferred to your second choice and so on.
When everything is said and done, the candidate with the most votes, transferred or otherwise, wins.
That's it? How does that help?
Well, for starters, you don't have to worry about "throwing away" your vote.
Backing an unlikely candidate doesn't just hand victory to your opponents,
If they're not quite popular enough to win, your preferred mainstream candidate will still get your support.
But you get to send an unambiguous message about your political priorities,
And, who knows?
Maybe enough people agree with you that your longshot gets elected.
That makes it feasible for several complex political views to be represented by numerous candidates,
rather than simply choosing between a red or blue package deal because it's the only chance that you stand at winning.
If you're concerned about government corruption, that diversity of candidates also makes it a lot harder to make shady deals with special interest groups.
If you have to buy off not just one, but three or four potentially electable people, you just don't get the same bang for your buck.
It also becomes harder to run negative slur campaigns
Cataloging all the reasons that people shouldn't vote for every single one of your opponents doesn't leave you a lot of time to sell your own platform.
And finally, both the math and the results from numerous RCV elections show a significant increase of voter satisfaction with the results.
It's demonstrably more representative in every way.
We would still have that weird swing state thing to deal with,
But there is a law in the works that would make that a moot point in the future
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
It's an in-process deal between several states.
If enough states pledge their support, enough for an electoral majority,
they've all agreed to instruct their electors to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in the U.S.
The Constitution doesn't actually mandate that states use any particular method for assigning their electoral college representatives.
If they want to use the popular vote to decide, that's totally legal.
Right now, states amounting to one-hundred and sixty-five out of the two-hundred and seventy electoral votes necessary have signed on.
And thirty-six more are pending.
If the NPVIC gets those votes, it will become the de facto voting system in the United States.
At that point, every voter, in every state will matter for the final election totals.
Not just the ones in swing states.
And because each state is still in control of its own electoral process, they can implement local RCV systems so we can get those benefits as well.
Of course, the electoral college could still vote however they wanted to, but by ditching the plurality voting system and moving to a popular vote instead,
the swing states would be effectively dethroned and wouldn't have any incentive to defend it anymore.
It would be more feasible to pass a constitutional amendment dissolving it.
And we could just, you know, VOTE for who we want to be president.
This has been a really tough election.
People are scared of the polarized and violent atmosphere in the U.S. right now, which has been fueled by in-group bias.
And confidence in our electoral process is low. For good reason. It sucks.
If you'd like to avoid doing it ALL again in four years:
Please, write or call your representative's state office and ask them to support Ranked-Choice ballots and the NPVIC,
or donate to FairVote.org
It may seem like a distant dream, but the U.S. has gone through a whole lot worse for the promise of a representative government.
Are you fed up with the two-party system? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you THUNK.
Also, if you're interested, I've created a website for new THUNK stuff at thunkshow.com. (and now some jerk is covering the link with text. Can you even read it under all these captions?)
I recently uploaded a podcast that I recorded with my friend Simone Chavoor about the election and cognitive biases.
And some other stuff.
I love to know what you think.
Thank you very much for watching.
Don't forget to Blog Blog Subscribe Blog Share.
Don't stop THUNKing!
And please, be kind to each other.