Thursday, October 28, 2004
How much your vote is worth...
It's always fun to figure out how much your vote is "worth" (well, actually, it's usually quite depressing, but let's do it anyway). The actual probability of casting a deciding vote in a US presidential election is vanishingly small (see this paper by Gelman, King, and Boscardin for examples from past elections). So Sam Wong calculates some examples in "jerseyvotes", where one jerseyvote stands for the probability a New Jersey vote will be decisive. Right now, according to Wong, a prof at Princeton, votes in Florida and Ohio are worth 4,400 jerseyvotes and 4,300. If you live in NJ (or most of the country, for that matter), that's got to make you feel important, doesn't it?
Lots of people are upset at how unnecessarily difficult this election has been. Logistics that should be a snap for our rich, advanced country are, we are piously told, simply insurmountable.
Counting 100 million ballots accurately? Can't be done. How many more dollars are counted accurately every day? Wouldn't you be steamed if your bank piously declared it couldn't get its accounts to balance because there were just too many transactions?
Maintaining a list of people legally allowed to vote, and ensuring their votes are cast in the correct precinct? The IRS can mail you a 1040 every year, the post office can find your address day after day, and the state send that driver's license renewal right to your home like clockwork, but voter registration? That's up to you, mind the deadlines and the cardstock.
Voting early? Sorry the computer is down.
Want a paper record of your vote? Good luck.
We can do better. The only reason we aren't doing better is because one side (guess who) benefits from making voting costly and turnout low. (Hint: it's the side that praises elections as a cure-all in the countries we've invaded, but thinks that it's more important to finish elections on time than to count the people's votes accurately). We've done elections on the cheap for years in this country, and now we lag behind countries like Mexico and South Africa in the conduct of elections. Jimmy Carter says we wouldn't even qualify for election monitors---they would insist on higher standards and stronger election authorities just to show up!
In my next post, I'll explain how we can turn this around.
Lots of people are upset at how unnecessarily difficult this election has been. Logistics that should be a snap for our rich, advanced country are, we are piously told, simply insurmountable.
Counting 100 million ballots accurately? Can't be done. How many more dollars are counted accurately every day? Wouldn't you be steamed if your bank piously declared it couldn't get its accounts to balance because there were just too many transactions?
Maintaining a list of people legally allowed to vote, and ensuring their votes are cast in the correct precinct? The IRS can mail you a 1040 every year, the post office can find your address day after day, and the state send that driver's license renewal right to your home like clockwork, but voter registration? That's up to you, mind the deadlines and the cardstock.
Voting early? Sorry the computer is down.
Want a paper record of your vote? Good luck.
We can do better. The only reason we aren't doing better is because one side (guess who) benefits from making voting costly and turnout low. (Hint: it's the side that praises elections as a cure-all in the countries we've invaded, but thinks that it's more important to finish elections on time than to count the people's votes accurately). We've done elections on the cheap for years in this country, and now we lag behind countries like Mexico and South Africa in the conduct of elections. Jimmy Carter says we wouldn't even qualify for election monitors---they would insist on higher standards and stronger election authorities just to show up!
In my next post, I'll explain how we can turn this around.
