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Notes -
American midterm election predictions?
Does anyone wish to use this space to register predictions for outcomes in tomorrow's American midterm elections?
Personally, I take a kind of efficient markets approach to this stuff, so I'll defer to the betting consensus. But if you want your time-stamped judgment registered as part of the official Motte record, here's your chance!
Mods - please feel free to remove if you don't think this is a good fit for the space.
With Milwaukee County giving other areas of the state the heads up that they're going to be reporting their final results after the rest of the state is done, I'm expecting another episode of whatever this is.
To clear, I'm not darkly hinting - I expect Milwaukee to count things up late, I expect that Milwaukee is 80% Democrat or higher, and I expect a similarly goofy looking curve to result. Republicans will look at this as obvious fraud, Democrats will look at it as a totally normal thing to happen with a large tranche of D votes dropping late at night, and it might be enough to push Evers and Barnes to victories. I don't really have a strong opinion on whether anything shady is actually happening, but I think it looks awful and should have been reformed as soon as the bizarre 2020 result happened. This isn't even difficult to do - nearby Dane County has almost as many absentee ballots, but counts them quickly because they don't centralize the process. No one familiar with Dane and Milwaukee Counties will be surprised that Dane's handling is fast and efficient while Milwaukee's is comically ridiculous and damages trust.
I maintain, the best way around this trying to glean information out of vote totals almost minute by minute is simply that no vote tallies are released anywhere until all counting is complete. There is too much noise for anyone watching externally to know whether something is legitimate, fraudulent or just weird. All it creates is the opportunity for narratives to be fitted (either way!) We can do reveal parties with Red or Blue cakes or balloons or whatever.
The switch over doesn't happen for months. There is no need to actually know on the night who wins what.
I would also advocate mandatory free federal government IDs for all citizens, mandatory ID checking for voting and mandatory voting. Massively reduces opportunities for fraud AND boosts democratic legitimacy because everyone has to vote. Hits the Republican "make it more secure" AND the Democrat "Don't disenfranchise people" buttons. Then we can really see how America would vote as a whole.
Mandatory voting is probably unconstitutional and is in any event likely to be hugely unpopular with Republicans, since conventional wisdom is that Republican demos usually have better turnout.
Likewise, free federal voter IDs are likely to be opposed on pragmatic grounds (e.g. NC voter id laws, which were targeting at obstructing Democratic demos) and on ideological grounds (federal voter ID means federal voter ID database).
I know, that's why I had both in there. Things both sides want as well as things both sides don't want.
Almost certainly will never happen of course. If you want really good security when voting that means a Federal database. One pulling from the IRS and other things so that people who move are properly tracked. It's pretty much how it works in the UK when updating the electoral register we could pull directly from death registrations, Council Tax info, the equivalent of Section 8 (housing benefit records) and the like. If you want to be sure someone is eligible to vote in place A and cannot vote in place B, then you need to track where they are and when.
It would be a bitter pill for both parties to swallow, but also gives them something they want. Higher turnout for Democrats and Increased security for Republicans. Whether it is unconstitutional wouldn't be a problem because in whatever world we were in where both parties agreed the compromise they would have the ability to make an amendment or just kludge it at the Supreme Court level. That world just to be clear is not this world though.
It seems to me that this could be accomplished without compelling states to do anything - create a federal database, assign federal IDs, allow states to participate on a voluntary basis. I would certainly advocate that my state sign up for it, and by participating in such a system, you could increase confidence that your state isn't getting illegitimate voters.
I am vigorously against compulsory voting because I think the marginal non-voter is (to be blunt) an absolute moron. I would generally prefer driving down participation in any way that doesn't seem likely to cause social upheaval. Of course, at some point we're bumping into the more basic question of what the point of democracy is in the first place, but none of the answers that I come up with make true universal voting sound appealing to me.
Morons are citizens too. Smart productive citizens can navigate whatever setup happens. Morons should have a say in making sure their society is set up for them. Democracy isn't about getting the best answers in my opinion. It's about getting the answers that work for the majority of your people. And those may be stupid and counterproductive. And that is ok.
I've heard an alternative take, which is: "Democracy is how we get different groups of people with widely-varying value systems to live in the same place without violent conflict." It's like, every N years, we have a mini civil war, except instead of actually shooting/stabbing/punching each other, we just line up everybody's troops on opposite sides of the battlefield, and whoever brings the biggest army wins, and we all agree to go home without bloodshed until the next regularly-scheduled civil war.
One can argue that there's no point in including people who are indifferent to politics in this process, because they're not the ones likely to start an actual war over anything.
On the other hand, one can argue that if we did make everybody show up, the issues being discussed would be more mainstream and less fringe. Wedge issues like trans rights, gun control, and abortion might be much less salient.
That definitely is another consideration, agreed. I think though that people's level of disengagement of politics can be a warning sign. They might not start a war, but they may very well opt out of the social contract entirely, if they feel they are not represented.
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