Posts by David Hood
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to Paul Williams,
However, surely the election of federal office bearers should be managed through federal law?
Well, the actions of the electors once they get to the electoral college are a matter of federal law (those states that have imposed laws that the delegates must vote the way they were supposed to once they get to the college are in what I understand is legally gray territory) and how many electors each state gets is determined by the combined number of house and senate seats (excepting special cases like Washington DC) so is a matter of federal law, but how a state determines it's delegates (both in terms of is it a winner takes all statewide, and in the exact details of who can vote (some states allow felons who have served their time and are no longer on probation to vote)) is a matter for each individual state. For this election Colorado is voting on a proposition to move away from a winner takes all system (entrenched interests are against it).
Some states also have binding voting on citizens referendum's at various voting thresholds (the "California Problem" of voting for spending initiatives but against tax increases). -
Capture: BOTY Potty., in reply to JacksonP,
You seem to have a real treasure trove there
I have 2100 slides (17Gb) scanned, and estimate I am about a third of the way through the slide collection. As my brother Lyndon will probably understand, if there is ever a need for a scenic shot of Central Otago, a native orchid, or a giant native land snail, I have an embarrassment of riches to choose from.
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to Hilary Stace,
The UN should be monitoring the elections there just like they do emerging third world democracies.
The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (which the US is a part of an contributes election monitors for other country's elections) have sent monitors (as they actually have for US elections since 2002, when invited by Bush). In Ohio, Texas, Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin the state officials in charge of the election process (and I am pretty sure they are all republican) have made it clear that they do not recognize the authority of the United Nations (note this is not a UN group so WTF) and if the monitors come within 100 feet of a polling station (300 in Iowa) they are liable for being prosecuted for interfering with the election.
Mind OSCE are only sending 57 observers. -
Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to BenWilson,
I think the main problem the US faces in this respect is that it’s got different systems in every state.
Two of the stated actually do not have winner-takes all for the electoral college votes (though as it is on the basis of each congressional district deciding it's own elector it is not quite (though often mis-described as) a proportional system). There is a reason Nebreska and Maine don't feature strongly in electoral news excitement- a few people in a few tipping point counties can't change the result for the entire state.
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to George Darroch,
Without using Google, which presidential candidate was arrested this week?
To paraphrase Pinky and the Brain "The same one that's arrested every week, Pinky" (or at least also arrested in mid October).
I may have been a little harsh on the calls from some of my minor party acquaintances in the U.S. this time round, but as I see it if they actually want national representation then the only real pathway is the one that Bernie Saunders (Socialist Independent from Vermont) took: Mayor of major state city -> House -> Senate.
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With regard to the BBC survey, some commentary I saw described Pakistan as voting for a third party candidate as, while Romney has more support than Obama, together both candidates have less than 25% support.
I seem to recall from some earlier surveys that Israel comes in pro Romney (with support concentrated among Jewish Israelis, the more to the right the stronger the support). -
Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Does “heavy-tailed distribution” mean “we just assume all registered Democrats, black people, the poor and GLBT atheists get smote by God on Tuesday morning”?
Basically, yes. In my I am not a statistician but I know about data kind of way, a heavy-tailed distribution is one where factors giving unlikely results are given more importance. If you imagine a classic normal distribution curve, a heavy tailed version is thicker at either end than a typical curve.
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to Hilary Stace,
woman who said the electronic voting process is so corrupt
Certainly the way the Work and Income Kiosks have been handled is a paragon of virtue to the problems and security issues of the American electronic voting machines. Ohio is itself known for returning statistical highly anomalous (pro Republican ) results in actual voting compared to exit polling in past elections.
If there are ever plans mooted to bring in electronic voting to New Zealand, people should oppose it utterly. -
My gut feeling (in the absence of data) is that if Obama wins by a comfortable margin, pundits are more likely to say "Hurricane Sandy changed everything" than "I was wrong all along"
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Hard News: The Watching World, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
To be fair to Patrick, based on current polling (insert usual heavy duty caveats here) he’d be more right than wrong if the popular vote actually determined the outcome of American presidential elections.
At the moment 538 lists the popular vote projection as 50.5% vs 48.5%. If this is the final result, it is not particularly close, being in the region of the margin Carter bet Ford by (in contrast Kennedy bet Nixon by 0.17% and Bush bet Kerry by 2.46%). In large populations a few percentage points is much more significant than in smaller populations.