Good Looks Count: one problem with democracy

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-06-10 10:40pm

Okay, I've never understood exactly how the Electoral College works, and am too lazy to find out myself. What exactly does it do? How does one determine how many of state X's votes one gets based on the popular vote of the people of that state?

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-06-10 11:15pm

Whoever wins popular vote for that state wins all the electoral votes. This is a bit flawed, when you consider that there's actually a reasonable possibility of the popular vote of the nation being against the actual winner, as happened in 2000.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-06-11 12:01am

Stupid small states and their demand for equal standing. I wish the US would get this whole "state" thing out of their heads. There is no real cultural difference between Indianians and Illinoisans. The country should be represented purely by population. Surely everyone in a single state doesn't think the same way. That might be true of regions, but states? Texas....okay that's a bad example, but Kansas...never mind, but New York doesn't have some totally unique agenda, separate from Pen or Vermont.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2005-06-11 12:49am

I contest that NZ fails on the democracy+good looks contest

Note, Helen Clark's photo is a 'touched up' photo, to put it mildly.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2005-06-11 01:37am

This is just a side-effect of the root problem underlying democracy in general: 50% of the decision-makers have an IQ below 100.

100 is the median? I thought it was the average.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-06-11 02:18am

Average throughout the world maybe. Perhaps we Asians pull it up for you stupid Americans.

Just kidding, don't kill me.

Kuroneko · Post by **Kuroneko** » 2005-06-11 11:19am

HemlockGrey wrote:100 is the median? I thought it was the average.

A Gaussian distribution has zero skewness (all odd central moments are zero, and skewness is directly proportional to the third), so mean and median are identical. There are two problems with this. Mathematically, IQ scores based on current tests cannot have zero skewness, as this would require individuals which would too mentally deficient to test, or even live, with extremely very low and even negative IQ scores (as an example, some tests scale up to 220s; where are the -20s individuals?). In practice, it might be possible that the skewness would still be low enough to not have any essential difference, but there is a methodological problem: there is no evidence that intelligence has a Gaussian distribution in the first place (and no reason why it 'should' be); test designers tailor the projected IQ from raw scores in an attempt to match it, but even that has limited success over very large populations.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2005-06-11 08:26pm

Zero132132 wrote:Whoever wins popular vote for that state wins all the electoral votes. This is a bit flawed, when you consider that there's actually a reasonable possibility of the popular vote of the nation being against the actual winner, as happened in 2000.

Actually, the state gets to set the rules about distribution. Maine, for instance, has two electoral districts, so whichever candidate wins the district gets it, and then the winner of the state gets the third electoral vote. But most states do go with a winner-takes-all system.