SeanFromQueens

SeanFromQueens t1_ix8hysd wrote

But much like the presidential votes determined by the US House (which appeared in your list of really close elections), when it's such a small number of voters it's more likely to be single digit margin of victory. Statistics would also make it likely with enough small elections, that resulted in a narrow or tied election there would a close to 50-50 break out, but only if there were thousands of instances. Most smaller elections are lopsided making the number of instances to occur take hundreds of years to see the result of near even outcomes. It's likely there will be drastic changes in partisan make up or demographic shifts or even electoral reform that would avoid the enough occurrences to have that result.

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SeanFromQueens t1_ix8ebza wrote

The problem that I'm pointing out is that the news outlets filling their airtime/column inches with the least informative races and it turns off the low information voter who judges the election just on the most reported candidates. I suspect that if the news outlets were informative and went in depth into policy differences, the same low information voters that judged that the candidates are all bad/corrupt/liars/what-have-you would still not vote because it was too boring. Shaming the non-voter is not effective at turning them out to vote but neither is informing them because there's a segment of the public who simply will not ever be interested in voting, they will come up with a rationale after the fact.

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SeanFromQueens t1_ix89t7x wrote

In 2016 Democratic Iowa Caucus, there were handful of ties that were decided by coin flip

>The Des Moines Register has identified six coin flips through social media and one in an interview with a caucus participant. Of those seven, Clinton was the apparent winner of six. It's unknown if there is any overlap between the coin flips identified by the Register and the coin flips the state party confirmed.

So in a small enough election the possibility of a one vote margin of victory or a tie goes up exponentially. The statistics of even distribution (such as coin flips) need a large number of attempts made and there aren't enough ties and 1 vote victory margins for that to be expressed, it's just more likely in smaller elections.

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SeanFromQueens t1_ix88aj1 wrote

It's because the races that are most profitable to report on (statewide or has a candidate who is incendiary) is all those individuals are basing their judgment on. If news outlets reported on policy differences those same individuals would complain about it all being too boring, but the rest of the electorate would be better informed at the detriment of the news outlets' profit margins.

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SeanFromQueens t1_ivk4jeq wrote

Reply to Where to vote by eddie964

It would be better if the voter registration lookup was separate from the poll site location lookup. Where to vote shouldn't require knowing an individual voter's birthday, but if the individual wants to check if they are already registered to vote then they self-check. If you are canvassing door-to-door trying to get people to go out and vote, it's not anything personal to say "yeah, you're poll site is this school/library/etc"

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SeanFromQueens t1_iva9lqb wrote

Reply to comment by twoshovels in New Haven 1640 by twoshovels

Like if you were 50+ years old in England, were going to risk the 6 week voyage and all the dangers of settling virgin territory or just sit back and in England and live out your old age in relative certainty of your last days that you won't starve, attacked by wild animals, or killed by Natives who are interloping on their lands?

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SeanFromQueens t1_iva6241 wrote

How old would you have to be to known as Old Mr. Nash in 1640 within the first decade of the settlement existing? I had the assumption that those who mad the trip across the ocean in 17th century were young adventurous types, not Old Mr. Nash.

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SeanFromQueens t1_iu10yxq wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in This is nuts. by therealcocochanel

But the next disease is what we're trying to avoid not the disease discovered from a surreptitiously decline of biodiversity that gave rise to disease carrying mice in South Eastern CT 40+ years ago. Let's learn from our past and do better.

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