Grave New World. And Hand Counting Votes
Trump's fascism plan; counting presidential votes; hand-wringing about hand counting in Minnesota.
[AI generated angry vote hand counters.]
Dear Reader,
We have a problem in Minnesota. MAGA wants us to hand count our ballots. We don’t vote by machine here. We use paper ballots, but they are counted by machines. The machines are very accurate, and hand counting is not, but MAGA insists that we are doing it wrong, and this comes with a constant undercurrent of threat. We are starting to lose election workers who don’t want that in their lives. I have a solution. See below, “A bill for an act.”
But first, the Grave New World.
Trump’s fascism plan has been exposed. They’ve outsourced to the “Center for Renewing America. It has three parts.
Make Christian Nationalist values the core of all executive decisions.
Established procedures for using the military to act on insurrection of any kind against the deployment of Christian Nationalist values.
Ignore Congress
I am not making this up. This is what is at stake in the upcoming election.
Counting On Votes
Here’s a fun fact. If the 2020 presidential election popular vote in each and every state was shifted by 1% in the D direction, every state would have the same electoral outcome. If it was shifted by more, we would get different results, as per:
With a 2% shift, North Carolina goes Democratic.
With a 3.5% shift, Florida shifts as well.
With a 6% shift, Texas joins the D column
In elections, 6% roughly equals infinity, but 3.5% is a little better than a snowball’s chance in hell.
Looking at 2016, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin shift parties at the 1% change level (which is why Trump was elected). In that year, Florida shifts with a 2% change. a 4% change shifts AZ from R to D in that year, as well as North Carolina. At 6%, Georgia.
Change of a few percent is not unlikely. bit a little less than a few percent is doable. The difference across states in D vs R votes, comparing 2016 and 2020, averaged 2 percent, with 10 states shifting by 2.5%, and the maximum change being over 4% in one state. But, those larger differences are in smaller states.
This might make sense in light of the fact that larger samples tend to average out more reliably. Every voter contributes to the regression towards the mean, so more voters equals a meaner and hard-to-change mean, as it were.
But that may be a weak explanation, because even medium size states have enough voters and enough representation of factions that things should even out at a much lower sample size. Another possibility, and an intriguing one, is that political organizing can push or pull outcomes more effectively in medium-size and smaller states. That may be worth exploring. In any event, if you had a gazillion dollars to throw at political organizing, maybe skip the five or so largest states and concentrate on a larger number of smaller ones.
Counting votes: “A bill for an act …”
That is the staring language of a typical bill to be introduced into the Minnesota State Legislature. I have no idea why they say it that way. Someday we will conduct a séance and ask someone from the 19th century about that.
Meanwhile, here is a bill for an act idea.
Designate a fund to carry out hand counts of elections in the state. Specify that the hand counts be public and aired on a streaming channel freely accessible to all. Specify that the count involve taking stacks of ballots and submitting them first to a set of two hand counts in parallel with the counts being done separately from each other so the results are independent. Also specify that a third count be carried out by machine. When the counts are compared, they must all be the same or the process must be repeated until they are. Specify that the hand counters are citizens recruited from the population but paid, and that the operators of the machines are county election officials paid on overtime.
The counting must be done under armed guard, with the outside of the building and the city block fully secured.
The fund would be initially set at some reasonable estimate, but if the cost overruns it will be reimbursed immediately. The total cost of the hand count itself and all associated administrative and technical costs, including the streaming, the purchase and maintenance of machines, security, etc will be summed and divided among the taxpayers of that county.
Elections would be carried out as they are now. Winners would be chosen using best practices, and that process would happen prior to the hand counts. The results of the hand counts would, however, supersede the original determinations should they produce different results.
Each county would be able to opt in or opt out of this system by a county wide vote every 12 years. So if, say, Rice County chose to use this method, Rice County residents would be billed, but if Hennepin County residents opted to trust the normal method of counting ballots, they would not. The billing has to be distinct and separate, like a water bill or any other utility bill. The residents of the county have to understand that they chose to use this method, and they are paying a bill for that method. The counting procedure would apply to all elections, regular and special, for all offices.
Democrats won’t support my bill because Democrats often have the same sort of knee-jerk reactions to policy that Republicans do. If it smells red, don’t do it. This has led to some missed opportunity. For exmple, when ZZ Top, who sits in the Minnesota Legislature, whined and insisted that the Crown Act cover beards as well as top-of-head hair, the Dems declined. They should have embraced the facial hair (figuratively) and made the whole thing more “of a bi-partisan nature” as the ritualized language calls it.
It needs to be understood that my bill for an act is not a MAGA policy. This is a policy that offers a specific kind of democracy to what appears to be a large percentage of Minnesotans who want it, but that also has them paying for it. Moreover, since the decision is made on the county level, and there are MAGA majority counties and Progressive majority counties … well, that works out nicely.
This might ultimately have the effect of educating the public on how we count ballots. I suspect most of our counties would opt in at first, then suffer some regret for a decade, then many would opt out. In the meantime, this can serve as a local economic stimulus and social gathering opportunity.
Fine those who do not vote and give the fines to those who do vote - net of ballot counting expenses.
A bill for a ludicrous act that requires opt-in. I like it. It is another example of a tax on those who are bad at math (much like the lottery). In this case, a tax on large groups lacking math skills.