Electoral College Anachronism

By tmess2 | Published November 5, 2024

As the final day of this election dawns, we are looking at the real probability that Democrats will win the popular vote for the eighth time in the last nine elections.  There is also a significant chance that, once again, the Republicans are going to win the electoral college vote despite losing the popular vote.  Since the end of Reconstruction, this only happened one time before the election of 2000.

When discussions of how the electoral college is flawed comes up, the defenders of the status quo like to spout about how the current system is what was designed by the Framers to avoid the big states having too much power.  The problem is that argument is wrong in three basic ways.  First, the original concept behind the electoral college and the belief about how elections would operate ended up being wrong.  Which is why the Framers had to amend the Constitution after 1800 to fix the electoral college.  Second, there were multiple other reasons for having an electoral college and for the final structure of the electoral college beyond helping the small states counteract the big states.  Third, most of those reasons are no longer valid which leaves the question about why should what was ultimately a compromise rather than the core reason for the electoral college still justify keeping what for most of its history has been like the tonsils, wisdom teeth, or appendix of our electoral system.

Let’s turn back to how things were in 1787 when the Constitutional Convention met.  There was no television, no radio, no internet, no telephones, no telegraph, no railroad, no cars, no planes.  The continent had been organized at the colony level with little or no connections between the colonies before the First Continental Congress.  After the Declaration of Independence, the colonies became states, but states were still the basic organizing unit of government.  Newspapers were more like your small town local paper is today with nothing like USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the Washington Post.  The primary form of transportation was horseback, and it could take several days to travel across a state.  It could take weeks for a letter to get from New York to Charleston.  In short, politics were local and or state-based.  There was no national politics, and it was difficult for the average voter to get information about what was happening in other states. Continue Reading...

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Election Security

By tmess2 | Published November 4, 2024

Depending on the results over the next seventy-two hours, sore loser Donald Trump and his supporters will probably complain about problems with the machines that count the vote and other election security issues.  While every state is different in the exact means that they use to secure the election, most have roughly similar processes that pretty much guarantee that what Trump will be saying is pure fiction (which has never stopped him in the past and will not stop him this year).

One thing that you may hear is the vote counting machines can be hacked.  This claim is a half-truth.  The machines are computers, and, in theory, any computer can be hacked.  The people who raise this claim may even note that the internal security in the programming of the machines is weak.  They may be right about that, but that argument misses that the external security is very strong, and there are checks in the process to detect if a machine has been compromised.  The biggest external security is that the actual counting machines are not connected to the internet — either by cord or by wireless.  The results are manually uploaded from the precinct machines to the county’s machine and the results are then distributed.    Hacking these machines requires having physical access to the machine (which only a limited number of people do) or the virus has to be installed at the company that does the programming for the machine.

Even if you could get to the machine, setting up the software to manipulate the results is not easy because it has to defeat the checks.  The basic checks are:  1) a pre-election “logic” or “accuracy” test on every machine; 2) a post-election “logic” or “accuracy” test on every machine; 3) a hand count audit on random races from random precincts; and 4) the voter logs from the election.  The logic or accuracy test is using a test deck featuring a known number of votes for each candidate including various different weird ways that people can vote (overvotes, skipping races, voting a straight party ticket by marking the bubble for the party, voting a straight party ticket and then marking the bubble for that party in each race, voting a split ballot by marking the party box and then voting for the other party in individual races, etc.).  The test is whether the machine gives the known result.  If it doesn’t there is something wrong with the programming.  And here is where the difficulty for the hack comes in.  The person doing the hack does not know when the tests will be done.  If the hack takes effect immediately, the machine will fail.  The hack has to take effect after the first test and then revert back before the second test — a much more complex hack.  Even if that effort succeeds, the hack has to be on only the machines that are not used in the audit.  If the hack is on the machines used in the audit, the error will be caught, and the audit will expand to other precincts.  And lastly, the hack has to merely switch votes.  The voting logs will detect if a precinct has too many votes recorded.  In short, it is almost impossible in practice to successfully hack the counting process. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part Six (Post-Midnight Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published November 3, 2024

Prior to Midnight, the polls will have closed in forty-eight states and the District of Columbia.  All that is left to close are Hawaii and Alaska.  Hawaii closes at midnight Eastern (7;00 p.m. local).  Polls close at 8:00 p.m. local time in Alaska.  For most of the state, that is midnight Eastern.  But the Aleutian Islands are in a separate time zone and will close at 1:00 a.m. Eastern.

In Hawaii, the first big chunk of returns will be the early votes, but those are not reported until all polling places have actually closed.  As such, it may be an hour or more before results are released.  The release of results will be a little bit slower than Alaska.

The biggest race out of these two states is the congressional seat for Alaska, currently held by Democrat Mary Peltola.  One factor that will delay a projection in this race is that Alaska uses ranked-choice voting.  The Republicans in Alaska have pretty well demonstrated that they do not know how to run a race with ranked choice voting.  Thus, rather than running two strong candidates and having the candidates encourage their supporters to rank the other candidate second, the Republicans have had their second candidate withdraw.  Not having two candidates attacking Representative Peltola is a strategic mistake.  But because the Republicans have cleared the field, it is unlikely that there will be many votes for the remaining candidates on the ballot.  A good rule of thumb for ranked choice voting is that a candidate who finishes in second on first preferences is unlikely to have a net gain more than 1% for every 2% of the vote that went to the eliminated candidates.  Representative Peltola received a majority of the vote in the primary, but that is now guarantee that she will get a majority of the first preference votes in the general election.  It is entirely possible that we will not know the winner until after all counts are voted and preferences are applied, but the history of ranked choice voting in Australia is that, in most races, there is a clear winner with a sufficiently large margin in first preferences that the second-placed candidate can’t realistically catch-up. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part Five — The Local News and the West Coast (11:00 To 11:59 P.M. Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published November 2, 2024

Typically, in the Eastern and Central Time Zones, 11:00 p.m. EDT is when the local affiliates of the “big three” broadcast networks have their local newscasts.  Election night is a little bit different.  Most of the networks give their affiliate a five minute or so slot at the top and/or bottom of the hour to give an update on the local races.  At 11:00 p.m., after doing a quick run down along with any quick projections that can be made, the networks will give an extended break for a short (fifteen minute or so local newscast).

During this hour, we have three states in which the remaining polls close and two states in which the polls close entirely.  But, in talking about the West Coast states, there is a heavy reliance on mail-in vote.  So vote counting in these states takes days.  The partial closings are 8:00 p.m. local (Pacific) time in the majority of Oregon and the northwest part of Idaho and 9:00 p.m. local (Mountain) time in North Dakota.  North Dakota and Idaho are covered in yesterday’s post, but Oregon is covered below.  The two full closings are in California and Washington.

The result in the presidential race is not in doubt in any of the three states closing this hour.  Kamala Harris should sweep all three states.  Given how many electoral votes are available in California, it is almost impossible for Vice-President Harris to be projected as the national winner before 11:00 p.m.  Similarly, if Adam Schiff is not the new Senator from California and Senator Maria Cantwell is not reelected in Washington, we are looking at a red wave that could get Republicans a filibuster proof majority.  In other words, these five contests should be projected for Democrats during the hour.  The races to follow in these states are the House races. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part Four — Prime Time Hour Three (10:00 to 10:59 P.M. Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published November 1, 2024

After the heavy numbers of the previous two hours of prime time, the final hour of prime time represents a slight slowing of polls closing.  Of course, that will be made up for as several of the close states will either be projected or turn into all night counts.

There are three partial closings and three full closings this hour.  On the partial closing, we have the second of two 9:00 p.m. local time closings with the eastern (Central Time Zone) part of North Dakota.  You also have all but the panhandle of Idaho closing at 8:00 p.m. local time (Mountain Time Zone).  For both of these states, the part closing represents the majority of the state.  The last partial closing is the one exception to the general trend.  Oregon is the one start in which the majority of the state is in the western part of the state.  So this post will only cover the partial closing in Idaho and North Dakota with Oregon in the next post.  The three full closings are Montana and Utah at 8:00 p.m. local time and Nevada at 7:00 p.m. local time.

Idaho, like Wyoming in the previous post, is solidly red.  If Democrats are competitive at either the presidential level or for either of the congressional seats, then it will have been a very good night for Democrats.   The one contest of interest is a ballot proposition seeking to go to a top four primary with ranked choice voting.   While Idaho is not likely to turn blue anytime soon, a top four primary with ranked choice voting might mean more moderate Republicans representing Idaho in the future. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part Three — Prime Time Hour Two (9:00 To 9:59 P.M. Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published October 31, 2024

As the major networks into the second hour of coverage, the focus begins to move from exit polls to actual returns.  Counting the split states in their main time zone, polls have now closed in the overwhelming majority of states.  For the first group of states (the ten that closed before 8:00 p.m. Eastern), you now have a good chunk of the returns from rural counties and you will have most of them by the end of this hour).  For the second group of states (the twenty that closed between 8:00 p.m. and 8:59 p.m. Eastern), those returns are just starting to come in.  In both cases, the people doing the math are comparing those returns to the results from 2016 and 2020 to see what, if anything has changed (percentages, margins, turnout).  And while you tend to have good exit polls for the statewide races, many congressional districts need these early returns to confirm the anticipated results.

This hour will see the remaining polls close in Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  We will also see the polls close in Nebraska, which like Tennessee in the previous hour, opts to close all polls at the same time even though the state has two time zones (so the eastern part of the state closes at 8:00 p.m. local time and the western part of the state closes at 9:00 p.m. local time).  You have the last of the Eastern Time Zone states, New York, close its polls at 9:00 p.m. local time.  You have four Central Time Zone states — Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, and most significantly Wisconsin — close at 8:00 p.m. local time along with the eastern half of North Dakota.  Finally, polls close at 7:00 p.m. local time in four states located in the Mountain Time Zone of which the most significant is Arizona but also includes Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.  At the end of this hour, we will only be waiting on polls to close in ten states.

Arizona is one of the two big states closing this hour.  While the easiest way for Kamala Harris to win the election is by sweeping the northern blue belt states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), winning in Arizona would allow Vice-President Harris to win if she loses Wisconsin.  At the Senate level, the unpredictable Kyrsten Sinema read the writing on the wall and decided to call it at one term.  Representative Ruben Gallego is favored to keep the Senate seat in Democratic hands but chief election denier Kari Lake will make it closer than it should be and will fight in court for the next three years if she does not win.  The Democrats are favored to keep the three seats that they currently hold in the House, but have fighting chances in three of the six seats held by Republicans.  The first district is a toss-up district (R+1) in which the Democrats have a well-funded challenger.  But we have seen this story before and Representative David Schweikert always seems to find a way to survive.  The second district is a little more of a longshot as it is a lean Republican district (R+6).   While the Democratic candidate has enough funding to run a strong campaign, unlike the first district, Republican Eli Crane has more money than his opponent.  The second is only likely to fall in a Democratic wave.  The last close district in Arizona in the sixth district.  Representative Juan Ciscomani narrowly won in 2022 and is facing a rematch this year.  The fundraising total for both candidates is approximately even. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part Two — Prime Time Hour One (8:00 to 8:59 p.m. Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published October 28, 2024

While there are some significant states that close before 8:00 p.m. Eastern, that time marks when election coverage truly kicks off.  Aside from the realities of the broadcast networks that as for two basic reasons.  First, as discussed last weekend, vote counting is slow.  Since people in line when the polls “close” can still vote, it takes some time to actually shut down a polling place (both in getting the last people processed and out and in the procedures to secure the election materials after the polling place closes).  And then the counting usually have to be transported to some central location for the local election authority.  Thus, the first hour of returns tend to be the results of early voting and absentee ballots (in those states which release those separately from the election day returns) and a handful of smaller counties.  It is only in the second and third hour of counting that you start getting the rest of the smaller counties and the first returns from the really big counties.  Second, not every state closes at 7:00 p.m., local time, and a good chunk of the states are not in the Eastern time zone.  Only two states (Indiana and Kentucky) close at 6:00 p.m. local time.   While 7:00 p.m. is one of the more popular local times to close, only nineteen states close then (and only five of those are in the Eastern time zone).  Four states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia) close at 7:30 p.m. local time.    The most popular poll closing time is actually 8:00 p.m. when twenty-two jurisdictions close their polls.  You have two states (Tennessee and Nebraska) which despite being split in two time zones have opted to have all the polls close at the same real time (meaning in the eastern part of the state, the polls close at 8:00 p.m. local time while in the western part of the state, the polls close at 7:00 p.m. local time).  Lastly, two states (New York and North Dakota) close at 9:00 p.m. local time.

So when 8:00 p.m. Eastern time rolls around, you have polls closing in the ten jurisdictions wholly in the Eastern time zone that close at 8:00 local time.  You also have the polls in the western part of Florda closing at what is 7:00 p.m. local time in that part of Florida to finish out Florida.  You have the polls closing at 8:00 p.m. local time in the part of Michigan in the Eastern time zone (all but the Western part of the Upper Peninsula), You have the polls closing simultaneously at either 8:00 p.m. local time or 7:00 p.m. local time in Tennessee.  You have all of the polls closing at 7:00 p.m. local time in Alabama, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma.  And you have polls closing at 7:00 p.m. local time in the eastern parts of Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  Of those last three states, only South Dakota is roughly evenly divided geographically between Central and Mountain time and only tiny slivers of Kansas and Texas are in the Mountain time zone.  In short, you go from approximately ten jurisdictions being closed, to the majority of almost thirty jurisdictions being closed.  For all intents and purposes, election night starts at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

As the hour starts, we should have already had some expected projections from the early states.  And the early news is more likely to be bad news than good news, but it is expected bad news that should not cause people to panic.  Barring a miracle, by 8:00 p.m. Eastern, the networks and the AP will have projected Donald Trump the winner in Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and West Virginia.  They will also have projected the Republicans as winning two Senate seats (Indiana and West Virginia) to one for the Democrats (Vermont) for a gain of one although it is possible that the Virginia Senate seat might also be projected before 8:00 p.m.  And most of the early House seats projected will be Republican with a couple of seats gained in North Carolina. Continue Reading...

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Exit Polls and Projections

By tmess2 | Published October 27, 2024

While working through this year’s “what to expect on election night” posts, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to do a brief refresher on exit polls and projections.

To start with, projections have no legal meaning.  Legally, there is no winner until several weeks after the election when canvassing boards certify the official results.  Instead, a projection is a media company’s prediction of who will be the winner once all votes are counted.

In practice, all of the media companies isolate their projection team from those reporting the election results.  Thus, the number crunchers do not know what the talking heads are saying.  On the other hand, the number crunchers aren’t idiots.  They know what the expectations are and what races are probably going to determine who wins. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part I — Pre-Prime Time

By tmess2 | Published October 26, 2024

The U.S. is somewhat unique among major democracies in having national elections run by state governments (which in turn mostly delegate the actual running of the election to local governments).  While Congress has set a uniform election day for federal offices (including the election of presidential electors) and most states have decided to hold state and county elections at the same time, each state gets to choose the time when polls close in that state.  In other countries, there is either a uniform closing time (mostly in countries with a single time zone) or polls close at the same local time (creating a gradual move from east to west with additional polls closing every hour).  The result in the U.S. is that rather than a stately progression, you have something of a zig zag.

But this zig zag process creates a rolling story for election night (and creates a way for us to break down what to look for on election night.  In this (and following posts), I will designate poll closing times by local and Eastern Daylight times.

Putting to the side the territories, polls start to close at 6:00 p.m. Eastern (which is also 6:00 p.m. local time) in the parts of Kentucky and Indiana in the Eastern Time zone.  These two states are deep red and very gerrymandered.  In other words, there should be nothing to see in these two states.  Indiana has an open Senate seat as the current Senator is running for governor and one of the Republican representatives is running for the Senate seat.  But this state is not on any body’s list of states likely to flip even though the candidate the Republicans nominated for lieutenant governor is extremely controversial (which could make the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor closer than it otherwise would be).  And none of the House seats in the Eastern time zone are competitive with the closest race having a PVI of R +11.  The only seat worth watching in Indiana’s first district which is mostly in the central time zone.  That district is only D+3, but the Republican candidate is viewed as a long shot.  The early votes are in the more Republican half of the district.  So the first hour or so of return may make the race look close, but, by the end of the night, the Democrat should be up by 10% or more.  In Kentucky, there are no Senate races or state races and the two closest races are +9 PVIs.    In other words, if anything is happening with the House seats in either state or the statewide races in Indiana, that could be a sign that polls are very off.  The most significant races in these two states are two ballot questions in Kentucky.  One is a “throw red meat to the base” proposal to ban voting by non-citizens (which is already illegal).  The other would allow public funding for private schools (which would include religious schools). Continue Reading...

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Voting and Vote Counting 101

By tmess2 | Published October 20, 2024

Once again, we are facing the possibility that early election returns on November 5 will be very misleading.  In large part, this is due to the efforts of one candidate (he who shall not be named) to demonize one form of voting which means that there will likely be significant partisan differences based on the mechanism showing.  This problem is made worse by certain states which would rather make voting difficult in the name of preventing the tiny amount of fraud that exists rather than actually preventing fraud.

There are basically four types of voting in the U.S.:  1) Absentee/Mail-in voting; 2) Early (in-person) voting; 3) In-person (election day) voting; and 4) provisional voting.  Each state has slightly different rules for these types of voting.  This difference is most pronounced for absentee and early voting.  For early voting, the difference mostly comes down to the period for early voting (when it starts and when it ends) and the days/hours when early voting locations are open.

For absentee voting, there are two big areas of difference.  First, states differ on whether a reason is required for an absentee ballot and what reasons are accepted.  While almost every state now allows early voting, many states still require an excuse before a person can cast an absentee ballot.  Second, there is a wide variety of rules governing the deadline for casting an absentee ballot.  The big difference is whether the ballot must be received by election day or merely postmarked by election day.  However, six states (Alabama, Connecticut, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and West Virginia) require any absentee ballot dropped off by the voter to be dropped off by the day before the election, and two states (Louisiana and New Hampshire) require any ballot mailed to be received by the day before election day, and three states (North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah) require that mail-in ballots be post-marked by the day before the election.       Overall, thirty-five states are “received by” states and fifteen states (and the District of Columbia) are “post-marked by” states (but each of these states have a different post-election deadline for the receipt of ballots).  Of the crucial states (at least at the presidential and Senate level), only Nevada, Ohio, and Texas are “postmarked by” states. Continue Reading...

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