[05:33] <tonyyarusso> Oh hey, we're actually getting a decent amount of snow out of this system.  Yay.
[05:34] <Takyoji> Yea; about up to 8" for Faribault
[05:35] <tonyyarusso> Of course, Takyoji always gets the real fun.
[05:35] <tonyyarusso> Might be half that here.
[05:35] <Takyoji> Actually, Faribault usually gets the least of everything. :P
[05:35] <Takyoji> There's even storm fronts that split, pass Faribault, then remerge thereafter
[05:35] <tonyyarusso> well lately you've gotten the fun.
[05:35] <tonyyarusso> Flooding, snow, etc.
[05:35] <Takyoji> Finally, yes
[05:36] <Takyoji> So, anyone else pissed off over COICA or Wikileaks censorship?
[05:37] <sparklehistory> tonyyarusso: Do you really want your house to flood?
[05:37] <tonyyarusso> sparklehistory: It would take a LOT for my house to flood.
[05:37] <tonyyarusso> Takyoji: COICA?
[05:37] <tonyyarusso> Also, what do you mean by wikileaks censorship?
[05:38] <Takyoji> Bill that permits US government to takeover whatever domain they want
[05:38] <tonyyarusso> Oh, right.  sparklehistory and I were talking about that the other day.
[05:39] <Takyoji> The forced takedown from Amazon, the domain takeover, politicians ravenously screeching "ASSASSINATE ASSANGE!", etc
[05:40] <tonyyarusso> Your second and third point are fine, but your first is false - there was no forced takedown from Amazon.
[05:41] <Takyoji> I still can't believe something like COICA was passed
[05:43] <Takyoji> I understand it's intent; but that power can (and has) certainly be misused.
[05:44] <tonyyarusso> yup
[05:44] <tonyyarusso> But, "its".
[05:44] <Takyoji> You win a gold star sticker for the correction
[05:44] <_diablo> lol
[05:44] <rlaager> Takyoji: COICA passed what?
[05:45] <rlaager> Last I heard, a Senator from Oregon (effectively) killed it for now.
[05:45] <_diablo> rlaager: out of committee
[05:45] <Takyoji> Also, what's the status of the Internet Shutdown Bill?
[05:45] <_diablo> rlaager: you're right. filibuster has been threatened.
[05:45] <_diablo> Takyoji: not passed yet. but got unanimous approval out of committee
[05:46] <rlaager> Our senators unfortunately voted for it, as I understand. Klobuchar was even a co-sponsor.
[05:46] <Takyoji> oh gee
[05:46] <_diablo> rlaager: that's sad :(
[05:47] <Takyoji> If that was passed before this, I have a feeling it would have been used right now
[05:48] <tonyyarusso> Klobuchar's been really good on the general human rights-y stuff and whatnot, but not terribly impressive on the interests of geekdom.
[05:48] <rlaager> My communication with her office was ignored. Here's an idea: Every elected representative should have a position statement/document on every bill they support. I shouldn't have to wonder why my senators support this bill.
[05:48] <Takyoji> considering they're using the "diplomatic 9/11" and "terrorist group" tags for the leak.
[05:48] <tonyyarusso> Of course, any alternative to her would be far worse, so....
[05:49] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: If I ever run for office, that will be one of my campaign promises.
[05:49] <_diablo> tonyyarusso: truth. 2 party system sucks.
[05:49] <tonyyarusso> _diablo: and the First Past the Post electoral system is what enables it.
[05:49] <rlaager> amen
[05:50] <_diablo> tonyyarusso: agreed generally; it's a big factor
[05:50] <rlaager> I think that Instant Runoff is probably the best compromise between utility for the general public and mathematical perfection.
[05:50]  * _diablo agrees with rlaager 
[05:50] <tonyyarusso> Although for offices like Senator it gets a bit tricker - PR is more for lower/sole houses.  STV/IRV would still help immensely for the single-seat things though.
[05:51] <rlaager> tonyyarusso: What are PR and STV?
[05:51] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: My favorite is a unicameral legislature using mixed member proportional representation under a Westminster system with STV for each local constituency race within that.
[05:52] <rlaager> tonyyarusso: I don't quite follow.
[05:52] <tonyyarusso> This of course will never happen in the US; my electoral reform thoughts are primarily developed in a Canadian context.
[05:52] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: What, was there political jargon in that sentence somewhere?  ;)
[05:53] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: "Westmister system" - Parliamentary model of the UK and Commonwealth nations (like Canada, Australia, etc.)
[05:53] <rlaager> Yeah, I followed that part... and "unicameral"
[05:53] <tonyyarusso> 'k
[05:53] <rlaager> It's "mixed member proportional" and "STV" that I don't follo
[05:54] <Takyoji> Shall we all just move to Canada then? :P
[05:54] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: "Proportional Representation": The percenttage of seats held in the house should closely match the percentage of the popular vote each party acquired.  So, if there are 100 seats in the body, and the Green Party gets 8% of the vote nationwide, there should be 8 Green legislators.
[05:55] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, of course.  Mixed Member is one of those ways.
[05:57] <tonyyarusso> It means that, again in our example with 100 seats, you might have 67 seats divided into districts the way they are now, and someone elected from that district.  Then, you compare where you stand on the proportionality goal at that point, and use the other 33 as "top-off" seats, allocating them as appropriate such that the final totals of 100 match the vote percentage very well, offsetting any disparities left after just the ...
[05:57] <tonyyarusso> ... local seats.  Most implementations do this by region, so you might have 5 top-off seats available for "New England" or some such.
[05:59] <tonyyarusso> STV is Single Transferable Vote, aka Instant Runoff Voting, where you rank the candidates from "I like this one the most" to "I like this one the least", rather than just voting for one.  A candidate is required to get 50% +1 to be elected.  If nobody has that after counting the first choices, then the candidate with the fewest votes for them as the 1st choice is dropped from the ballot, and the count re-calculated, this time ...
[05:59] <tonyyarusso> ... using the 2nd choices on any ballot that had the dropped person as 1st.  Repeat until someone gets a majority.  This is just like holding runoff elections, except way faster and cheaper because you do it all on one ballot and it's just math instead of trying to put together a new poll.
[06:01] <rlaager> So you'd use STV/IRV to determine the representative per district and then use the top-off seats to match the percentages of the 1st place choices?
[06:01] <tonyyarusso> Correct.
[06:02] <tonyyarusso> That way you're mathematically less likely to need the top-off seats (ie, the result after just the local seats would already be closer than it is now under FPTP), so a) you can get by with fewer of them, and b) people won't get as upset about some massive influx of regional representatives (since people see these as less accountable, etc.)
[06:04] <tonyyarusso> I have some demonstrations of how PR would look after recent elections too, check these out:
[06:05] <tonyyarusso> UK 2010:  http://files.tonyyarusso.com/uk/ukresults.html
[06:05] <tonyyarusso> Canada 2008:  http://files.tonyyarusso.com/canresults.html
[06:05] <rlaager> How are these calculated?
[06:05] <tonyyarusso> US 2008:  http://files.tonyyarusso.com/usresults.html  (lower house only)
[06:05] <tonyyarusso> Top part is the actual result; bottom part is percentage of popular vote multiplied by number of seats in the house.
[06:06] <rlaager> ahh, okay
[06:06] <rlaager> So this underestimates the third-party candidates' seat counts if this were to actually be passed.
[06:06] <tonyyarusso> The black bars represent the threshold for a majority.
[06:07] <rlaager> That is, if you want a Libertarian to win, but realize that won't happen under FPTP and vote for a Republican or Democrat instead, that wouldn't show up as Libertarian in your PR count (because you have no way of estimating that).
[06:07] <tonyyarusso> This puts it soley how it would look if people cast their votes the same way the did last time and you applied different math, not the upsurge in other parties due to being seeing as legitimate contenders again, yes.
[06:07] <rlaager> Right, so this seems like a good plan.
[06:07] <rlaager> Whereas under IRV, you'd still end up with the results from the top of the page.
[06:08] <tonyyarusso> The UK and Canada both have viable third and fourth parties (sometimes even fifth), so those are a bit closer to what you would expect already.
[06:08] <tonyyarusso> The US is way whackadoodle in only ever having two.
[06:08] <tonyyarusso> IRV you'd get slightly different results, but it doesn't fix everything.
[06:08] <rlaager> Yeah, I'll need to sleep on this, but I think I agree with you.
[06:08] <tonyyarusso> It would be great for things like our governors race though.
[06:08] <rlaager> Right.
[06:09] <rlaager> So this for the State/Federal House & State Senate, IRV for Governor.
[06:09] <tonyyarusso> Right.
[06:09] <rlaager> You'd probably suggest IRV for the federal senate then (assuming you can't change that to unicameral like you want).
[06:09] <tonyyarusso> Except for the detail where I support abolition of Senates :P
[06:09] <tonyyarusso> Otherwise yes.
[06:10] <rlaager> I want a repeal of direct election of senators, personally.
[06:10] <rlaager> So they'd actually represent the States again.
[06:10] <tonyyarusso> I could also go for something where we elect one senator per state with IRV, and then have a PR system for say 10 senators aggregated among 10 states by region, or something.
[06:10] <rlaager> subject to some other restrictions and implementation details that aren't relevant to the point at hand
[06:11] <rlaager> So how would you handle President?
[06:11] <tonyyarusso> IRV nationwide, abolish Electoral College.
[06:11] <tonyyarusso> (Westminster systems do not have a President)
[06:11] <rlaager> So you'd have one slate of choices nationwide then?
[06:15] <tonyyarusso> yes
[06:15] <tonyyarusso> How else would you do that?
[06:16] <rlaager> Well, that's one of the big problems I have with our current system.
[06:16] <rlaager> Assuming for a second that we don't change the voting at all, I'd really like to see it where the candidates were the same in all 50 states.
[06:17] <rlaager> For example, each state would maintain its own method of getting people on the ballot, but once a candidate (well, a P-VP team) was on enough states that it could theoretically win (if it got all their electoral votes), then they'd be on the ballot in ALL states.
[06:18] <rlaager> If you were going to do national voting, it'd be a de facto requirement.
[06:20] <tonyyarusso> Oh, you know, I'd almost forgotten that we DON'T already have identical ballots - our system is so stupid I forgot we even did that :S
[06:20] <rlaager> I like the idea of the electoral college system isolating election problems.
[06:22] <tonyyarusso> That is a valid point, but I think you could accomplish the same thing by counting them by state and *leaving* the ballots in the state.
[06:23] <rlaager> I don't follow. Say Minnesota adopts electronic voting and there's massive fraud, such that 90-100% of Minnesota's votes are for one candidate when the election is as close as Bush vs. Gore.
[06:24] <rlaager> Under the electoral college system (and a two-party system), that's only an issue to the extent that the fraud upsets the winner in Minnesota and the damage is limited to Minnesota's electoral votes.
[06:24] <rlaager> In a nationwide election, it will surely change the national result.
[06:25] <rlaager> Other than that point, I'm all for getting rid of it.
[06:27] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: Don't you think that someone would NOTICE if all of Minnesota's votes went to one candidate?
[06:27] <rlaager> Sure they would. And what would they do about it?
[06:27] <tonyyarusso> This is what recounts and judicial proceedings are for.
[06:28] <rlaager> Judicial proceedings where?
[06:28] <tonyyarusso> You can pick up today's paper and read all about how we do it here, most likely ;)
[06:28] <rlaager> Who has standing? Which court has jurisdiction?
[06:28] <tonyyarusso> That would depend entirely on the type of case, I would imagine.
[06:28] <tonyyarusso> That issue is the same electoral college or not.
[06:28] <rlaager> It'd have to be the candidates in federal court, but which district?
[06:29] <rlaager> Not really. With the electoral college, this is a state matter. Look at the Florida situation.
[06:29] <tonyyarusso> Go look up how the Bush v. Gore stuff went in Florida?
[06:29] <tonyyarusso> huh?
[06:29] <tonyyarusso> Without the electoral college it would still be a state matter.
[06:29] <tonyyarusso> States are in charge of all election proceedings.
[06:32] <rlaager> Okay, so under a national popular vote system, Gore would've won in 2000 by 543895 votes (using wikipedia's numbers).
[06:32] <rlaager> With the electoral college, no matter what Texas said their vote returns were, the result is the same.
[06:33] <tonyyarusso> Yes, so?
[06:33] <rlaager> Without the electoral college, if Texas had fraud on the order of 550,000 votes, it would turn the election to Bush.
[06:33] <tonyyarusso> That disenfranchises any Democrat in Texas and any Republican in California - how is that a good thing?
[06:33] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: You're entire premise is the assumption that fraud is allowed.
[06:33] <tonyyarusso> *YOUR, geez
[06:34] <tonyyarusso> No matter what system you use, you have to find and fix any fraud that occurs for it to work.
[06:34] <rlaager> I can't find totals for 2000, but in 2004, Texas had 7,359,621 votes in total.
[06:35] <tonyyarusso> Under the current one for instance, I could just bribe about 100 people and make the electoral college always turn out the way I want.
[06:35] <rlaager> So a roughly 7.4% percentage of vote-swapping fraud in Texas would've changed the outcome of the election.
[06:36] <tonyyarusso> and?
[06:36] <rlaager> 7.4% is small
[06:37]  * tonyyarusso sighs
[06:37] <tonyyarusso> Do you really not see the flaw in this line of bickering?
[06:37] <rlaager> This is a frequently cited advantage of the electoral college.
[06:38] <tonyyarusso> There are lots of frequently said things that still aren't valid argumentative points.
[06:39] <rlaager> Your point about bribing electoral college voters is valid, but could easily be addressed by making the electoral college a virtual thing instead of having actual voters.
[06:39] <tonyyarusso> I'm going to come up with an example that proves this is silly - give me a minute :P
[06:39] <tonyyarusso> well, actually, meh
[06:40] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: How is that different from what I said earlier?  You keep the states' results separate.
[06:40] <rlaager> In other words, the states certify the winners and you just do the math. Anyway, I'm not sure that this advantage of the electoral college system is *worth* the disadvantages.
[06:40] <tonyyarusso> There is no advantage of the electoral college - its advantages would ALSO exist under another system, so have no net positive.
[06:40] <rlaager> So you'd do 50 states of IRV and then combine the results how?
[06:40] <tonyyarusso> NO
[06:40] <tonyyarusso> ONE race, 50 counting offices.
[06:41] <tonyyarusso> 51 rather
[06:41] <rlaager> heh, DC ;)
[06:42] <rlaager> So you'd have 51 sets of counts for any possible orderings of candidates that were voted and then you'd finialize that by summing it nationally?
[06:43] <rlaager> e.g. Minnesota says 3 people voted Gore, Nader, Bush, 2 people voted Nader, Gore, Bush, etc., etc.
[06:43] <tonyyarusso> What?
[06:43] <tonyyarusso> Yes, I believe you're saying what I mean.
[06:44] <rlaager> right, ok, that's what I thought you meant
[06:45] <tonyyarusso> FYI, changing 16,700 votes in New Hampshire would have given Gore the election under the electoral college system - if you're a fraudster, would you rather change 16,700 votes, or 550,000 votes?
[06:46] <tonyyarusso> (There's my example)
[06:46] <rlaager> So the counterargument is that because the electoral college only has benefits in non-landslide elections, there will be, by definition, close states that can be manipulated with smaller numbers of votes.
[06:46] <rlaager> Interesting.
[06:47] <tonyyarusso> No, the counterargument is that is disenfranchises millions of voters every two years.
[06:48] <rlaager> How so?
[06:48] <rlaager> The electoral college is only a problem when it causes a different result from a popular vote, right?
[06:48] <tonyyarusso> If you're a Democrat in Alabama or a Republican in DC, there's absolutely no reason for you to even think about bothering to vote in a Presidentical election, as there is 0% chance your vote will count.
[06:49] <rlaager> Ah, right.
[06:49] <rlaager> And that certainly becomes an issue in practice if you want to change any other aspect of the system.
[06:50] <tonyyarusso> It's always an issue when you're denying citizens the right to vote.
[06:52] <rlaager> So do you see any value in States existing?
[06:52] <tonyyarusso> Sure, providing administrative services over this large of a country with a single level would be a nightmare.
[06:52] <rlaager> It sounds like you'd do away with any weighting that existed for States (e.g. the Senate and the Electoral college) in favor of strict proportional popular voting.
[06:52] <tonyyarusso> I am however in favor of a Federation over a Republic.
[06:53] <rlaager> What does that mean in practice?
[06:53] <tonyyarusso> "states" are not people - they don't have a right to vote; people do.
[06:53] <tonyyarusso> Federation:  Most power is in the federal government
[06:53] <tonyyarusso> Republic:  Most power is with the state governments
[06:54] <rlaager> ok
[06:54] <tonyyarusso> It's the old "States Rights" argument.
[06:54] <rlaager> Right, so then why have the states at all?
[06:54] <tonyyarusso> Canada is the former, the US is the latter.
[06:54] <tonyyarusso> Because governments are supposed to *do* things after you elect them, not elect themselves :P
[06:55] <tonyyarusso> For instance, state government handles a lot of our roads.  It makes a lot of sense for different folks to be in charge of plowing the roads here tomorrow and staring idly at the ones in Mississippi.
[06:56] <rlaager> But couldn't a Federal Department of Transportation have regional offices, where the regions were broken up in a way that made sense for the services they are providing?
[06:56] <tonyyarusso> Simply put, you can't govern effectively from thousands of miles away, so you need various levels of administrative subdivisions to deal with stuff - the emporers of Ancient Rome knew this.
[06:57] <rlaager> In other words, they could treat Minnesota and North Dakota as a region, because we get snow, but some other government department could treat them differently for different reasons.
[06:57] <tonyyarusso> Sure, but when you made regional offices for everything you'd just recreate states.
[06:57] <tonyyarusso> They might have different borders, but it's the same concept.
[06:57] <rlaager> Well, the different borders bit is pretty fundamental, I think.
[07:12] <rlaager> tonyyarusso: Thanks for the discussion. It was very informative. I'm going to call it a night.
[07:13] <tonyyarusso> rlaager: sounds good, sleep well
[23:18]  * MTecknology makes MN part of SD
[23:18]  * MTecknology now demands MN LoCo become part of SD LoCo
[23:18]  * MTecknology finally made his LoCo active!
[23:19] <tonyyarusso> You seem to be unclear on which way annexations work.
[23:21] <MTecknology> tonyyarusso: you mean how the smaller usually becomes part of the bigger?
[23:21] <MTecknology> I was thinking taking it forcefully :P
[23:21] <tonyyarusso> yes
[23:22] <tonyyarusso> With what force?
[23:23] <MTecknology> me and my magical abilities (i only have them when i'm on my pain meds though)