Which Votes Decide?
Yes, I am getting a little impatient during this campaign, but not with the campaign itself, which seems to have been rather well paced. No, I've long ago lost patience with all the bellyaching from people who are so tired of this campaign and just want it to be over.
It started (at least) near the beginning of the year. We got to March and, for reasons beyond my comprehension, most people seemed to think that the Democratic primary should have been settled already. Tsk, I said, that's what conventions are for: to choose a nominee. Can you imagine a few decades ago actually having to wait! (Of course, it's a trick rhetorical question, since not so many people were involved in the process nor did they care quite so much as people seem to today.)
Then it's September and pundits and bloggers are demanding to know why Obama hadn't sewn it all up already. Tsk, I said, that's what the election is for!
Hae you noticed all the tiresome people who claim to disdain the horse-race aspect of campaigning then talk breathlessly about how we're winning or losing as a new poll appears every fifteen minutes?
I fail to understand how one can be winning or losing. Elections are discrete events that change the state of the candidates: before the event, they are both candidates; after the event, someone is a winner.* One does not become a winner gradually, although one can gain intentions to vote but those really don't count for anything until they are actualized in the voting event.†
So, to me, an election is something that happens as a discrete event (let's overlook early voting for the moment, too), and it has an outcome that is not yet determined but will be known sometime after the event. Except for all the psychological battles that go into the war for intentions to vote, I don't see any reason to anticipate the election event. I believe, deep down, that I really do not care one bit for the horse-race aspect, which I find tedious–but not so tedious as all those who complain about it.
I actually think that Obama's campaign has been well paced as it built its arguments and momentum geared toward the election-day event. Very unusual! Remember all those people wringing their hands in–what?–September when Obama took a weekend of vacation? To my mind it was a perfect opportunity to take a bit of time off and refresh the candidate before the endgame.
Today we arrived at my most peevish pet peeve, namely which votes will win it for which candidate. Current punditing has it that Ohio will determine the election.
What could that possibly mean? Remember, I see the election as a discrete event, albeit one extended over a period of time. Before the event, no votes are cast and no one has won; after the event all votes are counted and someone has won. Take away the necessary number of votes for the winning candidate, in any arbitrary combination, and a different candidate would have won. While votes are being counted the result is in an indeterminate state that I find most interesting: the outcome is determined but still unknown.**
Evidently I lack sufficient imagination to see how one can make the claim that any particular votes determined the election. It might be fun, enlightening even, to discuss how one group of voters or another contributed to a candidate's win or loss, or the demographics of the voters, but just because group Z contributed some number of votes that, when moved from one column to another would have changed the outcome of the election, there is no sense in which those votes determine the outcome. The winner is the one who obtains a specified fraction of the necessary type of votes.#
Honestly, I do get excited sometimes about campaigns and election results, but I try to save my anxieties for those things where it might be useful.
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* This is obviously a physicist's simplification since there can be plenty of circumstances that can deflect that simple outcome, but this is a first-order approximation anyway.
† You might be inclined to see this as something dangerously akin to the "observer effect" in quantum mechanics, but it's really not and I'd rather avoid that comparison, largely because I have some professional issues with the Copenhagen interpretation anyway.
** After polls close people love to speculate on the outcome of the count as is proceeds but, honestly, I don't see the point. It really makes no sense to me to talk about who's "ahead" anytime during that process.
# Regardless of how people feel about the importance of the popular vote in the presidential election, the result is nevertheless determined (except in extraordinary circumstances) by who wins the most votes in the electoral college, at least until we choose a different method, a process fraught with difficulties.
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on Sunday, 2 November 2008 at 23.59
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Have to admit I'm among those who believe the whole thing goes on too long. Starts too early, grinds on for what feels like a mind-numbing eternity. And, it all costs way too much.
I especially feel this way toward the end of the primaries and the last weeks of the general election. A big reason is that substantive issues have long since ceased to be meaningfully discussed. It's down now, as it always gets down to in the final days, throwing brickbats such as, "He's a socialist" or "not fit to be commander in chief."
But I'm with you on the silly business of announcing who's ahead, who's catching up, and such, as voting is still under way and the count is still a long way from being complete.
Determination of which state or states will decide the election is based on the most evenly divided battleground states. Its figured states like Texas and Idaho would be lock for Republicans if Richard Nixon's ghost and Alberto Gonzales were running. Similarly, California and New York are considered solid for Democrats, no matter what. Then you get to the more strongly leaning of the battleground states, and tip them whichever way polls say they're headed.
So, finally, it comes down to another headache-inducing slog in Florida, where voter suppression and incompetently managed elections make up an industry second only to tourism as a mainstay of the state's identity; and to Ohio, home of (conservative) Republican presidents. There, somehow, unindicted co-conspirator Kenneth Blackwell seems to always wield an evil influence on the outcome.
Even so, I wouldn't miss this for anything.
(BTW, tried to leave this comment last night, but it looked like the server went down while I was writing it.)