My main disappointment with this was that it was too short. I wanted to hear more about voter rights and also more about the voter fraud issue. 15 minutes was not long enough. I need to hear more of Dan's platforms before I write him in. :)
When arguing about voter fraud rates in the context of voter ID laws, you need to be careful that you're discussing the specific forms of voter fraud that would be reduced by voter ID laws (voter impersonation fraud at the polls). I think there's pretty strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that very little incorrectness in election results comes from that form of voter fraud.
I'm pretty sure that Dan can't be right about felon disenfranchisement tipping the balance in elections of Reagan and Bush Sr. Seriously, Dan, Reagan?! Look at the electoral maps!
In 1980, Carter lost the popular vote by over 8 million. In 1980 there were ~5M current and ex-felons in the US (PDF, sorry), so that doesn't seem enough to tip the balance, even if you assume all of them were disenfranchised as a result, that all of them would have voted, and that all of them would have voted for Carter. (And none of those assumptions are accurate.) The same goes for Mondale, but much, much worse. By the time Bush Sr. was running there were more like 7M current and ex-felons (welcome to the War on Drugs!) and Bush won by about 7M so maybe if you squint really hard... but no, it's not enough.
For Bush Jr. it's at least plausible, but that's because he ran extremely close elections. 2004 had a difference of 3M, and the felon + ex-felon population was well over 15M by that point. In 2000 ~500 votes in Florida could have changed the Electoral College result and Bush won the popular vote by an underwhelming -0.5M.
Speaking of which: On the subject of presidential electoral politics in particular, there's a lot of strange stuff to discuss, issues that maybe should be decided on common principles but devolve into "what will let our guy win" almost immediately. The demographics line up so that popular vote landslides for Democrats are much closer in the electoral college than similar percent victories for Republicans (compare Bush Sr. / Dukakis to Obama / McCain), the situation where Democrats have an electoral loss but a popular vote majority is way more likely than the same for Republicans. To say nothing of Bush v. Gore (the Supreme Court case), which may yet come back to bite America (I don't just mean liberals) in alarming ways.
Ah, well, it's the midterm. At least there's plenty of material for 2016.
Chelsea: It was indeed too short. Timing constraints on my end this time.
l33tminion: Here I must take my lashes by wet noodle, as I have committed the sin of "I heard/read this one thing this one time and can't remember where but I'm going to cite it as fact."
My main disappointment with this was that it was too short. I wanted to hear more about voter rights and also more about the voter fraud issue. 15 minutes was not long enough. I need to hear more of Dan's platforms before I write him in. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen arguing about voter fraud rates in the context of voter ID laws, you need to be careful that you're discussing the specific forms of voter fraud that would be reduced by voter ID laws (voter impersonation fraud at the polls). I think there's pretty strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that very little incorrectness in election results comes from that form of voter fraud.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that Dan can't be right about felon disenfranchisement tipping the balance in elections of Reagan and Bush Sr. Seriously, Dan, Reagan?! Look at the electoral maps!
In 1980, Carter lost the popular vote by over 8 million. In 1980 there were ~5M current and ex-felons in the US (PDF, sorry), so that doesn't seem enough to tip the balance, even if you assume all of them were disenfranchised as a result, that all of them would have voted, and that all of them would have voted for Carter. (And none of those assumptions are accurate.) The same goes for Mondale, but much, much worse. By the time Bush Sr. was running there were more like 7M current and ex-felons (welcome to the War on Drugs!) and Bush won by about 7M so maybe if you squint really hard... but no, it's not enough.
For Bush Jr. it's at least plausible, but that's because he ran extremely close elections. 2004 had a difference of 3M, and the felon + ex-felon population was well over 15M by that point. In 2000 ~500 votes in Florida could have changed the Electoral College result and Bush won the popular vote by an underwhelming -0.5M.
Speaking of which: On the subject of presidential electoral politics in particular, there's a lot of strange stuff to discuss, issues that maybe should be decided on common principles but devolve into "what will let our guy win" almost immediately. The demographics line up so that popular vote landslides for Democrats are much closer in the electoral college than similar percent victories for Republicans (compare Bush Sr. / Dukakis to Obama / McCain), the situation where Democrats have an electoral loss but a popular vote majority is way more likely than the same for Republicans. To say nothing of Bush v. Gore (the Supreme Court case), which may yet come back to bite America (I don't just mean liberals) in alarming ways.
Ah, well, it's the midterm. At least there's plenty of material for 2016.
Chelsea: It was indeed too short. Timing constraints on my end this time.
ReplyDeletel33tminion: Here I must take my lashes by wet noodle, as I have committed the sin of "I heard/read this one thing this one time and can't remember where but I'm going to cite it as fact."