Foreign readers might or might not know this, but the United States has an utterly idiotic voting system for Presidential elections whereby entire states have to go entirely for one candidate or the other. The only thing stupider than this system is that we can't get together to abolish it.
Wisconsin is a "swing state" in this election, which means it's one of the few that could go either way, which means it's one of the states where campaigning is actually going on...because of course all American elections are decided by the few idiots who can't make up their minds in the states that are most evenly divided, a system that is sufficiently random that no one can object to it. My nerves are frayed. I've hardly answered the @#!$ phone in two weeks, because nine out of ten calls are robo-calls from political organizations. My own mother is complaining bitterly that she can't get through to me. (As I typed this, the phone lit up again, "caller unidentified." It's probably either Bill Clinton or someone cordially inviting me to a Republican rally.)
And don't even get me started about the avalanche of email clogging up my inbox.
I'm suspicious of polls, though. I told the first few (accurately) who I will be voting for and that the chance of me changing my mind was zero; then I told the next few (subversively) that I would be voting for the other guy; and the last time that there was actually a live human pollster on the other end of the line, I tried my best to convince her that I thought the candidate I don't like was an alien who came out from behind a comet and that if I didn't vote for him he would atomize me with an anti-progress gun. I think I had her going for a while there, too, but then I started laughing at my own jokes.
They've tried to poll me about thirty times, I think. Those are just the calls I picked up.
Just for fun, I picked up that call I told you about above. It was a robo-pollster; I told the nice robo-lady that I was a female who would definitely vote but was undecided and not leaning either way. Hey, bad data serves lazy sociologists right.
But here's the best commercial of the current season. This was made by two pharmacist friends who actually paid their own money to put it on the air, on the late local news in the Omaha, Nebraska market. It sums up why I've watched very little TV in the past few weeks.
This is non-partisan, too, so it's safe to watch no matter which side you're on.
One other thing you should know is that I suffer from an irrational fear of dental work.
Tomorrow, the drilling stops...we hope.
Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)
P.S. Note that this post is non-partisan. If I can do it, you can too...non-partisan comments only, please.
P.P.S.: This was supposed to be the "Open Mike" yesterday, but I got distracted by football....
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Featured Comments from:
paul in AZ: "A serious question: After two or more years of non-stop campaign rhetoric and BS, how could there still be undecided voters? Are these Martians who just stepped off the spaceship?"
Mike replies: I think they'd have to be from farther away than that. Martians probably have their opinions. [g]
You should have stayed in the empire - we told you not to leave!
Posted by: Mike Weatherstone | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 05:14 PM
Feeling it here in Virginia, too, Mike. And I've always felt that voting the way we do is another one of those things we do simply because it has always been done that way.
Posted by: emptyspaces | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 05:42 PM
To quote Stephen Colbert: "Just flip a G0dd@mn coin already!"
After reading this month's Harper's cover story, I just hope the election is over tomorrow night, and doesn't go into January, like in 2000/2001
Patrick
Baal/Zoroaster 2012!
Posted by: Patrick Perez | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 05:42 PM
"If I can do it, you can too"
Yes we can.
Posted by: Rob Atkins | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 05:44 PM
Watch it, Atkins.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 05:59 PM
Actually, it is not quite true that "whereby entire states have to go entirely for one candidate or the other", it is up to the state to apportion the electoral college electors.
Maine and Nebraska allow for splitting the number of electors based on the popular vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Selection
Posted by: KeithB | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 06:04 PM
You may be rightly cynical about any individual poll but (Bayesian) agregated data from polls is a very good predictor of outcome.
fivethirtyeight is run by Nate Silver. He correctly predicted the presidential winner of 49 of the 50 states of the 2008 election and the results of all 35 Senate races. Before that he applied Bayesian analysis to baseball predictions (PECOTA) with great sucess too. He's a semi-pro poker player too (similar methods).
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
Posted by: Kevin Purcell | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 06:43 PM
Being in a swing state sucks (Virginia, in my case). I 've pretty well quit watching network TV and listening to commercial radio (both of which, on the face of it, may not be such a bad thing really.
As flawed as the electoral college system may be, campaign financing and advertising rules could use a rather more urgent overhaul.
Posted by: Paul Glover | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 08:12 PM
It's very fixable. I was skeptical at first when I heard it, but after careful consideration of the legal reasoning behind it, it looks pretty airtight to me. http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/explanation.php
Posted by: James Liu | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 08:56 PM
I finally decided to "have fun" with the robo calls. I always indicated I was voting for one party's candidate while identifying myself strongly with the other party. I hope they choke on the data!
Posted by: Mr Ed | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 12:06 AM
Of course we in Australia don't cop this blitz of ads, but our media of all colours, from the informed and responsible to the lunatic "shock jocks" are obsessed with the campaign and I'll be very happy when it's over.
I will not be surprised to see our politicians...
(Ambrose Bierce: POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When we wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.)
...seize on the robocall technique at our next elections. Their most recent telephone trick here was the "push poll" which involved posing as an accredited telephone pollster, but slipping in derogatory comments on the candidate that their employer opposed.
Posted by: Ross Chambers | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 01:16 AM
It's not so much that you left British rule but that you went 100 years too soon and so missed out on Britain setting up the country properly. It truly would be the United States of America rather than the Dysfunctional States of America it has become.
Posted by: Calvin Palmer | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 01:22 AM
"campaign financing and advertising rules could use a rather more urgent overhaul"
You'd think, but it turns out that lobbyists are more powerful than Congress. Which is a strange state of affairs. Repeatedly, Congress attempts to address corruption issues but their efforts are overwhelmed by the lobbyists. In some cases more than overwhelmed--actually reversed. There are many examples.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 01:30 AM
If 2-3% of those polled in swing states answered like you did, then those late-breaking polls are unreliable.
Posted by: Sarge | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 02:22 AM
And when I started reading this piece I was actually afraid that you would try to be subliminally partisan.
Posted by: Player | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 02:30 AM
Fear of dental work is rational.
Posted by: Andreas Manessinger | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 03:01 AM
Watch it, Player.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 05:03 AM
You should move to HK. We don't have a vote. We still get a government as incompetent as yours (probably more so) but at least we can say with a clear conscience that "I didn't vote for him".
Posted by: Andrew H | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 07:59 AM
"Watch it, Player."
Sorry Mike, I thought sarcasm had me covered :-).
Posted by: Player | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 09:14 AM
My sister, who is a dentist, did not think this was funny. Too bad, I did!
Posted by: Jim | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 10:35 AM
Isn't the current USA Presidential election system the result of the Founding Fathers not wanting the usa to be a Democracy (the winner is by the largest vote - not necessary a majority of voters) but rather a Republic where you vote for others to decide who will be the President; hence the Electoral College system in use. Or am I mistaken about this?
Posted by: geoff belfer | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 11:35 AM
"You'd think, but it turns out that lobbyists are more powerful than Congress. Which is a strange state of affairs."
It's a *disturbing* state of affairs, yet one which sadly does not surprise me at all.
Posted by: Paul Glover | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 01:55 PM
We have a bunch of local and state judicial positions on the ballot, and we get a robo-call for each and every one of them pretty much every day. These are supposed to be non-partisan positions, but there's no such thing. Shockingly, ALL of the folks who want to be judges are in favor of the family and against crime. All of their opponents are radicals, and/ or "activist judges," or tools of the special interests. I guess a "special interest" is anybody you don't like.
None of these judge folks ever mention where they stand on any particular issue, probably because that would make it too easy to decide.
I've also had a bunch of "push-poll" calls where the caller starts out by saying "Most people think that candidate A is a terrible person who hates puppies. Do you think we should have a terrible person in that position?"
I answer "yes." Sometimes they don't even say goodbye before they hang up.
Posted by: Paris | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 04:59 PM
"Wisconsin is a "swing state" in this election, which means it's one of the few that could go either way,"
It would so much better if Wisconsin was known as a "swing state" on account of Woody Herman.
Posted by: hugh crawford | Tuesday, 06 November 2012 at 06:11 PM
Mike,
You're no worse off than being in a "swing" seat under the Westminster system. And you are probably better off than being in a "safe" seat - at least you might have a chance of influencing something if you vote - which is compulsory in Oz by the way.
Posted by: Bear. | Wednesday, 07 November 2012 at 01:48 AM
Suck it up. With the electoral college, people in the swing states endure the campaign ads as a sacrifice to their fellow Americans. If we switched to a popular vote then campaign ads would inundate every channel of every state.
Posted by: Andy Kowalczyk | Wednesday, 07 November 2012 at 07:55 AM
While I'm glad we don't endure the absurd torrent of robocalls and TV commercials, at least some of us in non-swing states are left convinced that the politicians and their campaigns don't care about us (even less than usual).
Posted by: AndrewG NY | Thursday, 08 November 2012 at 11:01 AM
I, too, disapproved of the Electoral Collage. Until Hurricane sandy came to show me the error of that opinion. Imagine if we were in a popular vote system now, with a huge storm that blocked transportation and power for millions of Blue State voters. The storm victims unable to reach polling places might have made the difference, tipping the result and undermining the legitimacy of the winner. A big Gulf Coast hurricane might have had the opposite effect. As it happened, the storm affected both sides' voters equally in MY, NJ and elsewhere, and those states' electoral clout was undiminished. The final result was not materially changed. That's reason enough for me to change my mind about this peculiar institution.
Posted by: John McMillin | Thursday, 08 November 2012 at 11:44 PM
"This was made by two pharmacist friends who actually paid their own money to put it on the air, on the late local news in the Omaha"
=============
You know this would have been illegal 30 days before the election if not for the Citizens United decision.
Posted by: Tom Smith | Saturday, 10 November 2012 at 07:51 AM