Re: A database of electoral results?
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 17:02:54 -0000
Message-ID: <MPG.1a15e01e1c6e1f949897e1_at_news1.eircom.net>
bbadour_at_golden.net says...
> With all due respect, the convoluted process you described for Irish
> elections is not entirely unlike the process that gave Hitler absolute power
> in Germany on the basis of a small minority of votes.
You couldn't be more wrong. The system actually works against anybody on the extremes of the political spectrum.
It also gives political parties the amount of seats in the Dáil (Irish parliament) that they merit on a percentage wise calculation of the vote - i.e. if your party gets 40% of the vote, it will get approx. 40% of the seats.
> The purpose of an election in a representative democracy is to choose an
> undisputed government accountable to the electors.
That's exactly what our system does.
> Ambiguity does not work.
> (Think Cromwell or two Popes.)
I fail to see where any ambiguity is coming from here? The references to Cromwell and the Popes isn't clear - care to expand?
> The US presidential election process intentionally uses a formula not based
> on proportion of votes. The United States of America comprises 50 sovereign
> countries that have relinquished some measure of sovereignty in exchange for
> mutual defense and unfettered trade. The presidential election process
> explicitly protects the sovereign rights of the sparsely populated countries
> by increasing the weight of their vote slightly above the proportion of
> their population. Otherwise, four states would determine all policy in
> America usurping the voice of the remaining 46 states.
Most federal systems do this - think of Switzerland for example, where your vote is (in some elections) 3200 times more powerful depending on whether you live in Zurich or Appenzel Innerrhoden (small canton).
I was referring to the count in Florida, where as far as I'm concerned, it should have gone to Gore, not the fact that it is not a straight majority of the whole of the US as a unit.
> Given that the last election was a draw by all measures (the difference in
> votes nationally was well within the margin of error), the fact that the
> process led to an undisputed President without bloodshed demonstrates the
> clear superiority of the US election process compared to the rest of the
> world.
In Ireland (the State, rather than the island) we haven't had bloodshed around an election since the early 1920's, this was no mean feat since less than a decade after our War of Independence and Civil War, the guys who lost the Civil War took power in the Dáil (through a democratic mandate).
There are many places where there are tight elections and the nature of the government can hinge on a very small number of key marginal seats and/or independents and where the legitimate authority of the government to govern is not questioned either (Ireland is an example).
I acknowledge that America is a democracy where violence associated with internal domestic politics is rare, however I feel that in the case of the Bush/Gore election, the figures were tweaked in Bush's favour in some fairly illegitimate ways. This topic, however, has been thrashed out on numerous newsgroups and I don't intend to rehash it here.
> The fact that the elected President did not receive a surplus of
> votes demonstrates that the formula works to protect the sovereignty of the
> lesser states.
I accept that there is an electoral college system for the presidency in the United States. I don't understand your remark about "did not receive a surplus of votes"?
> I live in Canada under a system of governance based on the British
> Parliamentary system. This system has handed absolute power to left wing
> socialists for the last decade on the basis of a minority of the votes,
Well, in democracies it is easy to have unrepresentative governments, particularly if you use the First Past The Post (FPTP) system of voting.
That *_is_* how Hitler got in.
Margaret Thatcher actually increased the number of seats her party controlled in the British parliament on a reduced share of the vote on her second election. At no time did her party get more than approx. 42% of the vote, yet it had massive majorities in her first two terms.
This is impossible under PR systems - proportional representation means just that.
> and
> specifically to the hands of a despicable opportunist--a truly evil man. God
> only knows what evil he is going to do in Africa, but I can only say good
> riddance at last! That cesspool of violence and tribalism is an appropriate
> place for him.
Chrétien? This is not a forum for discussing your likes or dislikes on who happens to be running your country.
My post was about databases and electoral systems and had any work been done on this before that I could look at.
> Your naive, simplistic and knee-jerk condemnation of the US Presidential
> election bespeaks a level of ignorance and intellectual sloth
I have no problem with an electoral college system. My small reference to the Bush election is that the votes in Florida were not counted properly - I am *_NOT_* saying that Bush should automatically lose because he didn't receive as many votes as Gore in America as a whole.
My post was about databases and electoral systems and had any work been done on this before that I could look at.
> entirely in
> keeping with your request for someone else to do your job for you.
I made no such request - what I wrote was
"Does anybody know of logical and/or data models that have been used in the past to model election data?" - i.e. Candidate, Constituency, Party, Election &c. (Sample tables and fields would be nice! 8-);
And,
"Particularly in the case of STV PR elections?":
Now, for the humour challenged like yourself, the smiley (a common newsnet convention) was meant to signal that I didn't really expect anyone to go to that level of detail in any reply.
When one starts a new job, it is normal to take a look at the work that has been done before - I was merely asking had any such work been done and where could I lay my hands on it, given that a Google hadn't come up with much.
This surprised me, but on reflection, maybe it shouldn't be too surprising. It seems that many politically unsophisticated countries throughout the world use FPTP - all you need to do any sort of analysis on that is a spreadsheet, so maybe there has been no pressing need to do what I am attempting.
I was open and honest about what I was looking for and there was no
element of subterfuge in my post - I am not a student doing an assignment, however even if I were, it is perfectly reasonable to make requests as to where reference material can be found - many people do so on this group - why bother reading it at all if all you are going to is carp and not even attempt to point me in a fruitful direction?My post was about databases and electoral systems and had any work been done on this before that I could look at.
> While I
> know nothing of your political beliefs, I observe that such a knee-jerk
> condemnation is typical of marxists who are either too stupid or too
> stubborn to admit to themselves that their social engineering policies are
> not only counter-productive but evil.
I'll leave it to the other readers of this group to judge who is stupid and stubborn.
You are correct in that you know nothing of my politics, however it has been *_my_* experience of life that one is more or less equally likely to find laziness (or other negative trait of your choice) in people of both right and left.
Hoever, I do find that negative traits are particularly common in those who use computer/technical newsgroups to make political points that bear absolutely no relation to the question asked.
> I would find doing the tedious parts of your job tedious as I imagine
> everyone else would.
I didn't ask you to do my "job".
It is not work related - it is a project that I am undertaking as an amateur psephologist in order to improve my chances of winning a competition being hosted here:
The maximum prize money that one person can win is $40 US) so that you can imagine it's not really a financial incentive that is pushing me. I am offering a prize of €20 myself for results in one particular area.
My post was about databases and electoral systems and had any work been done on this before that I could look at.
> If you were to describe some update anomaly caused by
> the business requirements and not prevented by 5NF, I would find that very
> interesting. Doing your grunt work for you because you are too lazy to do it
> yourself would bore me.
If you don't want to help me either because you feel my post is offtopic or because you think that I'm a Marxist parasite, nobody's got a gun to your head.
Now, you can either help by
- pointing me to any such work previously done so that I can go "Oh, yeah, I never thought of that"
or
b) telling me that the post is off-topic on comp.databases.theory.
Ad hominem attacks and strange assumptions about my political beliefs don't help - if you want to do this sort of thing, go to soc.culture.irish where I also post on matters political.
My post was about databases and electoral systems and had any work been done on this before that I could look at.
Mind you, it's probably just as well you didn't try to help, because you obviously don't have the first clue about what PR is or how it works.
If you don't want to help me with legimate requests on this group, please fuck off and leave me alone.
Paul...
-- plinehan__AT__yahoo__DOT__com C++ Builder 5 SP1, Interbase 6.0.1.6 IBX 5.04 W2K Pro Please do not top-post.Received on Fri Nov 07 2003 - 18:02:54 CET