Plurality take all elections and the 2016 elections

I found this spreadsheet online 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/133Eb4qQmOxNvtesw2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?sle=true

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I notice that there are 13 states considered swing states. Only one of these states, Iowa, shows a clear majority of the votes for either candidate. Otherwise, no one has a majority. Whoever won those states, won with a plurality. In the non-swing states, very few show the winner with only a plurality. Those are: New Mexico, Utah, Virginia,

In fact, in those states where no one has a majority, we don't know who the majority of the voters would have voted for in a race that only included Clinton and Trump.

This is a problem with plurality take all elections. You can get a winner, who is not supported by the a majority of the voters.

When I lived in France, in 1976, I was impressed that they had two rounds of voting. After the first round, no one had a majority. Then they had a runoff election between the two lead candidates, so they could determine who would really get the majority.

I have a long standing concern about this, because Hitler was elected with a plurality. A majority of Germans never voted for him.

Glad to see Maine adopting ranked voting

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/maine-makes-it-harder-elect-trump-likes-so-will-rest-us-follow-suit-1593600?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous&yptr=yahoo

This is one way of dealing with a situation where no candidate has a majority.

travel pix

I went to Florida to poll watch & canvas for Hillary.

I did do a bit of sightseeing, tho.








I am putting links to my FB photo albums here.  I wanted to embed them, but I originally couldn't figure out how how to do that.  It seems like I can only embed posts and for reasons I don't understand there were no posts for 3 of these albums, so I just reposted the albums so that there would be embeddable posts.
  
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1525325880814494.1073741922.100000112901247&type=1&l=1c20511f9c

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1530158703664545.1073741923.100000112901247&type=1&l=37e2d7678e

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1532802930066789.1073741924.100000112901247&type=1&l=1f2685aee1

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1533987046615044.1073741925.100000112901247&type=1&l=79ecdedc6a

Some thoughts about the unpleasantness in the current campaign

On the loss of truth

I feel the Internet has had something to do with this. It's so easy for the widest rumors to gain an international audience here. It's hard to know what is true. Traditional newspapers have systems for checking the reliability of sources, while internet websites often don't. Yet it is still possible for an internet website to discount the New York Times or the Washington Post as "liberal" and people believe it. After a while, nothing seems to be true or reliable. Even "Snopes" and Politifact have been tarred as "liberal." There has to be a mechanism for verifying truth. Yet there is none.

******

On the alleged unlikability of Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren

For many years, in order for women to succeed in traditional men's jobs they have had to pose as junior men: wear male looking suits, speak in a lower voice, never cry (men's eyes have larger tear ducts, so it's harder for years to escape) Ultimately, though, all this stuff looks fake. The question is whether women can succeed while maintaining female culture and femininity.

I've been working in acting recently. In this field, the word "actress" has become unpopular, because it's viewed as sexist, as saying that women aren't as good; but, to me, having lived in France, where all nouns and adjectives have gender, it seems like the ultimate sexism to say that the female form of a word is unacceptable.

I have come to believe that France is the least sexist country in the world. They have a saying "vive la différence"-- long live the difference.

Is it possible for a woman to drop this defensive shell, be feminine, and succeed? Or do women have to be junior men to succeed? Or, alternatively, can women who have never acted this way succeed?