[0964] Zoey Volunteers
└ posted on Thursday, 15 February 2018, by Novil
- Zoey: The election isn’t over yet!
- Teacher: What do you mean?
- Zoey: Sandra didn’t get the absolute majority. There must be a second round for the two of us! And I’ll win that one easily! Sandra only got the votes of her best friends. All those who didn’t vote for her will vote for me in the second round!
- Teacher: There won’t be a second round, Zoey.
- Zoey: But that’s not fair!
- Teacher: I’m very pleased that you’re volunteering to write a detailed essay on the different electoral systems. Please make sure to finish it by Friday.
- Zoey: AAAAAAH!!
![[0964] Zoey Volunteers](/comics/2018-02-15-0964-zoey-volunteers.png "[0964] Zoey Volunteers")
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Poor Zoey got cheated by dirty, broken politics. 🙁
Wolfhowl wrote:
No, Zoey just learned how far she should and should not push things and to stop whining and abide by the results.
And this is why America has a two party system. Slugging out of what platforms people want happens during the primaries, and then they butt heads. Third parties don’t tend to get above state offices, unless you’re Bernie Sanders founding the Vermont Progressive Party and becoming a senator.
Zoey is really a sore loser it seems.
@ Flemkopf:
I really don’t want to start a politics discussion, but you got me curious – do you actually support the US-American voting system and think a two party system is a good thing or did I misunderstand you? Because if you do, you’re literally the first such person I’ve ever encountered.
It seems that the teacher wouldn’t like Zoey to be the representative…
Zoey raises a good point. Though it’s worth noting that she only raised this issue afters he lost. I somehow doubt that she’d be complaining if the votes were in her favor.
After she lost, rather.
And the moral of the story is: Do not annoy your teacher, for she can retaliate with homework.
@ All-Purpose Guru:
I don’t really like that message. Reasoned dissent shouldn’t be punished. She actually has a valid point.
Not saying there should really be another round, since everyone knew the rules going in, but she shouldn’t be punished just for pointing out the same flaw in the system that many political scientists have acknowledged.
“Also, you’re yelling during school hours. That’s a disruption, so you earn 2 points.” (My school uses ‘points’ as a bad thing, where you get a call home for five points, risk suspension at 20, etc.)
Everyone knows Sandra was helped by the Russians. Specifically Larisa.
Xezlec wrote:
Her point is valid, but telling the teacher how to run her classroom isn’t. Besides, she’ll learn two valuable lessons this way. Don’t antagonize power unless you’re ready to face the consequences, and just what the other options could have been and their features and failings.
Frankly, I’m not a fan of first past the post, but since it IS what we use, for pretty much everything except a few local things in a few places, it makes sense that a classroom election would use that model.
I’d prefer a Condorcet method, personally. I’d say Single Transferable Vote, but I learned that breaks down some when voting for more than one seat. (Namely, it leaves room for parties, with the absolute winner being in a position to delegate surplus votes to someone of similar positions. It also leaves room for patronage.)
I also think a Condorcet system could help close the gap between “left” and “right” since there’d be less incentive to pander to the extremes on either “side”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI
Unless I misunderstood that, and somehow the voters for the winner get their second choice…which would get messy if, say, you counted the first votes from those who voted 2 for candidate C, and left those who voted 2 for candidate B as the overflow…
@ Jack:
Back in the day, my school called them demerits.
Also, Zoey doesn’t seem to be considering the possibility that another system might yield a winner besides Sandra or herself. Assuming an IRV method that allows for resolving the tie between Sebastian and Taylor, I think it’s quite possible one of them would end up the eventual winner instead. They almost certainly would win if either of them could make it to the final round since I doubt either the Zoey or Sandra partisans would vote for the other. Zoey would have a better chance against Sebastian than Taylor, if only because it’s doubtful that Cloud would vote for Sebastian .
@ Kay:
Yeah, it seems Zoey has internalized Macchiavelli’s lesson: “If you are about to lose, change the rules, if that still doesn’t help, change the game.”
Yet unfortunately she forgot about another of his important lessons: “Kiss the hand that you can’t chop off.”
I think some folks here are missing the point….aside from being a sore looser, she gets an “opportunity” to research and write about other electoral systems. She might actually learn a few things from it. Kudo’s to the teacher.
Xezlec wrote:
Well, she doesn’t get punished for her first comment, which was the reasoned dissent, but only after the second comment, which was yelling at her teacher.
Xezlec wrote:
She’s not being punished for her first statement. She’s being punished for the cry of “But that’s not fair!” It’s a cry that many a child has used when they don’t get their way on something.
Well to be honest, Zoey… putting so much posters everywhere and wasting papers might have backfired on you if there were any environmentalists and people with prudence.
It is obvious, that the teacher was paid by Larissa the only way she could… By not burning anything in the class for a month!!!!!
What was up with “The Way Back Home 103” appearing in my RSS reader three days ago? There is “Woo’s Way Back Home” in the archive but it has different number.
And that’s how Jakarta overthrown its previous governor, despite winning in first round of election, he lost in 2nd round because the voters of the losing candidates banded together and vote for his opponent.
There is also a flaw in her logic. She is assuming that those who didn’t vote for Sandra would vote for her. What is to prevent it from being the other way around or an even split. Just because they didn’t vote for Sandra doesn’t mean that they prefer Zoey.
Zoey sounds like Lucy from Peanuts here.
Next, Zoey correctly points out that Sandra benefited from all sorts of things that Larissa did that were illegal, unethical, and in violation of school rules, and demands an investigation of Sandra’s complicity in Larissa’s misdeeds, and that Sandra be impeached or indicted, either for complicity or for obstructing the investigation into her complicity.
I’m for children expressing themselves politically. Don’t want to recite the pledge of allegiance, want to take a knee, want to do some other form for non-violent protest? Fine, but ya gotta write me a well structured research essay on the topic first, with proper citations and a conclusion. Let kids protest, but also hold them accountable to understanding WHY they are protesting. Of course it is also on the adult to accept the protest if the child actually goes through the process of researching and writing such an essay.
@ Qaysed:
I am from the US, and I would like a multi-party system myself. The problem lies in candidates from outside parties just not being good enough to vote for.
Are you sure you did not follow the Czech presidential election of last month? 🙂
Be wary when you whine to those who can give you homework. 🙂
@ Renadt:
And that is, in turn, partially because a lot of people think there’s 0 chance to go beyond regional politics in those other parties, so you get less suitable candidates.
Renadt wrote:
No, the actual Problem is that due to the voting system of the US you’re actually punished by voting for anyone but the 2 main parties because of the spoiler effect.
@ Cat:
Honestly, given how narrow it is and how many voted for others she isn’t exactly delusional about her chances of winning in a second second round.
In 2016 the Austrian presendential election actually turned around entirely in the second round. In the first round, the right-wing candidate lead by almost a factor of 2 (35 vs ~20) over the second placed left-wing opponent, but lost in the second round that was necessary because he didn’t get an absolute majority by a mere 0.7% difference (50.35 vs 49.65). Mostly because his party has a reputation for connections to the far-right and the votes from the other candidates moved vastly to the left-wing opponent — plus more people were mobilized to actually take the election serious. (Other curious detail: The pedictions had seen the left-wing candidate winning the first round by 25 vs 20 per cent, but the election saw him come in second with 20 vs 35).
Then they cried „formal mistakes!“, implying without ever actually claiming that they had been used to manipulate the result. Sadly there WERE mistakes (we say „Austrian solution“ ourselves for sloppy ignorance of details of rules for a reason), and the courts agreed, so the result was invalidated. The repetition, however, only resulted in a higher margin for the opponent (53 vs 47). Or technically the repetition of the repetition, because the first attempt as canceled over issues with glue on voting cards endangering the voting secret.
Oh Zoey, let it go.
@ Wolfhowl:
First Past the Post Sucks.
Xezlec wrote:
True, but this is really not a reasoned dissent. If this was actually about the system being flawed, Zoey should/would have raised this point earlier, before the results came in. The fact that she didn’t and only waited until the final results were in (and she lost) is a clear sign this is not a (reasonable) attempt to fix a flawed system, but just a cheap attempt to steal the election even after losing.
@ Qaysed:
It sure beats a one-party system like we have in Russia.
Of course there won’t be a second round…after what Taylor did in the physics room.
Xezlec wrote:
But that’s the point. The essay on electoral systems she has to write will lead to the conclusion that other systems (first & second rounds) have drawbacks as well. It is not really a “punishment”, maybe she even gets a good grade.
jim of jim’s blog wrote:
And then, if this analogy continues, it gradually emerges that Zoey’s own misdeeds were worse. Her rumored acne and BO really were true, not a smear, the debate had in fact been rigged, and so on.
This is turning out more entertaining than I anticipated. The chief lesson Zoey should learn from her studies is that you have to decide what voting system you’re using BEFORE the vote, not after.
Hmm, actually her reasoning, although frantic, is pretty sound; Sandra did only get 30% of the vote so the proportional representation is pretty skewed, which in turn makes it easily corruptable. Case in point, if any of these candidates had actually thought about it, instead of campaigning to all the students they could have spent their time better currying the favor of a select few voters.
Also, give this poor teacher a name.
@ Xezlec:
It’s not punishment; it’s an educational experience. She might learn something.
With multiple candidates vying for an office no system is fair, they all have weaknesses, except under pathological conditions.
@ Renadt:
And that is different than the candidates from the major parties, how?!
Yinan wrote:
And we don’t vote for who we like; we vote for whoever whose policies we dislike least.
Which system do you have in mind, anyway? The one in which they use electoral colleges and thus are not guaranteed to elect according to the popular vote?
You gonna gerrymander the school?
Oh, by the way, why does Zoey predict higher voter turnout on the second round?
I mean, there might be! But only because Zoey-supporters will see that they lost the first time and be more likely to put in the effort.
But then Sandra-supporters will see that they should’ve had more turnout and ask for a third round. And so on. At least that’s my prediction.
FWIW, Zoe is correct that FPTP is the worst possible electoral system.
This reminds me of when I had to vote in a local council election and had no idea who would be best, next best and so on, and there were something like two or three dozen candidates. Their policy statements weren’t all that much help either, since they all said much the same things in different ways.
Then it occurred to me that the candidates probably knew each other a lot better than I knew them.
With the above in mind, I found which candidate had the most “put this person second” votes from other candidates and put them in at number 1, and followed through with who got the most 3rd votes, putting them in at number 2 and so on. Where there was a tie, I would read their policy statements and order them according to whichever sounded best to me.
(I even wrote a little computer program to allow me to auto-order the candidates by just entering the vote positions from each candidate’s suggested voting order)
If I’d had any real preference, or known any of the people, that would have made a difference, but I didn’t so I used the method I thought would be most likely to select the best candidates.
@ Marc:
Actually, that is only true in multiple-candidate elections. The worst possible electoral system is the single-candidate system favored by totalitarian governments to be able to insist that they have an elected government.
I’ve been reading Sandra and Woo for several years (and Gaia as well), and want to tell you how much I enjoy it. It is something I look forward to reading every time it gets published. Took me a while to understand what was going on in Gaia, but now they are both part of my daily(ish) comic reading.
Thank you
There ARE no “perfect” voting systems. See Arrow’s Theorem. Every variant can violate at least one of the tenets which we regard as essential to “fairness”; like voting for your favorite candidate should never decrease his probability of winning.
As an American, I freely admit that our system has serious flaws, many dating back to the compromises which went into our Constitution. Small states, fearing they’d be steamrollered by a few well-populated ones, demanded a bi-cameral legislature. In the Senate, every state gets two votes. And in the Electoral College, each state gets a number of votes equal to their number of congressmen — senators AND representatives. A state (extreme example) with only 12 adult citizens, still gets 3 votes. Each electoral vote is equivalent to 4 people. Each individual’s vote counts more than the vote of a citizen of a state with millions of people, where each electoral vote equals a few hundred thousand people.
This leads to the current absurdity (not for the first time) of the loser of the popular vote (by a good margin) becoming President. I’d also favor “preferential voting”, as they have in Australia. This is equivalent to an “instant run-off” system. It eliminates the “If I vote for the guy I really like, I’m wasting my vote” quandary. The man most people like may not win — but it avoids giving the job to someone universally despised.