EC and Extremely Narrow Elections

Tyler Cowen points to a recent working paper arguing that the Electoral College system is more likely than a national popular vote system to lead to a disputed election. As they put it,

Extremely narrow election outcomes—such as could be reversed by rejecting a few thousand ballots—are likely to trigger dispute over the results. Narrow vote tallies may generate recounts and litigation; they may be resolved by courts or elections administrators (e.g., Secretaries of State disqualifying ballots) rather than by voters; and they may reduce the peacefulness, perceived legitimacy, or predictability of the transfer of political power.

This in itself shows some of the problem with the argument, since this is an immensely naive statement. In a large election system, any election outcome is likely to trigger dispute over the results under a wide variety of conditions, not just extremely narrow ones. We have recounts and litigation in every presidential election before the Electoral College meets; most gubernatorial races have recounts and litigations. None of this need have anything to do with the outcome being 'narrow'. It happens when there's suspicion of voter fraud. It happens when there's suspicion of voter suppression. (And in the United States, we have suspicion of fraud and suppression in every single election year, even independently of cases in which either is well-founded, because Republicans use voter fraud suspicions and Democrats use voter suppression suspicions in every single election they lose in the attempt to blunt the force of having lost and in order to raise funds for future elections.) Election administrators are making decisions about what ballots to disqualify in every single election, because disqualification is not a matter decided by voters but by the policies established by the legislatures, the executives, and the courts. In California, it's hard to disqualify ballots; in some other states, all sorts of things can disqualify a ballot; this is not because of the voters, but entirely because no state has exactly the same mix of aims in structuring how votes are counted, and that mix is determined entirely by a complicated negotiation among the relevant authorities. You can't have an election without counting ballots; counting ballots depends on the methods for counting and discounting; in no election system is this established directly by the voters, because that would give us an infinite regress. Election disputes very rarely arise from the method of election; they arise as a regular occurrence from the politics of elections. The "peacefulness, perceived legitimacy, or predictability of the transfer of political power" is not a byproduct of counting practices.

That aside, it's not very clear why one should care about whether elections are extremely narrow or not. While our usual way of describing this -- that the election was "decided" by 20000 votes or fewer -- makes it sound like that it's a few people deciding the matter, in reality, this is a figure of speech. What wins the election is all the votes, not just the surplus of the win. And while I don't myself believe in popular mandates, lots of people do, so that extremely narrow wins in controversial elections serve the function of limiting the plausibility of a claim of having a clear mandate from the voters.

Some Poem Drafts and a Poem Re-Draft

Stuck Inside a Little Room

Stuck inside a little room,
outside only rainy gloom,
we sit and wait;
leaving half to worry, half to fate,
we sit and wonder
of things too early, things too late,
as the rain begins to thunder.
And who can know what futures loom?
The world is vast,
thick with future, thick with past;
only within is hope against gloom
when stuck inside a little room.

Huldra

I met a maiden in the skog;
so sweet she was, and fair as snow,
and friendly were her blue eyes pale.
But I saw, as she turned down a trail,
hollow back above a tail.

She seemed an angel, kind as sky,
with eyes of mirth in heaven's shade;
almost from love my senses failed,
but I saw, as she turned down a trail,
hollow back above a tail.

Like holy Mary 'midst the pines
her liquid laughter froze the time;
she seemed a maid, I felt a male,
but I saw, as she turned down a trail,
hollow back above a tail.

Unchristian things in darkest wood
are lurking, waiting, for the good,
to tempt the soul to death or hell--
so pray you see upon the trail
that hollow back above that tail.

Like a Bomb

Like a bomb, an expanding ring of flame,
like an echo on the hill
that is calling out my name,
like a horseshoe ringing round
and finally touching down,
you and I are not quite right,
but still, I think, are worth the fight,
because we're close -- so very close.

Like a guess that has no peer,
like reflection of the moon
still light enough to steer,
like a look of near-surprise
that lightens lovely eyes,
you and I are not quite right
but still we are a splendid sight,
because we're close -- so very close.

In the Darkness

I knew you in the darkness;
I did not walk away;
our hearts were joined together
where the shadows play.
I suppose I should have known --
it seemed too good to be.
But what can't hope uncover
in things we cannot see?
I will still remember.
I will remember everything,
the silence in the darkness,
the shadows, the whispers, in the darkness.

The days are falling
like the leaves from autumn trees;
the hours are flowing
like the tides on restless seas.
I will still remember.
I will remember everything,
the silence in the darkness,
the shadows, the whispers, in the darkness.

I suppose it's pointless,
but it's somehow deep inside
and will remain within me
until the darkness dies.

Lady of Sorrows

Sword-pierced Mary, ponder well,
beneath the wide and wailing wall
of all this world, the prophet-word.

Death stalks the home and human life
is shattered short; no living laugh
leaps up, no joyful word.

God destroys, no pity gives;
the dead all mutter in their graves,
gnawed by winding worm.

No respite raised and no repose,
amid the pain no balmy peace
leaves vestige in this world.

Molten heart like wax moves down;
Shame and guilt, what have we done
against the good to war!

Shall human hearts, though vulgar, crass,
die blood-and-water on this cross
and, buried, feed the worms?

Pietà with pity's grief
processes to the silent grave,
itself without a word.

The stone is rolled and in this shade
it covers all; the tomb it shuts
and leaves us here without the Word.

But this was known. This evil way
will stay as evil as it was
but never have the final word.

For good may overcome and good
of newer kind is formed by God
to overtop and crown the world.

Comfort here? None shall you find
but comfort is not always friend
when darker things still wage their war.

Who sleeps in calm no vigil keeps
against the shadow-shade that creeps
across a heedless world.

For comfort there will come a time;
for now make passions gentle-tame
while waiting for new word.

Sword-pierced Mary, ponder well,
beneath the wide and wailing wall
of all this world, the prophet-word.

Wooed Onward by the Vision of the True

Du Maurier
by Francis Earle Coates

Two rocked his infant cradle as he slept,
⁠And crooned for him their native lullabies.
⁠One gave her sense of beauty to his eyes,
One taught his heart her smiles, the tears she wept.
Each made him love her as the child his home,
⁠And, mother-wise, reclaimed his wandering glance:
⁠Belovèd England and belovèd France,—
Each drew him, though, afar, he could not come.

In his imagination, fleur-de-lis
⁠And English daisy blossomed side by side,
And dreams were his, lost transports to renew.
Half exiled wheresoe'er he chanced to be,
⁠Like migrant birds his thoughts went soaring wide,
Wooed onward by the vision of the True!

A Forceful, Original, Simple Reason

 I missed it when the news came out a few weeks ago, but Jean-Luc Marion has been rewarded the 2020 Ratzinger Prize for lifetime achievements in theology. I've talked briefly about his phenomenological account of what he calls 'saturated phenomena' before.

From his essay, "Faith and Reason", in the collection, The Visible and the Revealed:

The love revealed by the Word, hence by the Logos, is deployed as a logos, hence as a rationality. And a rationality in full right, because it allows us to reach the closest and the most internal phenomena, those experienced by the flesh which intuition saturates. If the Revelation of Christ had shown only that, namely, that love has its reason, a forceful, original, simple reason, which sees and says what common reason is missing and does not see, it would already have saved, if not humans, at least their reason. But Christ has not only shown the logic of love, he has demonstrated and proven it in facts and acts by his passion and his resurrection.

[Jean-Luc Marion, "Faith and Reason", The Visible and the Revealed, Gschwandtner et al., trs., Fordham University Press (New York; 2008) p. 152.]

So Secret that the Very Sky Seems Small

 A Ballade of Suicide
by G. K. Chesterton

The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours--on the wall--
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay--
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall--
I see a little cloud all pink and grey--
Perhaps the rector's mother will not call--
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way--
I never read the works of Juvenal--
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational--
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small--
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

ENVOI

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

Fortnightly Book, October 25

 George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was born in Paris in 1834, but he made his career in England, where he had settled with his wife, Emma Wightwick (with whom he would end up raising a famously literary and artistic family). He started as an illustrator for Punch magazine and became one of the foremost illustrators of his day. Bad eyesight, however, forced him to retire from professional illustrating in 1891; he used his remaining few years to write a few novels. The most famous of these would be Trilby in 1894, but arguably that novel only became possible because du Maurier's first novel, Peter Ibbetson, our next fortnightly book, was moderately successful. 'Moderately successful' is as well as it did at the time, but the novel has proven unusually adaptable: a play was made in 1917, an opera in 1931, and a film in 1935, all of them quite successful. And the book itself has endured, never so flashy as Trilby, but always charming new readers.

Usually I have at least a rough idea of the content of the classics I pick up for the first time, not always right but usually in the neighborhood of right. But I have only the vaguest notion of what I'm in for with this story, so that will be interesting. I do know that the story is narrated by the titular character as memoirs written while in the lunatic asylum for having killed a relative.

I'll be reading a Heritage Press edition, which has a preface by Daphne du Maurier (George's granddaughter, who tells us that the family called him, "Kicky") and pen-and-ink illustrations by the author himself. It uses a 12-point Scotch Roman type, chosen to pair well with the line drawings.

CT7D: Pazar

 The final day of Conversational Turkish in 7 Days covers general conversational topics. For instance, occupations (meslekler). I went over fairly quickly how agreement of pronouns and case endings works, but this is a good point at which to look in a little more detail. The Turkish word for 'to be' is imek. Imek's conjugation for present tense is like so:

Ben im : I am
Sen sin : You  (familiar, singular) are
o dur : He/she/it is
biz iz : We are
siz siniz : You (formal or plural) are
onlar dırlar : They are

This is directly relevant to case endings, because you use the conjugations for 'to be' as case endings (allowing for vowel harmony). This takes some getting used to, but is wonderfully logical. So, for instance, to say 'I am an Englishman', you say, Ben bir İngilizim. The -im links the object with the appropriate pronoun (ben); it does the same thing (with some additional complications) with verbs. This carries over to discussion of occupations. Some examples:

Ben bir mühendisim : I am an engineer

Ben bir doktorum : I am a doctor

Ben bir müdürüm : I am a manager

O bir diş doktorudur : He/She is a dentist

Eşim bir bankada çalışıyorudur : My spouse works at a bank

Siz bir hastahanede çalışıyoruz : You work at a hospital

If you want to ask what someone else's occupation is, you say, Sizin mesleğiniz nedir?

Weather is also a universal chatting topic. To ask what the weather is like, you say, Hava nasıl? Various possible answers:

Hava sıcaktır : It is hot

Hava güneşli : It is sunny

Hava rüzgarlı : It is windy

Hava bulutlu : It is cloudy

Hava yağmurlu : It is rainy

Hava karlı : It is snowy

Yağmur yağıyor : It is raining

Kar yağıyor : It is snowing

Yağmur yağacak : It will rain

Kar yağacak : It will snow

Another way to chat is comment on hobbies. Since hobbies are ongoing activities, they tend to use the aorist -rim in first person, e.g.:

Golf ayarım : I play golf

Ben piyano çalarım : I play piano

Piyano dersleri alırım : I take piano lessons

Resim çizerim : I draw

Well, I haven't given everything, just little samples of the lessons, and anyway I'm sure you wouldn't be fluent in seven days, although, if you are a more adept conversationalist than I, you might be able to stumble your way through basic conversation. But it does make a handy way to see how the language works.

___________

Tayfun and Gillian Çağa, Conversational Turkish in 7 Days, Passport Books (Chicago: 1992).