{"id":9471,"date":"2012-11-06T07:49:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T15:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=9026"},"modified":"2012-11-06T07:49:41","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T15:49:41","slug":"election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/06\/election-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s an entertaining explanation of why winner-take-all voting procedures generally evolve into two-party systems, typically forcing most voters to support candidates they don&#8217;t always agree with.<\/p>\n<div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" title=\"Why Your Vote Doesn&amp;#039;t Count\" style=\"width:640px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe\" id=\"WYL_s7tWHJfhiyo\" itemprop=\"video\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/VideoObject\"><div><meta itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/s7tWHJfhiyo\/hqdefault.jpg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"embedURL\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/s7tWHJfhiyo\" \/><meta itemprop=\"duration\" content=\"PT6M31S\" \/><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2011-03-09T18:23:26Z\" \/><\/div><meta itemprop=\"accessibilityFeature\" content=\"captions\" \/><div id=\"lyte_s7tWHJfhiyo\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/s7tWHJfhiyo\/hqdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\" itemprop=\"name\">Why Your Vote Doesn&#039;t Count<\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/s7tWHJfhiyo\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/s7tWHJfhiyo\/0.jpg\" alt=\"Why Your Vote Doesn&amp;#039;t Count\" width=\"640\" height=\"340\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"Help support videos like this: https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/cgpgrey\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:640px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><\/p>\n<p>But vote anyway! (If you are a US citizen, or a citizen of another municipality which happens to be voting today.) You never know when you might cast the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog\/?p=1162\">deciding ballot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I have to go figure out the jillion (okay, eleven) ballot initiatives we have to deal with in the barely-functional direct democracy called California. One of them &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov\/2012\/general\/pdf\/37-title-summ-analysis.pdf\">Prop 37<\/a>, which requires labels on certain genetically modified foods &#8212; poses <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2012\/10\/in-case-you-havent-been-paying-attention.html\">an interesting dilemma<\/a>. On the one hand, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaas.org\/news\/releases\/2012\/1025gm_statement.shtml\">science<\/a> seems to indicate that genetic modification doesn&#8217;t introduce any special health risks. (At least not to individuals; there may be deleterious effects on the diversity of food sources, but that&#8217;s a different issue.) On the other hand, giving consumers more true information is generally a good idea. Is it a weird kind of reverse-paternalism to not give people correct information because they might take the wrong message from it?<\/p>\n<p>p.s. At the end of our Moving Naturalism Forward workshop, Jerry Coyne offered &#8220;I think the best someone can do to move naturalism forward is to vote for Obama.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s an entertaining explanation of why winner-take-all voting procedures generally evolve into two-party systems, typically forcing most voters to support candidates they don&#8217;t always agree with. But vote anyway! (If you are a US citizen, or a citizen of another municipality which happens to be voting today.) You never know when you might cast the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}