54% give Pawlenty thumbs-up in state job

Most Minnesotans approve of the job Gov. Tim Pawlenty is doing — and most won’t be influenced one way or another in their presidential voting if he ends up as John McCain’s running mate.
Last update: May 20, 2008 - 8:17 AM
LTNS! As usual, you’re off on your comparative analysis. But don’t feel too bad. HoneyDog was even worse (he said in a previous posting … read more that three bridges can be built for under $75 million). I did my homework for the posting at 8:30-ish this morning, and I’ll extend that just a tad for lucky you. Your Lt. Gov. Farmer Carol “Dolt” Molnau said the bridge repair should cost about $393,000,000.00. You say Oberstar got funds for more than $12 million for alternative transportation projects like commuter rail, etc. Are you including the $52 Million from two years ago? Looks like you dropped the ball on that one, dude. Nevertheless, your Gov. Toolittle, through his Lt. Gov./anyone-can-do-this-job Transportation Head Molnau, failed to make sure the safety of the motoring public was ensured, but not because of funds Oberstar earmarked. Nope. It was because Toolittle allowed safety to take a backseat to cutting taxes to appease the Tax Evaders League, et al. The money Oberstar got was not meant for inspecting bridges, no matter how many would’a could’a should’a assertions you wish to make. Toolittle put in his own personal no-nothing hack into a position designed for someone who knows how to make public roads, bridges, and other forms of transportation work. The buck stops with him, and no one else.

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Tags: mates, state

Wednesday 21 May 2008 | Forest | Uncategorized

8 Responses to “54% give Pawlenty thumbs-up in state job”

on 21 May 2008 at 2:02 am 1Matilda

The reason I disagree with you is simple. Because everybody is going to be advertising for the population cetners to vote for them, they are going to cancel each other out. You’ll end up with a lot of close races in those places. So, the population of the smaller areas will be a factor just because of that. Only about half the population lives in cities. You would need all of them (90%+) to vote for you in order to be sweep into office on the vote from them alone. And nobody is going to get a super majority of the vote like that from any area of the country, no matter the population of the place.Also, the min. # of EC votes a state gets is not two. It’s three.And what will and does protect the interests of states is really more a Congressional issue. They have reps in the House and Senate. And since we get leaders in both parties from small states, as well as large, that protects the interests of the small states, while allowing the interests of the nation as a whole to override those local interests when nessecary.
on 21 May 2008 at 2:52 am 2Lynn

Go to http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ for the status of this proposal in each of the 50 states. In general, the proposal doesn’t go into effect until enough other states have already adopted it to make it a done deal.
on 21 May 2008 at 3:43 am 3Delmar

Ooh, good analogy. Better argument than mine above.
on 21 May 2008 at 4:33 am 4Braidy

This reminds me of certain network setups I’ve dealt with, trying to fix a broken system by misconfiguring another system at a lower level of the protocol stack.Thank goodness the New Jersey state legislature isn’t designing routing tables…Plus it’s bad for NJ, if their electoral vote is dependent on the national vote, who has incentive to campaign there.
on 21 May 2008 at 5:24 am 5Jesse

Be very careful quoting mathematicians if you don’t understand the question that they’re answering.Natapoff started with the assumption that voting power should be defined as “What is the probability that one person’s vote will be able to turn a national election?” He showed that as contests become more lopsided and the size of a district becomes larger, the chance of an election deadlocking becomes vanishingly small. If you shrink the size of a district, the chance of a deadlock becomes larger - basically, with fewer coin tosses, the preexisting odds matter less.But he’s essentially arguing that “voter power” comes from the ability of one voter to overall a larger majority. Which is great if you’re the one voter, but it sucks hard if you’re in the majority.When I cast my vote, I don’t really care about whether I personally decide the election. I care about whether some nincompoop will enact policies that I find absolutely atrocious. If I wanted to solve for optimum voter happiness, I’d try to minimize the chance of a fringe candidate winning over the objection of a large number of non-supporters. That’s exactly the quantity that Natapoff’s model maximizes.When I try to explain mathematics to non-science majors, I usually put it like this: “Math is all about making your definitions and your rules of inference so precise that there can be no possible doubt of your conclusions. If you accept the definitions, then you have to accept the theorems. But the audience always has a responsibility to listen carefully to the definitions and decide whether they actually fit the problem at hand.” That’s worth remembering here - it’s great that Natapoff came up with a precise mathematical model, but his definition of “success” is exactly how I’d define “failure”.
on 21 May 2008 at 6:14 am 6Macie

How would this system effect voter fraud? Would it increase or decrease the likeliness of it?
on 21 May 2008 at 7:05 am 7Kerenza

Not necessarily. Keep in mind how close recent elections have been, a few states switching sides due to something like this could swing the entire election.

on 21 May 2008 at 2:02 am 1Matilda

The reason I disagree with you is simple. Because everybody is going to be advertising for the population cetners to vote for them, they are going to cancel each other out. You’ll end up with a lot of close races in those places. So, the population of the smaller areas will be a factor just because of that. Only about half the population lives in cities. You would need all of them (90%+) to vote for you in order to be sweep into office on the vote from them alone. And nobody is going to get a super majority of the vote like that from any area of the country, no matter the population of the place.Also, the min. # of EC votes a state gets is not two. It’s three.And what will and does protect the interests of states is really more a Congressional issue. They have reps in the House and Senate. And since we get leaders in both parties from small states, as well as large, that protects the interests of the small states, while allowing the interests of the nation as a whole to override those local interests when nessecary.

on 21 May 2008 at 2:52 am 2Lynn

Go to http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ for the status of this proposal in each of the 50 states. In general, the proposal doesn’t go into effect until enough other states have already adopted it to make it a done deal.

on 21 May 2008 at 3:43 am 3Delmar

Ooh, good analogy. Better argument than mine above.

on 21 May 2008 at 4:33 am 4Braidy

This reminds me of certain network setups I’ve dealt with, trying to fix a broken system by misconfiguring another system at a lower level of the protocol stack.Thank goodness the New Jersey state legislature isn’t designing routing tables…Plus it’s bad for NJ, if their electoral vote is dependent on the national vote, who has incentive to campaign there.

on 21 May 2008 at 5:24 am 5Jesse

Be very careful quoting mathematicians if you don’t understand the question that they’re answering.Natapoff started with the assumption that voting power should be defined as “What is the probability that one person’s vote will be able to turn a national election?” He showed that as contests become more lopsided and the size of a district becomes larger, the chance of an election deadlocking becomes vanishingly small. If you shrink the size of a district, the chance of a deadlock becomes larger - basically, with fewer coin tosses, the preexisting odds matter less.But he’s essentially arguing that “voter power” comes from the ability of one voter to overall a larger majority. Which is great if you’re the one voter, but it sucks hard if you’re in the majority.When I cast my vote, I don’t really care about whether I personally decide the election. I care about whether some nincompoop will enact policies that I find absolutely atrocious. If I wanted to solve for optimum voter happiness, I’d try to minimize the chance of a fringe candidate winning over the objection of a large number of non-supporters. That’s exactly the quantity that Natapoff’s model maximizes.When I try to explain mathematics to non-science majors, I usually put it like this: “Math is all about making your definitions and your rules of inference so precise that there can be no possible doubt of your conclusions. If you accept the definitions, then you have to accept the theorems. But the audience always has a responsibility to listen carefully to the definitions and decide whether they actually fit the problem at hand.” That’s worth remembering here - it’s great that Natapoff came up with a precise mathematical model, but his definition of “success” is exactly how I’d define “failure”.

on 21 May 2008 at 6:14 am 6Macie

How would this system effect voter fraud? Would it increase or decrease the likeliness of it?

on 21 May 2008 at 7:05 am 7Kerenza

Not necessarily. Keep in mind how close recent elections have been, a few states switching sides due to something like this could swing the entire election.

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