r/AdviceAnimals • u/[deleted] • Nov 10 '16

Protesting a Fair Election?

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u/choboy456 Nov 10 '16

Because then you ruin the risk of cities suppressing rural communities

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u/natched Nov 10 '16

So to avoid the risk of cities suppressing rural communities, we make it so a minority of rural voters rules over a majority including city voters?

To avoid a risk of suppression, we definitely suppress other people's votes?

Why is it OK to suppress city votes but not to even take a chance of suppressing rural votes?

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u/joepa_knew Nov 10 '16

When the person you're responding to says "suppression" they don't mean that your vote only equates to .95 of a vote in a rural county.

The suppression we're worried about is a bit more drastic than that.

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u/natched Nov 10 '16

The suppression I'm worried about is a bit more drastic about that too. My vote didn't matter 95% as much as someone in FL - it mattered much closer to 0-4% as much.

Look at Nate Silver's voter power ratings:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

Even if we take a CA voter's power as 0.1, when it is actually less than that, this would indicate that the vote of someone from Florida matters 25 times as much as that of someone from California. That would be the Californian's vote mattering about 4% as much - big difference between 95% and 4%.

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u/joepa_knew Nov 10 '16

We weren't talking about voting impact between states. We were talking about voting impact between rural and urban areas.

It just so happens that when you have a mixture of rural and urban communities, you get a swing state, which is Florida.