Re: scale of elections . . . Re: scale of social phenomena in general

The vote count was not accurate.

If it’s finally reported as 81,758,027 vs. 74,631,244 that won’t be the truth.

Any human-based phenomenon involving 150 million instances of anything will manifest about a zillion anomalies.

For the state of New Jersey I used to maintain a database of 120,000 people. It had lots and lots of erroneous information. People do all kinds of human things. The subjects move around. They change. They forget (to send in updates). The trackers (database maintainers) do all kinds of human things. They mis-type. They lose paperwork. They get confused.

In a hypertrophy-scale election situation, add to mistakes, losses, and confusions machine- and tech-based anomalies . . . such that, if you have an objective of pointing out irregularities in a process involving 150 million votes, you probably could track down hundreds of thousands. Voting machine problems, misplaced votes, wrongly assigned votes, duplicated votes, purposely miscounted votes, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Normally, at that scale, we can only hope and figure that the anomalies will mostly balance out, resulting in no particular process-related bias.

* * * *

Millions and millions of votes.

As a rule I would be disinclined to participate in a process involving that kind of scale. I do vote because I feel that I’m among a relatively small number of people who at least, by voting for an alternative-party candidate, send a tiny message that what we care about in elections such as these is to open up the system to more voices and more choices. I would never vote for a major party candidate. I’m afraid to say (I’ll get a lot of flack) that I would feel like a fool casting one vote among 70 or 80 million.

I would take my voting responsibility seriously under circumstances where the context was communitarian-scale.

An ideal ecovillage might be composed of something like five neighborhoods of 30 units each. In 30 units, with a variety of families, extended families, singles, etc., you’d have about a hundred people. In the village overall you’d have about 500 people.

In a neighborhood of a hundred you’d have about 80 voting-age adults. For a debate on a particular issue 30 or 40 might care enough to participate. At that scale the process of decision-making can be reasonable, interesting, engaging, enlightening, personal, civil, and sane. It’s the ideal scale. Personal, civil, and sane. After debate among 30 or 40, a vote put to the neighborhood, with 70% voting, might result in 32 Pro and 24 Con. My vote would matter.

I would participate in village-wide elections. Among 500 people you’d have about 400 voting-age adults. A vote on an issue might result in 200 Pro and 150 Con. The tabulation would be accurate. My vote would matter somewhat — not a huge amount, but somewhat.

That’s communitarian-scale.

I’d vote in municipal elections. But orders of magnitude beyond that get ridiculous. An election with 150 million votes is hypertrophy-scale. I think hypertrophy-scale is insane.