The first obstacle

It's already 12:20 am on the third day of me starting this habitual experiment and I'm already falling behind. As tempting as it is to just chalk it up to work, family & friends, or simply the lack of free time, I'm going to try and at least write an entry down.

This gave me a few minutes to reflect. How many times have we given up on something just because of a little inconvenience? Life gives you these little obstacles just to see how badly you want something. I want to learn and become a better writer and be able to provide insight to what goes on in my head. I'm not always the best at coming up with explanations off the top of my head and being cerebral gives me decision paralysis when it comes to my selective choice of words. However, I will persevere and keep this little experiment going. 

How I learn about others

I am genuinely interested in peoples stories and the decisions they made in their lives to get them to where they are now. I know that my views are only one perspective and it may not be the right one, so I try to keep an open mind. I believe they are opening themselves up and sharing an intimate moment. In order to ask more penetrating questions, I tend to not disagree or criticise what they're saying and let the conversation flow naturally and find and explore interesting nuggets of information. I get the sense that people think I'm an agreeable person but that's definitely not true. I reserve judgement until I know enough about the person and the situation they're in. That takes time, and patience. 

Hold me to this

It is the morning of August 26th and will be the beginning of my 30 day experiment to write something each day. It's been my personal goal to practice writing and just excercise a life long skill I've wanted to develop since I was a kid. The inspiration has been the A VC blog that I read. 

Writing is a powerful tool that was never emphasized while I was growing up. It's amazing to me how we over index on the hard sciences, but if we don't learn how to communicate it's relevance to everyone else, that discovery is lost. I remember a story my old boss told me. He has an autistic son who was in first grade at the time and was doing math at a fifth grade level. However, his autism made it difficult for him to communicate and empathize with the people around him. This deficiency made him realize the importance of the humanities and social sciences and how those subjects teach us what makes us people. We need empathy to convey why these important scientific discoveries matter to everyone else. 

Improving the election process

Here's the problem

There are a ton of complaints about the election and the one that stands out to me is the drive to get the National Popular Vote. Let's be honest, it's a good solution would not pass because smaller states would give up their voting power. You can just look at the states that have approved the NPV and they're predominantly large liberal states (California and New York). So while I think it's a good idea, there's no political willpower to pass something like this. How do we maintain the Electoral College, which gives smaller states a voice in the national election process, while addressing the need for larger states to be heard? How do we also remove the idea of "Battleground States" where the election hinges on a few? How do we make a third party candidate relevant to the election? (Disclaimer: I did work with the Clinton Foundation, but I am taking a centrist view and believe this would benefit dems, the GOP and emerging parties.)

Here's a solution

I've thought about this for a bit and think one viable solution is a weighted average of the electoral vote (not sure why it's a non secure site but an MIT professor thought of this already). The basic idea is to keep the electoral vote but to apply a proportion of the popular vote to that electoral vote count. The winner would be determined by having 51% of the available electoral votes. The wrinkle I'd introduce to the above solution is if the democratic and republican party don't receive a majority. The the third party would have to allocate all of its electoral vote share to one of the two parties of its choosing.

How would this affect previous elections?

I'm a pretty big dork and looked at past elections (1984 - 2016) to see how this would've affected the outcome. In a nutshell, not much, although it does make it interesting when the president does not receive the necessary 51%. (Sorry for my lack of formatting skills.)

1984 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
Ronald Regan (R)		58.8%		59.3%
Walter Mondale (D)		40.6%		40.5%

1988 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
George HW Bush (R)		53.4%		53.8%
Michael Dukakis (D)		45.6%		45.7%

1992 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
George HW Bush (R)		37.4%		37.9%
Bill Clinton (D)		43.0%		43.1%
Ross Perot (I)		18.9%		19.0%

1996 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
Bob Dole (R)		40.7%		41.6%
Bill Clinton (D)		49.2%		49.8%
Ross Perot (I)		8.4%		8.5%

2000 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
George W Bush (R)		47.9%		48.7%
Al Gore (D)		48.4%		48.5%
Ralph Nadar (G)		2.7%		2.8%

2004 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
George W Bush (R)		50.7%		51.4%
John Kerry (D)		48.3%		48.2%

2008 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
John McCain (R)		45.7%		46.3%
Barack Obama (D)		52.9%		53.1%

2012 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
Mitt Romney (R)		47.2%		48.0%
Barack Obama (D)		51.1%		51.0%

2016 Elections

		Popular Vote		Weighted Popular Vote
Donald Trump (R)		47.3%		48.0%
Hillary Clinton (D)		47.6%		48.6%
Gary Johnson (L)		3.3%		3.4%

You can see the data here. It is pulled directly from Wikipedia with some formatting done.

The 2000 and 2016 elections are great use cases in that the popular vote doesn't reflect the actual outcome and only a third party allocation of votes would break the 51% necessary to win the election. The added benefit would be that the major parties would have to appeal to third party candidates in order to win the swing vote. The hope is that this would help limit the extremism that occurs in a two-party election system.

What does stand out to me is the 1992 and 1996 elections. President Bill Clinton could've lost those elections if the third party candidate chose the other direction. (As an aside, I had no idea Bill Clinton never got the popular vote until I started looking into this.) In this year's election, Gary Johnson's voters would have a huge impact on the outcome and unfair vitriol hurled against them could be avoided.

Some open questions

Some eagle-eyed readers will note in 1996, if Ross Perot allocated his votes to Bob Dole, it would not put either candidate over the 51%. I'm not quite sure how to solve this issue at the moment and would love to have some ideas. I assume you could go down the line and see the 4th or 5th party candidates and how they allocate their votes but this gets a little tedious and we would need an outcome in an expedient manner.

Additionally, I'm not sure how the third party platform can get their platform heard for the party that they back and win. More cabinet positions? He/She would get the VP position? This is still something I wouldn't know and would love to hear ideas.

In Summary

I'm definitely in Clinton's camp in this election and I won't try to hide my view. I think it's important to find good solutions for the problems we face now. I am sad about the outcome of the election but rather than complain about it, let's be Americans and find solutions and work together to fix our issues. I hope this starts a smart discussion with actionable outcomes.