📰 Noteworthy stories for today #11
Anti-Trumpers without Trump, the Electoral College & Black market artefacts
Another round-up of interesting stories I’ve read and whatever-the-hell-I-want.
The Dive: Originals
What is the Electoral College? Another election down and a wild one at that, I intended to release this short chart mapping the weight of each state’s Electoral College vote but we know what happened there. The Electoral College is supposed to be a representation of the population of each state but has come under some fire for weighting some states more than others.
How do they get selected? The Electoral College is decided by the number of Senators (2) and the number of Representatives in each state (minimum of 1). This means each state is guaranteed a minimum of three Electoral votes - which has caused some to argue that smaller less populated states such as Wyoming are over represented in the election. As the population of a state increases so does the number of representatives and as that increases so does the Electoral Vote that each state carries.
Why do the vote the way the do? In a nutshell, the Winner-Takes-All approach is actually not mandated by the constitution but decided by each state themselves, there are only 2 states that split the vote - Maine and Nebraska which follow a system closer to a popular vote with the winner of districts being split some votes.
What does it mean for elections? In 2000 it was criticised for awarding George Bush the presidency over Al Gore even though Gore received over half a million more votes in his favour. Similarly in 2016 Trump lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College handing him the presidency. This year Florida was a key player in the election because of the number of Electoral College votes it held and Biden’s increased chance of winning it over - as it happened he didn’t and it didn’t matter anyway as he managed to flip some historically Republican states in his favour giving him the crucial 270+ needed.
What will become of Anti-Trumpers with no Trump?
The dust on the US elections is beginning to settle though still without a definitive end in sight but the assumption that Trump will be leaving brings about an interesting question: when your politics centre around an enemy what happens to your identity when that enemy is finally gone?
Black market artefacts & hoards of treasure
I’ve never been tempted to go metal-detecting and I’ve also never watched Detectorists though everybody tells me I should but this story from The New Yorker was oddly captivating. Whilst the most exciting artefacts appear to be armour and weaponry often the most value are coins. After rare coins started to appear on the black market and investigation lead to the finding of one of the biggest hoards of treasure was discovered (legit technical terminology).
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