CDR: Close Elections and Causality

[Tim May]

* In a close, nearly-tied election, should a re-vote be allowed?

* In a close sports game, should all potential "fork" decisions 
(referee calls) be reviewed and the game rolled-back...even hours 
later? Should critical plays be re-played the next day?

* Did the woman who voted at 9 a.m. but whose vote was counted at the 
_end_ of the final count, and whose vote seemingly "caused" one 
candidate to win and another to lose _actually_ "cause" the outcome?

* Did Oregon, for example, whose votes were counted last and whose 
votes put a candidate over the top actually "cause" the outcome?



First, a few words about causality. Most people think they know about 
cause-and-effect. The earth turns, and this "causes" the sun to rise. 
A rooster crows, but this is _not_ the cause of the sun coming 
up...so we know from modern science.

But how about this example: a golfer is about to be defeated in a 
tournament. He hits his ball, it appears to be going wide, then it 
hits a tree branch and bounces toward the hole. It goes in. The 
golfer wins. It turns out (pointed out by Patrick Suppes 30 years ago 
in one of his textbooks) that nearly every person will say something 
like "The tree branch _caused_ him to win." That is, the tree branch 
is seen as an intervening agent which altered history.

The weird thing is that a ball bouncing off a tree branch is quite 
clearly a _scattering_ event. In our crypto and information theory 
terms, we would say it "increases entropy," it randomizes the 
outcome. The fact that sometimes the randomization or scattering 
works to the benefit of one player does not mean much about 
"causation."

How this relates to voting:

In close elections, as in close sports games, as in the golf example, 
there will be many events which are later claimed to be "hinge 
points," or forks.

-- Someone will say that a highway being closed prevented them from 
getting to the polling place in time, and that there additional vote 
"would have made the difference." They want a re-vote.

-- Someone who voted at 9 a.m. will be characterized as having 
"caused" the outcome to be as it was...which is an obvious misuse of 
"causation" (just by the basic ontology that her vote at 9 a.m. could 
not have "caused" other votes to be as they were).

-- The most commonly heard version of this "causation fallacy" is the 
usual stuff about how "Oregon made the difference. The voters in 
Oregon caused Al Gore to win." Do the mental experiment of assuming 
votes were tallied in the _other direction_, with votes on the West 
Coast counted and reported _before_ votes to the east. Then the 
comments would be about how "Rhode Island made the difference...the 
voters in Rhode Island caused Al Gore to be elected."

Again, a misuse of the term "causation."

Ironically, the book I recommended several weeks ago, Judea Pearl's 
"Causality," is very apropos here. It _caused_ me to better 
understand these points.

OK, how about re-votes?

Many are calling for a re-vote in Palm County, Florida. Various 
issues are cited, and the "voters in Palm County will make the 
difference" point is heard often. "The vote in Florida will cause one 
or the other of the candidate to win." "The outcome hinges on the 
vote in Palm County."

First off, the points above, about causality and who gets counted last, apply.

Second, at the time of the "approximately simultaneous" vote on 
Tuesday, no particular state, no particular county, and no particular 
precinct had any way of "knowing" that it would be a hinge site. 
Thus, some people didn't bother to vote, some were careless in 
reading the ballot instructions, some just made random marks, some 
were drunk, all of the usual stuff happening in polling places across 
the country. This despite the estimated $3 billion spent on wooing 
voters.

Deciding that one of those states or one of those counties was 
"decisive" (caused the outcome, was a hinge point, etc.) and thus 
should be given a chance to hold a new vote, has numerous 
implications for fairness:

* instead of being just another voter, just another voting site, the 
N residents will now have the weight of the entire election outcome 
on their shoulders

* intensive lobbying for votes will occur, far beyond the original 
lobbying (when I say "far beyond" I mean by several orders of 
magnitude...it might be that all residents would have to be 
sequestered from the time of the announcement of a re-vote to the 
actual re-vote just to ensure that bribes are not offered, etc.).

* the claims by some that people would simply "repeat their votes, 
except without the confusing ballot issue" are naive. Sensing their 
new role as determiners of the outcome, many would change their 
original votes

(And of course there would be no way of knowing if someone had 
changed their vote, for obvious reasons that ballots are not linkable 
to the voter.)

* and there are the points about the ballot raised earlier: the 
ballot had been used before, there were no legal challenges made, the 
voting commission was led by a Democrat who had approved the ballot, 
the ballot was published in newspapers, etc.

In summary, close elections and close sports games often seemingly 
depend on minor factors. These minor factors are, paradoxically and 
incorrectly, ascribed to be the "causes" of later events.

Lastly, allowing a re-vote when the hinge points have already been 
identified is a serious distortion of the process.

Rules are rules. The time to object is beforehand. Unless extremely 
serious voter fraud is found, results should not be thrown out when 
those results are in accordance with the rules. In no cases should a 
re-vote of a "hinge county" be allowed for less-than-massive-fraud 
reasons.

And, of course, Palm County will _not_ be given a second chance to 
vote in this election. I guarantee it.

--Tim May

-- 
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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