 Imagine arguing bitterly with your friends over which magazine photos to cut out and paste together, only to have some stranger do it for you once you'd made up your minds. The result? An electoral collage. I'd like to talk about some things related to the recent 2016 presidential election. Why it seems that the world has gone crazy, no matter who you voted for, why the election results have spawned mass protests, why America's electoral system is partially responsible for both phenomena and what we can do to fix it. But first, let's look at this cute puppy. Okay, let's do this. I've talked a little before about in-group bias, a hardwired problem with human brains that distorts our perception in measurable ways whenever we're divided up into teams. If you sort a roomful of people into two groups, they'll show a clear behavioral preference for members of their own group. This happens even when the division is obviously arbitrary, so you can imagine what happens when people think that it's actually meaningful. The two primary political parties in the United States shamelessly exploit the psychology. Voters are repeatedly encouraged to feel as though even a slight hint of allegiance for the red or the blue team is a matter of us versus them, of reasonableness versus insanity, of good versus world-ending evil. In-group bias is intrinsic to how these parties continue to operate, and importantly, one of its primary effects is making members of the opposite team seem homogeneous and monolithic. This is partially why accusations of hypocrisy are rampant in politics. Blue team members don't see one person who voted Republican suggesting that Michelle Obama's manner of dress is inappropriate, and another person who voted Republican suggesting that Melania Trump would be a good first lady. They just see this single stupid red blob that contradicts itself all the time. In that light, a close presidential election like this one seems apocalyptic for everybody. So many voters for the other team. Half the country doesn't even care that their chosen candidate is transparently corrupt or bigoted. They will vote for them anyway. We're obviously doomed. I don't want to minimize the concerns that many people rightfully have over Donald Trump's totally inappropriate remarks or the discriminatory policies hinted at by his campaign. Now is absolutely a time for anyone who cares about religious rights or minority rights or gay rights or women's rights or the like to be vigilant and clear. Whether or not he meant any of it, the American people will not abide any violation of such. But the ballots for this election did not say bigotry and not bigotry on them. They didn't say corruption and anti-corruption either. The platforms and the candidates representing them were multifaceted, and so were the motivations of the people who voted for them. For a significant portion of those 120 million Americans who voted, those factors made both candidates equally despicable. voters who earned their living in dying manufacturing industries, parents who need Obamacare to take care of their kids, people who feel alienated and disenfranchised from their government. All of these factors and countless more played an important role in how those millions of Americans voted. But thanks to in-group bias, our skewed perception would have us believe that everyone who voted for the other team simply did not care about that singular thing that was most important to us. An incredible number of voters are disappointed or worse with the candidate that they backed and wished that they had had another option, but they were simply too scared or outraged at what they imagined would happen if the other candidate won. Now that one candidate has won, that fear and outrage has driven huge protests in numerous cities. But it's not the only reason. These weird, edge case elections have drawn attention to all of the truly stupid problems the U.S. electoral system has built into it, and many people are rightly pissed. For example, this marked at least the fourth time in American history that the popular vote has been subverted by the system that we use to elect our president. That means that the majority of American citizens are dissatisfied with the result of a vote, which is just bananas. For people outside the U.S. who are understandably confused how someone could be elected by a minority of voters, we have a weird legacy system here in the U.S. called the Electoral College, where each state has its own mini-election to send either a set of Democratic or Republican voters to Washington, D.C. in December for the real election. Those electors then usually vote the way that their state tells them to vote, either all red or all blue. Because of the way those electors are broken down by state, which is complicated, more Americans might want Hillary Clinton to be president, but because they're concentrated in fewer states, they control fewer electors, and so Hillary loses with a popular majority of the vote. As envisioned by the founding fathers, this system seemed like it would be a good idea to get candidates to campaign in and cater to non-populous states. Rather than spending all their time in big cities, they'd be forced to appeal to voters in every state to court all those electoral votes. Unfortunately, that's not really how things worked out. Instead, swing or battleground states, which have a decent number of electoral votes and a population that split more or less evenly between the two parties, get all the attention. Like Texas contains 15 million registered voters and a whole slew of electoral votes and neither candidate lifted a finger to campaign to any of them. Because Texas simply isn't a variable in the electoral equation. In fact, 39 states aren't. Just 11 states. That's where these candidates spent the vast majority at their time, money, and energy, and that's who gets to decide the future for everyone else. If you don't live here, your vote for president has no practical effect on who gets elected. No wonder people are pissed. Another issue, remember back when I said this, those electors then usually vote the way that their state tells them to vote. Sadly, there's no federal law mandating that the Electoral College vote in any particular way. They might be instructed to vote red or blue by their state's election, but they don't really have to. There have been 179 faithless electors in US history, members of the Electoral College who voted against their state's wishes. No such renegade has ever changed the course of a presidential election, but it's definitely possible, especially if the race is particularly close and one of the candidates isn't particularly well liked by his party. 37 people could simply decide come December that Hillary Clinton gets to be president. That would be quite an upset with some very different protests despite the fact that it's 100% legal under federal law. Trump supporters probably aren't really happy with that thought. Another part of the problem is that the American electoral process is based on a plurality or winner takes all system. As we've discussed, this sort of electoral system encourages strategic voting rather than honest voting. If you voted for either Trump or Clinton, not because you agreed with all their policies but because they were your best chance at stopping the other one, you're a victim of this system. A huge number of Americans do not vote for who they actually want to be president because they can't afford to let them elect the other guy. How many people do you think would have absolutely loved to support a Bernie Sanders or Gary Johnson ticket if it were feasible? Now amending the Constitution to mitigate any of these problems is a pretty tall order especially with swing states not too keen to give up their favorite position. But there are two bits of pretty easy to pass state level legislation that could change the entire American electoral process for the better ranked choice voting systems and the national popular vote interstate compact. Ranked choice voting or RCV is very simple. Rather than checking one box for who you want to be president, you rank candidates from your most to least favorite. If your first choice doesn't receive enough votes to be elected, your vote is safely transferred to your second choice and so on. When everything said and done, the candidate with the most votes transferred or otherwise wins. That's it? How does that help? Well for starters, you don't have to worry about throwing away your vote. Backing an unlikely candidate doesn't just hand victory to your opponents. If they're not quite popular enough to win, your preferred mainstream candidate will still get your support. But you get to send an unambiguous message about your political priorities and who knows? If not enough people agree with you that your long shot gets elected. That makes it feasible for several complex political views to be represented by numerous candidates rather than simply choosing between a red or blue package deal because it's the only chance that you stand at winning. If you're concerned about government corruption, that diversity of candidates also makes it a lot harder to make shady deals with special interest groups. If you have to buy off not just one, but three or four potentially electable people, you just don't get the same bang for your buck. It also becomes harder to run negative slur campaigns. Cataloging all the reasons that people shouldn't vote for every single one of your opponents doesn't leave you a lot of time to sell your own platform. And finally, both the math and the results from numerous RCV elections show a significant increase in voter satisfaction with the results. It's demonstrably more representative in every way. We would still have that weird swing state thing to deal with. But there is a law in the works that would make that a moot point in the future. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It's an in-process deal between several states. If enough states pledge their support, enough for an electoral majority, they've all agreed to instruct their electors to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in the US. The Constitution doesn't actually mandate that states use any particular method for assigning their electoral college representatives. If they want to use the popular vote to decide, that's totally legal. Right now, states amounting to 165 out of the 270 electoral votes necessary have signed on. And 36 more are pending. If the NPVIC gets those votes, it will become the de facto voting system in the United States. At that point, every voter in every state will matter for the final election totals. Not just the ones in swing states. And because each state is still in control of its own electoral process, they can implement local RCV systems so we can get those benefits as well. Of course, the electoral college could still vote however they wanted to. But by ditching the plurality voting system and moving to a popular vote instead, the swing states would be effectively dethroned and wouldn't have any incentive to defend it anymore. It would be more feasible to pass a constitutional amendment dissolving it. And we could just, you know, vote for who we want to be president. This has been a really tough election. People are scared of the polarized and violent atmosphere in the US right now, which has been fueled by in-group bias. And confidence in our electoral process is low. For good reason, it sucks. If you'd like to avoid doing it all again in four years, please write or call your representative's state office and ask them to support Rank Choice Ballots and the NPVIC, or donate to fairvote.org. It may seem like a distant dream, but the US has gone through a whole lot worse for the promise of a representative government. Are you fed up with the two-party system? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Also, if you're interested, I've created a website for new thunkstuff at thunkshow.com. I recently uploaded a podcast that I recorded with my friend Simone Chavour about the election and cognitive biases, and some other stuff. I'd love to know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share. Don't stop thunking, and please be kind to each other.