Let’s make elections TRULY interesting. Our current system strictly prevents any vote totals from being released until the last polls have closed at the end of election day. I say we do the exact opposite. Let’s publish vote totals for every election LIVE!
When you vote early or send in an absentee ballot, it may be counted early, but currently those results are held secret until the last polls close on election day. Instead, let’s have states and counties publish online live running totals of votes as they come in! Also we can invest in more rapid ballot-counting equipment so that election day results can be published minute-by-minute. Election day will be a mad dash with both sides competing live against each other, against a ticking clock with live vote totals that anyone can see. In close races, both sides will be running around with their hair on fire trying to find a few more votes. You might even see elaborate vote strategies; for example one side might deliberately reserve a chunk of voters until the 11th hour, just to make their opponents overconfident.
Elections are far too boring. Let’s publish live running vote totals and turn them into a spectator sport! Embrace the madness. Embrace the beautiful chaos. Turn election day into something people can watch like a sporting event. Let’s publish election results as they come in!
Most of the more advanced democracies have rules about not allowing reporting of results until polls are closed for a reason. Many don’t even allow reporting until official results are released. Informal exit polls and advanced opinion polls are bad enough.
The idea is for people to vote for who they think will be the best, not vote for who send to be doing well or poorly up to that point
Sure. But you’re completely missing the point of this post. This isn’t, “c/seriouspolicyproposals,” this is “c/crazyideas.”
And this is a gloriously crazy idea. With one simple change, simply publishing the results live, you can cause incredible chaos and turn elections into a complete circus. It’s a wonderfully crazy idea!
Satire aside, preliminary counts wouldn’t really correlate with a final outcome directly anyway. Kind of like polling, but with even more time variation and weird feedback effects like you point out. It certainly could be interesting as a view of the process over time (e.g. which candidate gets more early votes), but lacking pertinent or useful information. Any conclusions drawn would likely be fallacious and psychologically driven.
I don’t think the post deserves the downvotes though. It is a crazy idea after all.