26 November 2016

Stein’s fishy scheme, Spencer’s threat level, MT needs 2nd House seat

Is Jill Stein’s recount request part of a sneaky fundraising scheme? At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall raises that question and urges caution before donating to her recount fund. I agree. There are devilish details in the fine print.

The predicate for Stein’s request for a recount in Wisconsin is a finding by Prof. J. Alex Halderman, et al, that in some states, vote totals for Hillary Clinton deviated from pre-election polls. That finding proves Halderman was paying attention. But does it prove that the election was hacked? No. Halderman himself admits that:

At FiveThirtyEight, Carl Bialik and Rob Arthur are skeptical of Halderman’s thesis — and convincing in their debunking of it.

Richard Spencer is a petty nuisance, and a bit of an embarrassment to Whitefish — and nothing more. In a nation of 321 million, this man who reveres white skin more than skin of any other color was able to attract only 200 to Washington, D.C., for a sit-down dinner (white food only, or were black beans or olives served?) and, reportedly, a few straight-arm salutes right out of Triumph des Willens.

Spencer strikes me as more huckster than Hun. He makes his living selling hymnals with cleaned-up lyrics to the choir, and obtains free publicity from news media that boost their readership by reporting on freak shows. His style reminds me of an old Mitchell Trio song. His ideas scare the devil out of many human rights activists, which is unfortunate because he’s not persuasive outside his little band of followers.

Whitefish has nothing to fear from Spencer. But Whitefish must take care not to let its displeasure with him degenerate into an intolerance for free speech or a movement to run out of town residents who espouse unpopular ideas. A community that seeks to suppress free speech or to expel law abiding citizens who reject mainstream views reveals a lack of confidence in the decency and good judgment of its members. Whitefish should take care not to make Spencer a martyr to free speech.

Montana needs a second seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. From 1912 through 1990, Montana had two seats in the House. After the 1990 Census one seat was lost. Montana now has the second largest congressional district in area (Alaska’s is the largest), and the largest in population. Having eastern and western districts again would make our representative more accessible to the voters, and decrease the costs and miles traveled for campaigns.

There are two ways to obtain that second seat. One is aggressive procreation, which could be fun but is not a sure thing. The other is increasing the House from 435 members, where it’s been stuck for the last century, to 680 members, a number closest to the cube root of the population of the 50 states at the end of 2015. Around the world, the membership of many legislatures, mostly through accident, not design, roughly corresponds to the cube root of their nation’s population. The Montana House of Representative’s membership of 100 is an almost perfect fit for the cube root (101) of Montana’s population of 1,032,000.

Under the present Huntington-Hill apportionment method, had the House been increased in size to 680 in 1990, Montana would have two representatives.

Note. The full Huntington-Hill method employs a priority table. I used a quick and dirty variant that substitutes a rounding point for the priority table. For purposes of illustration, that’s good enough.