# Senate and House Obligations **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2022, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703 "2022-11-10T18:45:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/61 "2022-11-14T13:33:23Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > (the tram doesn’t run on Sunday Doh! Saturday! ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/62 "2022-11-14T14:15:38Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I do not think the country is evenly spilt. Republican presidents regularly lose the popular vote these days. They win via the electoral college. To be fair, the popular vote margin itself is skewed by the existence of the electoral college because candidates usually don’t bother to seriously campaign in states they have no chance in or states that are “gimmies.” And so Trump could have likely found more voters in California or New York if he’d made more of an effort there, but the electoral college rendered those votes meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/63 "2022-11-14T18:42:16Z")
Looking at presidential elections alone is a very poor way to understand the split, and certainly the Electoral College is the major reason. That’s why I included state and local races. Mark Kelly won Arizona’s Senate race big - with 51.6% of the vote. The governor’s race still isn’t called and neither are the Attorney General, Proposition 309, and two House seats. The House overall is still too close to call. About 20 seats are undecided and ten are total toss-ups. The Senate is 50-49 with Georgia once again heading for a run-off between two candidates less than a percentage point apart. Doesn’t that happen every year? Not really. Maybe a few races here and there are extremely close. The country is truly split, although the split is mostly urban/rural that happen to balance one another. That’s easier to see in state races because of House gerrymandering. In 2016 and 2020 a few tens of thousands of votes in a few states would have switched the electoral totals. Twice in a row. Unprecedented. Again, the presidential race shouldn’t get all the attention; take the deep dive and go into the states. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/64 "2022-11-14T21:05:53Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Looking at presidential elections alone is a very poor way to understand the split, and certainly the Electoral College is the major reason. That’s why I included state and local races. > > Mark Kelly won Arizona’s Senate race big - with 51.6% of the vote. The governor’s race still isn’t called and neither are the Attorney General, Proposition 309, and two House seats. > > The House overall is still too close to call. About 20 seats are undecided and ten are total toss-ups. The Senate is 50-49 with Georgia once again heading for a run-off between two candidates less than a percentage point apart. But the interesting thing is a lot of the state elections (and some of the House of Congress districts) are seriously gerrymandered, giving one party or other an advantage beyond its numbers. So the balance in the House is less indicative of the actual divide too, as much as who used to be a majority in that state. Plus the uncertainty in the House results is because of odd rules about not even starting to process ballots mailed n or dropped off until after the polls close, coupled with misguided propaganda about mail voting. Many of the house races have an apparent winner, but because of the uncertainty between the same-day vote distribution vs. mail-in, it is unwise to call the vote (Cortez-Mastro vs Laxalt is a good example). This is exacerbated as the proportion of early (mail-in) votes grow. in this election, 44M voted early; based on 2020 when 160M people voted, that implies a quarter of the vote. (Some mail-in, some early poll stations) The problem is that, contrary to allegations, faking a mail-in ballot is difficult. Faking 100,000 pretty much impossible. First, the ballot arrives with the name and signature (and date?) signed by the person who voted. This name must be validated against the voter rolls, and the signature verified. Then, it must be validated in some form that the person did not also vote in person at a poll. Then, the ballot should be removed from the envelope when all is verified, to ensure secrecy of the ballot. Also, all this paperwork has to be verified that it is in fact the actual paperwork the state sends out, not a fake made of bamboo paper. Faking any part of this - creating fake ballots, creating fake voters, or submitting fake ballots for real voters (ensuring they aren’t flagged as double-voting), forging signatures, swapping in boxes of ballots- all have issues that make fraud incredibly difficult in the face of dual-party scrutineers. There may be a good argument to making the popular vote the rule for presidential elections, but there are other aspects of democracy that also need fixing. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/65 "2022-11-14T21:38:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The country is truly split… I do not think so. This close split is only happening because of extreme republican voter disenfranchisement. Gerrymandering being the biggest example but not the only effort to skew the vote. Get rid of that and republicans would lose in dramatic fashion. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2022, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/66 "2022-11-14T22:18:20Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > But the interesting thing is a lot of the state elections (and some of the House of Congress districts) are seriously gerrymandered, giving one party or other an advantage beyond its numbers. By state I meant state-wide races, of which most if not all states have several. Gerrymandering of state legislatures does, as you say, provide a skewed perspective and you need to find cleaner ways to get to the issue. > [@md-2000](#): > > odd rules about not even starting to process ballots mailed n or dropped off until after the polls close, Deeply ironic that the Republican Arizona legislature passed the very rules that prohibit counting early ballots until Election Day that make Republicans scream about the slow counting of ballots. Apparently the issue of a small number of people conducting the time-consuming necessity of confirming each individual ballot, normally done by thousands of election workers all day across the state, never occurred to them. In Republican math 2 + 2 has no answer, just stunned befuddlement. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/67 "2022-11-15T06:09:09Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I do not think so. > > This close split is only happening because of extreme republican voter disenfranchisement. Gerrymandering being the biggest example but not the only effort to skew the vote. > > Get rid of that and republicans would lose in dramatic fashion. This is my thought too. Each election cycle, a new cohort of voters comes of age, having grown up in a world where gayness, gay marriage, trans rights, racial equality, changing racial demographic - are normal. I’m old enough (not that old) to remember “Whites Only” signs in the South. I’m old enough to remember when the Engineering students thought it was hilarious to go down to the local gay bar on a Saturday night and beat up the people exiting the bar. To quote the Four Yorkshiremen, “you tell the kids that today and they don’t believe a word of it…” I think the conservative faction of society is fighting a rear-guard action against this social evolution. (And apparently the teaching of evolution). But to circle back to the OP’s question - the interesting thing about the congress and Senate is that they are not as heavily tied to the party factions as a parliamentary system. Individual members can express doubts and disagreement and vote against any particular bill with a lot less consequence. (“Can”, but do they?) A prime minister with a majority is effectively a dictator for the 4 or 5 year term unless he/she incites outright rebellion. (not unheard of) > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Deeply ironic that the Republican Arizona legislature passed the very rules that prohibit counting early ballots until Election Day that make Republicans scream about the slow counting of ballots. I thought the same, but then there’s California whose delays seem to be outpacing Arizona. I also recall an article (200 presidential election?) that said at the time many states simply discarded the mail-in and military ballots unopened when the results were such that the winner lead by more votes than the number of ballots remaining. I’ve worked elections in Canada, and they are typically complete in a few hours, unless the race is particularly tight, despite being antique pencils and paper. Plus, each poll clerk counted their station, maybe 200 or so at most. However, it is simplified by the fact there is only one position on the ballot. For a recent municipal election, with mayor, council and school board on the ballot, they used “fill the bubble” with sharpies and an optical reader, still had the results fairly quickly that night. ---
**Author:** ![RayMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e495f1/32.png) [@RayMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RayMan)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703/68 "2022-11-15T06:10:17Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > The City of Chicago has used a similar system for its mayoral primary since 1999, though there is a second electoral round (with the top two finishers from the primary) only if no one candidate wins a majority in the primary. What you are describing is not a primary election. The City of Chicago has a two round nonpartisan mayoral election. There is no primary for Chicago’s mayoral election. > **[Mayoral elections in Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayoral_elections_in_Chicago)** > > Chicago has held regularly-scheduled popular elections to select the city's mayor ever since it was incorporated as a city in 1837. > Chicago currently holds regularly-scheduled mayoral elections once every four years, in years prior to a presidential election. > Beginning with its 1999 mayoral election, Chicago has used a nonpartisan two-round system. Under this system, if no candidate secures an outright majority of the first-round vote a runoff will be held between the top-two finishers. No runo... Beginning with [its 1999 mayoral election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Chicago_mayoral_election), Chicago has used a nonpartisan [two-round system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system). Under this system, if no candidate secures an outright majority of the first-round vote a runoff will be held between the top-two finishers. No runoff is held if a candidate has secured an outright majority in the first round. Thus far, only two elections ([2015](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Chicago_mayoral_election) and [2019](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chicago_mayoral_election)) have necessitated a runoff. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senate-and-house-obligations/974703.md?page=3)