Thinking out loud: A US service to help you move to where your vote will count the most
Maybe this topic is silly, but I am up from insomnia, so here it goes.
I watched a piece on the news about how the election may come down to teeny tiny little town in Nebraska. I remember a similar situation coming to pass in the 2020 election.
There are many teleworkers now. Many of them are IT people who would be happy anywhere there is a good Internet connection.
I was thinking that a movement to get people to move to where their votes would count the most would be interesting. At least to talk about.
There could be a web site/app that would identify the potential most crucial areas, like that little Nebraska town.
Nomadic and patriotic teleworkers could then move to such places a year in advance of an election, vote, and move on if they aren't happy in those places.
On the margin, I could see it being useful to decide on one side of a state border versus the other for someone who is moving anyway. But moving permanently is pretty drastic, and I think people motivated by politics would get a more immediate effect by volunteering to work for the Harris campaign in a swing state. If you move, that’s just one vote, but by influencing others you might change many votes?
(Although, some people might do both.)
I came up with the idea because I've come across a number of teleworkers without attachments moving within the continental U.S. maybe once or twice a year for the fun of it. Have company laptop, will travel.
It wouldn't be a permanent move for those types. I think there might be some who would be willing to relocate for a few months. Whether they would be enough, I don't know.
Like someone else in the thread wrote, I would still like to see such a site and see what the hot areas are.
Sure, it makes sense for that demographic. I still think they’d get more impact by moving and volunteering.
I moved from MA to NH, primarily because I wanted more green space and a home that I could use as a foundation to chase net zero. Being a remote employee that needs not to commute helps with my footprint, as does not having children.
Throughout my life I've been interested in civics. I knew moving to NH, my vote was transitioning from a solid blue state to a purple state.
I really appreciate knowing that elections are actually contested here, and I can help make a difference. That was simply not the case for either side in MA.
I'm definitely not part of the demographic of this proposed service you mention. But if it was data rich, I would certainly spend time interacting with its data / visuals!
Welcome to the purple state with way too many political advertisements 😎
This somewhat reminds me of a similar tool developed in the UK this past election with the sole purpose to vote out the tories. You enter where you live and it tells you the best candidate to vote for to fulfill that purpose.
In the US, can't you just focus on the swing states as a whole since they are ran like senate races? I know exceptions are in Nebraska and Maine since they split their electoral votes.
Another good option is to target house representation and throw thorns in the gerrymanderer's sides.
Even most blue states have some Republican representatives. Find those borders and hop them.
You can, but the "swinginess" of a state can vary a lot over time. I'm from Ohio which used to absolutely be a swing state, but is now basically a red state. Similarly, other states that used to be solid red have become more swingy over time.
I think Bleeding Kansas is the historical equivalent to what you’re thinking. It can be difficult to narrow down precisely where you’d have the most impact from election to election, as we saw with a number of republican upsets in 2022. Or consider all the election conspiracy theories complaining about how Biden lost certain bellwether districts.
More concerning: elections are decided by demographics. So if a dyed in the wool liberal moves to a swing district, didn’t surprised if they gradually shift to the right, being influenced by their living situation, aging, and neighbors…
I would think that a person most likely to move would be a young person with few attachments who enjoyed moving around. It seems like the minimal amount of time living there would be 1 year -> for a lease on an apartment. Not really enough time IMHO for values-creep.
Just saying, no way would I suffer living in a conservative district if I can avoid it.
Probably easier to make an election tracker that tells you which races have the biggest impact per dollar.
I guess that's potentially easier than reforming the election system.
Do you think there are enough people willing to do that?
I doubt there are many people willing to actually move purely for a marginal political impact.
But the best way to get electoral college reform is probably getting enough solidly blue states to a point where the EC is biased towards Democrats instead of Republicans. Otherwise I can’t see Republicans ever being on board for reform.
Getting the last few states needed to pass the NPVIC would be the most important thing.
I think it’s definitely worth a shot, but find it hard to believe the current Supreme Court would find it constitutional.
As is I think it could qualify as an illegal coalition.
Yeah it does seem they prefer election interference over offering popular policies.
The complete and total population of Wyoming is less than 600,000 people. Based on the split in the last election, if 150,000 dedicated Democrat voters moved, they could turn Wyoming blue overnight, and pretty much own the state if they stayed. This would be a huge win giving the replacement of 2 senate seats.
Probably too late for that now though. The time for these tactics was at least 1 year ago.
150,000 is a LOT of people, especially to move to a state that likely does not have necessarily 150k people worth of work for them.
Cost of living might be lower, but you still need an income. Remote helps, but isn't a be all end all.
Further this all assumes that the other side isn't going to do the exact same thing or do nothing about it.
Edit:
Thinking about this more, the worse it looks.
You're basically saying "what if Wyoming gained 25% more population in an extremely short period of time, and likely NOT long term inhabitants".
So these people need housing, jobs, utilities, etc. and are basically here to fuck with political numbers and thus might uproot and leave at any moment. Local services and companies will need to scale to meet the new demand as well.
Assuming some large % of these people work remote, you're not even necessarily going to see an increase in local business. Ethically, you're basically saying "hey lets have a bunch of people move somewhere to get the outcome we want, and fuck whatever the hell the locals want there, we want their representation".
Actually, frankly, in the current state of affairs... yes kinda-sorta fuck Wyoming and their 2 senators and 1 house rep with incredibly disproportionate power, in terms of federal representation. That entire state is less than half of Philadelphia's popultion. If we get into serious talks about merging Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana for the purposes of federal representation, I'll ease up.
And yes, an ad-hoc movement would have logistical problems. A co-ordinated one could pool their resources and import/export neccessities.
If Kerry had won Ohio in 2004, we could’ve been blessed with back-to-back elections where the EC and popular vote totals disagreed, but in opposite directions.
Could the title be edited to clarify that the topic is related to the USA? Perhaps by adding 'USA' as a prefix or something similar.
I'm genuinely not trying to be pedantic, so I'm sorry in advance if my message passed that impression.
Added. 👍
When I post such topics, I do try to include US or USA in the title and also the tags usa and politics, even though my tags always get changed and added to. I don't think it's pedantic.