Talk:2380: Election Impact Score Sheet

Please vote, everyone! #Hashtag. (Unsigned. Whoever you are.)

Cool, how to convince citizens of other countries to vote for this shitsotrm?

I always told myself that if I ever joined Twitter (rather than 'browse-lurked' the feeds of people of interest, as I do now) I would use #hashtag a lot, and other ironic self-referential things in order to stop myself taking it too seriously. Nice to know I'm on the same wavelength with Randall, but now I must further delay my inevitable signing up until I've got something newer and better in mind! 162.158.158.61 00:06, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

This "as if you voted again!" should not be confused with the stuff that Trump keeps yammering about. :-) BunsenH (talk) 02:44, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Why is Alaska four points?? 162.158.62.79 03:20, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Alaska is only three, but who knows, it's not a close race there according to 538. They also have higher than average voter turnout too.

172.69.42.92 03:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Not sure. However, according to [wikipedia] they have the 3rd lowest population per electoral vote ratio (of the proper states), meaning that an alaskan vote in theory counts more than a texan one (which has the highest ratio). But don't ask me. I am a European with no big clue about that complicated US election system. --Lupo (talk) 06:29, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

That's ok, I'm not convinced most Americans understand it either. But then, I don't understand why so many Americans think that compulsory voting is un-democratic - particularly compared to a situation where those in power get to deliberately interfere with voters' ability to vote at all. Paddles (talk) 13:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

It seems that "538" is a reference to https://fivethirtyeight.com which seems to be a USA election news aggregation website. 108.162.216.80 07:30, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

0h, and on a second look 538 is mentioned.108.162.216.80 07:38, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Uhm 538 is the number of electors in the United States electoral college, which FiveThirtyEight is named after, so it is not a reference to that program. But the note about Nate Silver of course is about him and his website. --Kynde (talk) 13:22, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if Randall knew about or intended the reference, but there is a website http://hashtaghashtag.org/, describing itself as "#Hashtag is dedicated to political analysis and long-form opinion pieces on politics and public policy." Or maybe he just wanted to be a smart-ass with the #Hastag. Bischoff (talk) 07:47, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Before "Hashtag" existed, "#' was sometimes just called "hash". Once it was combined with a word (e.g. "#blart") and use to tag things like tweets, the combined unit was called a "hashtag" (i.e. a tag containing a hash symbol). At some point "#blart" changed from being read as "hash blart" (essentially reading the individual symbols that make it up) to "hashtag blart" (the meaning of the combined symbols), sort of how "$10" is read as "ten dollars" rather than "dollar-sign ten". But then taking the reading "hashtag blart" and back-applying it to the text "#blart" has produced the use of the term "hashtag" for the "#" symbol. Hopefully this won't go around the circle again and make "hashtagtags"

Printable version

I would argue that the "[Click for printable version]" should be hyperlinked with the link to https://xkcd.com/2380/election_impact_score_sheet.pdf

Let me see if I can do that by myself.