Joke and Dagger

Title: Numbers Game

A friend of mine asked, is it worth advocating for a full 12-Senator vote in 2019?

The context of the question is that the “Oposisyon Koalisyon” fielded only 8 candidates, and people
on social media (not counting the pro-Duterte, pro-Marcos, and pro-Llamanzares troll farms,
naturally) are at odds as to whether to vote only those 8 candidates, or to fill out an entire slate of 12,
or to even vote less than 8 candidates, because reasons.

I did some reading. Particularly on power indices and voting power, and two guys named Lloyd
Shapely (a mathematician) and Martin Shubik (an economist).

The concepts of power indices and voting power are rather math intensive (sorry ka-DDS, you’re
gonna have to sit this one out), but the gist of it in terms of an election is: when people vote for a
candidate, there is a chance that a single vote becomes a “critical vote,” or the vote that pushes the
candidate over the threshold needed to “win.”

What’s that chance that a single voter is a critical voter? Let’s assume, based on the 2016 elections,
that it will take 16 million votes to be elected Senator, and about 55 million out of the 66+ million
registered voters. The formula for finding that chance (influence, denoted by i) is i=(s-1)!(n-s)!/n!,
where s is the number of voters All told, it is a mathematical way of saying it’s an extremely small
chance, almost zero.

So why bother voting?

Well first of all, it’s a civic duty, so boo for even asking. But more importantly, there *is* a way to
improve those chances, no matter how miniscule.

Vote by blocs.

Yup, the secret to electoral success is to vote the same way in very large numbers. Who’d a-thunk it,
right?

Think of it this way: instead of counting as several individual voters, a voting bloc becomes a single
voted, with the weight of the number of its individual voters. What that does for that handy formula
above is it increases s while decreasing n. In layman’s terms, it greatly improves the chance that the
bloc vote, counting as a single voter, becomes a critical voter.

And if there’s anything we want to be, it’s a critical voter.

Which goes back to the original question: should we advocate for a full 12 slate?

The answer to that question depends on your goal.

If the objective is to simply be a critical voter for a specific group of candidates (say, the 8 Oposisyon
Koalisyon candidates), then a bloc vote for all 8 of them should be enough.

But if the objective is two-fold, namely to be a critical voter for a select group of candidates AND
minimize a critical vote for another group of candidates (They Who Shall Not Be Named), then best to
go with a full 12 slate.

The explanation for this requires far too much mathematical modeling than I’m willing to simplify
here. The gist of it is this: if we assume that the votes for the candidates placing 8-16 are reasonably
close to one another, then undervoting helps the candidates with a larger support base with more
potential critical voters, ie. the ka-DDS.
So here’s the pitch: we’ve seen how much Duterte is willing to be Xi Jinping’s puppy dog. We’ve seen
how complicit the State is willing to be to sell the Philippines out to China.

We’ve seen how #TeamChina Duterte and his lackeys are.

Will we vote for #TeamChina?

No-brainer question. Of course we shouldn’t.

But it goes beyond that. We shouldn’t vote them into office. We also shouldn’t be doing anything that
helps them get voted into office.

There are many ways by which can happen from now until May next year. But on the day itself, the
best way to deny #TeamChina from legislative seats is to “bloc” them out of the Senate. (The House
will be much more difficult, but still doable, using the same theories above.)

It sounds like I’m just playing with numbers. I am. But the underlying purpose isn’t just a game.
Democracy is at stake. Everything else is secondary to that. If you believe otherwise, you’re just
kidding yourself.