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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

From a UK perspective the "call time" seemed amazing - the amount of time dedicated to that, and the eco system around it (EMILY's list?)

I am sure that exists in all countries just it presumably is less prevalent? Any insiders have knowledge?

Weirdly I would think that process of dialing and recording would be very automatable too

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This stood out to me also, things that are unique about the US compared to other countries

1) Relatively low personal and corporate donation limits - a lot more phone calls are needed to raise the same amount of money

2) Low rate of voting - you need an entire get out the vote campaign along with your existing campaign

3) Hatch act - your congressional staff cant work on your campaign, so you need two sets of staff, this combined with 2 year election cycle is probably what makes "campaign ronin" a viable career path and a also more expensive

4) Presidential system - a bit counterintuitive but i think in a parliamentary system house races are less important as people are more voting for the party

Being in the US, the whole idea that UK doesn't elect their leader directly always struck me as odd, until I realized that their PM's generally feel much more beholden to their party's platform than politicians in the US. In which case, it really is less relevant who the particular person is and more than the party you support is in power.

Same here. I think one of the critical flaws of the US constitution is that it completely ignores the existence of political parties.

The US also does not elect their leader directly.

Most people seem to have slept through their civics classes where the mechanism of how this works was detailed. A startling number of people are under the mistaken assumption that it is or was intended to be, a direct democracy.

I think at this point, with two recent disparities between the popular vote and electoral points, most people realize there's an abstraction layer in between their vote for president. My point stands though: In the US, you vote for the specific individual you want to be president. In the UK, you do not vote for the specific person you want to be PM.

That is only partially true. In the US, we are able to vote for the specific person we support, a huge difference over UK's system for PM, and never has the electoral college gone against the outcome of that vote.

> never has the electoral college gone against the outcome of that vote

That's factually incorrect. The electoral college precluded the winner of the popular vote from becoming president in the last elections, so no. You can vote for the specific person you support but that does not guarantee the outcome.

The parent is making the correct claim that the voting outcome by state (or CD, in the states that split their vote) fully determines the winner, and the electoral college is a procedural formality. The way the votes are weighted is different from "count the popular vote nationwide", but that doesn't mean we don't directly elect the President.

Electors are independent agents and in theory could cast votes differently than one would expect, 'procedural formalities' could be abolished but this actually has a real effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

No not incorrect, you misunderstood what I said, which was my fault because I was imprecise. I didn't say the popular vote was reflected by the electoral college vote. I said the electoral college has always themselves voted along with the result of the votes, i.e., voting in accordance with what each state voted.

In fact they have not. Yes, the end result was the same in all but one case. But some electors chose to do whatever they thought was right instead of what they were supposed to do on multiple occasions. See other comment in this thread.

I'm speaking of the electoral college as a whole. Despite a rogue elector here or there, that has never impacted the final outcome.

In fact it actually has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1796_United_States_presidentia...

You clearly know a bit about this side of history, so at this point I'm not sure if you are purposely misinterpreting what I say. Adams one by 3 electoral votes, and there was only one single "faithless elector" in that election. The other electors that voted Adams against their state's popular vote still did so in accordance with the rules for apportioning electoral votes

The system operates in different ways depending on how big the majority is; large majorities (Tony Blair) mean the leader can tell the party what to do and run their own personal platform. Small majorities (Theresa May) are prone to collapse and tend to get overtaken by the fringe elements.

It was always a virtue of the Westminster system that failing to pass legislation could collapse the government and force elections - no "shutdowns" or "gridlock" here - until the Lib Dems vandalised that bit of the constitution with the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. The first three months of this year showed us what a disaster that was.

In the UK, there's a total campaign spending limit.

And it's low - the maximum a candidate can spend in the 25 days before polling day is ~$21000 (The national party has a separate budget - and rules about which expenses go against which budget)

The consequence of this is parties are relatively less dependent on raising money - and it's relatively more important to get volunteers, as the spending limit isn't enough to mail two letters per voter.

I've been the sole "tech guy" on a few campaigns over the years; it was mind blowing to see call time, my first time around. I spent several days asking other campaign officers why I couldn't just automate it; dialing, doing the money ask, collecting donation information, all totally automatable. I was told a number of reasons, with the overarching theme being that the more human effort went into it, the better the outcome would be. The people doing the calls had been at it for years, had a system, and didn't want the disruption caused by automation. They would work better if it was their job start to finish.

It is a bit Ludite in nature, but when I beta tested an autodialing system, the person making the calls seemed more surprised, less ready for the call, and had less immediate knowledge about who they were calling. The act of scrolling through the list, identifying the next viable name (and reading all of the information we had about that person), dialing the number, etc, gave the caller time to mentally prepare and digest what they knew about the person they soon would be speaking to. They were more engaging during the ask, and overall were more successful.

Kind of missing the point. Call time is about "access" to the candidate. Most large campaigns already have call center operations for low-dollar donors. Donors that max out do so because they have the candidate's attention for a period of time. Not possible to automate (and automating it would defeat the purpose).

Ah thanks for the correction! I misunderstood the article's description of "call time" as a synonym for "call bank", as it consists of volunteers calling and asking for donations. I can see how automation is not feasible with this definition.

Agree, and with the unfortunate history of robo-calls, more and more people are letting calls go straight to voicemail. At what point will cold-calling not be essentially worth the effort?

The important part of call time is the phone number or caller ID, shows the candidates name. We have automated it some, but paper is still quick and easy to write on to later be entered at the end of the day

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