Week 49: "The Election That Never Ends" (November 27, 2016)

Dear Readers,

The election may have passed but there’s always more news. If at any time you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, feel free to reply and let me know. A reminder that all newsletters (and more) are available at http://electreport.blogspot.com.

An Effort for A Recount

The talk of a recount began very small. A few mathematicians noted some possible errors in the results and advised the Clinton team to push for a recount. However, Clinton declined, and it took third-party candidate Jill Stein to raise money and file for a recount in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She also plans to file in Michigan, closest of the three, but has not yet done so. The odds that any changes happen are very low and the odds that it flips the results are next to none, but it is nice to have confirmation of the results, although there are still some drawbacks, such as loss of trust in the system.

The margins for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are both greater than 20,000 votes - there would have had to be a major error to flip the results at all. Michigan is more likely, seeing that the margin was only 11,700 votes, but even then it would take huge amounts of human error to flip it at all, and it would accomplish very little to see just Michigan flip. I’d assign the chance of the election outcome to be astronomically small, but this year has been so crazy that you never know...

Continued Cabinet Announcements

-For Secretary of Education, Trump has chosen Betsy DeVos, a noted charter school advocate who is anti-public school.

-For Ambassador to the UN, he has chosen Nikki Haley who has next to no foreign policy experience

There remains much uncertainty around the other positions, especially Secretary of State.

This Week In World Elections

Cuba: Longtime president/prime minister Fidel Castro was pronounced dead this weekend, leading to mixed, but mostly negative, reactions around the world. One that particularly raised eyebrows was a quite sentimental reaction from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

France: The Republican Party primary runoff was held between Francois Fillon and Alain Juppé. Fillon received nearly two-thirds of the vote and won, meaning the election is likely to be held between President Francois Hollande for the Socialists, Fillon for the Republicans, and Marine Le Pen for the Front National, as well as some smaller parties’ candidates.

Thank you for reading. Sorry that this one was short and late! As always, feel free to reply and comment.