6% of six states

Why do you think the #GOP has made #RCV illegal in 5 states?

6% of six states. Because of the Electoral College, any majority wins all of a states votes (for most states), regardless of 51% or 75%. The only states that matter are where the election is even enough where that states electoral votes can go either way.

Of course I’ll vote for whoever is more likely to improve society, but my state has historically overwhelmingly voted for one party, so adding my vote to that doesn’t affect anything — this is where you’ll read complaints that for quite a few recent elections, the declared winner was NOT the one with the most popular votes

Fwiw, this article title & description, like every other media source in existence in our current capitalistic hellscape that as it chases profits to the exclusion of all else, somehow converts even true statements into false ones (literal heroes like Ian Danskin's Innuendo Studios aside ofc, although that's probably why it struggles to find funding, b/c it doesn't "enrage" more than it informs).

Thus, that statement "the election will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states" is the tiniest bit true, more than 99% false, and any way you slice it, is designed to make you angry. And therefore talk about and share it. As we are doing now.

Rest assured, all the votes will be counted (barring some other event where that somehow does not happen - meh, it's been known to occur before, see e.g. Bush in Florida where his brother was in charge of the counting process - but why would we think that a conflict of interest could be there!?), from all of the voters.

It is just that there is this statistical model that the authors are using, whereby states that usually tend to vote one way, are thereby expected to vote the same way that they have in the past - there is nothing guaranteed about that, though it is indeed likely. And that model predicts a tie in many states. Which will be broken by a much smaller number of voting entities than the full 100%. As is always the case - that's just what "tie-breaking" means.

A much more informative title would have been a lot more boring, with caveats scattered all throughout every part of it, and would say something like "Based on our statistical modeling predictive algorithm that even we did not bother to look at but our interns who work hard for very little pay, haha j/k it is no pay at all, tell us that we should be making forward predictions into the next quarterly review and are you even still reading fuck you all but also if you could send us money that would be great...".

But if they did that then their website could not use your click as the product to sell to the advertising executives, so that they can buy a thirtieth summer home.

TLDR: tie-breakers gonna tie-break, same as always. Probably. Maybe. They think. We'll see.

Edit: you also happen to be correct and the USA is not a democracy - we are rather a plutocracy where monied interests subvert the election process and get their way regardless of who wins - but that is a separate matter from the one that this article was trying to get us to click on and read.

Edit 2: I also entirely skipped over the Electoral College system, since that refers to the form of democracy, not whether a democracy exists in the first place. You can, and probably should, argue that it is a very bad form, that is less democratic "in spirit", but at least technically it does lie within the purview of democratic systems.

Maybe, depending on the system, although if a state is truly progressive, then it may be less likely to ever vote that way in the first place?

One such system that is gaining popularity is to state that whoever wins the popular vote across all of America will win that state's electoral votes - essentially abolishing the entire electoral college system, although just for that coalition of states. They basically are saying that they don't want the outdated electoral college system, and that whoever wins the popular vote truly deserves their votes. Plus again, Democrats tend to always win the popular vote lately so... it's not that big of a risk, although in the future I suppose that could change, and yet, still it is a nice gesture to lead the way in doing the correct thing, even if not everyone chooses to follow.

Another system that is even better at giving us real, actual choices (yay!) is the "ranked choice" system - the normal system btw is often called "first past the post", and tends to devolve into voting against the other side, rather than taking a risk on picking someone who will actually step up and DO well... anything at all. I put links in there - the suggest ordering is the second one (normal voting) first, then the alternative system.

This one at first glance seems to have few risks for the "other side" winning, since it would mainly apply to the primary elections where the chief candidate for each of the two parties is selected - i.e. "the" Republican and "the" Democrat candidate, who then subsequently go head-to-head in the main election. One huge caveat though is that someone could e.g. vote for a third-party candidate, followed by the candidate that they think has a better chance of winning the election. Even if we took it as a given that the third-party candidate is guaranteed to lose, they still can influence the election and have major impacts on politics overall. Which sadly, seems naively to explain why even liberal states don't want to switch to it: they don't want to lose their power to Republicans, but if they do, they know that they can turn around and use that to fuel people's anger and resentment and thereby win the next election more readily. But what they CANNOT condone is someone splitting from their power base and going off to do wild things on their own - why, they might even do something as radical as (gasp!) "tax the wealthy"!?! Don't forget that even liberal politicians are just as slimy, self-serving, power-hungry, greedy, corrupt, etc. as conservative politicians. Well, perhaps not AS much, but they are no shining sainted angels either. Maybe, MAYBE if the literal fate of democracy itself was on the line, they might at least consider doing the right thing... but I would not bet on it. They will do whatever they think serves their interests best, that's it and that's all. The rest is a mere academic discussion in theory.

Wouldn’t it be more akin to a snapshot during a race? Anything can change after that until the finish. A photo finish strikes me more as final night counting of actual votes. And “too close to call”