You’ll never guess why the 2020 race will be more eventful and steamy than previous elections!
After 231 years, the government has decided the old system for electing a president was outdated (finally). No more of that silly plurality voting based on states and an outdated system of electors. That’s for the past. The government has finally decided that “likeability” or “popularity” shouldn’t be the most important factor. For once, everyone has agreed that the president is just eye candy and the American people deserve a president that is as hot as possible. After all, we see the president on enough TV – we might as well enjoy every second of it, no matter what comes out of their mouth.
Once the House of Representatives decided that a new election system was needed and the criteria was set, the House had to decide how to quantify hotness. After thinking for a while (no one in Congress has been in the dating pool for about 40 years), one of the new Representatives thought Tinder might help. After a little research (and a bunch of interns teaching Representatives how to use Tinder), they decided to use the Tinder Elo score, the algorithm that matches you with other profiles of similar hotness, named after creator of the algorithm Arpad Elo.
Eventually, the House came up with a name for the new app: Tinder-in-Chief. This new app would be pretty simple: right before the primaries start, all the candidates in your area, from local mayors to the presidential candidates, will create profiles. Voters can swipe left or right on candidates, and candidates would be able to do the same (probably making some 18-year-old intern swipe right on everyone the candidate sees).
Even the interns might not help, because by some quirk in coding, some people will only have the option to select Republicans, men, or gun owners. No one can figure out why. When the election time comes, the Elo score for each candidate per state will be calculated, and this information will be factored into the results.
After deciding on the Elo score as a way of quantifying hotness, the House proposed a few methods of calculating the new and updated results. The first new method of calculation is simple; we want the hottest president, and it’s not like millennials or honestly anyone under the age of 55 votes anyway, so get rid of voting entirely and just have the presidential candidate with the highest average Elo score win. This seems particularly popular with younger voters, but is polling quite badly with Baby Boomers, most of who have no clue what a Tinder is or know how to actually rate hot people anyway.
The second calculation method is a little more complex but familiar. A quarter of all electors will now go to the candidate with the highest average Elo score, with the rest of the electors going as they normally do to the candidate with the highest number of normal votes. Simple enough, honestly.
The last calculation method is the most complex. Each state will give a quarter of electors to the candidate that is the hottest, a quarter of electors to the candidate who wins the national popular vote (for reasons that escape half the Representatives) and half of electors will go in the normal plurality for the state way.
As of right now, the House isn’t sure exactly how the Elo score will factor in or which of the options to use because, just like any other reality TV show, the producers will handwave and fudge the numbers so that the candidate they want will win. So stay tuned, and you’ll find out on election night!
