I’m unhappy to report that I anticipated the future.

From this 2017 post, “Did Trump win because his name came first in key states? Maybe, but I’m doubtful.”:

So, suppose ballot order gave Trump the win in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida. That’s 16 + 10 + 29 = 55 electoral votes. On the other side, maybe ballot order helped Clinton in Maine (at-large) and New Hampshire, that’s 2 + 4 = 6 electoral votes, for a net gain of 49 for Trump. Take away 49 of Trump’s electoral votes and he no longer has the victory (assuming all electoral voters voted as pledged; I guess that will be our next constitutional crisis, come 2020). We tend to think of all these little things as averaging out, but they don’t have to. The number of swing states is small.

As noted in the above-linked post, I’m doubtful on the claim that ballot order caused Trump’s Florida victory because this would require a 1.2% swing, which based on my review of the literature is on the high end of plausible ballot-order effects in recent presidential elections. But the thing that jumped out at me when rereading this post was my offhand remark that not counting the electoral votes as pledged would be our next constitutional crisis, come 2020. I was kinda kidding, but maybe not, as this is pretty much what actually happened. Scary when our jokes come true.

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