Additional Notes On Chapter 11

In Elena's speech, a big thing is made of tracking numbers.  That's about how many Affiliates there are.  But more than numbers need to be tracked.  Consider, in particular, the case of a Republican Affiliate in a state and/or in a Congressional district where the Republican candidate does not support The Minute Women's principles.  What does this Affiliate do at the ballot box or, indeed, does the Affiliate choose to abstain from voting (at least in those races) rather than vote for the Democratic candidate?

Abstaining can be thought of as one less vote for the Republican candidate.  Voting for the Democratic candidate is both one less vote for the Republican candidate and one more vote for the Democratic candidate.  Aggregating over all the Republican Affiliates, it matters which of these choices likely will be made.  That needs to be tracked as well as the numbers in themselves. 

An additional thing that matters this way is whether the Affiliate voted in the previous election or not.  It seems that voting participation rates in the recent midterm elections were down considerably from the 2020 elections.  I have not yet seen convincing evidence presented that indicates why this happened.  Was it all the legislation passed at the state level to make voting more difficult?  Or was it that many voters had muddled views about both Trump and Biden, which made them less willing to vote?  In any event, whether an Affiliate voted previously also should be tracked.  

Summing up, how many Affiliates are needed to swing an election is a somewhat complicated thing to determine.  It is when the Affiliates approach that size that the Republican candidates have incentive to embrace The Minute Women's principles.  And then, if these candidates anticipate it will happen, they may then want to embrace these principles earlier, so they don't appear quite so opportunistic.

I didn't include this additional complexity in Chapter 11 because I didn't think it would add much to what is already there.  But if this was a real story and not merely a hypothetical, no doubt this added complication would matter.