The media was way too cautious in making the call here, but it's easy to understand why when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night, likely to benefit their candidate through the confusion of swinging red and then blue.
If you don't want this to happen again, pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system.
There was some interesting game theory stuff going on there, where AP and Fox called Arizona early, but other networks didn't feel it was safe.
And then Nevada has obviously been won for days, but nobody was calling it because that would have put Fox and AP over 270. So all the networks just started waiting for PA rather than calling the obvious for Nevada.
> Although Biden's lead has only grown there saying that it's "obviously won" is a touch optimistic.
No, if you follow the election analysts like Nate Cohn, Nate Silver, Dave Wasserman, and especially Jon Ralston (who is "the guy" for Nevada elections), Biden has been the clear winner for nearly two days.
And also AP almost immediately called Nevada after the Pennsylvania drop, so they were definitely waiting on that.
Analysis is more complex than just what percentage of ballots remain. It was widely expected for Pennsylvania to have a decisive swap when Trump had a seemingly huge lead and Georgia a very red state was predicted as being a vastly closer race. North Carolina could have also been called as leaning Trump much sooner, but overall it was a fairly close race.
Voting by people in large groups are predictable and people spend a lot of effort getting this right. Out of 50 states exactly one was significantly different from predictions based on a significant shift in a specific group which is easy to miss in statewide polls.
It was not obvious for Nevada, because the outstanding votes were the last 2 days of drop-off, which has skewed red, and there has been uncertainty about how Vegas would react considering Covid's effect on their economy.
> when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night
That really can't be noted enough. That the count took so long is specifically because several legislatures decided to not allow any preprocessing of mail ballots, and to count mail ballots last.
> That really can't be noted enough. That the count took so long is specifically because several legislatures decided to not allow any preprocessing of mail ballots, and to count mail ballots last.
Indeed this bears repeating.
The whole process mounting to the election day was engineered to sabotage and outright throw out votes from the opposition, even if that comes at the expense of the core principles of the whole political system.
I really wonder how good faith conservatives can view these actions positively. One side tries to make it easier, safer, and quicker to vote. One side is trying the opposite.
The only explanation they can come up with is voter fraud which has not been found to be a widescale problem by nearly every group that has looked into it.
They and their base are not operating in good faith. Trump and other high level GOP very publicly stated that doing these sorts of things to improve voting would only help Democrats and that's why they're opposed. The Us vs Them mentality that increasingly and openly permeates through politics is a cancer to the US' future.
>They and their base are not operating in good faith.
There are certainly some people and perhaps even most people in that group, however there are also still millions of people who do actually believe in small government. Do these people think that winning elections is more important than democracy or is there some reason that they have used to convince themselves that it is okay to make it harder to vote?
I suppose they genuinely believe easier voting brings with it massive fraud. Of course no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise - keep in mind this is the same party that just put a QAnon supporter in congress.
Yes, quite easily: you don’t want election results leaking and being reported early, while the polls are still open. This can spoil the results of the election. If you don’t count the votes until Election Day, that’s a lot easier to guarantee.
Not to mention the arbitrary power given to stated during primaries merely by when they vote. Why does Iowa, a state that is over 90% white, get to influence the nomination that much?
No one asked for vote counting before Election Day. All that needed to happen was the preprocessing that mail-in ballots require. They need to be verified against voter lists, sorted by voting place etc. None of this even touches the actual ballot, but it requires substantial amounts of time.
That by itself reveals A LOT of meta information that could be used to gauge outcomes and for a campaign to react accordingly. A campaign that knew which voters had returned ballots could look up their party registration and district and then use that for highly targeted voter turnout or suppression on the day of the election. Enough to turn the tide of a close election like this.
Is there any evidence any of this data has been available - let alone been used - for a campaign in any of the states that do preprocess mail-in votes? Because doing so in order to shift a few ten thousand votes would leave quite a bit of a trace.
How would we know? But ultimately it doesn’t matter. This is the first election with near universal mail-in ballots, so no prior election would have had the coverage necessary to make this data useful. Secondly, just because it hasn’t been done yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. The point is to proactively prevent possible election manipulation, not merely react to demonstrated problems.
It's really the same on either side. It just changes with the circumstances. Some of the same people claiming the integrity of the vote shouldn't be questioned were the same people claiming the 2016 vote was compromised. And vice versa.
Can you point to any mainstream democrat who made accusations that voters were changed or forged in 2016? Democrats were claiming the process was compromised. I don't remember anyone seriously questioning the integrity of the votes themselves.
The claims weren't just that the system was compromised, but also that votes were manipulated or suppressed.
Harry Reid made claims that the vote totals were manipulated.
On a side note... thank you. At least you asked a question about my position rather than simply downvoting without an explanation.
Mea culpa, I was wrong to say "no mainstream democrat", but that was a single retired congressperson. The Republicans now also have two members of Congress who believe that Democrats participate in ritual sacrifice of children to drink their blood so maybe we shouldn't focus on the extreme minority opinions of these parties. Voter fraud is a rallying cry of a large percentage of the Republican party. Votes being changed in 2016 or any other election is not a major rallying cry of a large percentage of the Democratic party.
I believe he was an active US senator at the time (2015-2016). I forget if he was majority leader or minority whip, it if that was during a different part of his tenure.
I do agree that it seemed somewhat isolated in official statements. I did hear quite a few individuals in my personal life believe/state that since the system was compromised that must mean the votes/count must have been changed.
I can see how the fraud claim is popular - if you're losing the popular vote consistently due to (simplistically) higher urban population, you might look for something to use as an excuse. This makes an easy excuse since in your constituent areas (rural) you would have the observation bias that almost everyone you know voted for your candidate and still lost. Sloppy voting system maintenance supplies plenty of anecdotal things to point to, like dead people kn the voting role.
Compromised as a result of aggressive and targeting foreign influence. Social engineering sponsored by state-level actors.
Democrats weren't claiming massive voter fraud was occurring and that it robbed them of the election and refused to concede as as result.
In fact, the one person very loudly crying about voter fraud in 2016 was the same person doing it now. Donald Trump, unhappy at losing the popular vote, claimed and continues to claim that the only reason he failed to secure the popular vote was due to massive voter fraud.
Harry Reid isn't the center point of the Democratic party. Nor is Harry Reid the President, nor is Harry Reid trying to hold the White House hostage.
People say all kinds of crap. There are people who are democrats who are bad people, lie, and say dumb crap. There are people who are republicans who are bad people, lie, and say dumb crap.
There is a profound and marked difference between Harry Reid grumbling about 2016 and what is happening in this election.
Parties play party politics, and you're correct in that there is a lot hypocrisy in that, especially when the balance of power swings. This, however, is not an example of that. This is a refusal to not only accept reality, but also leave lasting damages and deepen the divide in this country. It's shameful and a national tragedy.
I thought Reid was minority whip when he made the 2016 comments.
Yeah, I can see Trump's comments being divisive. There have been Democrats that have made divisive comments too. Which is why I see them as similar. We'll have to see if he steps down when he's supposed to.
It is one of the big mistakes of US politics that the sides are treated as if they are equally compromised. It is really a strawman argument without any merit.
From my perspective, they both do questionable, self-serving, and even illegal things. The topics, methods, and frequency do vary. Personally, the last couple presidential elections have felt like a choice between a shit sandwich and a shit sandwich without the bread. (Which is which? Take your pick)
Because the level of mischief between republicans and democrats is just not comparable when objectively assessed (let's say from a historians perspective).
To give you an example from another context which is similar:
In Germany, polticians and some news media have started to use the notion that right-wing terror (e.g. neo-nazi) and left wing terror (e.g. Antifa) are equally evil. If you look objectively though, there is still a disproportionate amount of right-wing terror and many of the crimes attributed to the left-wing are really just part of their fight against the right (they are anti-fascists for a reason). While right-wing terror killed German citizens and immigrants each year, there is no comparable level of crime anymore that could be attributed to the left (need to go back 40 years).
I would like to see the numbers that support this for the Republican/Democrat version of this story. I feel like most people would have strong confirmation bias when assessing this topic.
Also, do you have numbers for looking at this from the perspective of the politicians? My comment was mainly focused on the politicians and party leadership, not really on individuals without an official capacity.
Voter fraud isn't made any harder or easier by checking incoming ballots as they come in against the voter list and sorting them by precinct ahead of time.
To be clear I am talking about their entire approach to voting and not just counting them. Limiting mail in ballots, limiting early voting, limiting polling places, pushing for voter ID, pushing for a more proactive pruning of voter rolls, pushing against same day voter registration, and simply requiring registration at all. One side wants more people to vote and one side wants less people to vote. I can't get over how that latter side isn't considered un-American.
Please don't misinterpret a vocal minority as the will of 50% of the country. We all want every vote to be counted. There's a lot of drama and accusations flying around with emotions running hot.
I am not judging the people of this country. I am judging the actions of one of its political parties. I am asking how the people who support this party can justify the party's policies.
Plenty of people vote for Republicans who blatently don't want every vote to be counted. If you want every vote to be counted, stop voting for those candidates.
The most vocal of those minorities happens to be commander in chief of the world strongest, most heavily armed military. That makes the drama harder to ignore.
Okay this will probably not be popular but I am what I consider a good faith conservative so I'll answer your points in reverse order.
1st: "Every group that has looked into it" and "widespread". First at this point I don't trust many of the groups and institutions, because I have repeatedly over the past 4 years seen various groups act in a concerted manner to try and slander, libel and misrepresent trump while trying to drive people to be angry and irrational about. There have been multiple I've seen things reported that I've said to myself. "Okay if Trump really said that then I am way off of supporting him" but then I go look at the actual remarks and it is radically different from what he said. Any else remember a 2 week news cycle on whether or not cofeve was a racist dog whistle? Ultimately at the end of this my faith in mant previously authoritative institutions has been shaken.
Also I don't know anyone that is claiming "widespread" voter fraud, no one believes there was "widespread" voter fraud in this election it was targeted specific voter fraud at particular places and counties is the contention. Everyone knew going into this what states needed to be won for biden to win. Many of these states were decided by less than 10,000 votes.
In response to your contention about being against making it easier to vote. The fact of the matter is that the more room for error in the voting process the less likely people are to trust the outcome. If we imagine for a second we lived in a non-Covid world right now and there everyone voted like normal do you believe as many people would doubt the veracity of the election? Ultimately I consider integrity of the election to be of higher value than ease of access, because it doesn't matter who gets to vote if no one trusts the process.
Again you asked how could a good faith conservative believe this. This is how, I could be wrong I could be off, but that is how I see things right now. Maybe that'll change but for right now that's how I reconcile being good faith and conservative.
> I don't know anyone that is claiming "widespread" voter fraud
This makes it very hard for me to take your claim of good faith seriously. Yes, perhaps the exact word "widespread" did not come out of Donald Trump's mouth, but there can be no doubt in anyone's mind (if they are indeed dealing in good faith) that Donald Trump has in fact been consistently and emphatically -- and, most important, falsely -- alleging wide spread voter fraud. Try doing a web search for "trump claims wide spread voter fraud" if you don't believe me.
This summer, in PA, a judge of elections pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes for democrats in exchange for cash.[0]
Maybe it’s an isolated incident, really.
The media response that “there is no evidence of fraud” shifted to “no widespread fraud” at some point in last three years. I remember noting the appearance of the new qualifier. That rhetorical shift was their own nuance in the face of recurring anecdote.
But let’s accept that - no widespread fraud. The concern - regardless of Trump or this election - is over a critical mass of fraud in counties that are won by narrow margins.
“Widespread” has never been a requirement of the good faith critique of voter fraud.
So when you hear the catchphrase “no evidence of widespread fraud” realize that it signals buy-in to a straw man argument which talks past the issue at hand.
> This summer, in PA, a judge of elections pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes for democrats in exchange for cash.[0]
A single individual is hardly evidence of "widespread fraud". If you want to play dueling anecdotes, I'll see your PA and raise you Republican vote tampering in North Carolina [1].
None of this is relevant to the substance of my comment, however, which is that I have a hard time seeing how anyone dealing in good faith can honestly say that they "don't know anyone that is claiming widespread voter fraud" [emphasis added].
Your anecdote reinforces the critique of fraud and I welcome it.
The argument is to increase the integrity of elections, not offset fraud by one side with fraud by the other and call it even.
There are a lot of anecdotes of fraud, and they keep coming up, enough to undermine the integrity of our elections (as evidenced).
If this was an issue of financial accounting in an organization, I’d wager your behavior pattern would be different - the recurring anecdotes would indicate a substantial risk that needs to be mitigated by putting controls in place to ensure the integrity of the accounts.
Instead, in this instance we are being told not only to look the other way, but are being told recurring anecdotes of abuse don’t warrant substantial procedural changes and improvements in accountability.
As Glenn Greenwald said the other day, this situation is either by choice or ineptitude. But it’s not a non-issue.
> There are a lot of anecdotes of fraud, and they keep coming up, enough to undermine the integrity of our elections (as evidenced).
Two data points is not "a lot" in a country with 150 million registered voters.
If there were actual evidence of enough voter fraud to move the needle, the Trump administration's law suits would gain some traction, particularly after four years of packing the courts with friendly judges. But they aren't [1]. Hell, not even Fox News is taking this seriously any more [1].
You think the anecdote I listed and the one you listed represent the totality?
This has been a recurring conversation for decades, and the fact that it’s inflamed in the last few cycles points to the fact that it’s getting worse, not better.
Look, the weak controls that were in place on this process are evidently broken in some critical locations - denying poll watchers entry, political material outside polling places, ballot chain of custody issues. So what controls we did have, weak as they were, were clearly not functioning in many critical locations, as evidenced by videos and court testimony over the last week. Without confidence that the controls are working, the results become suspect, especially when the mistakes appear aligned in one direction. This is what the auditing world would call a material deficiency. It’s that simple - how do you restore faith in the process when people won’t just take your word for it? This is a problem set with known solutions.
Forget this election and the outcome you want to see, Biden’s the president barring something crazy - but there’s a systemic problem here that’s getting worse (let’s say relative to the 2000 fiasco).
We still aren’t conversing, as a nation, about how to bring more integrity to the process to allay the very real concerns half this country has. The institutional narrative is that there is no problem. To then willfully deny that this disagreement really matters forestalls the conversation. We’ll see how this ages, but the answer here isn’t for one side to just shut up. The answer is to take meaningful steps to demonstrate that the process has integrity. Videos of poll workers denying poll watchers access don’t create an appearance of integrity. Denying observation of the ballot counting process also doesn’t support the integrity of the results.
> You think the anecdote I listed and the one you listed represent the totality?
Probably not. But I don't see any evidence that the problem extends beyond a few isolated incidents.
> the weak controls that were in place on this process are evidently broken in some critical locations
That is far from evident to me. And your claims are not evidence.
> there’s a systemic problem here that’s getting worse
Claims are not evidence.
> the very real concerns half this country has
The concern may be real, but the problem isn't. It just isn't. (Voter suppression is a real problem. But fraud is not.)
The real concern is (or at least should be) that half the country has lost touch with reality to the extent that a demagogue can make them spend so much mental energy trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
> The argument is to increase the integrity of elections,
I find it terribly odd that all this concern about the sanctity of the electoral process only dawn upon the Trump administration after a) realizing they were going to lose the election, b) having spent months trying to sabotage the election by mounting a campaign to reject a voting method that was known to be used primarily by the opposition.
And still, in spite of all the explicit accusations of the existence of a massive fraud campaign, they still cannot find any single shred of evidence to support it. Hell, their initial claim about their observers being barred from observing ended up being materialized in simply wanting to have their observers closer to ballot boxes.
> The media response that “there is no evidence of fraud” shifted to “no widespread fraud” at some point in last three years.
What a blatant red herring.
The media did no such thing. What "the media" did was listen to the Trump campaign's empty claims about having lost the election to this magical massive widespread wave of voter fraud, and proceeded to ask the Trump administration for evidence of this massive widespread wave of voter fraud they were complaining about.
Asking a source to substantiate their bold claims, or fact-check them, is now passed off as media manipulation?
And let's be honest here: if Trump is complaining about tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of votes being either fabricated or destroyed, how is a typo in a projection or a postman failing to deliver the mail any substance to that gargantuan claim?
You read the volume of news I do day after day and you’ll find some humor in how the common vocabulary morphs in unison across the channels, and it’s notable when it happens. “Widespread fraud” is right there with “mostly peaceful”.
But again, why spend your time arguing that there’s nothing to see here rather than advocating for improving the transactional integrity of the voting process? And surely you must see those problems even if you trust that politicians don’t leverage them. Which of those pursuits do you think will be more effective in countering the distrust people have in the system? Which one do you think is ultimately healthier for the country? Saying, yes, I see why you would be concerned, let’s work to fix the integrity of the process so those concerns are addressed, or saying the all-to-frequent anecdotes mean nothing and we should have faith that the political machine is inherently trustworthy?
> You read the volume of news I do day after day and you’ll find some humor in how the common vocabulary morphs in unison across the channels, and it’s notable when it happens. “Widespread fraud” is right there with “mostly peaceful”.
I don't know what you were trying to say, but you said nothing if substance. It reads like a red herring that desperately tries to conflate the world begging the Trump campaign to substantiate any of their myriad of claims regarding their so-called massive nation-wide wave of voter fraud, which succeeded their initial absurd and ridiculous announcement of having won the election, with other propaganda tropes.
> But again, why spend your time arguing that there’s nothing to see here rather than advocating for improving the transactional integrity of the voting process?
The only problems that can be fixed are those which exist in the realm of reality.
Where is the massive wave of voter fraud that supposedly robbed Trump of his election? If that problem really exists, shouldn't you be worried about getting to know the evidence of its existence in order to ensure the same thing doesn't happen again?
Because otherwise these wild election fraud claims jus sound like a desperate red herring fabricated by a childish irresponsible man who decided to throw a tantrum instead of admitting defeat.
>First at this point I don't trust many of the groups and institutions
The Trump Administration itself couldn't find evidence of widespread voter fraud.[1]
>Also I don't know anyone that is claiming "widespread" voter fraud, no one believes there was "widespread" voter fraud in this election it was targeted specific voter fraud at particular places and counties is the contention. Everyone knew going into this what states needed to be won for biden to win. Many of these states were decided by less than 10,000 votes.
The 2016 election was one of the closest elections we have ever had and it still would have required roughly 100k votes changed to change the result. This election is even less close. Biden is winning PA by 30k, MI by 150k, and WI by 20k. That alone wins it. You can ignore the close states like GA, NV, or AZ and Biden still wins. This would have needed widespread fraud in order to switch a true Trump win to a Biden win.
>The fact of the matter is that the more room for error in the voting process the less likely people are to trust the outcome.
This flows the other direction too. Voting being suppressed makes people trust the outcome less too. How can an election have integrity if people who want to vote can't? If that is the outcome of strict voting laws, shouldn't we require some higher level of evidence of voter fraud in order to justify this cost of people losing their vote?
1. The link you provide is indicating there was no voter fraud in the 2016 election not the, 2020 election.
2. As for "widespread" I think we are disagreeing on what it means, in this case you seem to indicate I am talking just about 1000s of people going out and voting multiple times, there are also concerns around counters through some means, providing a different number for the counted whether by introducing false ballots, lying about the number they counted, etc.
For example there was a machine in Detroit that read in 8,000 votes that were listed for Trump as votes for Biden [0] now that could very well be a simple technical error but it indicates how easy it is cause voting totals to not match the reality of the voting.
As for the final rejoinder, I think maybe we are having different opinions in mind as to what we are discussing. For me I fully support having many polling places that are easy to get to for many people in multiple locations and that on election day we should make it as easy as possible for people to vote; however I also think there should be tighter integrity checks on who is voting and on the counting of votes itself.
The point is you need to change hundreds of thousands of votes in order for any voter fraud to impact a presidential race. There is no evidence of anything even close to that happening in this or any recent elections.
>For me I fully support having many polling places that are easy to get to for many people in multiple locations and that on election day we should make it as easy as possible for people to vote; however I also think there should be tighter integrity checks on who is voting and on the counting of votes itself.
The first half of that goes against the policies of the Republican part and Democrats aren't going to disagree with the second half.
“Widespread” and “nearly every” are notable wiggle words. In a tight election in a few states swung by a few counties, “widespread” has never been a requirement.
Anyone can be forgiven for doubting the integrity of our election process in the face of worrying anecdote. The answer isn’t to call for blind faith by ignoring the red flags, but to shore up the process and improve its systemic integrity.
What would your standard be if this concerned the finances of your own company? You wouldn’t be telling the organization to not worry and ignore warning signs.
Some states eliminated witness signature requirements on absentee ballots; some states allowed new votes with no postmark up to a week after the election; videos showing the eviction of poll watchers, political placards posted at the entry of polling places; a “reporting error” with an extra zero corrected only after being called on it, software “glitches” resulting in 3000-vote over-count in one county corrected only after being challenged; a box of ballots produced after Election Day, 100% of whose contents went to one candidate; counting paused in the middle of the night. None of it helped by being refereed by a media plurality that clearly wanted a specific outcome all year.
There’s enough widespread questionable anecdote to warrant a top to bottom audit, which nobody can afford.
Every time the media (trusted by the public less than Catholic priests and politicians, btw) says there’s “no evidence of widespread fraud” in the face of this, it doesn’t help - it only raises another red flag.
And this isn’t just the Presidential election, btw.
That we are incapable of building and executing a process with inherent integrity is getting increasingly risky/dangerous.
Biden is winning PA by 30k, MI by 150k, and WI by 20k. That alone wins it. It seems there would have needed to be 200k fraudulent votes for this election to have been changed. How is that not "widespread"?
Also it isn't just the media that investigates voter fraud. Academics and political institutions have looked into it also and not found a problem. Trump's Administration even looked into it and couldn't find any significant problem. Is there anyone who you would trust that could certify this isn't a problem?
Pennies make dollars, baby. Instead of saying, we see no evidence of widespread fraud - where we have no idea in what context you’re using the word - let’s turn the conversation to making solid attestations about the integrity of the processes, which we certainly don’t hear. Instead we hear “don’t worry about it”.
I think the accounting analogy is the best suited. You won’t say, with whistleblower reports in hand, that there’s no evidence of _widespread_ problems and leave it at that. The presence of recurring whistleblower reports about financial irregularities demands a different conversation: these are the preventative and detective controls we will put in place, and here’s the evidence that they worked, such that we can be assured a high degree of integrity in what we’re reporting.
Right now, the evidence doesn’t even exist to be challenged. Party A puts the onus on Party B to prove that ballots without postmarks weren’t submitted on time and then say there’s no evidence of a problem. No, the problem in that example is the lack of postmarks to even begin to evaluate the suitability of the ballots.
It’s hard to interpret the willful reticence to have this kind of conversation as a nation, especially because the shoe can absolutely be on the other foot some day.
When the integrity of the institution is in question, the right response isn’t to tell people to look the other way. What I’m trying to convey is that nobody believes that a talking head on the news has any authority or personal expertise to tell people “everything’s fine” when the anecdotes just keep coming, particularly in places run by people with a conflict of interest in the outcome.
You ask what authority would have credibility to be taken on their word that everything’s fine. The right question is how do we demonstrate that the processes have integrity. How do we increase the integrity of the processes such that we’re not relying on me accepting integrity on faith.
You used the word “certify”. That’s a good word and we should dig into the strength behind those attestations. Right now they’re based on very weak control structures.
> Instead of saying, we see no evidence of widespread fraud - where we have no idea in what context you’re using the word - let’s turn the conversation to making solid attestations about the integrity of the processes, which we certainly don’t hear.
If that was the case then why has the Trump campaign failed to present any evidence whatsoever to substantiate it's baseless accusations of electoral fraud?
I mean, the Trump campaign complains that the election was stolen from them as a result of this hypothetical electoral fraud campaign that no one sees or has any tangible proof of existing. Heck, the Trump campaign is even accusing elections organized by Republicans of having been compromised. If there is indeed a problem then how come no one is able to see it anywhere, no matter how may times everyone asks?
If no one is able to find any problem anywhere, is there really a problem to begin with?
Well, again - videos of poll watchers being denied access to polling places; videos of political material posted at the entrance to multiple polling places; videos of official party observers being denied access to the ballot counting process; ballots with no postmarks being accepted after Election Day; software glitches in MI that alter the vote count; States abandoning witness requirements for absentee ballots - these are all real events and people don’t know whether or how these samples should be extrapolated.
Further, when the body of material lacks metadata to support chain of custody investigations, or observers can’t witness counting processes, it’s pretty disingenuous to say no evidence can be found. The control failures are the evidence.
There are very real bad examples, and we don’t know how representative they are. There are critical control failures (missing information) that make investigation difficult.
If you want to convince people everything is fine, take away these distractions by shoring up the process - transparency and authentication controls would go a long way towards fending off the accusations of fraud.
> Well, again - videos of poll watchers being denied access to polling places
Are you referring to the cases where the place was packed above capacity (and packed with both dem and good observers) and those wanting to enter had to wait for their turn to enter?
> videos of political material posted at the entrance to multiple polling places;
Are you talking about the Trump supporters getting arrested after picketing a polling place with pro Trump propaganda while brandishing a firearm?
I'm going to make it very simple for you: show any evidence. A primary source describing anything will do. Don't fabricate accounts or go with the "he said she said" approach. Each and every single case you vaguely referred to has been debunked and corrected, but apparently either you prefer to ignore facts or preferred to turn yourself off from the world. Show the evidence. Can you do it?
> The only explanation they can come up with is voter fraud which has not been found to be a widescale problem by nearly every group that has looked into it.
Not "nearly" every group. Every group. Election fraud is effectively nonexistent.
There are plenty of things that were clear sabotage.
Not tallying votes early doesn’t seem so clear cut to me.
The argument is that if early vote counts came out in favor of Biden it could suppress voter turnout on the Republican side.
I don’t know if that’s actually how it would have played out, but it does seem reasonable not to have results start to be reported before everyone has made their choice.
More independence is generally better in voting systems.
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done for mail-in votes. I only have first-hand experience with the German voting system, but from what I read the US system is similar: The actual ballot is in a sealed envelope. This envelope together with a signed paper (“Wahlschein” in Germany) is in a second envelope that goes in the mail. The process of counting that vote starts with opening the outer envelope and verifying that the ballot was issued to the person signing. Then verify that the inner envelope is properly sealed to ensure that the vote is actually secret. Collect the inner envelope with the actual filled-in ballot. No counting has happened yet, but this verification costs considerable time. All of this could be done even before Election Day with no effect on voter suppression - no one at that point can actually know the vote.
In theory, even counting could be done as long as no result is leaked, though there’d be a risk.
Explicitly not allowing the preprocessing - and as far as I followed the news, that’s what happened in PA - seems like a pretty clear cut case of “we want to draw the count out.” to me.
Plenty of states already count ballots early without leaks. If that can’t be trusted, can any aspect of the process?
Even if a minority of the vote was known, how different would that be from public polling that also represent a slice of the electorate (which also is likely not 100% representative of the actual results.)
That's a hyper partisan view of a much more complicated situation. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Republican legislature passed laws allowing early counting, which was blocked by the Democratic governor because it limited acceptance of ballots after the election. You can argue the merits of either side, but it isn't sabotage or subterfuge.
Moreover, some GOP-controlled counties in PA decided to not count mail-in ballots on election day either (they were allowed to start when polls open) and instead saved them all for the following day and beyond.
Waiting to starting the count until the window to vote is over seems like an inherently fair idea - it closes the information gap between absentee and day-of voters. Otherwise it’s like a game of Yankee Swap, where voting (or trading) last is best.
> The media was way too cautious in making the call here,
It's my understanding that it had zero to do with caution and all to do with the fact that the election was not decided.
If there are still votes that were not counted and the slim margin between both candidates is smaller than the number of unaccounted votes then the election results are yet to be determined. Thus it would make zero sense to claim that one candidate was the winner when the votes that are yet to be counted are enough to sway the results.
Not really. Once the models project that it's basically impossible, the DD's call it. They call states like California or Arkansas once they get the exit poll data, before any votes are in.
Fox News called Virginia for Biden when there were like 50% votes in and Trump led with 10%.
They were uber cautious this time and waited for a >0.5% lead.
> Not really. Once the models project that it's basically impossible (...)
It's only "basically impossible" if the amount of votes to be counted are still enough to sway an election.
You should think things through and pay attention to the unwanted consequences of these sort of claims. We're living a development where half the US population is complaining about voter fraud and conspiracies to withheld their candidate from their rightful place in the US's regime. It makes no sense to argue in favor of taking shortcuts in the election process citing arcane arguments and models, each of which unverifiable and impenetrable to the common man, and expect it to simply accept an outcome that is dictated by you and not verifiable by them.
If you want a country to accept election results, the results need to be obvious and above any scrutiny. In the case of elections, you only get there if all votes are counted and any shred of doubt is rendered an impossibility. Otherwise all you get is conspiracy theories, dissent and erosion of any faith on the democratic nature of a system.
> You should think things through and pay attention to the unwanted consequences of these sort of claims.
Who is "you" here? The media organizations are the one making the calls and defining the processes for doing so, not some random on HN.
> It makes no sense to argue in favor of taking shortcuts in the election process citing arcane arguments and models,
The media calling the election is not part of the formal election process. If the media calls the election wrongly they just get humiliated when the final results come in and they are proven wrong. The media doesn't decide the election result.
I mean they will count all the ballots, this is just the DDs of the major news groups seeing that its statistically improbable (like, less than 3 std devs) and projecting the winner.
> I mean they will count all the ballots, this is just the DDs of the major news groups seeing that its statistically improbable (like, less than 3 std devs) and projecting the winner.
We're talking about people who spread conspiracy theories on how the big media companies are manipulating the public into stealing an election.
Seeing media companies announce that the opposing candidate has won even though the race is exceptionally close, votes are still being counted, and it's still theoretically possible to see their own candidate win.... That just contributes to fuel the conspiracy theories that are being fabricated to delegitimize the election results.
Clearly you disagree with the methodology used by decision desks, however, what /u/stu2b50 said is absolutely the way they have worked in real life for many years.
The purpose of a decision desk is to project who will win each election as soon as possible using all available data. They don't need all the votes to be in if they believe the remaining votes skew towards a particular candidate based on polling.
Of course, in the end it is the votes that decide who wins not the decision desks, but most often there is no difference between the two outcomes.
Their cautiousness made sense. Projections just before the election showed a lot steeper win for Biden. It didn't play out that way so it makes sense to be cautious.
Trump had a lot more support among some demographics than people expected. as the race got tighter it made sense to doubt what might play out.
> Their cautiousness made sense. Projections just before the election showed a lot steeper win for Biden.
You need to distinguish between the national vote, which met projections with a significant dem majority, and state races, some of which were close, which is also what was predicted.
Once it became clear that the election wouldn't be called on election night, was there really any benefit to making an early call? Whether it was called on Thursday or Saturday seems kind of irrelevant when inauguration isn't until January.
There's an argument to be made that not making the call when the result was already certain, even if the margin of 0.5% hadn't been reached yet, was irresponsible in the sense that it allowed Trump more time to promote this idea that he has won, everything's fraudulent etc. (Just look at his last tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13250998450450718...)
I disagree with that argument FWIW, but I can certainly understand it. Though I think people were just impatient to hear "Biden has won" be made official, even if they already knew. I certainly was.
the result was definitely not certain. there was more outstanding votes than the leader's margin, and it wasn't clear what the composition of those votes was. it was definitely very likely that they would follow the trend of the rest of the state, but it could have come to pass that the late-arriving absentee ballots or provisionals in PA broke very differently to the early-arriving absentee ballots. They called it when the first sample of outstanding allegheny county ballots were counted and made it clear that the rest of those votes were going to trend as expected.
the networks have to balance a late call giving fodder to conspiracy theorists with an early or uncertain call also giving fodder to conspiracy theorists. they don't want to be doing anything that could promote a narrative claiming the networks are trying to influence the election for biden.
It is. The longer it drags the longer you can feed fodder to conspiracies. Calling it too quickly would have been bad as well but not as bad as not calling when the end is clear. I think calling it now seems appropriate even though I don’t think Arizona should have beeen called.
but it's easy to understand why when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night,
In Pennsylvania, the Republican House passed a bill to start counting three days early but it died in the Senate under threat of veto from the Democrat governor -- https://apnews.com/article/2396bbdd1617a82c4919127726778711 The Democrats had a separate bill that would have started counting much earlier, but the Republicans opposed that for fear there would not be proper oversight over the counting process.
The bill would have still given PA voters multiple months to get their ballot and mail it in. Hardly voter suppression. As for dropboxes, I really wish we could have some survey of opinion about them before it became a partisan issue. If it wasn't a partisan thing, I think the problem of dropboxes making ballots less traceable and enabling fraud would be pretty well acknowledged by all.
>The media was way too cautious in making the call here, but it's easy to understand why when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night, likely to benefit their candidate through the confusion of swinging red and then blue.
I'm curious about the efficiency of this strategy. I'd figure they'd gain more by allowing early counting, leaking the pro-democrat results and thus lowering democrat turnout on election day. After all, why bother voting when it's already in the bag and so on.
Well, the Republican legislature apparently discussed with the whitehouse about ignoring the popular vote and appointing electors for Trump (and was willing to talk about this on record)
> pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system
You can pressure them all you want on that. It won't change a thing because making it easier to vote via mail will possibly result in them being voted out by making it easier for minorities to vote.
Because the economically disadvantaged part of the US population (which disproportionately affects minorities) can't afford to take a day off from work to vote, so voting by mail is a good way for them to vote without a personal downside.
Alternatively this could be fixed by making Election Day a national holiday and/or setting up more polling locations.
It took me less than 15m to vote on Tuesday, no lines or anything (deep red county). I've heard of people waiting for hours but that's because their local govt failed them (not enough locations, under-staffed, etc).
IMO seems more accurate to say in-person voting disproportionately affects incompetent municipalities.
I mean a deep red county that will stay red whether they correctly reflect their populations leanings or not, so there is little incentive to suppress any voting efforts, right? That's in contrast to a currently-elected-light-red county where the population is slightly leaning blue, but can't express that due to hindrances in the voting process (you can flip the colors if you want).
Much of the rest of the democratic world looked upon those reports of people waiting all day, sometimes 10+ hours in a queue and thought "it took me 5 minutes where I live".
In countries without long queues to vote, you don't need to take a day off work.
Oh, I agree. That's what I wanted to suggest with more polling places.
Another way would be to hold elections on a Sunday instead of the middle of the week. There seem to be a number of fairly simple ways to improve on the way US voting works, and it's baffling that none of them are implemented.
It's coming either way. Once a country with a similar representitive system hits 80% urbanization, it's government tends to be more progressive, especially on certain hot topic policies like gun control.
You can already see how the popular vote for president is consistently Democrat. There is also a pact of states that promise to vote for the popular vote winner once their ranks have 270 electoral votes. A good visual way to view this divide is the map showing the county-by-county vote allocation.
> pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system
I don't see why expressing concerns about postal voting would necessarily be a partisan thing. Don't the TWO major political blocks want a fair process? Perhaps everyone?
...especially in light of evidence of documented cases. Here is a sample query for: "Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots which resulted in a criminal conviction" (with results ruled as recently as 2020):
The result set doesn't include "Duplicate voting", "Impersonation", "Altering the vote count", which are separate criteria (relevant to mention because they are part of the ongoing allegations).
You still have to deal with a 6/3 hard-right supreme court, courts packed to the gill with FedSoc pasties, and most likely (though depending on a GA runoff) the same senate which basically gridlocked Obama's second term and prepared the grounds for Trump's term.
There are enough other Republicans in the Senate from safe states that I'm sure one of them would be happy to play obstructist on any Democrat policy. Eliminating any one senator without gaining majority is just a morale victory.
My prediction is that McConnell retires. Without a willing patsy to play against, there is not much to be gained by staying in office. He rammed a court nomination through, mission accomplished.
I am sad to say that it is likely not over; the people who voted for Trump didn't wink out of existence. The Democrats barely won the presidency and lost ground in Congress. It's really a tremendous slap in the face for them by the public, given how unfit his opponent and those who aligned with him were.
Things could easily flip the other way in 2024, particularly if the economy goes south as it's been projected to do in 2021.
I know you said it in jest, but I am continually impressed how relevant Simpsons were/are in the areas of politics. I don't know whether it is the question of the human condition ( robot radio host saying "can you believe these clowns in Washington?" ) or just some careful time travel, but it is fascinating.
You're overlooking the most chilling explanation of all: The Simpsons are bending reality to make their predictions come true.
Seriously though, "The best way to predict the future is to create it" as Alan Kay once said, and there are cases of science fiction inspiring technologists to create actual products and inventions.
European here, I do not understand your comment. What are you calling Stalinist Russia exactly? The only thing I can think of is Biden but that seems weird so I don't get it.
Parent has a link to a website (https://www.trumpaccountability.net/) where people are gathering lists of people associated with the Trump presidency. I don't know if it will include his doctors.
AOC said the following on twitter:
"Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future"
Plus this Washington Post writer who is keeping a list of Trump supporters to keep them from being able to participate in society, hold public office, faculty positions, or be on company boards.
The process isn't over yet (AP News opinion withstanding) but this wasn't really a victory for Democrats at all in my opinion assuming the probable happens.
The polls at minimum were very wrong which means either fixed or stupid take your pick.
We are going to see a lot of incidents of shady doings around the election (how could we not?) brought up over the next couple of months.
Biden and team won't really be able to deliver rainbows and ponies and may have to get quite authoritarian to quell dissent.
Trump leaves on a high note with a large amount of support and Republicans made big gains and greatly expanded the party.
A whole lot will have to go right for this to be anything like a victory for the Democrats. It almost would have been better for them if they let the chips fall and Trump take the rap for what's going down next.
These 10's of millions of people aren't going anywhere, they'll be even madder next time around and in the polls watching like hawks with court sanction. And Trump will be talking the whole time about the injustice and how he was railroaded. Rightly or wrongly people will listen.
Looking around the thread you'll see that might not be the case. I think the comment meant to correct a (hopefully uncommon) misconception that the election is now final before all the votes have been counted, which of course isn't true.
There absolutely is room for Biden not to have 270 electoral votes, if investigations reveal (... correctly or incorrectly) big enough issues that some states don't send electors.
I don't think there's a realistic way for Trump to have 270 electoral votes, but he could still possibly be awarded the Presidency by a weird-ass one-vote-per-state vote in the House.
Not an American citizen, but I’m really glad that Biden won. USA sets an example for other Western countries, and Trump wasn’t a good example. I hope you’re able to recover from Trumpism and that the Republican Party rejects such violent and authoritarian points of view.
Edit: I’m not saying US citizens should think of other nations when casting their vote. Just glad — as non-US citizen - that Biden won and that our national far-right politicians can finally shut up about Trump
> When I vote I make sure I pick the candidate that other countries would be happy with.
Is not something that the common voter could control. You will do in the 50% of the cases in fact, just by chance.
And is great, because deliberately burning all bridges with all your allies and to pee in the curtains just to make a vanity statement, is not a productive way to work in a multinational team to obtain your goals.
Unfortunately, Trump's brand of conspiracy theory populism resonates with a significant number of American voters more so than any other political ideology. Trump was so popular that his base increased over the last four years. So popular with that base that an actual messianic cult formed around him. Trump himself just wasn't charismatic, competent or forward thinking enough to capitalize on it at scale the way populist dictators in other countries have. But that still leaves the danger of a competent successor to Trump in the future.
What we need to watch for is whether or not the Republican Party interprets this as a repudiation of Trumpism, or merely of Trump himself.
> Unfortunately, Trump's brand of conspiracy theory populism resonates with a significant number of American voters more so than any other political ideology.
The problem runs deeper than that. Unfortunately Trump's blend of populist rhetoric fueled by conspiracy theories, divisiveness, and victimization coupled with a vindictive/authoritarian agenda has seeped out of the US borders and reverberated in european countries that are now struggling (again) with he rise of fascist parties.
Take for example Spain's Vox party, which is quite literally a fascist apologist which copies Trump and recently even went as far as claiming that Spain's current government is the worst in 80 years, subtly bundling Franco's fascist regime in comparison and thus stating that it was a better alternative than the current democratic regime.
The free world has a problem with fascism in specific and authoritarian regimes in general, and Trump contributed to whitewash these political movements to the point that they might regain mainstream status throughout the world.
Exactly. USA may not get it because they never really had fascism, but some of us in Europe do. It’s not pretty. It’s not good for our national far-right parties to look at one of the most powerful nation in the world and think: “they did it, we can too”. Like I said in another comment, it’s not about US citizens thinking about other countries before casting a vote.
But it’s understandable that some of us non-US citizens are glad to see Trump go.
> Exactly. USA may not get it because they never really had fascism, but some of us in Europe do. It’s not pretty.
The scariest part, to me, regarding the way the Trump administration whitewashed fascism is that those of us who live in countries who experienced it are fully aware that fascism doesn't dawn upon us with a bang, and more often than not it just seeps in.
Therefore, people are desensitized towards fascism because they expect it to come as a bogeyman that strong-arms his way into power in an obvious way and against everyone's wishes. It does not. It sneaks in with overwhelming popular support, based on a rhetoric that there's an inhuman enemy threatening the little people and that the fascist hero is here to save everyone from evil by doing whatever it takes. That's precisely what we are seeing with Trump, with their supporters demanding beheadings and bullets to the head of reactionaries, while their supporters praise Trump for being a bully that's on their corner protecting them.
> those of us who live in countries who experienced it are fully aware that fascism doesn't dawn upon us with a bang, and more often than not it just seeps in.
I feel the same way about socialism and communism.
Republican Party violent? LMAO, it’s the leftists burning stuff down. Trump was doing a good job, as he is despised by both the left and establishment Republicans. Too bad he lost (or subject to fraud).
I don't follow politics too closely, but I keep hearing Trump is the first president who started no new wars. He also supposedly brokered numerous peace deals and had 4 Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
Is there a lot of violence I'm missing that warrants calling him "violent and authoritarian"?
Hey, I would encourage you to follow politics more closely! If you want a broad overview, I would start with the wikipedia page for Donald Trump. I'd also spend some time reading about media literacy and bias - your comment about Nobel Peace Prize nominations stands out as a bit of red flag that you may be uncritically repeating something you heard from a far-right editorial source. Good luck, there's a lot of information to synthesize, but this stuff is really important!
FWIW, Nobel Peace Prize nominations are worthless. National level politicians, professors can nominate anyone.[1] You could find someone (or three people) to nominate you.
> Joseph Stalin, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.
> Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939. As unlikely as it may seem today, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament, E.G.C. Brandt. Apparently, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. [...]
> Other statesmen and national leaders who were nominated but not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
Peace Prize nominations are worthless. Literally, worthless. Anyone can be nominated by anyone.
Yes, the fact that we didn't get into any hot war is pretty much the only thing that Trump has going for him, though it was partially due to others backing him off bad ideas.
He wanted to remove us from a South Korean defense agreement, which would have been huge for each country's economy and defenses.
He bombed an Iranian general in Iraq - it was a huge gambit of arguable utility, and the only reason the Iranians didn't get more international support for retaliation was because they shot down a civilian airliner on accident.
He talked so much crap to NK that there was serious concern of an escalation in fighting.
But, yes. We didn't have any major foreign-based terror attacks, and we didn't get entangled in fighting a new conflict.
As far as the peace deals, I think they could be good, but they haven't "fixed" anything yet. The Palestinians still have no sovereignty, the Israelis still deny Arabs rights of citizenship, Iran and SA still are at each other's throats while Yemen, AFAIK, is still a humanitarian crisis.
China is perpetrating a holocaust on ethnic minorities, and Trump congratulated Xi on his success there.
The man is no human rights hero.
---
edit: Not to mention his domestic policy failings, his characterizations as sitting president of all who disagree with him as "enemies", his rhetoric around protesting, his encouragement toward violent right-wing actors, and his use of the National Guard to clear out a public square to get a picture taken with a holy book he has never read.
"He bombed an Iranian general in Iraq - it was a huge gambit of arguable utility, and the only reason the Iranians didn't get more international support for retaliation was because they shot down a civilian airliner on accident."
The utility of his action against Qassem Suleimani is not in question. It was clearly a very effective move. Whether this was justified depends on your viewpoint of Iranian actions in the Middle East.
I've always thought that most of the rage came from a dying traditional media quickly realizing they could capitalize on Trump's bombastic style for a critically important advertisement cash injection. Look at viewership of major media properties declining until around 2016. Opinion pieces, designed to induce rage-clicks, are vastly more cost effective than actual journalism or just reporting the facts. Plus, for the average viewer, it's just plain fun to read your "team's" spin on the facts. I'm sure the typical response to this is that "the media has always been like this", but I certainly haven't seen a situation quite this extreme in a while.
If you spent all of your time in a bubble reading these opinion pieces from a select group of sources and news aggregators that presumably aggregate the news that is most likely to generate ad impressions/clicks (Reddit, Google News seems to push highly inflammatory opinion pieces), sure, I can see how you'd think Trump is some sort of fascist dictator hellbent on destroying the world. The average political junky isn't going to spend brainpower trying to understand the diametrically opposed.
To be clear though, most level headed individuals don't actually believe Trump is a fascist. That's an extremist view (and obviously insulting to anyone who has lived under fascism) that's just used to sow discord and get a reaction.
I mean, sure, I imagine no one disputes that in whatever self-selected bubble you get your news from, but that isn't the debate here. Yes, as stated above, I totally agree that if you filter down your news into whatever makes you feel safe, comfortable, and doesn't challenge any of your beliefs, it is easy to come to the conclusion that "Trump is a fascist". That isn't useful for anyone trying to become an informed voter though.
> Trump is inarguably fascist, just incompetently so. Nobody really disputes this.
I'd argue against Trump being an incompetent fascist. That's still giving him too much credit.
He's authoritarian, a narcissist, views the world through a zero-sum transactional lens, doesn't see anything wrong with cronyism or nepotism, and as far as he's concerned you're either with him or against him.
Some of that has certainly allowed fascistic people to accrete around him, and enact policies that are fascistic, but as far as I can tell, that's only because the lowest hanging fruit and the clearest path to avoiding blame was in removing restraints and checks and balances. IOW writing (and reading) and passing regulations is hard, removing or ignoring them is comparatively easy.
If it were easier to avoid blame, punish enemies, line his pockets, and put his stamp on things by nationalizing industries, he'd have been doing that instead.
And I wouldn't quite rule anything out as an attempt at some kind of "grand bargain" before he leaves office if he decides he wants to punish the GOP.
It's a fact that Trump sympathizes a lot with dictators and got
along with Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, Putin and others much better
than e.g. European leaders.
He always avoided distancing himself from fascist and racist
movements and their actions in the US. He teargassed people just
so he could get a couple pictures taken in the middle of a
protest. He tried to cast a democratic election into doubt and
talked for months about his intention of not conceding the oval
office in the case of a loss in the election.
I don't think Trump could ever be a dictator, but he clearly
does not oppose the idea and undoubtedly contributed to the
political divide in the US.
Regardless of whether or not he accomplished those things, his outspoken goading of his base and complimenting other authoritarian or authoritarian adjacent rulers on Twitter and other media outlets is a clear source on violent and authoritarian points of view.
> I keep hearing Trump is the first president who started no new wars.
Don't believe everything you hear. This is false.
> He also supposedly brokered numerous peace deals
Like what?
> and had 4 Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
As others have noted, this means nothing.
> Is there a lot of violence I'm missing that warrants calling him "violent and authoritarian"?
The violence is largely hypothetical, and would, if it materialized, probably be perpetrated by white-supremacist militias rather than the U.S. military. But that Trump is authoritarian there can be no reasonable doubt. He has a long record of using his power to fire anyone who speaks against him, to harass anyone who speaks against him who he does not have the power to fire, and to protect and grant favors to anyone who supports him politically, even if they have been convicted of crimes. That kind of behavior is the textbook definition of authoritarian.
No, the real call isn't until the electoral college votes on December 14th. The media is calling states when their projections are confident enough (and possibly when the difference is above the automatic recount threshold).
IIUC, litigation cannot (Constitutionally) change when the electoral college votes, when those votes are counted, or when the Presidency transfers. Assuming all states appoint electors in accordance with the safe harbor provisions of the Electoral Count Act, the "real call" is December 14th. If that doesn't happen, then it's possible neither candidate will have 270+ votes and in that case the "real call" is an unusually counted vote in the house.
With the current projections, it would likely have to be three states that fail to send electors properly for Biden to have a chance of losing.
Donald Trump was called the Republican nominee for months before the convention even though you could say that was the "media" making the call. In fact, he didn't become the nominee until the vote at the convention was certified.
But it is completely irrelevant. Biden will be the next president.
The typical term is "presumptive". Trump was the presumptive nominee until the RNC met. Biden is the presumptive victor, pending completion of vote counts and EC vote. But people just shorten it to the (foregone conclusion of) victor.
Absurd. There is an identically titled article from election night 2016, for Trump. HN has consistently carried water for Trump by allowing a small number of HNers to flag Trump critical articles, for four years.
I won't deny that HN as a whole has a conservative tilt (edit: at least in who's willing to flag and downvote), but I've always found dang's rulings on stuff fair and reasonable. We'll probably get a thread at some point with a stickied reminder to chill out.
I seriously doubt HN has a "conservative tilt". People on this site generally try to call the good for the good and the bad for the bad, regardless of party.
The NYTimes one has also been flagged now, and just about every comment in that thread has been downvoted heavily. My guess is it's a small group of users flagging everything about the election results.
I don't understand why this is flagged. It's highly relevant to tech (particularly given trump's moves on Chinese tech firms and his treatment of social media) and from a legitimate source.
Biden will now begin to receive intelligence briefings. He is the President-Elect (which is not a legal term - it is a media one - so it is silly to insist your definition is correct)
Headline is inaccurate. He's not president elect until a joint session of congress counts the certificates of votes from the electoral college and declares him as such.
Yeah, Biden likely will be president elect. But the news media's call of what they think is likely is in no way official.
Edit: When I wrote this, the headline was along the lines of "Joe Biden is President-Elect."
All: before reading further, make sure you're up on the site guidelines and don't post political or ideological flames to this thread. If you're hot under the collar, please cool down and wait for your curiosity to come back before commenting (and maybe even reading) further. This is a good test case to see if HN can stick to its intended spirit: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: There are now multiple pages of comments in this thread. If you want to see the later pages, click 'More' at the bottom of the earlier pages. Or get there like this:
As many have pointed out, a dozen or so submissions on this topic were flagged by users. That's actually the immune system working as intended, but another component of the system is that moderators rescue the very most historic stories so HN can have a single big thread about them. We did that 4 years ago, also for Brexit, etc.
Since this was the first submission on the topic, it seems fairest to be the one to restore. (It's still on our todo list to have some form of karma sharing for situations like this, to make it be less of a race and/or lottery.)
I changed the URL from https://www.cnn.com/ since that is not the most useful link and the AP seems as close as one can get to a neutral source.
Not but given that his public interactions like re-tweeting blurbs about "The only good democrat is a dead democrat"[1] i would argue America's internal discourse has gotten far, far worse as a direct result of his behavior.
[1]: Yes, he retweeted this. The video blurb does not give any more context. The full video does, as they only call for death of Democrats "politically speaking", but not only is this retweet from the President a great example of how violent blurbs without context are unconstructive, we've seen example of violent acts recently that one can't help but feel the President personally promoted - for example the attempted kidnapping of a democrat official. Context is king, and the President is known for giving vague and awful statements without context. For his followers that only look skin deep, of which plenty of humans do, what do you think they take from this?
US foreign policy was affected, though not by his tweets. Dipping out of the Paris Agreement, starting a trade war with China, cozying up with Russia which has a chilling effect with historical allies, almost starting a war with Iran right before the pandemic hit its stride
"On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount."
It’s not about legitimacy, it’s about misleading people about your veil of objectivity when your biases, yes even AP leans left, come out through your authors and published work.
Barry Richard, an election lawyer who served as a lead attorney for President George W. Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida, criticized the campaign’s efforts. “I wouldn’t call it a strategy,” he said. “There isn’t any legal basis for anything I’ve seen so far.”
Other election law experts have questioned the multipronged attack. Richard Hasen, professor at UC Irvine School of Law and author of “Election Meltdown,” said the lawsuits, even if partially successful, were smaller-scale and didn’t threaten the results. “If they’re not being filed to change the election outcome, what’s the point?” he said.
I flagged and downvoted your comment because it follows a disturbing pattern I have seen in messages from President Trump and his supporters, that the President cannot lose in a legitimate contest. The President has today asserted that he has won the election, "by a lot"; an assertion that can only be true if a significant number of votes against him are illegitimate. Mr. Trump has previously asserted that he won the 2016 election by a historically large margin, that the primaries and even the Emmys were rigged against him.
I'm tired of it.
Your comment is nothing more than an attempt to shut down discourse by denying that any opposed ideas can have any validity. That is a fallacy in an argument. In a democratically elected leader, or his followers, it is a direct attack on the foundations of the country. Please stop.
He sued to stop counting legally cast ballots in states he was winning (PA,MI,WI) while suing other states to recount where he was loosing (AZ,GA, etc.).
It's both a contradictory argument and obviously illegal: you can't stop a state's election board from counting the already cast ballots.
Well they’re going to try to challenge lots of mail-in ballots that were either processed without poll watchers being able to see the signatures, or allegedly backdated by USPS, for a start. The first suit will be filed on Monday according to Giuliani. We’ll see how far it goes, but should be fun.
This is just announced today so I’m not sure how “experts” could have weighed in already, whatever that means.
They're going to get figuratively laughed out of court like have been so far. The handful of cases they have won are so non-controversial, they could have been equally brought by the Biden campaign, eg: observer distance in PA. These aren't serious people. They never have been, they never will be.
Yes, at one time Giuliani did good things. That was over 25 years ago. Giuliani is nothing more than a muckraker for Trump nowadays.
And yes that is a prediction. But it is an informed prediction. It is informed by the fact that so far, every case has been tossed for lack of evidence. I can go around making false assertions and filing false lawsuits all day too, it doesn't mean that anyone should take them seriously, and no one would. The only reason that we give these assertions oxygen is out of deference to the power these people hold.
Follow Up: The NY Post editorial board, one of the few boards that endorsed Trump has offered the following advice:
"Get Rudy Giuliani off TV."
Even the Post doesn't give Giuliani credence. Trump will get recounts, none of them will move the numbers in a meaningful way, just like every other recount in the history of Presidential recounts.
Fleccas is going to need to find *someone" who doesn't sell "bill+Hillary clinton pointing guns" t-shirts to independently check his work before he deserves anyone's attention.
The oldest known American was born in 1905. This list seems hit-or-miss, but I spot checked a few entries with birth years before that (excluding Jan 1900 since that might be used as NULL) and it showed them as having voted via absentee ballot. I don't know if the number is large enough to make any meaningful difference, but it's not a good look.
I've seen this explanation, but it's gaslighting. It says:
> No ballot for the 118-year-old Mr. Bradley was ever requested, received or counted.
Yet, the voter registration site clearly showed that a ballot was requested, sent to, and received from the elder Mr. Bradley. I'm skeptical that they would have detected the error had this particular case not gone viral. If they had the means to detect the error, then why didn't they do it before sending the ballot? Or, even better, remove the defunct registration in the first place?
Depends on how bad you consider the issue:
1) Ballot is sent to dead person -> not great, but I think this is apparently not illegal (and makes sense, since people don't die on schedules, and don't need to notify voter registration when they do)
2) Ballot also sent to alive person at same address with same name -> good
3) Living person fills out their ballot, turns it in -> good
4) Living person throws out dead person's ballot -> good
5) Vote counting accidentally records Living person's vote under Dead person's entry -> bad, but pretty easy to imagine as clerical error
6) Living person's entry never has a vote counted -> good (sort of, as living person's vote only gets counted once, just under wrong name
Result:
A) No change in voting results (living person's vote gets counted once)
But
B) Is this fraud? -> my opinion, no. There was no difference in vote count, likely no intention to make the mistake. If it was intentional fraud that's pretty useless
C) Is this system? -> Not sure, the list of thousands of 'possible dead people' certainly looks like worth investigating, but unless some real reports are gonna go look at every one I'm not sure there's gonna be a real answer for all of them
"If they had the means to detect the error" -> quite possibly because they're busy doing other things, like counting the votes. "skeptical that they would have detected the error" is pretty speculative, but again an error that results in no vote count difference is not the kind they should be correcting. They should focus on correcting errors that affect the vote count, right? (ie, execute the main thread rather than spend cycles garbage collecting. Garbage collect when the main thread is idle.)
There are no ballots cast after election day. There are some received after election day, but none in PA, where those ballots aren't included in any counts.
Can you help me understand how we'd know if a ballot were cast after election day, if received after election day? I understand postmark is one such form of "signature of authenticity" (in a sense).
There are (generally) three ways to vote. In person, absentee via some form of ballot drop off, and absentee by mail.
In person and absentee ballots dropped off can be trivially found to be legitimate (timewise). You have them by 8PM or you don't.
For mail-in ballots, states have different rules. Some states allow ballots received by the 12th or later, as long as the postmark is on or before election day. Some states require ballots to be received by election day. PA is under a microscope because ballots postmarked by the 3rd, but received by the 6th may or may not be counted, pending court decisions.
Those ballots, however, are not included in current vote totals as reported by the state, so Biden won PA without those votes (and beyond the margin required for a recount). They'd just further extend his lead.
Having lived in 3 different cities let me tell you: they ain't got anything close to the same culture. Seattle, NY, and Atlanta are as disparate physically as culturally.
And the majority of Americans don't want a rural minority dictating the "fate of the country" either.
The big difference is that 2000 revolved around a disputed recount, in a race with a margin of fewer than 1000 votes. There will be recounts in this race, but:
(1) There's no reason to believe they'll change the outcome much (recounts in 2016 didn't) --- states have learned since 2000 and have moved away from faulty ballot designs.
(2) The recounts will be occurring in multiple states, and Trump needs to sweep them.
(3) The margins in those recounts are much bigger than in 2000 --- tens of thousands of votes, not hundreds.
Look at it logically. Bush was ahead by 537 votes. The court wrangling happened for so long and there were so many delays that it was impossible to do a recount in time for the legally mandated date of certification.
Biden is ahead here. Even if you remove PA or AZ, he'd still have enough electoral votes to win.
He's going to be President. The only person who doesn't get that at this point is Trump, and everyone around him is just bowing to his whims.
What do you mean "all media called Gore the winner"? I can't find any evidence of that. According to Wikipedia [1], "on November 8 ... the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and therefore been elected president. ... after all votes were counted, ... the networks retracted their declarations that Bush had won Florida and the presidency".
Also, note that Gore privately conceded the election that night, but retracted it after further counting due to the <1000 vote margin.
So in fact major networks (including CNN, ABC, FOX) initially called Bush the winner, but retracted that afterwards due to the possibility of a recount.
The media also called Tilden over Hayes in 1876 and Dewey over Truman in the 1940s. Its almost as if they're not the ones to decide the winner of an election.
This is going to go in front of the Supreme Court. Twitter should not be trying to hide the fact that one of the parties claims fraud. A huge number of people voted for Trump. Let him make his case.
My Gut instinct is that it is suspicious that some democratic counties got 90% turnout.
It's more nuanced than that. Gore wanted some select counties recounted, bush wanted no counties recounted, but if there was going to be a rexound then bush wanted the whole state recounted. In the end the SCbrules that the 14th amendment said that including votes with "hanging Chad's" and other clear intent required the whole state to be recounted. Gore conceeded because there wasn't enough time and he believed that a whole state recount wouldn't have favored him in the end. History reflects that it may have been a bad strategy for Gore to try and recount just some counties because he may well have won if he argued for a state wide recount from the beginning.
The biggest factor in Florida is that the ballot marking system that Florida used at that time was extremely prone to failure, especially with regards to machine reading of ballots (which itself could cause an apparent mark on the ballot!). This means that trying to divine whether or not a ballot recorded an intent to vote for a candidate can be subjective and depends on the exact standard you want to use, which Florida didn't specify (and the Florida Supreme Court ruled was ultimately too vague).
Since 2000, most states have switched to optical scan ballots as their paper records. These ballots have much lower error rates, closer to 1 error per million votes. I don't think there's been a single race using optical scan ballots where a recount actually caused a winner to switch.
Another thing that complicated this was that the way you punched the ballot resulted in the chad going into a waste bin. Those waste bins would fill up to the point where it would physically prevent you from being able to punch out your chad.
That election and SCOTUS ruling was a mess, and as a consequence did a lot of damage to this countries institutions.
The Associated Press, who called the election this year, and who has been calling US elections since 1848, didn't call the election for either side in 2000:
"AP did not call the closely contested race in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore – we stood behind our assessment that the margin in Florida made it too close to call."
Anyone else get weird vibes reading that? If feels like that comment was written yesterday and an eternity ago. It's feels like 4 years just passed by in a jiffy but at the same time, it felt like it was the longest 4 years of my life.
Yeah, reading dang's wording again brought back memories of that thread and all the events back then - and my general disbelief at the result.
This year in particular has been weird for me for passage-of-time; it feels simultaneously like the pandemic has been a constant forever - but also, spring and summer have gone so fast and now it's almost 2021.
Until the midterms in 2022 I don't expect much to happen on federal level (minus executive orders) but there's a lot of work to do. Trump has proved US can be hijacked and someone who's a bit more competent can actually take over the country.
> It's still on our todo list to have some form of karma sharing for situations like this, to make it be less of a race and/or lottery.
Just disable karma on topics like these. They are going to be submitted multiple times and very quickly anyway, nobody "needs" the karma and it doesn't matter if nobody gets it.
Historically, when the President and at least one house of Congress are opposing parties, the federal government tends to be gridlocked except in time of national emergency (e.g., 9/11).
This, I believe, is why the markets are reacting rather optimistically to the election results. Market makers clearly believe that a Biden presidency and a Republican Senate will get very little done, pass very few new laws, and spend a lot of time quarreling. This allows the economy to essentially run on auto-pilot, which in a free market system is rather conducive to growth.
If however the Senate swings to the Democrats after all the votes are counted, it may be a different story.
> Historically, when the President and at least one house of Congress are opposing parties, the federal government tends to be gridlocked except in time of national emergency (e.g., 9/11).
Unless you mean in the strict technical sense of national emergency, where the US has spent exactly 14 months not in one since March 9, 1933 (so the rule is moot because it basically never applies), historically that's mostly not true; it wasn't that true in the 1980s through 1992s with Democrats controlling one and sometimes two houses of Congress and Reagan-Bush presidencies. It wasn't very true in the mid-late 1990s with Clinton vs. Gingrich (there were shutdowns, but also major bipartisan initiatives like welfare reform).
Still, it's pretty true if you narrow it to a Democratic President and Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority leader, rather than trying to make it some nonpartisan broad historical phenomenon.
Clinton was a pragmatist; he shifted to a more moderate position after 1994 and the huge GOP sweep of the House. Thus he and Gingrich were able to work together and get some great work done.
Maybe, more significant was that he was ideologically a center-right neoliberal, the same as the dominant faction of the Republican Party at the time he was elected.(but not the same as the right turn the Republican Party took in response.)
> he shifted to a more moderate position after 1994
Not really. Overall policy outcome shifted from what a center-right neoliberal with weakly progressive stands on social issues could agree with a Democratic Congress that was to his left on both economic and social issues on to what athe same President could agree with with a Congress that was slightly to his right on economic issues and far to his right on social issues.
Welfare reform, for instance, may have passed after Republicans took office, but it wasn't Clinton “shifting to a more moderate position”, as it was a major part (though not as significant as health care, on which he was defeated by Democratic defections before Republicans took control) of his 1992 platform.
But the point is, in either case, while you can find excuses for each of the exceptions to the supposed “divided government is normally total gridlock outside of unusual emergencies” idea, the history of divided government has far more exceptions than cases which support the rule.
Return of a coordinated US foreign policy, which includes supporting allies and not kowtowing to dictators, will bring stability to global financial markets. With the US once again making decisions based on facts and science and sound economic policy, I fully expect the US economy to get back into stable, modest growth (vs. the last 4 years of chaotic instability. If the government is unstable, the economy reacts pessimisticly).
More predictability in the market, even more so if the Senate remains in Republican hands (since the ensuing political deadlock would make it unlikely that we'll see major legislation pass over the next two years).
Probably not a lot for quite a while to be honest. The virus is still here, the deficit is still ballooning and Biden won't even be in office for another few months. Even when he is, it will take time for policies to be formulated, enacted and eventually have any effect.
Closer relations with China. Reverse on immigration. US attracts/accepts more foreign workers. Probably a raising dollar and lower stockmarket. The high taxes might see some flee high tax states/regions (living in New York city making 400k will cost you 60%+ of income tax) to lower cost states or out of country or remote.
Overall remote work should increase with a different lockdown tone at the federal level creating uncertainy in commercial real estate.
You won’t see 60% income tax on 400k. That would require an additional 10%+ new income tax (which no one is asking on a 400k income). Even then, you’d not lose 60% of your income. You’d lose around 35%-40% to taxes still because of how tax brackets work.
Anything after 400k would be taxed at that rate, 62%.
"In California, New Jersey and New York City, taxpayers earning more than $400,000 a year could face combined state and local statutory income tax rates of more than 60%"
It is an option, but remember something that the Democrat party was talking about in 2016... a global tax. Prediction, that will make a big comeback under Biden
A big factor will be who wins the Senate, and that won’t be decided until January due to two run off elections in Georgia.
The two possible outcomes in the Senate will still leave questions about what, if any, additional stimulus legislation will be passed, and my guess is that this has the potential to impact the markets and exchange rates significantly.
There is no easy answer to your question, so I would start reading up on the potential outcomes and relevant legislation if it might have a material impact on you.
Likely the biggest change for the next year will be strategy for fighting Covid. Expect vast expansion of test and trace, bigger push for mask mandates, but also earlier reopening of public spaces and a sharper recovery in second half of 2021. Impact on the dollar is a crap shoot due to huge Fed intervention that never wound down from the last recession.
Still a bit early to say "much more": Arizona can still flip (it's been inching ever closer and is at 0.6% difference at 90% counted) and Georgia has already announced a recount because it's so close.
If those do both actually end up in Trumps favor, that puts him only 11 electoral votes short. If the voting machine errors in Michigan do turn out to be a thing (and the error is large enough), or he wins legal battles there or in Pennsylvania, that's enough to flip the whole election.
It's a very long shot, but this isn't actually over yet until everything is counted and verified.
The legal battles in Pennsylvania aren't even substantial enough to trigger a mandatory recount - the number of ballots the GOP is fighting over is too small.
Michigan's results are accurate, and were never in question after one county's glitch.
“Because the clerk did not update software, even though the tabulators counted all the ballots correctly, those accurate results were not combined properly when the clerk reported unofficial results,” the Department of State said.
All of them knew their symbolic votes would not change the result, and they didn't all switch in the same direction.
The majority of them were pledged to the loser Democrat, and went faithless so that Republicans could be faithless without risking electing a democrat. Only 2 Republicans took the bait, and that only happened because many Republicans hated Trump, whereas Biden is extremely popular among Democrats.
There really aren't; as that article says, the state was already doing what the GOP sued to require, and those ballots are both small enough in number and likely enough to favor Biden that even saying there are "questions" is overblown.
It’s tantalizing and, in my opinion, overtly political that the Washington Post uses the phrase “enforce segregation” here. This similar story from Reuters says “separate”:
I severely doubt that someone would non-anonymously choose to be the single person that gave away the election to their declared opponent, weeks after being a loyal partisan.
If there's one thing I don't doubt, it's people's dedication to a president they believe is the only person fighting the 'deep state' and other things along those lines. I can easily see it spun (or justified) as "defending democracy" rather than upending it.
That doesn't mean anything legally either. It's not like you give up your electors when you concede. It's just part of losing gracefully. Technically the only thing that matters is what the electors decide to do.
Well... there is such a thing in law as estoppel. It's primarily used in a civil context; I'm not sure a situation has ever come up for it to be tested in election law.
Dec 14th is a better deadline to watch. That's the date at which a state's "Certificates of Ascertainment" is due. If they miss this deadline, the electorate votes are forfeited.
Keep in mind some of these swing states don't have strong one-party control of the state legislatures, and there could be a strong appetite for a recount or closer scrutiny of the ballots.
The Electoral College votes on the first Monday after the 2nd Wednesday in December; so the 14th. What happens on 6 January is Congress ratifying the electoral votes.
And it's the state legislatures that effectively elect their state's electors, which needs to be done before 14 December.
Completely independently of who won/will win this election, I find it massively irresponsible that media outlets are calling it before actual states are. The media should report the news, not make it.
In 2000 it was bad because the call was done for something too close (hundreds of votes) that hadn't finalized and the controversy that followed was around how close that state was not that states had been called.
The differences in the "close" states needed to push past 270 are nearly 100x that and multiple would need to flip to matter. The only remaining thing that's actually close to watch is how much over 270 Biden ends up with at this point.
I mean we called Trump the President-elect before the states certified results. A lot of senators and congresspeople are now marked as "Senator-elect" or "Future Governor" or whatever.
I'm sorry - but it is silly to be pedantic on this.
Were you saying it was bad to call Donald Trump the Republican Nominee before his convention speech? Even though it was mathematically and legally certain?
That’s not really a comparable situation. Right now, we are waiting on a recount in Georgia and the final results in North Carolina and Arizona, not to mention any court cases or recounts that inevitably arise. The media mostly called this because people got tired of waiting, IMO.
At this point, it is practically impossible at a statistical level that the outcome would change even if every legal avenue on Trump's wish list were granted. There is such a thing as a reasonable degree of statistical certainty, and the media have been extremely conservative this time around (compared to, say, 2000) to ensure they don't get egg on their face and retract calls.
Also, there's this whole thing about "freedom of speech" that conservatives like to crow about, too.
It is not practically impossible. Highly unlikely, absolutely, but so is pretty much everything these days.
The quip about freedom of speech is really unnecessary. One can criticize the media while recognizing the importance of individual free speech. I don’t see this as the same issue, even if they are legally.
Can you describe a set of facts that are within the realm of reasonable possibility under the current set of circumstances that would substantially change the outcome?
> The quip about freedom of speech is really unnecessary. One can criticize the media while recognizing the importance of individual free speech
Live by the sword, die by the sword. How about Citizen's United, instead?
I don't know what the word "plausible" means to you, but to most (and in the dictionary), plausible means "reasonable or probable." If something is unlikely, it is also implausible. It is imaginable, of course, but anything is imaginable.
As an attorney and technologist, words and code are my stock in trade. So, accuracy in vocabulary and expression is important. If you are here, presumably you are a technologist, and so correctness should be important to you, too.
If we find that the scenario you have described has come to pass, you are more than welcome to come back and hit me over the head with it. However, you should also be able to stand by your own claims, especially when there are mathematical probabilities attached to them.
They don't officially become "the next president" until the Electoral College's votes are counted in January. Are we supposed to not try to figure out who won or ignore what the likely future is for two more months?
The media calling the election has no legal force. In principle, they look at the results and call the election once they think it's highly unlikely that a particular candidate can lose. Sometimes that call is badly made, like Florida 2000 or, IMO, Fox calling Arizona prematurely. But it's misinforming viewers to claim that all candidates still have a chance after some point in time.
That's how it's done in most countries in Europe as well in my experience. To be clear in the end it's not what the media say that matters, it's the certified vote counts but those come in often much later. In this case I believe that some states like Alaska will be counting ballots well into next week.
It makes sense to call the race once the lead is considered significant enough that the remaining ballots can't statistically change the outcome.
A good counterexample in this election is Arizona, that's been called early for Biden by some outlets (AP and Fox News IIRC) but is still considered to be potentially winnable by Trump by the others. In this case it is possible that AP and Fox were a bit too trigger happy.
What if you look at "calling a race" as "reporting on the underlying mathematical trajectories based off of empirical vote evidence"?
Given I believe that's an accurate description of what's involved in a news organization calling a race, they're not making the news, but reporting it, albeit in a form that makes it more palatable to the average reader.
Yes but that isn’t the messaging here. “Biden won the election” is.
If there is some kind of court challenge or recount that changes the outcome, it’s really bad for trust in the democratic system. Better to just be patient and wait - but patience is something lacking these days.
But your premise that this has something to do with peoples patience “these days” is incorrect. The AP has been calling presidential races since 1848.
So perhaps you are right that this is problematic but it is neither new nor related to anything thats happened in recent history. Its hard to see why the rest of your premise is true when the rest of your assumptions are so faulty.
You must also find it massively irresponsible for Trump to state he won the election as early as Wednesday morning.
Fortunately, his statements, like those of the media, aren’t how the winner is determined. Rather, all the votes are counted and then certified. The media waits until the unofficial counts are outside of the reach of recounts. Trump’s legal challenges are contradictory: he’s arguing to continue counting in states where he is behind and stop counting in states where he is ahead. It doesn’t work that way.
After 2000, the media has been very conservative in waiting to call elections. In any case, they’ve twice miscalled a presidential election but it didn’t impact the ultimate winner, because at the end of the day, we follow the rule of law.
What really afraid me is that if such an idiot was able to become president and was finally so hard to beat. There is room for a much smarter populist.
It will be then very hard to remove him/her.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 585 ms ] threadIf you don't want this to happen again, pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system.
And then Nevada has obviously been won for days, but nobody was calling it because that would have put Fox and AP over 270. So all the networks just started waiting for PA rather than calling the obvious for Nevada.
And might have been right, Biden's lead in AZ keeps shrinking, 3 days ago his lead was 25% of the ballots left to count, now it's 15.
> And then Nevada has obviously been won for days, but nobody was calling it because that would have put Fox and AP over 270.
Although Biden's lead has only grown there saying that it's "obviously won" is a touch optimistic.
No, if you follow the election analysts like Nate Cohn, Nate Silver, Dave Wasserman, and especially Jon Ralston (who is "the guy" for Nevada elections), Biden has been the clear winner for nearly two days.
And also AP almost immediately called Nevada after the Pennsylvania drop, so they were definitely waiting on that.
Voting by people in large groups are predictable and people spend a lot of effort getting this right. Out of 50 states exactly one was significantly different from predictions based on a significant shift in a specific group which is easy to miss in statewide polls.
That really can't be noted enough. That the count took so long is specifically because several legislatures decided to not allow any preprocessing of mail ballots, and to count mail ballots last.
Indeed this bears repeating.
The whole process mounting to the election day was engineered to sabotage and outright throw out votes from the opposition, even if that comes at the expense of the core principles of the whole political system.
The only explanation they can come up with is voter fraud which has not been found to be a widescale problem by nearly every group that has looked into it.
There are certainly some people and perhaps even most people in that group, however there are also still millions of people who do actually believe in small government. Do these people think that winning elections is more important than democracy or is there some reason that they have used to convince themselves that it is okay to make it harder to vote?
On a side note... thank you. At least you asked a question about my position rather than simply downvoting without an explanation.
I do agree that it seemed somewhat isolated in official statements. I did hear quite a few individuals in my personal life believe/state that since the system was compromised that must mean the votes/count must have been changed.
I can see how the fraud claim is popular - if you're losing the popular vote consistently due to (simplistically) higher urban population, you might look for something to use as an excuse. This makes an easy excuse since in your constituent areas (rural) you would have the observation bias that almost everyone you know voted for your candidate and still lost. Sloppy voting system maintenance supplies plenty of anecdotal things to point to, like dead people kn the voting role.
Democrats weren't claiming massive voter fraud was occurring and that it robbed them of the election and refused to concede as as result.
In fact, the one person very loudly crying about voter fraud in 2016 was the same person doing it now. Donald Trump, unhappy at losing the popular vote, claimed and continues to claim that the only reason he failed to secure the popular vote was due to massive voter fraud.
People say all kinds of crap. There are people who are democrats who are bad people, lie, and say dumb crap. There are people who are republicans who are bad people, lie, and say dumb crap.
There is a profound and marked difference between Harry Reid grumbling about 2016 and what is happening in this election.
Parties play party politics, and you're correct in that there is a lot hypocrisy in that, especially when the balance of power swings. This, however, is not an example of that. This is a refusal to not only accept reality, but also leave lasting damages and deepen the divide in this country. It's shameful and a national tragedy.
Yeah, I can see Trump's comments being divisive. There have been Democrats that have made divisive comments too. Which is why I see them as similar. We'll have to see if he steps down when he's supposed to.
From my perspective, they both do questionable, self-serving, and even illegal things. The topics, methods, and frequency do vary. Personally, the last couple presidential elections have felt like a choice between a shit sandwich and a shit sandwich without the bread. (Which is which? Take your pick)
To give you an example from another context which is similar:
In Germany, polticians and some news media have started to use the notion that right-wing terror (e.g. neo-nazi) and left wing terror (e.g. Antifa) are equally evil. If you look objectively though, there is still a disproportionate amount of right-wing terror and many of the crimes attributed to the left-wing are really just part of their fight against the right (they are anti-fascists for a reason). While right-wing terror killed German citizens and immigrants each year, there is no comparable level of crime anymore that could be attributed to the left (need to go back 40 years).
Also, do you have numbers for looking at this from the perspective of the politicians? My comment was mainly focused on the politicians and party leadership, not really on individuals without an official capacity.
1st: "Every group that has looked into it" and "widespread". First at this point I don't trust many of the groups and institutions, because I have repeatedly over the past 4 years seen various groups act in a concerted manner to try and slander, libel and misrepresent trump while trying to drive people to be angry and irrational about. There have been multiple I've seen things reported that I've said to myself. "Okay if Trump really said that then I am way off of supporting him" but then I go look at the actual remarks and it is radically different from what he said. Any else remember a 2 week news cycle on whether or not cofeve was a racist dog whistle? Ultimately at the end of this my faith in mant previously authoritative institutions has been shaken.
Also I don't know anyone that is claiming "widespread" voter fraud, no one believes there was "widespread" voter fraud in this election it was targeted specific voter fraud at particular places and counties is the contention. Everyone knew going into this what states needed to be won for biden to win. Many of these states were decided by less than 10,000 votes.
In response to your contention about being against making it easier to vote. The fact of the matter is that the more room for error in the voting process the less likely people are to trust the outcome. If we imagine for a second we lived in a non-Covid world right now and there everyone voted like normal do you believe as many people would doubt the veracity of the election? Ultimately I consider integrity of the election to be of higher value than ease of access, because it doesn't matter who gets to vote if no one trusts the process.
Again you asked how could a good faith conservative believe this. This is how, I could be wrong I could be off, but that is how I see things right now. Maybe that'll change but for right now that's how I reconcile being good faith and conservative.
> I don't know anyone that is claiming "widespread" voter fraud
This makes it very hard for me to take your claim of good faith seriously. Yes, perhaps the exact word "widespread" did not come out of Donald Trump's mouth, but there can be no doubt in anyone's mind (if they are indeed dealing in good faith) that Donald Trump has in fact been consistently and emphatically -- and, most important, falsely -- alleging wide spread voter fraud. Try doing a web search for "trump claims wide spread voter fraud" if you don't believe me.
Maybe it’s an isolated incident, really.
The media response that “there is no evidence of fraud” shifted to “no widespread fraud” at some point in last three years. I remember noting the appearance of the new qualifier. That rhetorical shift was their own nuance in the face of recurring anecdote.
But let’s accept that - no widespread fraud. The concern - regardless of Trump or this election - is over a critical mass of fraud in counties that are won by narrow margins.
“Widespread” has never been a requirement of the good faith critique of voter fraud.
So when you hear the catchphrase “no evidence of widespread fraud” realize that it signals buy-in to a straw man argument which talks past the issue at hand.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-ele...
A single individual is hardly evidence of "widespread fraud". If you want to play dueling anecdotes, I'll see your PA and raise you Republican vote tampering in North Carolina [1].
None of this is relevant to the substance of my comment, however, which is that I have a hard time seeing how anyone dealing in good faith can honestly say that they "don't know anyone that is claiming widespread voter fraud" [emphasis added].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/mccrae-dowless-indictm...
The argument is to increase the integrity of elections, not offset fraud by one side with fraud by the other and call it even.
There are a lot of anecdotes of fraud, and they keep coming up, enough to undermine the integrity of our elections (as evidenced).
If this was an issue of financial accounting in an organization, I’d wager your behavior pattern would be different - the recurring anecdotes would indicate a substantial risk that needs to be mitigated by putting controls in place to ensure the integrity of the accounts.
Instead, in this instance we are being told not only to look the other way, but are being told recurring anecdotes of abuse don’t warrant substantial procedural changes and improvements in accountability.
As Glenn Greenwald said the other day, this situation is either by choice or ineptitude. But it’s not a non-issue.
Two data points is not "a lot" in a country with 150 million registered voters.
If there were actual evidence of enough voter fraud to move the needle, the Trump administration's law suits would gain some traction, particularly after four years of packing the courts with friendly judges. But they aren't [1]. Hell, not even Fox News is taking this seriously any more [1].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-vote-lawsuits/...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/fox-news-t...
This has been a recurring conversation for decades, and the fact that it’s inflamed in the last few cycles points to the fact that it’s getting worse, not better.
Look, the weak controls that were in place on this process are evidently broken in some critical locations - denying poll watchers entry, political material outside polling places, ballot chain of custody issues. So what controls we did have, weak as they were, were clearly not functioning in many critical locations, as evidenced by videos and court testimony over the last week. Without confidence that the controls are working, the results become suspect, especially when the mistakes appear aligned in one direction. This is what the auditing world would call a material deficiency. It’s that simple - how do you restore faith in the process when people won’t just take your word for it? This is a problem set with known solutions.
Forget this election and the outcome you want to see, Biden’s the president barring something crazy - but there’s a systemic problem here that’s getting worse (let’s say relative to the 2000 fiasco).
We still aren’t conversing, as a nation, about how to bring more integrity to the process to allay the very real concerns half this country has. The institutional narrative is that there is no problem. To then willfully deny that this disagreement really matters forestalls the conversation. We’ll see how this ages, but the answer here isn’t for one side to just shut up. The answer is to take meaningful steps to demonstrate that the process has integrity. Videos of poll workers denying poll watchers access don’t create an appearance of integrity. Denying observation of the ballot counting process also doesn’t support the integrity of the results.
Probably not. But I don't see any evidence that the problem extends beyond a few isolated incidents.
> the weak controls that were in place on this process are evidently broken in some critical locations
That is far from evident to me. And your claims are not evidence.
> there’s a systemic problem here that’s getting worse
Claims are not evidence.
> the very real concerns half this country has
The concern may be real, but the problem isn't. It just isn't. (Voter suppression is a real problem. But fraud is not.)
The real concern is (or at least should be) that half the country has lost touch with reality to the extent that a demagogue can make them spend so much mental energy trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
I find it terribly odd that all this concern about the sanctity of the electoral process only dawn upon the Trump administration after a) realizing they were going to lose the election, b) having spent months trying to sabotage the election by mounting a campaign to reject a voting method that was known to be used primarily by the opposition.
And still, in spite of all the explicit accusations of the existence of a massive fraud campaign, they still cannot find any single shred of evidence to support it. Hell, their initial claim about their observers being barred from observing ended up being materialized in simply wanting to have their observers closer to ballot boxes.
What a blatant red herring.
The media did no such thing. What "the media" did was listen to the Trump campaign's empty claims about having lost the election to this magical massive widespread wave of voter fraud, and proceeded to ask the Trump administration for evidence of this massive widespread wave of voter fraud they were complaining about.
Asking a source to substantiate their bold claims, or fact-check them, is now passed off as media manipulation?
And let's be honest here: if Trump is complaining about tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of votes being either fabricated or destroyed, how is a typo in a projection or a postman failing to deliver the mail any substance to that gargantuan claim?
But again, why spend your time arguing that there’s nothing to see here rather than advocating for improving the transactional integrity of the voting process? And surely you must see those problems even if you trust that politicians don’t leverage them. Which of those pursuits do you think will be more effective in countering the distrust people have in the system? Which one do you think is ultimately healthier for the country? Saying, yes, I see why you would be concerned, let’s work to fix the integrity of the process so those concerns are addressed, or saying the all-to-frequent anecdotes mean nothing and we should have faith that the political machine is inherently trustworthy?
I don't know what you were trying to say, but you said nothing if substance. It reads like a red herring that desperately tries to conflate the world begging the Trump campaign to substantiate any of their myriad of claims regarding their so-called massive nation-wide wave of voter fraud, which succeeded their initial absurd and ridiculous announcement of having won the election, with other propaganda tropes.
> But again, why spend your time arguing that there’s nothing to see here rather than advocating for improving the transactional integrity of the voting process?
The only problems that can be fixed are those which exist in the realm of reality.
Where is the massive wave of voter fraud that supposedly robbed Trump of his election? If that problem really exists, shouldn't you be worried about getting to know the evidence of its existence in order to ensure the same thing doesn't happen again?
Because otherwise these wild election fraud claims jus sound like a desperate red herring fabricated by a childish irresponsible man who decided to throw a tantrum instead of admitting defeat.
The Trump Administration itself couldn't find evidence of widespread voter fraud.[1]
>Also I don't know anyone that is claiming "widespread" voter fraud, no one believes there was "widespread" voter fraud in this election it was targeted specific voter fraud at particular places and counties is the contention. Everyone knew going into this what states needed to be won for biden to win. Many of these states were decided by less than 10,000 votes.
The 2016 election was one of the closest elections we have ever had and it still would have required roughly 100k votes changed to change the result. This election is even less close. Biden is winning PA by 30k, MI by 150k, and WI by 20k. That alone wins it. You can ignore the close states like GA, NV, or AZ and Biden still wins. This would have needed widespread fraud in order to switch a true Trump win to a Biden win.
>The fact of the matter is that the more room for error in the voting process the less likely people are to trust the outcome.
This flows the other direction too. Voting being suppressed makes people trust the outcome less too. How can an election have integrity if people who want to vote can't? If that is the outcome of strict voting laws, shouldn't we require some higher level of evidence of voter fraud in order to justify this cost of people losing their vote?
[1] - https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d
1. The link you provide is indicating there was no voter fraud in the 2016 election not the, 2020 election.
2. As for "widespread" I think we are disagreeing on what it means, in this case you seem to indicate I am talking just about 1000s of people going out and voting multiple times, there are also concerns around counters through some means, providing a different number for the counted whether by introducing false ballots, lying about the number they counted, etc.
For example there was a machine in Detroit that read in 8,000 votes that were listed for Trump as votes for Biden [0] now that could very well be a simple technical error but it indicates how easy it is cause voting totals to not match the reality of the voting.
As for the final rejoinder, I think maybe we are having different opinions in mind as to what we are discussing. For me I fully support having many polling places that are easy to get to for many people in multiple locations and that on election day we should make it as easy as possible for people to vote; however I also think there should be tighter integrity checks on who is voting and on the counting of votes itself.
[0] https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/...
>For me I fully support having many polling places that are easy to get to for many people in multiple locations and that on election day we should make it as easy as possible for people to vote; however I also think there should be tighter integrity checks on who is voting and on the counting of votes itself.
The first half of that goes against the policies of the Republican part and Democrats aren't going to disagree with the second half.
Anyone can be forgiven for doubting the integrity of our election process in the face of worrying anecdote. The answer isn’t to call for blind faith by ignoring the red flags, but to shore up the process and improve its systemic integrity.
What would your standard be if this concerned the finances of your own company? You wouldn’t be telling the organization to not worry and ignore warning signs.
Some states eliminated witness signature requirements on absentee ballots; some states allowed new votes with no postmark up to a week after the election; videos showing the eviction of poll watchers, political placards posted at the entry of polling places; a “reporting error” with an extra zero corrected only after being called on it, software “glitches” resulting in 3000-vote over-count in one county corrected only after being challenged; a box of ballots produced after Election Day, 100% of whose contents went to one candidate; counting paused in the middle of the night. None of it helped by being refereed by a media plurality that clearly wanted a specific outcome all year.
There’s enough widespread questionable anecdote to warrant a top to bottom audit, which nobody can afford.
Every time the media (trusted by the public less than Catholic priests and politicians, btw) says there’s “no evidence of widespread fraud” in the face of this, it doesn’t help - it only raises another red flag.
And this isn’t just the Presidential election, btw.
That we are incapable of building and executing a process with inherent integrity is getting increasingly risky/dangerous.
Also it isn't just the media that investigates voter fraud. Academics and political institutions have looked into it also and not found a problem. Trump's Administration even looked into it and couldn't find any significant problem. Is there anyone who you would trust that could certify this isn't a problem?
I think the accounting analogy is the best suited. You won’t say, with whistleblower reports in hand, that there’s no evidence of _widespread_ problems and leave it at that. The presence of recurring whistleblower reports about financial irregularities demands a different conversation: these are the preventative and detective controls we will put in place, and here’s the evidence that they worked, such that we can be assured a high degree of integrity in what we’re reporting.
Right now, the evidence doesn’t even exist to be challenged. Party A puts the onus on Party B to prove that ballots without postmarks weren’t submitted on time and then say there’s no evidence of a problem. No, the problem in that example is the lack of postmarks to even begin to evaluate the suitability of the ballots.
It’s hard to interpret the willful reticence to have this kind of conversation as a nation, especially because the shoe can absolutely be on the other foot some day.
When the integrity of the institution is in question, the right response isn’t to tell people to look the other way. What I’m trying to convey is that nobody believes that a talking head on the news has any authority or personal expertise to tell people “everything’s fine” when the anecdotes just keep coming, particularly in places run by people with a conflict of interest in the outcome.
You ask what authority would have credibility to be taken on their word that everything’s fine. The right question is how do we demonstrate that the processes have integrity. How do we increase the integrity of the processes such that we’re not relying on me accepting integrity on faith.
You used the word “certify”. That’s a good word and we should dig into the strength behind those attestations. Right now they’re based on very weak control structures.
If that was the case then why has the Trump campaign failed to present any evidence whatsoever to substantiate it's baseless accusations of electoral fraud?
I mean, the Trump campaign complains that the election was stolen from them as a result of this hypothetical electoral fraud campaign that no one sees or has any tangible proof of existing. Heck, the Trump campaign is even accusing elections organized by Republicans of having been compromised. If there is indeed a problem then how come no one is able to see it anywhere, no matter how may times everyone asks?
If no one is able to find any problem anywhere, is there really a problem to begin with?
Further, when the body of material lacks metadata to support chain of custody investigations, or observers can’t witness counting processes, it’s pretty disingenuous to say no evidence can be found. The control failures are the evidence.
There are very real bad examples, and we don’t know how representative they are. There are critical control failures (missing information) that make investigation difficult.
If you want to convince people everything is fine, take away these distractions by shoring up the process - transparency and authentication controls would go a long way towards fending off the accusations of fraud.
Are you referring to the cases where the place was packed above capacity (and packed with both dem and good observers) and those wanting to enter had to wait for their turn to enter?
> videos of political material posted at the entrance to multiple polling places;
Are you talking about the Trump supporters getting arrested after picketing a polling place with pro Trump propaganda while brandishing a firearm?
I'm going to make it very simple for you: show any evidence. A primary source describing anything will do. Don't fabricate accounts or go with the "he said she said" approach. Each and every single case you vaguely referred to has been debunked and corrected, but apparently either you prefer to ignore facts or preferred to turn yourself off from the world. Show the evidence. Can you do it?
Not "nearly" every group. Every group. Election fraud is effectively nonexistent.
Not tallying votes early doesn’t seem so clear cut to me.
The argument is that if early vote counts came out in favor of Biden it could suppress voter turnout on the Republican side.
I don’t know if that’s actually how it would have played out, but it does seem reasonable not to have results start to be reported before everyone has made their choice.
More independence is generally better in voting systems.
In theory, even counting could be done as long as no result is leaked, though there’d be a risk.
Explicitly not allowing the preprocessing - and as far as I followed the news, that’s what happened in PA - seems like a pretty clear cut case of “we want to draw the count out.” to me.
Even if a minority of the vote was known, how different would that be from public polling that also represent a slice of the electorate (which also is likely not 100% representative of the actual results.)
Of course a small sample of votes is likely to be too, but we aren’t talking about statistical inference here, we talking about political perception.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pennsylvania-counting-votes-...
No it’s not.
> it isn't sabotage or subterfuge.
It’s absolutely sabotage. “You can either count all the ballots or count quickly” is dishonest hackery, and defending this behaviour is shameful.
It's my understanding that it had zero to do with caution and all to do with the fact that the election was not decided.
If there are still votes that were not counted and the slim margin between both candidates is smaller than the number of unaccounted votes then the election results are yet to be determined. Thus it would make zero sense to claim that one candidate was the winner when the votes that are yet to be counted are enough to sway the results.
Fox News called Virginia for Biden when there were like 50% votes in and Trump led with 10%.
They were uber cautious this time and waited for a >0.5% lead.
It's only "basically impossible" if the amount of votes to be counted are still enough to sway an election.
You should think things through and pay attention to the unwanted consequences of these sort of claims. We're living a development where half the US population is complaining about voter fraud and conspiracies to withheld their candidate from their rightful place in the US's regime. It makes no sense to argue in favor of taking shortcuts in the election process citing arcane arguments and models, each of which unverifiable and impenetrable to the common man, and expect it to simply accept an outcome that is dictated by you and not verifiable by them.
If you want a country to accept election results, the results need to be obvious and above any scrutiny. In the case of elections, you only get there if all votes are counted and any shred of doubt is rendered an impossibility. Otherwise all you get is conspiracy theories, dissent and erosion of any faith on the democratic nature of a system.
Who is "you" here? The media organizations are the one making the calls and defining the processes for doing so, not some random on HN.
> It makes no sense to argue in favor of taking shortcuts in the election process citing arcane arguments and models,
The media calling the election is not part of the formal election process. If the media calls the election wrongly they just get humiliated when the final results come in and they are proven wrong. The media doesn't decide the election result.
We're talking about people who spread conspiracy theories on how the big media companies are manipulating the public into stealing an election.
Seeing media companies announce that the opposing candidate has won even though the race is exceptionally close, votes are still being counted, and it's still theoretically possible to see their own candidate win.... That just contributes to fuel the conspiracy theories that are being fabricated to delegitimize the election results.
The purpose of a decision desk is to project who will win each election as soon as possible using all available data. They don't need all the votes to be in if they believe the remaining votes skew towards a particular candidate based on polling.
Of course, in the end it is the votes that decide who wins not the decision desks, but most often there is no difference between the two outcomes.
Trump had a lot more support among some demographics than people expected. as the race got tighter it made sense to doubt what might play out.
You need to distinguish between the national vote, which met projections with a significant dem majority, and state races, some of which were close, which is also what was predicted.
Why were the polls so wrong again?
These polls are from November 1.
Targoz Market Research was really off. 56 to 42
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e28be4ccb16eb0aa6496...
New York Times 42-49
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/az-fl-pa-wi/bc6b622f3...
I honestly don't recall much in the way of news about the popular vote projections. Probably because folks were more concerned with other things.
It's much better to be certain that wrong.
I disagree with that argument FWIW, but I can certainly understand it. Though I think people were just impatient to hear "Biden has won" be made official, even if they already knew. I certainly was.
the networks have to balance a late call giving fodder to conspiracy theorists with an early or uncertain call also giving fodder to conspiracy theorists. they don't want to be doing anything that could promote a narrative claiming the networks are trying to influence the election for biden.
In Pennsylvania, the Republican House passed a bill to start counting three days early but it died in the Senate under threat of veto from the Democrat governor -- https://apnews.com/article/2396bbdd1617a82c4919127726778711 The Democrats had a separate bill that would have started counting much earlier, but the Republicans opposed that for fear there would not be proper oversight over the counting process.
I'm curious about the efficiency of this strategy. I'd figure they'd gain more by allowing early counting, leaking the pro-democrat results and thus lowering democrat turnout on election day. After all, why bother voting when it's already in the bag and so on.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if...
So apparently the strategy was to make the vote counting look suspicious enough that it would give cover for essentially a coup.
Haven't been watching this closely. Care to share some refs? Thanks
Republicans in Pennsylvania, a swing state, created a law that didn't allow for absentee ballots to begin to be counted until 8pm on election day.
You can pressure them all you want on that. It won't change a thing because making it easier to vote via mail will possibly result in them being voted out by making it easier for minorities to vote.
Alternatively this could be fixed by making Election Day a national holiday and/or setting up more polling locations.
IMO seems more accurate to say in-person voting disproportionately affects incompetent municipalities.
Much of the rest of the democratic world looked upon those reports of people waiting all day, sometimes 10+ hours in a queue and thought "it took me 5 minutes where I live".
In countries without long queues to vote, you don't need to take a day off work.
Another way would be to hold elections on a Sunday instead of the middle of the week. There seem to be a number of fairly simple ways to improve on the way US voting works, and it's baffling that none of them are implemented.
You can already see how the popular vote for president is consistently Democrat. There is also a pact of states that promise to vote for the popular vote winner once their ranks have 270 electoral votes. A good visual way to view this divide is the map showing the county-by-county vote allocation.
I don't see why expressing concerns about postal voting would necessarily be a partisan thing. Don't the TWO major political blocks want a fair process? Perhaps everyone?
...especially in light of evidence of documented cases. Here is a sample query for: "Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots which resulted in a criminal conviction" (with results ruled as recently as 2020):
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=Al...
The result set doesn't include "Duplicate voting", "Impersonation", "Altering the vote count", which are separate criteria (relevant to mention because they are part of the ongoing allegations).
Also called by ABC, NBC and the AP (https://twitter.com/AP/status/1325112826072084480). Congratulations, America.
Now I want the last 4 years of my life back.
(Not even counting one can just impeach Trump successfully.)
Things could easily flip the other way in 2024, particularly if the economy goes south as it's been projected to do in 2021.
"As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump." -- Lisa Simpson
Seriously though, "The best way to predict the future is to create it" as Alan Kay once said, and there are cases of science fiction inspiring technologists to create actual products and inventions.
... yet. Don't worry Michael Simon is making a list. thetrumpregistry.com
The website apparently isn't working anymore (404 error).
What I don't understand why people pointing this out are being down voted. You can't have a civil discussion like this.
You're being downvoted because of The Implication.
Here's an example: https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1324792225260253184
Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20201106194139/https://twitter.c...
https://twitter.com/McAdooGordon/status/1324907788146008065
https://twitter.com/McAdooGordon/status/1324907989745233922
So sad to see this is what tech people do.
AOC said the following on twitter:
"Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future"
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078
Plus this Washington Post writer who is keeping a list of Trump supporters to keep them from being able to participate in society, hold public office, faculty positions, or be on company boards.
https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1324792225260253184
The process isn't over yet (AP News opinion withstanding) but this wasn't really a victory for Democrats at all in my opinion assuming the probable happens.
The polls at minimum were very wrong which means either fixed or stupid take your pick.
We are going to see a lot of incidents of shady doings around the election (how could we not?) brought up over the next couple of months.
Biden and team won't really be able to deliver rainbows and ponies and may have to get quite authoritarian to quell dissent.
Trump leaves on a high note with a large amount of support and Republicans made big gains and greatly expanded the party.
A whole lot will have to go right for this to be anything like a victory for the Democrats. It almost would have been better for them if they let the chips fall and Trump take the rap for what's going down next.
These 10's of millions of people aren't going anywhere, they'll be even madder next time around and in the polls watching like hawks with court sanction. And Trump will be talking the whole time about the injustice and how he was railroaded. Rightly or wrongly people will listen.
"It's not official until it's Facebook Official."
It still has significance.
But it is a marker that people use as shorthand. There is no getting around the fact that Biden will have 270 electoral votes.
Almost everyone does.
I don't think there's a realistic way for Trump to have 270 electoral votes, but he could still possibly be awarded the Presidency by a weird-ass one-vote-per-state vote in the House.
It stayed up. Please show the same consideration.
Edit: I’m not saying US citizens should think of other nations when casting their vote. Just glad — as non-US citizen - that Biden won and that our national far-right politicians can finally shut up about Trump
When I vote I make sure I pick the candidate that other countries would be happy with.
The US understands that stick very well when the topic is its opponents.
Is not something that the common voter could control. You will do in the 50% of the cases in fact, just by chance.
And is great, because deliberately burning all bridges with all your allies and to pee in the curtains just to make a vanity statement, is not a productive way to work in a multinational team to obtain your goals.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-u-s-electio...
What we need to watch for is whether or not the Republican Party interprets this as a repudiation of Trumpism, or merely of Trump himself.
The problem runs deeper than that. Unfortunately Trump's blend of populist rhetoric fueled by conspiracy theories, divisiveness, and victimization coupled with a vindictive/authoritarian agenda has seeped out of the US borders and reverberated in european countries that are now struggling (again) with he rise of fascist parties.
Take for example Spain's Vox party, which is quite literally a fascist apologist which copies Trump and recently even went as far as claiming that Spain's current government is the worst in 80 years, subtly bundling Franco's fascist regime in comparison and thus stating that it was a better alternative than the current democratic regime.
The free world has a problem with fascism in specific and authoritarian regimes in general, and Trump contributed to whitewash these political movements to the point that they might regain mainstream status throughout the world.
But it’s understandable that some of us non-US citizens are glad to see Trump go.
The scariest part, to me, regarding the way the Trump administration whitewashed fascism is that those of us who live in countries who experienced it are fully aware that fascism doesn't dawn upon us with a bang, and more often than not it just seeps in.
Therefore, people are desensitized towards fascism because they expect it to come as a bogeyman that strong-arms his way into power in an obvious way and against everyone's wishes. It does not. It sneaks in with overwhelming popular support, based on a rhetoric that there's an inhuman enemy threatening the little people and that the fascist hero is here to save everyone from evil by doing whatever it takes. That's precisely what we are seeing with Trump, with their supporters demanding beheadings and bullets to the head of reactionaries, while their supporters praise Trump for being a bully that's on their corner protecting them.
I feel the same way about socialism and communism.
I don't follow politics too closely, but I keep hearing Trump is the first president who started no new wars. He also supposedly brokered numerous peace deals and had 4 Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
Is there a lot of violence I'm missing that warrants calling him "violent and authoritarian"?
FWIW, Nobel Peace Prize nominations are worthless. National level politicians, professors can nominate anyone.[1] You could find someone (or three people) to nominate you.
[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/
> Nominated but not awarded
> Joseph Stalin, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.
> Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939. As unlikely as it may seem today, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament, E.G.C. Brandt. Apparently, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. [...]
> Other statesmen and national leaders who were nominated but not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
> Italy: Benito Mussolini
Yes, the fact that we didn't get into any hot war is pretty much the only thing that Trump has going for him, though it was partially due to others backing him off bad ideas.
He wanted to remove us from a South Korean defense agreement, which would have been huge for each country's economy and defenses.
He bombed an Iranian general in Iraq - it was a huge gambit of arguable utility, and the only reason the Iranians didn't get more international support for retaliation was because they shot down a civilian airliner on accident.
He talked so much crap to NK that there was serious concern of an escalation in fighting.
But, yes. We didn't have any major foreign-based terror attacks, and we didn't get entangled in fighting a new conflict.
As far as the peace deals, I think they could be good, but they haven't "fixed" anything yet. The Palestinians still have no sovereignty, the Israelis still deny Arabs rights of citizenship, Iran and SA still are at each other's throats while Yemen, AFAIK, is still a humanitarian crisis.
China is perpetrating a holocaust on ethnic minorities, and Trump congratulated Xi on his success there.
The man is no human rights hero.
---
edit: Not to mention his domestic policy failings, his characterizations as sitting president of all who disagree with him as "enemies", his rhetoric around protesting, his encouragement toward violent right-wing actors, and his use of the National Guard to clear out a public square to get a picture taken with a holy book he has never read.
The utility of his action against Qassem Suleimani is not in question. It was clearly a very effective move. Whether this was justified depends on your viewpoint of Iranian actions in the Middle East.
This is an outright lie. About 20% of Israel's citizens are Arabs, and there are Arabs in the Knesset, the Courts, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel#:~:tex....
@dang please don't allow HN to become a platform for spreading absolute lies.
If you spent all of your time in a bubble reading these opinion pieces from a select group of sources and news aggregators that presumably aggregate the news that is most likely to generate ad impressions/clicks (Reddit, Google News seems to push highly inflammatory opinion pieces), sure, I can see how you'd think Trump is some sort of fascist dictator hellbent on destroying the world. The average political junky isn't going to spend brainpower trying to understand the diametrically opposed.
To be clear though, most level headed individuals don't actually believe Trump is a fascist. That's an extremist view (and obviously insulting to anyone who has lived under fascism) that's just used to sow discord and get a reaction.
I'd argue against Trump being an incompetent fascist. That's still giving him too much credit.
He's authoritarian, a narcissist, views the world through a zero-sum transactional lens, doesn't see anything wrong with cronyism or nepotism, and as far as he's concerned you're either with him or against him.
Some of that has certainly allowed fascistic people to accrete around him, and enact policies that are fascistic, but as far as I can tell, that's only because the lowest hanging fruit and the clearest path to avoiding blame was in removing restraints and checks and balances. IOW writing (and reading) and passing regulations is hard, removing or ignoring them is comparatively easy.
If it were easier to avoid blame, punish enemies, line his pockets, and put his stamp on things by nationalizing industries, he'd have been doing that instead.
And I wouldn't quite rule anything out as an attempt at some kind of "grand bargain" before he leaves office if he decides he wants to punish the GOP.
He always avoided distancing himself from fascist and racist movements and their actions in the US. He teargassed people just so he could get a couple pictures taken in the middle of a protest. He tried to cast a democratic election into doubt and talked for months about his intention of not conceding the oval office in the case of a loss in the election.
I don't think Trump could ever be a dictator, but he clearly does not oppose the idea and undoubtedly contributed to the political divide in the US.
Don't believe everything you hear. This is false.
> He also supposedly brokered numerous peace deals
Like what?
> and had 4 Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
As others have noted, this means nothing.
> Is there a lot of violence I'm missing that warrants calling him "violent and authoritarian"?
The violence is largely hypothetical, and would, if it materialized, probably be perpetrated by white-supremacist militias rather than the U.S. military. But that Trump is authoritarian there can be no reasonable doubt. He has a long record of using his power to fire anyone who speaks against him, to harass anyone who speaks against him who he does not have the power to fire, and to protect and grant favors to anyone who supports him politically, even if they have been convicted of crimes. That kind of behavior is the textbook definition of authoritarian.
No need for "supposedly": https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-do...
This is what we really need to fix.
Doubtful. Doesn't look like Trump is going to concede. Likely litigation and supreme court in the coming weeks.
> The media is calling states when their projections are confident enough (and possibly when the difference is above the automatic recount threshold).
The media has been projecting trump to lose since 2016. Well since 2014 really.
Either way, it's history in the making. Comfy chair. Popcorn. All set.
With the current projections, it would likely have to be three states that fail to send electors properly for Biden to have a chance of losing.
But it is completely irrelevant. Biden will be the next president.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/networ...
Also there's a new thread from the NY Times that has more votes and isn't flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016070
Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201
edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967
You're on the right one!
It would probably be flagged today, too; the tolerance for mainstream political content has dropped since 2016.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Yeah, Biden likely will be president elect. But the news media's call of what they think is likely is in no way official.
Edit: When I wrote this, the headline was along the lines of "Joe Biden is President-Elect."
Edit: There are now multiple pages of comments in this thread. If you want to see the later pages, click 'More' at the bottom of the earlier pages. Or get there like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=5
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=6
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=7
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=8
---
As many have pointed out, a dozen or so submissions on this topic were flagged by users. That's actually the immune system working as intended, but another component of the system is that moderators rescue the very most historic stories so HN can have a single big thread about them. We did that 4 years ago, also for Brexit, etc.
Since this was the first submission on the topic, it seems fairest to be the one to restore. (It's still on our todo list to have some form of karma sharing for situations like this, to make it be less of a race and/or lottery.)
I changed the URL from https://www.cnn.com/ since that is not the most useful link and the AP seems as close as one can get to a neutral source.
Did US foreign policy get affected because Trump tweeted something mean?
[1]: Yes, he retweeted this. The video blurb does not give any more context. The full video does, as they only call for death of Democrats "politically speaking", but not only is this retweet from the President a great example of how violent blurbs without context are unconstructive, we've seen example of violent acts recently that one can't help but feel the President personally promoted - for example the attempted kidnapping of a democrat official. Context is king, and the President is known for giving vague and awful statements without context. For his followers that only look skin deep, of which plenty of humans do, what do you think they take from this?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/04/the...
"On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount."
Can this happen again this time?
* In 2000 it was one tipping-point state. Here, Biden has multiple states putting him over the top.
* The margin in those states is larger than in Florida. The final official Florida count gave the victory to Bush by 537 votes.
* 2000 involved a recount of legitimately questionable ballots. Trump's legal cases (thus far) have been judged by experts to be far less serious.
* Trump (so far) is not challenging enough ballots to give him the lead in the tipping-point state.
Tell us more, where are the details of that legal case?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/us/politics/trump-electio...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-06/supreme-court-probabl...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/06/politics/lawsuits-trump-gop-p...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judges-evidence-trump-campai...
It's a conspiracy against Donald Trump because he's a man of the people!
Trump is definitely an outsider.
Barry Richard, an election lawyer who served as a lead attorney for President George W. Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida, criticized the campaign’s efforts. “I wouldn’t call it a strategy,” he said. “There isn’t any legal basis for anything I’ve seen so far.”
Other election law experts have questioned the multipronged attack. Richard Hasen, professor at UC Irvine School of Law and author of “Election Meltdown,” said the lawsuits, even if partially successful, were smaller-scale and didn’t threaten the results. “If they’re not being filed to change the election outcome, what’s the point?” he said.
I'm tired of it.
Your comment is nothing more than an attempt to shut down discourse by denying that any opposed ideas can have any validity. That is a fallacy in an argument. In a democratically elected leader, or his followers, it is a direct attack on the foundations of the country. Please stop.
It's both a contradictory argument and obviously illegal: you can't stop a state's election board from counting the already cast ballots.
This is just announced today so I’m not sure how “experts” could have weighed in already, whatever that means.
> These aren’t serious people. They never have been, they never will be.
Well, Giuliani prosecuted the NY mafia and won, so part of this statement is a little far fetched.
And yes that is a prediction. But it is an informed prediction. It is informed by the fact that so far, every case has been tossed for lack of evidence. I can go around making false assertions and filing false lawsuits all day too, it doesn't mean that anyone should take them seriously, and no one would. The only reason that we give these assertions oxygen is out of deference to the power these people hold.
"Get Rudy Giuliani off TV."
Even the Post doesn't give Giuliani credence. Trump will get recounts, none of them will move the numbers in a meaningful way, just like every other recount in the history of Presidential recounts.
- Joe Rogan (>10 million listeners)
- Rush Limbaugh (15 million per week)
- Crowder (8 million on election night)
- No Agenda (nobody, this is a joke)
The Post has a circulation of ~250k.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK21F1b5ihc&feature=youtu.be...
List of names: https://controlc.com/c17e91ba
Voter website: https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/Voter/Index
> No ballot for the 118-year-old Mr. Bradley was ever requested, received or counted.
Yet, the voter registration site clearly showed that a ballot was requested, sent to, and received from the elder Mr. Bradley. I'm skeptical that they would have detected the error had this particular case not gone viral. If they had the means to detect the error, then why didn't they do it before sending the ballot? Or, even better, remove the defunct registration in the first place?
2) Ballot also sent to alive person at same address with same name -> good
3) Living person fills out their ballot, turns it in -> good
4) Living person throws out dead person's ballot -> good
5) Vote counting accidentally records Living person's vote under Dead person's entry -> bad, but pretty easy to imagine as clerical error
6) Living person's entry never has a vote counted -> good (sort of, as living person's vote only gets counted once, just under wrong name
Result: A) No change in voting results (living person's vote gets counted once)
But B) Is this fraud? -> my opinion, no. There was no difference in vote count, likely no intention to make the mistake. If it was intentional fraud that's pretty useless
C) Is this system? -> Not sure, the list of thousands of 'possible dead people' certainly looks like worth investigating, but unless some real reports are gonna go look at every one I'm not sure there's gonna be a real answer for all of them
"If they had the means to detect the error" -> quite possibly because they're busy doing other things, like counting the votes. "skeptical that they would have detected the error" is pretty speculative, but again an error that results in no vote count difference is not the kind they should be correcting. They should focus on correcting errors that affect the vote count, right? (ie, execute the main thread rather than spend cycles garbage collecting. Garbage collect when the main thread is idle.)
The race to change laws in various states at the last minute has guaranteed a faught and without hesitation leaves open the charge of fraud.
There is zero reason why America shouldn't have VoterID free to all and sanity checks at the voter booth to guarentee 150+ year olds don't vote.
https://www.indiarightnownews.com/seven-voters-older-than-th...
The charges of fraud are only going to worse the longer those in power don't take real steps to fix the issues.
Are there others at play?
In person and absentee ballots dropped off can be trivially found to be legitimate (timewise). You have them by 8PM or you don't.
For mail-in ballots, states have different rules. Some states allow ballots received by the 12th or later, as long as the postmark is on or before election day. Some states require ballots to be received by election day. PA is under a microscope because ballots postmarked by the 3rd, but received by the 6th may or may not be counted, pending court decisions.
Those ballots, however, are not included in current vote totals as reported by the state, so Biden won PA without those votes (and beyond the margin required for a recount). They'd just further extend his lead.
State election systems will decide the election.
And if the people truly and directly got to decide the president, this post would have been made on Wednesday morning.
And the majority of Americans don't want a rural minority dictating the "fate of the country" either.
[0]https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-recount...
(1) There's no reason to believe they'll change the outcome much (recounts in 2016 didn't) --- states have learned since 2000 and have moved away from faulty ballot designs.
(2) The recounts will be occurring in multiple states, and Trump needs to sweep them.
(3) The margins in those recounts are much bigger than in 2000 --- tens of thousands of votes, not hundreds.
Biden is ahead here. Even if you remove PA or AZ, he'd still have enough electoral votes to win.
He's going to be President. The only person who doesn't get that at this point is Trump, and everyone around him is just bowing to his whims.
Also, note that Gore privately conceded the election that night, but retracted it after further counting due to the <1000 vote margin.
So in fact major networks (including CNN, ABC, FOX) initially called Bush the winner, but retracted that afterwards due to the possibility of a recount.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
Fact is that mail in voting has been banned in European countries and elections overturned because its much easier to cheat.
I would need more some statistical evidence. So far I have seen graphs pointing out how Biden's tally doesn't follow Benford’s Law.
https://principia-scientific.com/joe-bidens-votes-violate-be...
"Michigan County Clerk Admits Voting Software Glitch "Skewed" Results, Trump To Gain 6,000 Votes
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/michigan-county-clerk-adm...
This is going to go in front of the Supreme Court. Twitter should not be trying to hide the fact that one of the parties claims fraud. A huge number of people voted for Trump. Let him make his case.
My Gut instinct is that it is suspicious that some democratic counties got 90% turnout.
Since 2000, most states have switched to optical scan ballots as their paper records. These ballots have much lower error rates, closer to 1 error per million votes. I don't think there's been a single race using optical scan ballots where a recount actually caused a winner to switch.
That election and SCOTUS ruling was a mess, and as a consequence did a lot of damage to this countries institutions.
"AP did not call the closely contested race in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore – we stood behind our assessment that the margin in Florida made it too close to call."
https://www.ap.org/en-us/topics/politics/elections/how-we-ca...
This year in particular has been weird for me for passage-of-time; it feels simultaneously like the pandemic has been a constant forever - but also, spring and summer have gone so fast and now it's almost 2021.
Just disable karma on topics like these. They are going to be submitted multiple times and very quickly anyway, nobody "needs" the karma and it doesn't matter if nobody gets it.
This, I believe, is why the markets are reacting rather optimistically to the election results. Market makers clearly believe that a Biden presidency and a Republican Senate will get very little done, pass very few new laws, and spend a lot of time quarreling. This allows the economy to essentially run on auto-pilot, which in a free market system is rather conducive to growth.
If however the Senate swings to the Democrats after all the votes are counted, it may be a different story.
Unless you mean in the strict technical sense of national emergency, where the US has spent exactly 14 months not in one since March 9, 1933 (so the rule is moot because it basically never applies), historically that's mostly not true; it wasn't that true in the 1980s through 1992s with Democrats controlling one and sometimes two houses of Congress and Reagan-Bush presidencies. It wasn't very true in the mid-late 1990s with Clinton vs. Gingrich (there were shutdowns, but also major bipartisan initiatives like welfare reform).
Still, it's pretty true if you narrow it to a Democratic President and Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority leader, rather than trying to make it some nonpartisan broad historical phenomenon.
Maybe, more significant was that he was ideologically a center-right neoliberal, the same as the dominant faction of the Republican Party at the time he was elected.(but not the same as the right turn the Republican Party took in response.)
> he shifted to a more moderate position after 1994
Not really. Overall policy outcome shifted from what a center-right neoliberal with weakly progressive stands on social issues could agree with a Democratic Congress that was to his left on both economic and social issues on to what athe same President could agree with with a Congress that was slightly to his right on economic issues and far to his right on social issues.
Welfare reform, for instance, may have passed after Republicans took office, but it wasn't Clinton “shifting to a more moderate position”, as it was a major part (though not as significant as health care, on which he was defeated by Democratic defections before Republicans took control) of his 1992 platform.
But the point is, in either case, while you can find excuses for each of the exceptions to the supposed “divided government is normally total gridlock outside of unusual emergencies” idea, the history of divided government has far more exceptions than cases which support the rule.
Where did Trump kowtow to dictators?
[0] https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2020/the-mac...
Overall remote work should increase with a different lockdown tone at the federal level creating uncertainy in commercial real estate.
"In California, New Jersey and New York City, taxpayers earning more than $400,000 a year could face combined state and local statutory income tax rates of more than 60%"
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/19/tax...
The question is how does this affect many FAANG employees? Is a move out of state an option?
A big factor will be who wins the Senate, and that won’t be decided until January due to two run off elections in Georgia.
The two possible outcomes in the Senate will still leave questions about what, if any, additional stimulus legislation will be passed, and my guess is that this has the potential to impact the markets and exchange rates significantly.
There is no easy answer to your question, so I would start reading up on the potential outcomes and relevant legislation if it might have a material impact on you.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1REAL
Url: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641
The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline
If those do both actually end up in Trumps favor, that puts him only 11 electoral votes short. If the voting machine errors in Michigan do turn out to be a thing (and the error is large enough), or he wins legal battles there or in Pennsylvania, that's enough to flip the whole election.
It's a very long shot, but this isn't actually over yet until everything is counted and verified.
Also, the Michigan "errors" were errors in publishing the data, not in balloting: https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127--544676--,00.html
“Because the clerk did not update software, even though the tabulators counted all the ballots correctly, those accurate results were not combined properly when the clerk reported unofficial results,” the Department of State said.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-technology...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...
https://www.fairvote.org/faithless_elector_state_laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#Legal_ruling...
The majority of them were pledged to the loser Democrat, and went faithless so that Republicans could be faithless without risking electing a democrat. Only 2 Republicans took the bait, and that only happened because many Republicans hated Trump, whereas Biden is extremely popular among Democrats.
If today's electoral vote split was 270-268 (as was a possibility if Trump won PA and GA), then things may have been more iffy.
'Justice Alito temporarily grants Pennsylvania GOP request to enforce segregation of ballots that arrived after Election Day'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pennsylvania-ballots...
Remember that when it comes to non-emergency motions, courts are unlikely to grant the form of relief requested when doing so would be moot.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/BigStory12/idUSKBN27N030
It's looking like the lead will be big enough that even in the (very) small chance things go wrong it won't matter.
for some definition of wrong
"... only two... defected from the winner."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clin...
Keep in mind some of these swing states don't have strong one-party control of the state legislatures, and there could be a strong appetite for a recount or closer scrutiny of the ballots.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641
And it's the state legislatures that effectively elect their state's electors, which needs to be done before 14 December.
The differences in the "close" states needed to push past 270 are nearly 100x that and multiple would need to flip to matter. The only remaining thing that's actually close to watch is how much over 270 Biden ends up with at this point.
I'm sorry - but it is silly to be pedantic on this.
Were you saying it was bad to call Donald Trump the Republican Nominee before his convention speech? Even though it was mathematically and legally certain?
Also, there's this whole thing about "freedom of speech" that conservatives like to crow about, too.
The quip about freedom of speech is really unnecessary. One can criticize the media while recognizing the importance of individual free speech. I don’t see this as the same issue, even if they are legally.
> The quip about freedom of speech is really unnecessary. One can criticize the media while recognizing the importance of individual free speech
Live by the sword, die by the sword. How about Citizen's United, instead?
- Supreme Court gets involved with PA and some votes are thrown out, or a recount is done.
- Recount in Georgia gives it to Trump.
- Arizona is still not declared and could go to Trump.
- North Carolina seems to be going to Trump.
If we find that the scenario you have described has come to pass, you are more than welcome to come back and hit me over the head with it. However, you should also be able to stand by your own claims, especially when there are mathematical probabilities attached to them.
I’m sorry, but I have better things to do.
It makes sense to call the race once the lead is considered significant enough that the remaining ballots can't statistically change the outcome.
A good counterexample in this election is Arizona, that's been called early for Biden by some outlets (AP and Fox News IIRC) but is still considered to be potentially winnable by Trump by the others. In this case it is possible that AP and Fox were a bit too trigger happy.
Given I believe that's an accurate description of what's involved in a news organization calling a race, they're not making the news, but reporting it, albeit in a form that makes it more palatable to the average reader.
If there is some kind of court challenge or recount that changes the outcome, it’s really bad for trust in the democratic system. Better to just be patient and wait - but patience is something lacking these days.
So perhaps you are right that this is problematic but it is neither new nor related to anything thats happened in recent history. Its hard to see why the rest of your premise is true when the rest of your assumptions are so faulty.
Fortunately, his statements, like those of the media, aren’t how the winner is determined. Rather, all the votes are counted and then certified. The media waits until the unofficial counts are outside of the reach of recounts. Trump’s legal challenges are contradictory: he’s arguing to continue counting in states where he is behind and stop counting in states where he is ahead. It doesn’t work that way.
After 2000, the media has been very conservative in waiting to call elections. In any case, they’ve twice miscalled a presidential election but it didn’t impact the ultimate winner, because at the end of the day, we follow the rule of law.
How to avoid that in 2024 ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017161