US Election Week 2020

[Valmy]

That scraper website pretty much has Biden winning Georgia, or am I missing something?

With 45k votes left to count - and the current spate of votes in the 73%+ rate for Biden - it looks really good for him. I mean, there will be a recount, but still.

Past performance are not indicative of future results. If this last batch performs like the rest then yes Biden will barely pull it out. But it might not.

[Syt]

On the two party system thing I have to ask what is so special about Maine that allowed them to setup a democratic voting system there whilst elsewhere doesn't?
AV, split electoral vote.... Sounds not just better than elswhere but outright good.

Nothing is special about Maine at all. The states run their own elections. Everybody could have that if they wanted to.

Inertia and tradition are powerful in most states and nothing tends to change until something goes wrong sufficiently enough to embarrass the state in question. Like look at how smooth and well managed the Florida election was? Nothing so archaic as voting chads there anymore.

Common human traits I wager. After a crippling scandal about widespread adding anti-freeze to Austrian wines in the 80s, the industry turned itself inside out and upside down in terms of quality assurance and has now an excellent reputation.

[alfred russel]

That scraper website pretty much has Biden winning Georgia, or am I missing something?

With 45k votes left to count - and the current spate of votes in the 73%+ rate for Biden - it looks really good for him. I mean, there will be a recount, but still.

Past performance are not indicative of future results. If this last batch performs like the rest then yes Biden will barely pull it out. But it might not.

I think that if Biden needs Georgia, then Georgia is Florida in 2000.

But for him to need Georgia, Trump has to get Pennsylvania and Arizona, neither of which seems likely. (assuming Nevada is in the bag)

[Syt]

[Valmy]

Yeah but states also have Constitutions.

I doubt very many of them say that the legislatures are free to ignore the popular vote.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I see a tiny bit of angst from some people I know about PA--but remember Biden is winning big in almost every batch, Allegheny County has around 20,000 ballots that are on hold until Friday that will probably be very heavily Biden 85%+, and Philly stopped sending reports in for several hours. With 500,000 to go as per the Penn SecState like 45 minutes ago and the way they're going, Trump's 115k or so lead is mathematically in very bad shape. The issue comes down to voting method, these are mail in votes and in Pennsylvania for every 1 Republican who cast one of those about 2.5 Democrats did. Even in counties that Biden won't come close to winning, it's often been the case he won the mail voting due to that 2.5:1 ratio. There are "less bad" and "awful" batches on the board for Trump in PA. There aren't any expected good ones anywhere.

AZ is more complex because of the fact mail voting is much more established there and frequently used by Republicans, but most AZ insiders still think because we haven't seen the dumps from the expected blue areas in like 2 days, that Trump will be set back there really bad when those do come out, such that he likely can't close the gap (but he should narrow it substantially.) But AZ is imo still fairly unknown because no one really knows the exact composition of these outstanding ballots, there's a lot of speculation and such based on different AZ pollster's knowledge of AZ. The state itself hasn't been nearly as transparent about what ballots it's holding as GA and PA have been.

[Sheilbh]

Sounds like Nevada won't be called till tomorrow at earliest

A shame because if Nevada could be called it would lead to a possibly hilarious meltdown as Fox is the first and only network to call the election for Biden

[DGuller]

Watching PA vote counts is like watching Zeno's paradox.  The gap keeps shrinking and shrinking, smaller chunk each time, but it doesn't seem to disappear.

[alfred russel]

Yi and Meri, are you reconsidering the idea that it is cool that ballots can still arrive after the polls close? I know that isn't the only (or even main) reason the count is still going, but there is something to be said for getting mail in ballots out with plenty of time, and having it be the voters responsibility to get it to election officials by election day (including in drop boxes) or to vote in person.

Two problems:
1) In a practical sense, the delayed count is destroying any mandate Biden would have had. Historically the votes are counted Tuesday, and one party loses and one wins. The losing party is demoralized, and gives the new president some leeway.

Biden would have won with about 306 electoral college votes, 52% of the vote and a 4 point margin of victory (probably). A resounding win. But instead of feeling defeated, Republicans seem to be energized, and a sizeable group thinking this is being stolen from them. McConnell is openly discussing unprecedented levels of obstructionism.

2) Imagine this becomes a close to tie vote. It comes down to Pennsylvania and the vote margin is 50 votes. You have tens of thousands of absentee ballots floating around that never got submitted. People start trying to send them in, claiming they were submitted before, maybe the post man finds some that slid under the seat in his car, etc. It is a recipe for even more chaos.

[Razgovory]

https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html

This scraper is live sraping every voting block that comes in and reporting the results.

I don't understand this.  Are they saying that Trump will win in Arizona?

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm generally in favor with requiring mail ballots to unequivocally arrive by election day, and if you are choosing to use postal voting you simply need to be very conservative and understand you need to get that ballot mailed 10 days out to have 0.0% chance of it not getting there in time. At 5 days out it's probably 95% chance of getting there in time, but why risk it?

I will reiterate that in PA where they were not allowed to even start counting mail ballots until the polls closed, the vast majority of ballots being counted arrived in time even under this metric. Other states that require mail ballots to arrive by election day, but allowed pre-counting, had their counting done very fast.

[DGuller]

The problem with not allowing the ballots after election day is that it's unfair and not legitimate to throw out valid votes because of failure of post office.  I don't see why we can't have the mail-in deadline be a week before the election, though.  You have at least one week to check and see whether your ballot made it in, and you have remedies in case it didn't come in.

[Sheilbh]

I will reiterate that in PA where they were not allowed to even start counting mail ballots until the polls closed, the vast majority of ballots being counted arrived in time even under this metric. Other states that require mail ballots to arrive by election day, but allowed pre-counting, had their counting done very fast.

Yeah and that was part of a deliberate strategy. So confusion and issues around "legitimacy" are features not bugs of the system in certain states like Pennsylvania. If the goal was a quick, decisive result then they could have a system like, say, Florida's.

[The Brain]

In Sweden mail ballots have to be in time for the start of counting, AFAIK that means no later than election day. Seems fine to me, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about this. If you don't trust the post office to deliver quickly then just vote a bit earlier.

[alfred russel]

Check this twitter feed out of Maria Bartiromo. She is a Fox Business host and previously a long time CNBC host. She is what I guess passes for right leaning but not in the talk show host realm of crazy:

https://twitter.com/MariaBartiromo

Lots of hints of Trump losing because of voter fraud.

I imagine in the true conservative echo chamber / talk show universe it is dramatically worse.

I don't know that most Republican voters are going to accept Trump losing as something other than a fraud. Trump certainly won't lead them there. I expect some doozies in Syt's family thread.