US Election Week 2020

[Admiral Yi]

Arizona is looking to go Trump.

The only state in the union where Dems voted in person and Reps voted by mail??

Or are these late counts something other than mail ins?

It's been pleasant chatting with you Hose.  I think we both gained something from this exchange.  Let's do it again soon!

[katmai]

Arizona is looking to go Trump.

The only state in the union where Dems voted in person and Reps voted by mail??

Or are these late counts something other than mail ins?

It's been pleasant chatting with you Hose.  I think we both gained something from this exchange.  Let's do it again soon!

Trump has been narrowing the gap,down to 20,000. but from reports I've read there are about 100k votes outstanding, and Trump would need to get better than 60% to take lead and he's been getting 52-59% of these ballots which have been mainly  ones mailed last weekend or turned in on day of.

[katmai]

Or what I'm trying to say is Dorsey best apologize to the future ex mrs. AR

[Syt]

[crazy canuck]

Arizona is looking to go Trump.

The only state in the union where Dems voted in person and Reps voted by mail??

Or are these late counts something other than mail ins?

You know how Yi is with nicknames that nobody else understands.

Clearly Trump is his nickname for Biden.

[Sheilbh]

Love seeing the UK news channels using gimmicks just like they do for UK elections

Sky News announcing Biden's victory:
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1325114219382116354?s=20

[viper37]

The latest count in Arizona was giving more votes to Trump than Biden, so Yi presumed the more it goes, the more Trump gets closer to a victory.

I'm not passing judgement because I've no idea where the votes to count come from.

[viper37]

Anyway.  Speakig of deplorable:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/incendiary-texts-traced-to-outfit-run-by-top-trump-aide/ar-BB1aM8p9?li=AAggNb9

The messages directed Trump fans to converge at a downtown intersection where hundreds of protesters from the opposing candidates' camps faced off Thursday afternoon. Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground state where former Vice-President Joe Biden's jumped ahead Friday and in a televised address later predicted a victory that would give him the presidency.

"This kind of message is playing with fire, and we are very lucky that it does not seem to have driven more conflict," said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto's online watchdog Citizen Lab. Scott-Railton helped track down the source.

The texts were sent using phone numbers leased to the text-messaging platform Opn Sesame, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition they not be further identified. The company's CEO is Gary Coby, the Trump campaign's digital director. It provides text-messaging services to GOP clients including the Republican National Committee.

"ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump! We need YOU!" the text said, directing recipients to "show your support" on a street corner near the Philadelphia Convention Center where votes were being counted and tensions were running high.

A top Trump campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the message did not come from the campaign. Because Opn Sesame is used by multiple customers, none of whom the company would identify, it could not be determined exactly who sent the message. Coby declined to comment.

Opn Sesame's connection with the messages was first reported by The Washington Post.

Among those who received the rallying text was Chris Bray, who lives in rural Bucks County, about 25 miles outside Philadelphia.

A registered Independent who said he voted for Biden, Bray said he was very surprised to see the message pop up on his phone since he never signed up for anything related to the Trump campaign.

"I actually texted a number of other friends to say 'hey, have you guys been getting robo-texts like this?'" Bray said Friday. "It was a call to action. It borders on that the rhetoric that we've been hearing for months now and that's really dangerous if you get the right people together with a slight screw loose, we just don't know what can happen."

Later Thursday night, two men were arrested near the convention centre for carrying loaded handguns without a permit, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said. District Attorney Larry Krasner said there were no indications they were part of an extremist group. Their vehicle bore a window sticker for the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon and an AR-style rifle and ammunition inside, Outlaw said.

The text messages were sent using 13 different phone numbers identified by RoboKiller, a mobile phone app that lets users block text and voice spam, said company vice-president Giulia Porter. RoboKiller traced the numbers to Twilio, a gateway for bulk-messaging services.

After being notified, Twilio shut down the numbers, saying in a statement that the texts "were sent without consumer opt-out language, which is in direct contravention of our policies." A company spokesman declined further comment.

About 80 million political text messages have been sent daily since September in the U.S. — many of those from the Trump camp echoing his baseless claims that Democrats were trying to steal the election, said RoboKiller's Porter. They are highly targeted.

Political text-messaging campaigns can exploit the same flaws in telecommunications infrastructure that let robocallers hide their origin. They can spoof the numbers they call from and auto-blast thousands of texts with a single mouse click.

Opn Sesame has earned millions as a hub of text-messaging efforts for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee this election cycle, said a digital Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of political retribution.

Facebook and Twitter cracked down on disinformation in the runup to the election, making text messaging and robocalls more attractive to those seeking to spread false and sometimes dangerous messages directly to voters via their phones.

"The extent to which these companies are relying upon loopholes in the law and a lack of regulation in this space has really staggered me," said Sam Woolley, a misinformation and computational propaganda researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.

"They really want to circumvent the need to rely social media firms which is why they are using these private mechanisms," he added. "They are using tech that we don't think of as particularly new, texting, calling, but using them in ways that are very Machiavellian."

[FunkMonk]

Love seeing the UK news channels using gimmicks just like they do for UK elections

Sky News announcing Biden's victory:
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1325114219382116354?s=20

Wait is this how they announce election results in the UK?   

[Sheilbh]

After his time playing golf the President is back and rage-tweeting (a phrase we probably won't need for the next four years).

[Sheilbh]

Wait is this how they announce election results in the UK?   

Something like that - it's normally obvious beforehand but once they cross the amount needed for a majority: cue cheesy graphics going down Downing Street normally to a CGI Boris Johnson/or whoever

Edit: The main difference is they'd normally do it all in the studio but they have to come off the screen because the host is in the US while the studio's still in London.

[The Larch]

More street partying: https://twitter.com/AledaGagarin/status/1325166661834596352

[celedhring]

Wait is this how they announce election results in the UK?   

Something like that - it's normally obvious beforehand but once they cross the amount needed for a majority: cue cheesy graphics going down Downing Street normally to a CGI Boris Johnson/or whoever

The Catalan TV's coverage was inside a virtual White House set 

[Sheilbh]

That's bad even by British gimmick standards.

As I say we do this nonsense for our own elections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWhiDQpzULc

[The Minsky Moment]

This is a very dangerous moment. The architecture of the American electoral process is  far from seamless.  Like much else it relies on people following custom and unwritten rules to work smoothly.  Trump has shown again and again he is completely unconstrained by such norms and views them as vulnerable loopholes to be vigorously exploited.  Trump doesn't need to win legal actions in court on the merits, he just need to disrupt or drag out the process of formally commissioning Electors long enough to prevent a sufficient number of states from certifying slates of Electors by the December 14 deadline for the Electors to meet and cast their votes.  If he can do that, no candidate will secure 270 and the election goes to the House to vote by delegation, where the GOP controls a majority of delegations. This no longer hypothetical speculation, it is Trump's strategy and it appears he has already succeeded in getting important elected GOP officials to cooperate with at least the opening moves.

Quoted for posterity, hoping you're proven entirely wrong; but given your respect on this foreign I fear some of what you've warned again or predicted might come to pass.

I'm feeling a little better now that I saw that Trump's legal effort consists of Rudy and a couple ambulance chasers ranting in the backroom of a Beefsteak Charlie's