Final Vote—All States, Progress in counting

[Kemp]

Ladies and gentlemen. The next Senator from Alabama:

 

 

[ALF]

US election security officials reject Trump's fraud claims

 

US election officials have said the 2020 White House vote was the "most secure in American history", rejecting President Donald Trump's fraud claims.

 

"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," a committee announced.

 

They spoke out after Mr Trump claimed without proof that 2.7 million votes for him had been "deleted".

 

Thursday's joint statement was released by the Election Infrastructure Government Co-ordinating Council - which is made up of senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the US Election Assistance Commission as well as state-level officials who oversee elections and representatives of the voting machine industry.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54926084

[Backintheday544]

On 11/12/2020 at 7:22 AM, RealKayAdams said:

 

<<< RealKayAdams fidgets with her red grading pen, adjusts her nerdy reading glasses, sternly gazes at her laptop screen. >>>

 

We are 8.5 days past Election Night. It’s time to grade our predictions! I’ll do mine:

 

President: 50 out of 53 (assumptions: Arizona and Georgia hold for Biden). Not bad, Kay! Not bad at all. I was wrong in both Arizona and Georgia by about 0.3% (<15k votes) each. I apparently don’t follow Omaha politics closely enough. Grade: A.

 

Senate: 30 out of 33 (excluding Georgia). The Tillis race in NC was a slight surprise to me. I badly underestimated Ernst in Iowa and Collins in Maine. The fate of the world depends on the 2 Georgia runoff elections in January, and I still like my original choices here of Perdue winning and Loeffler losing. My bold prediction of the Dems taking back control of the Senate doesn’t look like it will come to fruition, but there were just too many expected close Senate races this year…I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Grade: B-.

 

House: I predicted the Dems to gain a dozen seats, but so far it looks like they will instead lose about half of that. We’re talking about 435 individual battles, so there is a fair amount of uncertainty here and I only closely follow the big Congressional names plus NYC tri-state area races. Hey, at least I correctly predicted the party that will have majority control. Grade: C.

 

Governors: 11 out of 11. The electoral prediction equivalent of spelling one’s own name correctly at the beginning of a test. Grade: A+.

 

Overall 2020 Election Day grade: B. There was a red wave competing with a blue one on November 3. For the executive branch, I (more or less) correctly predicted the wave crests relative to the polls. I did so mainly with a combination of the “shy Trump voter” polling theory and the expected enthusiasm gap between Biden’s voter base and Trump’s base. For the legislative branch, however, it looks like I went a bit in the opposite direction and placed too much trust in the polls. The “shy Trump voter” effect appears to have followed the Reps down ballot somewhat and did not distinguish between government branches as I thought it would have done. Perhaps I also let some of my own personal judgments of candidate quality (namely, Ernst and Collins) slip in and cloud my perception of what their constituents think? Oh well. Live and learn.

 

Brief takeaways from this whole ordeal:

 

1. Polls are difficult to trust when you have such a polarizing non-traditional candidate at the top of the ticket like Donald Trump. Compare average poll accuracy between the 2018 midterm and both the 2016 and (especially) the 2020 elections. Do I owe Trafalgar and Rasmussen apologies??

 

2. “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s a phrase I’ve heard many times before, and it’s one that I believe best summarizes American electoral politics. Even with a once-per-century pandemic where polling data indicated that a large majority of Americans cared most about the health crisis issue and believed the challenger to be more capable of managing it, the incumbent with a slight polling edge on economic issues greatly overperformed and nearly pulled off a bigger upset than in 2016. Was economic anxiety the real determinant of the discrepancy between polls and results? I don’t know, but I’m raising it as a possibility.

 

3. Electoral demographics are shifting in the Sun Belt and in the Rust Belt as I type. A superficial post-election analysis might conclude that Trump’s legacy and the aging GOP voter base are dooming the party. A deeper analysis might indicate major Democratic Party vulnerabilities with Latinos (primarily over economic issues) and with working class whites (primarily over cultural issues) that the GOP can potentially exploit.

 

4. Election integrity should be a bipartisan issue. Sensible protections against voter fraud and voter suppression in 2022+ must be implemented ASAP so to not add fuel to future conspiracy theory fires. I’ll throw in proposals for an Election Day national holiday and for ranked choice voting if we want to get serious about free and fair elections, although I think we all know why those two ideas won’t be pushed (answer: status quo maintenance for the one-party corporate oligarchical establishment).

 

5. Corporate mainstream media is corrupt and social media is corrupting. We are all animals on a British farm circa 1984. Is there any doubt now? Does anyone on either political side disagree?

 

6. Accompanying the continued erosion of public trust in institutions of knowledge and expertise is a rapidly expanding communication divide between the two political sides. It’s one thing to distrust people on the other side, but it’s quite another to completely cut off contact with friends/family/news sources whose views may differ from yours! I find these societal developments to be very dangerous and troubling indeed.

 

And on a related note with point #6…anyone know what’s happening with The Great Right-Wing Bills Fan Message Board Exodus of October 2020?? Are they coming back to PPP soon or was their move intended to be permanent? Should we instead migrate over there? I do miss our Trump-loving Bills fans terribly and worry about them isolated in their unchallenged right-wing internet echo chamber (just as this place is slowly becoming one for the left…).

 

Also, will PPP be transitioning from “sub-forum” status to “club” status soon? If so, should we hold elections for club owners and club moderators? I recommend a decision-making triumvirate of owner, left-leaning moderator, and right-leaning moderator. Voting criteria should include familiarity with PPP’s longstanding culture of vigorous free speech, knowledge and passion for politics, enough free time to visit TBD regularly, mental stability, and good people skills. I think BuffaloHokie13 volunteered to be club owner at one point. A few names I would nominate for moderator on the left-leaning (or anti-Trump) side include Doc Brown, ALF, SoTier, Capco, BullBuchanan, shoshin, and Tiberius. Some names for me on the right-leaning (or anti-Biden) side would include Foxx, Azalin, KRC, GG, 3rdnlng, IDBillzfan, and leh-nerd skin-erd. I know I’m forgetting a lot of other good moderator candidates right now. Please don’t take your exclusion personally!!!

 

EDIT: A grammar mistake. Poo. So…no replies to the last two paragraphs of my post??

no apologies to Trafalgar.

 

Last Polls from them:

PA - Trump +2

MI - Trump +2

AZ - Trump +3

 

 

 

[jrober38]

7 hours ago, Kemp said:

Ladies and gentlemen. The next Senator from Alabama:

 

 

They thrive off of ignorance and stupidity.

 

You need both to be in the cult. 

[Backintheday544]

GA called and NC called. Biden 306. Will have more electoral votes than Trump in 2016!

[The Frankish Reich]

3 minutes ago, Backintheday544 said:

GA called and NC called. Biden 306. Will have more electoral votes than Trump in 2016!

Actually I think that's exactly the same as the Trump margin vs. Clinton.

But overall, Biden outperformed -- +5 million votes nationally, about a 3.5 percentage point margin now.

The pollsters took a beating, and nationally they did call about a 7 point margin for Biden. So it was half of that. Some state polls were way, way off, but that's true both ways. It just so happens that some of the big misses were in battleground states (Wisconsin). My state -- Colorado -- was polling as Biden +10. It wound up being Biden + 14. Likewise for Minnesota - Trump thought it was competitive, it ended as Biden +7.

But it is well and truly over. Trump had a notion that he could get the courts to intervene to save him. The only one I think he may win doesn't matter: the PA 3-day extension to receive mail-in ballots. Otherwise we have to remember that courts, particularly the Supreme Court, tend to be conservative with a small "c." In other words, they are extremely hesitant to intervene in elections. Even in Bush v. Gore the rule is best summarized as this: if state courts intervene in a manner that makes it unlikely that they can meet election certification/electoral college deadlines, the Supreme Court will stop the intervention. That decision was greatly criticized. I thought it got it right at the time, and the principle today is still important. So far none of the lawsuits (except the PA late mail ballot one) have any real chance of success.

 

It's over. Let's get on with the next 4 years. Right now, I'm kind of liking that:

- Trump is done

- Pelosi may be too, given the poor performance by Dems in House races

- The Senate hangs in the balance, with middle of the road types like Collins and Romney now holding the swing vote

 

But that's me. I'm a radical centrist.

 

 

 

[Backintheday544]

30 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Actually I think that's exactly the same as the Trump margin vs. Clinton.

But overall, Biden outperformed -- +5 million votes nationally, about a 3.5 percentage point margin now.

The pollsters took a beating, and nationally they did call about a 7 point margin for Biden. So it was half of that. Some state polls were way, way off, but that's true both ways. It just so happens that some of the big misses were in battleground states (Wisconsin). My state -- Colorado -- was polling as Biden +10. It wound up being Biden + 14. Likewise for Minnesota - Trump thought it was competitive, it ended as Biden +7.

But it is well and truly over. Trump had a notion that he could get the courts to intervene to save him. The only one I think he may win doesn't matter: the PA 3-day extension to receive mail-in ballots. Otherwise we have to remember that courts, particularly the Supreme Court, tend to be conservative with a small "c." In other words, they are extremely hesitant to intervene in elections. Even in Bush v. Gore the rule is best summarized as this: if state courts intervene in a manner that makes it unlikely that they can meet election certification/electoral college deadlines, the Supreme Court will stop the intervention. That decision was greatly criticized. I thought it got it right at the time, and the principle today is still important. So far none of the lawsuits (except the PA late mail ballot one) have any real chance of success.

 

It's over. Let's get on with the next 4 years. Right now, I'm kind of liking that:

- Trump is done

- Pelosi may be too, given the poor performance by Dems in House races

- The Senate hangs in the balance, with middle of the road types like Collins and Romney now holding the swing vote

 

But that's me. I'm a radical centrist.

 

 

 

actually, it’s not. Faithless electors had Trump only end up with 304. The Supreme Court case after that makes it almost impossible now for that to happen.

[TBBills]

So can any Trump supporters tell me how you feel about Trump after this?

 

Four years being fed bull#### from a man who wanted nothing more but to scream "Jump" and too get you to scream "How High?". He has stopped even working for the republican people just b.c he lost, hid, and played golf while you all fought. Thinking what you see isn't for real, him putting in your mind this wild conspiracy that could only be believed if you were brainwashed.

 

I don't hold this against you, it is how many of the worst people end up with jobs like that, they can fool almost anyone. Maybe a few more days to understand exactly what he was doing with you as an American. Do not worry, he will become a citizen again and will no longer be heald above the law. 

Edited November 13, 2020 by TBBills

[The Frankish Reich]

1 hour ago, Backintheday544 said:

actually, it’s not. Faithless electors had Trump only end up with 304. The Supreme Court case after that makes it almost impossible now for that to happen.

Ahh, I had forgotten about the faithless electors.

Of course, if you listen to certain nutcases, Trump's alternative electors appointed by Republican legislators will shift about 50 electoral votes his way in the final count ....

[Warcodered]

8 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Ahh, I had forgotten about the faithless electors.

Of course, if you listen to certain nutcases, Trump's alternative electors appointed by Republican legislators will shift about 50 electoral votes his way in the final count ....

I don't want to see the meltdown that would follow something like that, I mean people thought there were riots before.

[The Frankish Reich]

1 minute ago, Warcodered said:

I don't want to see the meltdown that would follow something like that, I mean people thought there were riots before.

That would be straight into banana republic territory.

"Because we believe the voting/counting in [Michigan/Georgia/Pennsylvania/Arizona] was rife with fraud, our only remedy is to appoint electors based on who we really think would have won a clean election."

[daz28]

If your wondering if Trump lost by a LANDSLIDE, just look to the many, many examples of him saying that this score IS a landslide, even though he LOST by 2 million votes.  How big of a landslide would he have been calling it if he WON by 5 million.  Think about that.