The Politics Megathread

[BestBoy]

@Thoraxe41 It would have gone a lot smoother if republican legislature hadn't blocked PA and MI from starting the ballot count of mail-in and early votes before 11/3. Starting counting early is why Florida went so smoothly.

As for Dems doing sketchy shit, that's all misinformation. The tech issues are normal for a presidential election, and the sudden vote jumps are because Trump told all his followers not to vote by mail. So when the mail-in ballots are counted they're 70/30 split at minimum favoring Biden. And while votes from the dead are exceedingly rare, it isn't a cause for alarm. If thousands of votes (the kinds of margins we're looking at in swing states) from dead people was actually happening, it'd require tens of thousand of people to pull off election fraud of that scale, and it'd be discovered almost instantly.

I do think the election process could be simplified, but it'd be a structural change with the electoral college probably.

 

[Tamerlane]

@BestBoy
There's a few issues with that first citation.

1) Saying there's generally low voter fraud in previous elections does not mean that there is not ones in this election. That's an ecological fallacy. Additionally, things like US postal systems tampering with election is a well-documented phenomenon in and of itself.
2) The study being cited in that is citation of a citation, which links to a study from 2004, which is 16 years old.
3) The study in question does not deal with the fraudulent voter mail in general, but specifically of returned mail/ballots and of fraudulent addresses, from which the number comes from. It does not deal with the potential corruption in the form of fraudulent ballots themselves.
4) These studies just indicate voter fraud overall is rare but that does not mean if you concentrate enough votes into specific places that you can't swing an election or a state. If you have a population of a millions of votes, the more likely that percentage of votes is going to matter.

That second article mostly cites longitudinal studies (I say "cites" but it doesn't actually provide links) in places like Oregon, which A) are not being contested right now and B) does not necessarily apply to other states as a whole. It also ignores the issue of the ecological fallacy in that you still can't provide general statistics to individual cases, such as this one.

Additionally, you may have to link me to the article referring to Trump's cases being rejected, but as far as I know, he's only had cases rejected on the grounds that he could not at that point in time name individual people involved, which would be resolved as he begins to investigate more and more into the situation, but the courts would be willing to hear them as soon as he could identify the specific cases he was referring to.

@Tlos Which is why you don't bet money when you know that there's good likelihood like people have been saying for months that a lot of fuckery is going on this year in elections. I'd be curious what would happen if Trump lost in the election but won in the courts. Would they have to return their money, or...?

 

[Kanami-chan]

Repeteadly saying "these technical errors and coincidences that only benefited one side have been debunked, sweetie!" won't convince anyone, sweetie.

 

[Thoraxe41]

@BestBoy

Canada uses paper ballots so no machine errors or sharpie issues. (I blame sharpies on idiots not fraud.) And after years of elections, Machine errors should not be as common as I've been hearing. (Any errors for Trump btw? Actual question, Media just says Trump is wrong, not hearing if any errors went his way.)

And again Canada lol. But our election did not see the kind of Jumps yours did. Though as you said it probably is due to the time which the State Started Counting. I believe we had to wait till election day to count mail in votes.

As for the dead. I do agree the amount is pretty small, it shouldn't be happening. Checking out Donald.win and a group found 3k in Michigan. They really need to put more time and money into making sure the voter list is up to date.

But in the end everything is pointless result wise if Trump doesn't flip Nevada or Arizona.

 

[Tamerlane]

@Thoraxe41 One of the things that it did point out in his sources is that a lot of the dead voting thing heretofore has been mostly clerical error, but in the age of the internet, there is the issue that names get caught in systems so someone in theory could go under such an alias, even if it is rare.

 

[porkwrangler]

Hope the election fraud can be proven by concrete evidence and not just statistically like it already has. If it isn't - the space program is utterly fucked. That's all I care about as a non-burger, even though having the 'I fucking love science'-crowd fucking themselves up the ass is pretty entertaining. It's as though all they care about is getting the candidate that pays only lipservice for their cause, but never distributes the cash needed to achieve those causes. That said, only 3/4 of people in Philly can even read, so I guess that could explain the results also.

Edit: Also, what a fucking shit-show American elections are. Since when did requiring an ID become the same as trying to stop people from voting? We have it in Finland, which makes it a lot harder to fake in-person votes. As for mail-in - I think it would be good idea to require people signing in through a portal which checks their identity before they're able to request a ballot be sent to their address. If a trading-site can do it, then so can a government.

 

[Mr_Detective]

Well, in any case, at this point, let's just consider it a loss for Trump. Regardless of the outcome, Americans will have to put up with another loud-mouth idiot for 4 more years until someone better comes along. Let's see how much more fucked up this country can get in 4 years. Just grab your popcorn and soda. Or maybe it's enough time to learn some skills, save money, and bail the sinking ship, either to another state or another country altogether if things become too hopeless. Lol.

Personally, I felt that this election was a complete loss for me the moment the Dem nominee was decided back in March. I felt little hope of the next 4 years after Andrew Yang dropped out, and then Biden being nominated was the final nail in the coffin. Wonder what kind of drama the leftist media will try to cause now that Trump has lost, in order to get more ratings. Surely they wanted him to win so they'd have more materials.

 

[BestBoy]

@Tamerlane

1) Just to clarify are you saying the ecological fallacy is implying there's 0 voter fraud or low voter fraud? And you're going to have to provide a link in regards to the USPS thing. It's not that I don't believe you, it's just I don't know what you mean by USPS tampering with elections. If you're referring to DeJoy dragging his feet to jeapordize 150,000 mail-in ballots, then yes I agree. Systematic voter suppression like that is happening, but it's important to note it was the President who installed DeJoy into that position.

2) The age of the study is irrelevant if the data is sound, and I'm not sure what you mean that the brennan center report is a "citation of a citation of a citation." It's a report with over 200 citations showing that voter fraud is historically low and that even if all the allegations listed in the report were true, existing laws would have caught them and prevented those votes.

3)Sure, the brennan center report isn't about mail-in voting. That's why I provided the second link. When you say "fraudulent votes themselves" are you referring to ballot stuffing?

4) I guess? But wouldn't the logic follow that if that type of widespread voter fraud was occurring, the side doing it wouldn't have done so poorly in the house and senate elections? It also doesn't account for the number of individuals required to pull off 5000-10000 fraudulent votes. I looked around and of the few instances of legitimate electoral fraud I found, none of them exceeded 1000 fraudulent votes. Not sure if there's a good resource to see how many fraudulent votes are usually found in actual cases of fraud.

Which states would you like articles about? Though, I get the feeling that it doesn't matter how many I link, because you won't believe any of them.

The court decisions have been pretty well reported. Surprised you haven't seen them. Googling "trump court cases" brings up a bunch of articles. I will cede this, because I hadn't realized just how many cases had been filed. I thought it was 5-7, but it looks more like 11 because they some were filed in both state and federal court. There are maybe 1 or 2 that are important. The postmark one is in my eyes the biggest, but it might become moot since Biden is leading in Penn without the postmarked ballots already. The rest are very small potatoes. Lawsuits involving individuals. An observer doesn't like where he was placed, or someone who doesn't like the automatic signature readers. The biggest problem so far for a lot of them is they lack evidence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/us/politics/election-courts.html

Here's a court reporter that's been live tweeting the court calls:

https://twitter.com/alanfeuer

@Kanami-chan

I can't help it if you want to reject reality and embrace conspiracy. Though, you should be glad the tech issues were resolved since they were benefiting the side you don't like.

@Thoraxe41

I've really only heard of machine errors in Anterim county Michigan. And if it's true that there were issues I definitely think counties using those machines should audit their votes.

Biggest election error in trump's favor are the 150,000 ballots the USPS processed on Nov. 4. There's no way to tell how many of them were in states that won't count them because they were late. The USPS is also missing a little under 5000 ballots, but that could be due to the court ordered rush the workers were under.

The sharpie thing is odd. Basically everyone, the Department of Homeland Security, the Maricopa County Elections Department, and the NV State Attorney General have said the sharpies did not result in any disenfranchisement of voters. In other words that the sharpies are okay.

The dead can linger in the system a while. Some states are more vigilant about doing spring cleaning of their voter polls than others. I doubt any of the dead votes were counted. The votes have to be cross checked with their qualified voter file, which is kept up to date with help from the Social Security Administration. At least that's my understanding of it from Michigan SoS Benson's explanation.

https://twitter.com/MichSoS/status/1324391461014675456/photo/1

I think he'd have to flip PA as well since Biden is ahead there by about 30k votes.

 

[Tamerlane]

@porkwrangler

As a rough evaluation of Trump just from the top of my head, here's what I liked and disliked from his time in office so far:

What I liked:
-Space program expansion
-Ban on Critical Race Theory
-Price Transparency in Healthcare
-Antitrust Suite on Google and other big tech
-Criticizing China and trying to bring back jobs (I think China's slowly becoming a Fascist state, so trying to remove power from them is good)

Basically his left-wing positions
What I don't like:
-Still don't like the Wall (waste of time and money)
-General policies such as having his staff always stay at Trump Hotels (corrupt)
-Tendency to spread misinformation
-Removing the Corona subsidies during the election
-Muslim ban did diddley dick and was a waste of time
-His cabinet is awful (Neocons and Creationists everywhere) and I hate Pence as someone from Indiana where Pence dicked over
-He's a bit too egotistical and that self-centeredness and ostentatious nature can be his downfall at times

 

[BestBoy]

I look forward to the end of this race and the subsequent recounts and court cases so I can close the 30 tabs I've got open covering it all.

Also walls of text are tiring. I took a break and ate BBQ watched Mandalorian, and then had icecream.

 

[Tamerlane]

@BestBoy

1) An ecological fallacy is when you apply statistical data to an individual case and assume that because something is unlikely or likely that this should not be the case here, even if the case may be an exception to an overall trend or example within a dataset. What I'm saying is that in a typical election your voter data may be accurate, but this is not relevant to whether or not there was election fraud HERE.

2) Age of the data can certainly skew accurateness when it's measuring something that is not constant on a societal level, or if things are prone to change. For instance, demographics are a big one that are always in flux, but percentage of people who commit crimes may also change from year to year as well as other factors based on numerable factors within a socio-political and economic framework. If voter fraud has become more or less common over time, the study you cited wouldn't account for that and would just be accurate for the time period selected.

And what I meant was that the data to that specific claim was linked on a website that redirected to a metanalysis was citing a study that I could not find due to it's age.

3) Not necessarily Ballot stuffing specifically because the issue of more voters than people in certain states was cleared up as a misconception earlier. Absentee Ballot Fraud is more likely the case, though it's likely a mix of different types of fraud if the reports are being believed

4) None of these in the New York times article are on behalf of Trump and most of them are "pending," not rejected like you said. I'm more or less waiting for a proper investigation before I believe much at this point if I'm being honest, but I'm hoping a lot of the voter fraud does turn out to be false just because it will ensure less corruption overall. Hence why I'm also skeptical about reporters on twitter because anyone can go to the side that agrees with them and find examples for the resolutions they want, hence why I'm just wanting an investigation to see if what's being said is accurate.

 

[Tamerlane]

@BestBoy
I can't wait until this election is over so we can be done with this and start arguing about shit that really matters, like who is best girl.

>Walls of text are tiring

How dare you insult my culture like this

 

[porkwrangler]

@Tamerlane

I think I can -- at least broadly speaking -- agree with every point you've made

Pretty much the only point I'd contest is The Wall, which could've been beneficial. 'Good fences make for good neighbors' seems to hold true when reading through peer-reviewed publications. E.g. many assert that the Yugoslav Wars would've never happened if the country would've had good natural borders akin to Switzerland.

 

[Tamerlane]

@porkwrangler

My argument against the wall is that it would be largely inefficient against any illegal immigration that would come from planes or staying until the visa is expired. It might be more effective at certain times, but trying to build a wall against uneven terrain that stretches for hundreds of miles that goes through various states and people's houses would be a bureaucratic nightmare, especially if we ever wanted to buy land from Mexico again.

Plus upkeep is an issue and I'd be curious if we have any statistics on how much it stops vs how much we've spent on it and how that compares to regular operations

 

[porkwrangler]

@Tamerlane

All valid points. I don't think it'd have much of an impact on illegal immigration either in the long term. After all, all that's required is pretty much crossing the border and requesting asylum after which any country in the UN is mandated to hear them out. I do think though that it could have a positive impact on reducing drugs crossing the borders. I don't have objective data to show but based on my subjective observations during the pandemic and closed borders, the consumption of hard drugs such as meth-amphetamines dropped due to shortages. People in turn opted to go for softer drugs like cannabis at least based on observations I made on local dark-web sites ( also, RIP Torilauta ).

 

[2SpiritCherokeePrincess]

Repeteadly saying "these technical errors and coincidences that only benefited one side have been debunked, sweetie!" won't convince anyone, sweetie.

If you believed that you wouldn't be repeatedly lying about voter fraud.

Remember when Trump liked sharpies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V5SWDlMrZg&feature=emb_logo

 

[BestBoy]

@Tamerlane I will get back to you on this in the morning.

text wall

Once I finished the first part addressed to you I refreshed two more times and more people had commented in the time it took to write it up. It was very disheartening.

 

[axelTHEGREAT]

#StopTheSteal

 

[Caseythedog345]

Only in American “democracy” is counting all the votes bad lmao

 

[immortalartisan]

I miss Obama and his full sentences. I also miss all the people who actually would be affected by their decisions running and having a chance.