The Politics Megathread

[porkwrangler]

@Kanami-chan
lmao

 

[BestBoy]

@Tamerlane On the contrary, I think their imprecise language is due to the fact they don't know what the data is actually saying. Another reason why their graphs are misleading is the fact they're using a states (florida, minnesota) that counted their mail-in votes early (majority Dem) as a baseline against a states that had to wait till election day to count mail-in ballots. It's common sense that these two strategies in counting are going to have opposite drifts. Plenty of folks have been predicting the exact drifts in that 1st link for weeks now. It's not anomalous. It's excluding context to seem anomalous.

Also I think his point is because most polling is done in major cities and towns, more rural areas or isolated ones that lean republican tend to vote more conservative, hence why they have to "travel further."

By polling do you mean voting? Or ballot counting? Again, those tweets are riddled with errors in regards to how ballot counting is actually done so I want to know what you mean.

I don't think high voter turnout is especially suspicious at the end of a presidential term with lower than average approval (46% vs 55%), nationwide police brutality protests (peppered with instances of more police brutality), and a global pandemic (exacerbated by president's handling), pulling out of an international climate accord, removing stationed troops to punish allies, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if engagement ends up being higher than Vietnam.

I haven't a clue where to find numbers for invalid votes, but the fun thing about those is that they'll be bipartisan.

Results don't match

This, to me, is entirely due to the regular citizen not knowing how the election process works and that it differs from state to state. The ballot counting didn't stop at 3-4am. The live updates from news stations were slow.

Dems have gained seats in the Senate so I'm not sure where you got that from. And they only lost 4 in the House. Not really as big a deal as your making it out to be. Where did the spreadsheet come from?

 

[2SpiritCherokeePrincess]

https://news.yahoo.com/arkansas-pol...-000937083.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=1_04
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-electi...ushed-debunked-sharpiegate-conspiracy-theory/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opin...epublican-bad-faith/ar-BB1aQAfX?ocid=msedgdhp
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/f...rmation-on-fox-news/ar-BB1aQziq?ocid=msedgdhp

 

[Ivegotnolife]

I've been resisting the urge for a while, but this Y**tube channel has tons of great materiel for Trumplicans, and the curious top ten meme browser.

It updates every Monday, here's today's upload, and it covers some of the response to the fraud.

 

[BestBoy]

I was wondering where you were getting your memes from. The low resolution makes sense now.

I guess thinking Gingrich is relevant is a good meme (#9).

 

[Ivegotnolife]

Actually the memes I use were products of Bing image searches.😅

 

[blackyawgdom]

Even Racist Oranges Lawyers are skeptical at his bullshit "FRAUD!!!" claims.

"Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs."

Heres a list of some of the clients Jones Day has defended. " Big Tobacco. Bin Laden family. Owner of the Cleveland Browns football team as he moved the franchise to Baltimore."

 

[Tamerlane]

@Halo

That's not what anomalous means within this context.

It's not strange that based on percentage that a major city overwhelmingly voted democrat.

It's strange that the pattern does not conform to things like Benford's Law nor the Log Graphs that is consistent with other parts of the country that hold similar ratios. What the graph measures in the first link is the constant ratio of votes drafted in the election, so if the ratio was consistently 4 votes for biden for every vote for Trump, it would not be anomalous, but what makes it anomalous is it does not hold to that ratio, indicating that the ballots are not as randomly shuffled because of the postal system as they would be, which could be indicator of tampering. Just because the end result is similar to a past election does not mean that this graph is not accurate.

It seems that you may be intentionally obtuse in this or have just completely misunderstood the point, so I'd recommend not just looking to debunk the point and actually engage with the argument.


@BestBoy
That seems like a likely explanation on the surface, but that only applies to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and doesn't apply to Georgia or Virginia which shows the same anomalies, indicating that it's probably not just that it's a division between mail-in ballots vs regular ballots, because then it would limited to the states that have to count mail-in ballots exclusively on election day.

And, again, statistics have to use imprecise language because statistics is an imprecise science. You can't make concrete statements when dealing with probability usually because very few things are 100% certain. It's still playing the odds. It's not out of malice or ignorance that social scientists do this, it's just because you're never going to be guaranteed unless you already know a given result.

You have to account there are mixed variables in that based on how the media reports things. For instance, it may seem like Trump has low approval ratings, but he's been demonized to such an extent that people are less likely to endorse or support him publicly because they risk social stigma and their standing. Additionally, things like the protests/riots were more likely to be divided based on preexisting views rather than on anything specifically to do with Trump nor that he could control. The same with the virus given there is very little that the President actually has the power to do if you want to be constitutionalist about it, as the President does not have the power in the constitution to enforce nor legislate for what each state should do in a pandemic, nor can he really control the disease itself.

Really I doubt engagement would be as high as Vietnam because Trump has not entered the US into any wars, which is one of his more laudable achievements in his term, as well as the fact that the deaths from something like Corona would not be nearly as impactful or wide-reaching as the Vietnam War by virtue of the fact most people recover from the virus and the fact it's a force of nature depersonalizes it to a degree. Vietnam was nationally televised, which affected public opinion, and nearly everyone knew someone who was drafted into the war, or was involved in the conflict in some way. Paired with the affects of veterans from a psychological standpoint, and yeah, people were much more affected than they ever will be as a whole by any of Trump's policies when taken in totality.

Well, several places had reported they stopped counting for the night. Philadelphia stopped so the pollworkers could sleep, which is what raised the most suspicion of all of the areas. I think this was often conflated to everywhere stopped counting, but the fact there were several hours without updates in states where Trump had a lead that they still had not called for him, and then suddenly there was just these major flips probably did make it seem as if something shady was going on behind the scenes. I don't know how much it is due to ignorance as much as just a lack of solid information, which is why the investigation is needed because it's essentially he-said, she-said by the media and other figures until we can get definitive answers.

The Dems have gained exactly one seat in the senate, not multiple, but the race isn't over yet, and projections look not as good for them in terms of actually controlling it, which is the important part.

The spreadsheet is a compliation of all the results of local county elections.
You can verify the results, even wikipedia has them, so the worry is not about their accuracy or veracity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_election_bellwether_counties_in_the_United_States

@2SpirtCherokeePrincess
That's not what democratic socialism is. Those are social services, which exist under a capitalist system. Democratic Socialism entails the collective ownership of the means of production and private property by which the government as a whole and redistributed under a democratic system. Whether such a system could work is another matter entirely, but needless to say to assume anytime the government does anything with money earned through taxes within a democratic system that the system is a democratic socialist system is absurd.

Government-produced goods and services are not socialism, just as paying people to work your land is not Fuedualism. It's a false eqvuialency.

 

[Halo]

Timur!

indicating that the ballots are not as randomly shuffled because of the postal system as they would be, which could be indicator of tampering.

Where did you get that from?

 

[Tamerlane]

@Halo

The ballots working their way through the mail, getting sorted and thrown together during shipping is essentially like shaking a bucket full of M&M's to the point where the odds of getting any individual one in a blind draw would seem to be completely random, or so close to completely random that it would not be statistically significant. Obviously ones from the same county would all be together, but the ratio within that county should be roughly constant.

Statistics.

 

[Ceildric]

@blackyawgdom

I have serious doubts that any law firm, let alone as one as prestigious as Jones Day, would make such a statement about on-going litigation even under the claim of anonymity. Arguably such attorney or attorneys have committed ethics violations by that statement, and have certainly undermined their client's case if true.

Furthermore, it is fairly self-evident that any challenge or accusation of fraud will call into question the integrity of the voting system, and cause a loss of faith even if found to be 100% true.

 

[Halo]

@Timur Interesting.

It seems reductively easy to see that the basic premise is incredibly flawed here: that ballots are uniformly shuffled in all states. Some very basic things that would cause those exact shifts in the data witnessed:

1. Mail vs Drop Box could very easily have a different ratio, which would easily explain a sharp shift if they counted them in different sets for some states when it's a plateau and a hard line jump.
2. Same goes for any sort of discrete shuffled sets - say they are boxed by the week through early voting, or by county early voting, etc. There's literally dozens of explanations for how you can end up with discrete shuffled sets.
3. If mail ballots are counted in roughly the order received, then any gradual shift may represent that one candidate may have early support fade or strengthen over the course of early voting.
4. All of this also ignores that the time series of reporting may not be from the same counties or mix of counties. Change that mix slowly and you also get a gradual shift.

Basically, you need full insight into exactly how ballots are collected (and vary by state) in order to actually have the central hypothesis hold. With no shred evidence of voter fraud at any level and a very clearly biased author, I don't see this holding any merit. While I understand the idea of trying to consider all data, the resounding lack of any evidence should lessen our resources put towards these unlikely theories.

post / thread

Timur? 🤔

 

[Tamerlane]

@Halo

I would not be confident either way without more information on how the data was collected, then, because this might be legitimate criticism, but it depends on what the data itself says.

Though, the commentator's criticism would depend on how it compares to other states which seem to be more uniform, which the stats seem to lineup are much more consistent, so it would seem odd that these factors only affect select states that like suspect instead of all the states if these problems were consistent.

Plus the comments themselves to be divided on the criticism, so I'll have to do more digging.

 

[Mr_Detective]

There was no evidence that Nixon wiretapped anybody, until there was.
There was no evidence that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 election, until there was.
There is no evidence that the Democrats cheated, for now.
Let's let the FBI and CIA handle this.

It's just so obvious that the mainstream media is just full of shits and they don't even bother hiding their bias anymore.
"Everything went smooth and well. Now shut the fuck up and trust in our demented President-elect and our VP who was chosen because our demented President-elect wanted a minority running mate, as he said himself, and that's why she was chosen, but don't worry, diversity will magically solve every problem this country has, as we have seen in CA and NY."

I don't think the average people in other countries really care about the details of the election. They just see "oh, so someone won" and just move on.

 

[Kanami-chan]

@Mr_Detective Come on, man. You should just trust Twitter and their deboonking machine. You know, the thing.

 

[2SpiritCherokeePrincess]

The blood on Donald Trump's Hands: https://abcnews.go.com/US/faces-coronavirus-pandemic-remembering-died/story?id=69932880

People in other countries? https://www.theodysseyonline.com/how-other-countries-view-the-us-election

 

[Tamerlane]

@2SpiritCherokeePrincess

You can't blame Trump for the pandemic or for people dying in the pandemic.

That's the issue with people, is we want to blame people or things within our control to give us some feigning sense that we have control over the millions of aspects of the universe too far out of grasp, ignorant of our own fragility.

That's the thing about disease is that it's indiscriminate. It doesn't care if you're young, old, rich, poor, what race you are or what skin color you are, it affects everyone all the same seemingly indiscriminately. Hence why Albert Camus used it as a metaphor for the Absurd in "The Plague," which is one of the greatest books on the subject in my opinion.

Probably my favorite moment is when the main character, who is a doctor, just finished treating a little girl who died of the disease and he witnesses a street preacher saying that the disease is God punishing them for their sinfulness, when he basically thinks to himself that's complete nonsense because the little girl he operated on was innocent in every sense of the term. it's a comment on just how desperate our psychology is to link to something we can attach to in order to give us hope or pin our wrath or despair towards.

In truth, even Quarantine can't stop a plague. Not really. It's just delaying the inevitable, as we are still arbitrarily infected and picked off seemingly at random with no purpose or reason to it.


Also that article is from 2016.

 

[BestBoy]

@Tamerlane So we agree that WI, MI and PA aren't anomalous in this data given the context of the ballot counting?

I'm not sure why it's odd that Georgia's shift is late seeing that Fulton County (Atlanta is deep, deep blue) had to delay mail-in ballot counting after the pipe burst, and a couple other counties had to delay when their ballot reading machines weren't reading ballots correctly (these had to be checked by hand). Georgia is going to be recounted regardless, though, because of how close it is so I think we should consider it moot at this point.

Virginia had millions of mail-in ballots counted after election day (remember they have a law that allows postmarked ballots to count). Again, this is how counting works: Election day poll votes are counted and reported that day. Mail-in ballots are counted and reported throughout the week.

Do you think the x-axis changes are so the graphs all look the same? Not sure what effects changing from ballot report time to ballot number might have on the graph.

endorse or support him publicly because they risk social stigma and their standing

I pulled my numbers from the Gallup presidential job approval rating. All their interviews are by phone. Doesn't sound like anyone would be publicly endorsing him or risking social stigma or standing. "This reporting was based on reporting job approval ratings from discrete, multiday surveys."

protests

You aren't thinking about his reaction to the protests, though. In my opinion, the best single event that summarizes how he portrayed the protests is when he cleared out Lafayette Square with tear gas (pepper balls are classified as an organic version of tear gas by the CDC and CS canisters were found on scene) and smoke canisters in order to shoot a promotional video and have a photo op with a Bible. This is undoubtedly reflected in his approval rating.

The same problem with COVID-19. You aren't thinking about what he's said about it. We know for a fact that Trump has purposefully downplayed how dangerous the pandemic was all year. Continuously making snide remarks about doctors and leading health officials who were taking it seriously. In addition, he pushed for potentially dangerous drugs even after it was determined they were not effective treatments. Again, this affects his approval rating a great degree, in my opinion.

Vietnam/COVID-19

U.S. Deaths from COVD-19 (239k) have passed the number of U.S. physical casualties in Vietnam (214k [includes KIA, WIA, MIA, and POW]). I don't really like comparing the Vietnam War to COVID-19 because it feels like a disservice to them both.

Trump hasn't taken us out of any wars were already in, has he? That'd be something to be lauded for.

he-said, she-said by the media and other figures

Personally, I'm putting my trust in the official statements from the various election commissions.

The Dems have gained exactly one seat in the senate

Ya that's my bad. I originally typed "Dems haven't lost any seats" and only changed the middle. The runoff is gonna be incredibly close. Part of the reason for all this electoral fraud bluster is a strategy to invigorate the republican base for that election. It's McConnell's strategy since he'll lose his position as majority leader.

so the worry is not about their accuracy or veracity.

Why is the spreadsheet missing so many bellwether counties? Did you make the spreadsheet?

edit: Also I travel for work tomorrow for about 2 weeks so the fun ends here for me 😢

If there's any participation it'll be sporadic and I (hopefully) won't devote much time to posts.

edit 2: I want to add I definitely believe there will be voter fraud this election. There's going to be more than in previous years simply due to the fact that engagement in this election is way up. In fact I've already posted an example. I do not believe it will be widespread or systemic to the point it overturns the election.

 

[gerent]

You can’t blame Trump for people getting sick from the pandemic. Their health is entirely their own fault because of the choices they make. Common sense, right? Think about it. Like getting e.coli from lettuce, for example. Whose fault is it for catching e.coli? The grocery mart for selling the lettuce? No. The employees for stocking the produce? No. The delivery service for bringing it to the store? No. The immigrants for picking the lettuce? No. The farmers for growing the lettuce? No. The fault in responsibility ultimately rests on the shoulders of the person who chose not to act properly and infect their whole family with e.coli contaminated lettuce. Common sense, right? And besides, only people getting e.coli from lettuce are the people who eat lettuce. So why should non-lettuce eaters be at risk for e.coli spread from actual lettuce eaters? Pointing fingers, avoiding responsibility, passing the blame of your failures onto someone else—seriously, get it together and stop acting like Trump is personally responsible for people getting sick.

 

[Ivegotnolife]

Yesterday's Tucker Carlson Tonight.