That’s a heavy R county. So unless Dems vote by mail at a much higher rate than gop you’re going to end up with more republican votes put aside until the 4th.
I know conventional wisdom is Democrat’s will vote by mail more in the pandemic but we don’t know thst for sure and we especially don’t know by how much. This could backfire on them
Well, per Taramoor above, there's some fear/chance that this county (or one like it) gets used as the test case that comes up before the SCOTUS and provides them with an excuse to say that every ballot everywhere received after 12:01 should be tossed, and to hell with state law or, well, anything.
The basis for these decisions is tied up in facts specific to the case; it's basically impossible to imagine them setting up a precedent that would apply to all states equally regardless of what each state's legislature, governor, and secstate wanted.
I'm not saying they couldn't try do that, but it would have no relation whatsoever to the logic displayed in this or any other case.
I agree that they're playing Calvinball a lot of the time here, but the downside (upside?) of Calvinball is that nothing you do creates any kind of durable precedent for a future play.
This is a day old so sorry if you guys covered it already, but I just saw the news report about only half of mail-in ballot requests have been sent in.
vidja
Can't you also drop off mail-in ballots in-person on election day?
A bunch of people probably requested them before the Republicans started fucking with USPS.
My sister requested a ballot, but once it became possible that might not work she voted in person.
Here in CA for the last half-dozen elections or so I just drop my vote-by-mail ballot off at the nearest polling place on election day. Not planning to change my approach this time around - is that not too common an option elsewhere? Doesn't seem too radical, would hope that's available most places.
Some states the mail in ballot has to be mailed back in and not dropped.
I'm gonna break my rule on only viewing this thread in incognito mode (seeing 'X new' posts creates a bit too much incentive to click) to post this little interactive article by Nicky Case from four years ago, To Build a Better Ballot. The recent discussion reminded me of it and I needed to look at it to refresh my memory on the broad plusses and minuses of the various voting systems.
Alrighty, then. Back to your regularly-scheduled discussion then, don't mind me.
Nice. One of the money quotes from this website:
Under Instant Runoff, it's possible for a winning candidate to lose, by becoming more popular. What a glitch!
The argument is if
9 rank A B C
12 rank B C A
8 rank C A B
Then in plurality B wins and ranked choice A wins. Thats the point. His worst case framing is the whole point.
I don’t think you get the problems. Under ranked choice A wins. But if B gets hit by a bus then under ranked choice C wins. So B is a spoiler. Ranked choice’s biggest selling point is that you can vote for who you really want without wasting your vote on a spoiler. But this simple example shows that ranked choice does not eliminate spoilers.
And while this example is indeed a worst case scenario (in the sense that it shows that so many different things can go wrong), these kinds of things actually happened in actual elections held with ranked choice voting. For example, the 2009 Burlington Vermont mayor election: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election#Results
Kiss won.
You can verify the following facts:
-if Wright were not in the race then Kiss loses to Montroll (so Wright was a spoiler).
-if enough Wright voters had switched their votes to rank Kiss first then Kiss loses (to Montroll)! This is insane. A candidate should not be harmed gaining more support, and yet that is exactly what ranked choice allows.
For the sake argument, let's refer to them as Kiss - Progressive (P), Montroll - Dem (D) and Wright - Republican (R).
All you're saying here is that the D+R|D voting bloc was bigger than the P+D|P bloc, but the scenario in which the furthest left candidate genuinely "earns" support from the rightmost candidate, and is then punished for it, is not a terribly likely scenario. This only happens in computer simulations that don't actually account for how or why people actually vote. The notion of 'strategically' voting for the candidate you hate in order to elect your second choice seems far less effective, or intuitive, than just voting for your second choice first. IE: Pre-emtively compromising. I have no issue with a system that rewards that.
In this case, it happened that the D candidate was ultimately acceptable to more voters than the P, and had the R been eliminated first, that would have been revealed. This is not an argument in favor of FPTP, rather, it is an argument in favor of an overall approval system; a metric which RCV is still far better suited at determining than FPTP.
I'm certainly willing to hear out an approval system, but FPTP would have crowned the R, the least popular of the three, in round 1.
I feel like any voting system is going to have an means by which to present a pathological case with seemingly irrational results like "You can reverse the order of candidates and the same person wins" in theirs.
Also, they aren't "reversing" the results. They're reversing the preferences they defined in which A is still the second choice of the smallest group, and now the first choice of the largest group.
They chose those numbers, and those preference ranks. If the second group was BAC, then 'reversing' the results does not select for A, and C is the clear winner. That analysis is either riddled with oversights or incredibly disingenuous.
Gonna respond to as many of these comments about voting systems as I can and then go to bed.
Your example of the Burlington mayoral race makes no sense; you're assuming behavior on the part of the voters in a counterfactual that we can't measure, and you're just flat wrong that if you take Wright out of the race before voting starts and more of those voters go to Kiss than to Montroll then that helps Montroll. You need to check that math again. It's also just plainly nonsense: you're talking about a counterfactual in which a majority of republican voters' second choice is the farther left candidate than the centrist candidate... what?
No, Wright (R) is still IN the race and a number of Republicans DISHONESTLY decide to vote for far-left Kiss over Wright, knowing that the more centrist and therefore better (by the R perspective) candidate Montroll will beat Kiss in a head to head comparison if those are the last two candidates. It's 100% rational on their part, and the fact that it WORKS is insane. In practice it can also mean that a candidate that is ahead in the polls should be wary of picking up too much additional support, as that could cause them to lose because of how it could change the order that other candidates in the race get eliminated.
2000 Florida is frustrating because Nader voters almost certainly preferred Gore to Bush. That scenario is not substantially different than the example above. It mitigates the spoiler effect.
The fact that ranked choice would have saved us in one election does not mean that it is the right choice for all elections going forward, especially if it can lead to bigger problems down the road. And actually, ranked choice may or may not have saved us in that election because if the election were held with ranked choice then there may have been any number of other candidates on the ballot as well. The whole race would have been different. In a better way? Maybe! But not definitely.
Also now I really would love to see the results of our ranked choice election run through the Condercet method.
Dunno what you mean because ranked choice is not a Condorcet method. In the Burlington example, Montroll beats everyone else in head to head comparisons. But ranked choice elects Kiss.
I feel like I'm missing something about the argumentation, but it seems like it just takes centrism itself as an established good thing, which is not something I think makes sense.
Actually it doesn't but you have to read a lot more of the website to get that. Ranked choice unfairly favors extremists (as in, extremists win more than they "should" with ranked choice). Approval voting is shown elsewhere on the site to favor centrists (as in, centrists win more than they "should" with approval). The system advocated by the website, score voting, shows little to no inherent bias.
Also the other page on this site about how minority representation is bad in IRV systems uses the US Congress as an example of how a plurality-based system is better for minority representation and just what even the fuck.
I believe they mean that plurality based system is better than IRV for minority representation. They are both bad, and the website as a whole is pretty clear about that.
Edit: Is part of the idea is that there's a chance that you do not get representation that matches your preferences because you can't really manage to express "I would like X 100%, I would settle for Y like 5%, and I hate Z so much I want them to be sent to the sun -1000%", since the rank distances are all the same?
Yes, EXACTLY. We need score-based rather than just crude ranking-based methods.
This looks like a good one, yes. It's fundamentally score-based and avoids many of the incentives baked into other systems (like ranked choice!) that incentivize you to vote dishonestly.
I feel like the plurality system has often produced standout bad results that make me inclined to go for any other option, but I assume that IRV isn't the ideal option either. Maybe Range Voting is! Or actually I feel like I like the STAR voting page makes a very compelling argument and does not have web design that hurts my eyes.
Yeah, the dude who built that score voting page sucks at web design and he seems like a bit of a nutter, but the arguments check out. Personally I'm all for score, STAR, and/or approval. I think there will be some huge unintended consequences with ranked choice, largely because people are uninformed about it. Ranked choice sounds great. In practice it falls apart.
I feel like any voting system is going to have an means by which to present a pathological case with seemingly irrational results like "You can reverse the order of candidates and the same person wins" in theirs.
Not score or approval! STAR has pathological results but seems to do a good job of minimizing people's incentives to vote dishonestly.
And it really only gets weird when the vote counts are pretty close together, which is easy to produce in toy examples with 30 voters but seems unlikely to occur often in the real world.
Pathologies in ranked choice have been found in many real world elections including the Burlington one I talked about upthread. Burlington then voted to get rid of ranked choice a year later!
I feel like looking at other voting systems is a bit premature for America.
I agree but I feel like we really need to go down the right path when it's time for that. Fargo started doing approval voting this year!
How does this example show that at all? All it demonstrates is that B supporters prefer C to A. Which is how they voted, so they are getting what they wanted under the circumstances.
This was in the context of discussing spoilers. No, the B supporters DO NOT get what they want under ranked choice, because their most hated candidate A wins. They would have gotten what they wanted (C beats A) if B WASN'T there. That's why B was a spoiler.
The notion of 'strategically' voting for the candidate you hate in order to elect your second choice seems far less effective, or intuitive, than just voting for your second choice first. IE: Pre-emtively compromising. I have no issue with a system that rewards that.
Pre-emptively compromising is one of the reasons why ranked choice eventually, when held over enough elections, degenerates back into two-party (or one-party) rule. And to pre-emptively compromise, you need to put your second choice ahead of your first choice. So much for incentivizing people to vote for their favorite, without fear of "wasting" their vote!
This is not an argument in favor of FPTP, rather, it is an argument in favor of an overall approval system; a metric which RCV is still far better suited at determining than FPTP.
Since I am the one who started this discussion and I am the one you quoted in your response I feel like you are talking to me directly, so let me be clear: I am not advocating for FPTP. I am advocating against ranked choice. I said in my first post on the matter that proper voting reform requires a score-based system. That would be something like score, approval (which is score but where the only scores allowed are 0 and 1), or STAR.
States have weeks to finalize the count. There is literally no legal method to make people stop counting on November 4th.
Trump also apparently think Californians have masks bolted to their face or some shit, I’m not terribly concerned with the trash coming out of his mouth.
If SCOTUS says the count is over the count is over. We can crow about how it’s not legal till the cows come home but if SCOTUS does it it’s legal.
In Bush v Gore SCOTUS stopped recounts before the certification date. They’re already setting up to stop counts from the language Kavanaugh used in his one of his concurrences.
My problems with the anti-ranked-choice page are several but the biggest two are:
* The very first argument they make against the process is, "Look at these votes and the result. Doesn't that feel wrong?!" And I was like, "No... that looks like the best choice from those results to me..."
* Their example is A, B, and C but then when explaining in more words they use Amy, Bob, and... Jim. Why?!
Being unimpressed by "the smell test" is fine, but to be fair to that page it does follow up with a bunch of examples of straightforwardly pathological features of the example they gave--which I did not actually go through and check myself, but w/e--which are all of the same basic form, namely that IRV rewards strategic voting. Sometimes some subset of voters ranking someone ~higher~ can actually make them ~do worse,~ or ranking someone ~lower~ can actually make them ~do better.~ That's generally regarded as a bad thing in voting systems.
I have no view on IRV vs other systems overall or how often these theoretical pathologies would actually arise in modern electoral systems. That page argues that they are extremely common but also it's some random page of text from a dude I've never heard of outside my area of expertise so
Mostly I just wanted to make the comment about Jim.
I feel like any voting system is going to have an means by which to present a pathological case with seemingly irrational results like "You can reverse the order of candidates and the same person wins" in theirs. Ranked choice is certainly not without issues but it seems like an easy-to-understand system which some US state(s?) already use and is, at the very list, better than the system we've got.
The scenarios where you get pathological results seem like they'd require a lot of coordination. One person can't make a candidate do worse by ranking them higher. And it really only gets weird when the vote counts are pretty close together, which is easy to produce in toy examples with 30 voters but seems unlikely to occur often in the real world.
Tournaments don’t, they always select the condorcet winner if one exists, but tournaments take a LONG time.
Anyway you are generally correct and this was proven in 1951
My favorite part about election season is talking about Arrows Impossibly Theorem.
generally pa counties count absentee votes after election day, because until this year there was no mail in/no excuse absentee system. so mail in ballots existed, but in very small numbers generally, almost never enough to really matter in an election.
while it might be an attempt at ratfuckery, i do think there is something to the fact that they literally probably don't have people to count them because they're running the election, and this is all new to everyone.
States have weeks to finalize the count. There is literally no legal method to make people stop counting on November 4th.
Trump also apparently think Californians have masks bolted to their face or some shit, I’m not terribly concerned with the trash coming out of his mouth.
If SCOTUS says the count is over the count is over. We can crow about how it’s not legal till the cows come home but if SCOTUS does it it’s legal.
In Bush v Gore SCOTUS stopped recounts before the certification date. They’re already setting up to stop counts from the language Kavanaugh used in his one of his concurrences.
This. This is what worries/scares me. That they find some flimsy excuse to work backward from the ruling they want to make, which need not set precedent if they declare it applies to "this election" as a whole.
Because, well, there won't be any more after that. Or none that matter.
i honestly don't think it makes sense to worry about scotus stopping counting the vote until it happens, because it's the end of democracy in the us, and then we have significantly bigger problems.
justice kavanaugh has made his decision, now let him enforce it. if we're already playing calvinball, why does it matter what they say.
just as likely that gov. wolf and the secretary of state force pa to finish counting the ballots as state law doesn't even require counties to start counting until 3 days after the election. preliminary results don't have to be in until the 10th, a full week after the election. final results don't have to be in until DECEMBER 3rd, a full month after the election. short of sending in federal troops and literally starting a civil war, i don't see why there's much point to worrying about this until it happens because again, bigger problems then.
I think what we're running into here is an inability to allow an expectation of winning, because of how much worse it hurt last time with that expectation. The real issue is that the other side has provided such fertile ground for such fears to be planted.
I think what we're running into here is an inability to allow an expectation of winning, because of how much worse it hurt last time with that expectation. The real issue is that the other side has provided such fertile ground for such fears to be planted.
It's not "oh, we're so hurt from 2016", it's "nobody trusts the SCOTUS because all the Republicans on the court are hacks willing to say anything to seize political power for their side".
justice kavanaugh has made his decision, now let him enforce it. if we're already playing calvinball, why does it matter what they say.
just as likely that gov. wolf and the secretary of state force pa to finish counting the ballots as state law doesn't even require counties to start counting until 3 days after the election. preliminary results don't have to be in until the 10th, a full week after the election. final results don't have to be in until DECEMBER 3rd, a full month after the election. short of sending in federal troops and literally starting a civil war, i don't see why there's much point to worrying about this until it happens because again, bigger problems then.
Well partly it's because at almost every level of the US system, there's a lot of lackey's who are content to agree with whatever the right-wing media narrative declares should be. Your government is already infiltrated by confederates, and getting an armed crowd to descend on counting centers is essentially just a matter of Hannity or someone declaring they need to "protect the vote".
How bad this could get, and how quickly, really can't be overstated. Every individual step is some "lolol america am i rite?" ridiculousness right up till you realize no one is actually coming to stop it.
I think what we're running into here is an inability to allow an expectation of winning, because of how much worse it hurt last time with that expectation. The real issue is that the other side has provided such fertile ground for such fears to be planted.
It's not "oh, we're so hurt from 2016", it's "nobody trusts the SCOTUS because all the Republicans on the court are hacks willing to say anything to seize political power for their side".
This is not an argument in favor of FPTP, rather, it is an argument in favor of an overall approval system; a metric which RCV is still far better suited at determining than FPTP.
Since I am the one who started this discussion and I am the one you quoted in your response I feel like you are talking to me directly, so let me be clear: I am not advocating for FPTP. I am advocating against ranked choice. I said in my first post on the matter that proper voting reform requires a score-based system. That would be something like score, approval (which is score but where the only scores allowed are 0 and 1), or STAR.
You stated a preference for FPTP over RCV ('RCV is worse'), and I inferred this mayoral race to be intended as an example of its relative failings.
The notion of 'strategically' voting for the candidate you hate in order to elect your second choice seems far less effective, or intuitive, than just voting for your second choice first. IE: Pre-emtively compromising. I have no issue with a system that rewards that.
Pre-emptively compromising is one of the reasons why ranked choice eventually, when held over enough elections, degenerates back into two-party (or one-party) rule. And to pre-emptively compromise, you need to put your second choice ahead of your first choice. So much for incentivizing people to vote for their favorite, without fear of "wasting" their vote!
"I would prefer R to D, but not as much as I would hate P, so I will support D|R because I don't think R has a real shot" is not worse than:
"I would prefer R to D, but not as much as I would hate P, so I will support D because I don't think R has a real shot"
In FTPT, you need to make this decision if you think your preferred candidate's support will exceed the margin of victory for your least favorite. That's a pretty common situation.
In RCV you need only make this consideration if you think two other candidates, combined, will have slightly less than twice the support of your candidate, and their supporters would prefer the other candidate over yours. That's a far more niche situation.
If that is the situation a person finds themselves in, then their presumably broadly unpopular policy preferences never had a chance in a remotely representative system, so the Burlington result, and the hypothetical canvasing effort required to slightly alter it, seems appropriately unsatisfying.
My main quibble with an overall acceptability system (with no regard to preference) is that it seems* like it would coalesce into a do-nothing one-party system that needn't ever concern itself with activists of any flavor. Socialists and libertarians alike could just be collectively branded "Radical partisans" and ignored by the reformed Democratic-Republican party.
STAR voting, if I understand it correctly, attempts to address arbitrary acceptability with preferential weighting, but, in the context of our current polarized system, reintroduces almost the exact same problem FPTP has: Top-rank support for a third party ultimately hurts the more popular second choice against the rival ideology whose supporters will not spare a single point for anyone on the other side. At the end of the day, the two most popular candidates just compare how many people gave them the highest score, and a candidate who got 15x5 +10x4 is going to lose to someone who got 16x5 + 8x4. It still makes it impossible for the third party to win (ie: does not incentivize the main parties to hear them out), and seems* to penalize genuine preferential ranking more strongly and in more situations than RCV.
*(First impression, I still haven't had a proper think on it)
Freaking everyone on MAGA twitter has been claiming that there's secret damning Hunter files, photos and videos but "Big tech and the main stream media are suppressing it maaaaan" even though Rudy gave his whole trove directly to a right wing, in-the-bag-for-Trump tabloid. The worst thing they have is the meth pipe photo, everything else is made up.
We'll probably be dealing with Hunter Biden conspiracy theories for years though.
I mean, people are still bitching about benghazi and I Still don't know what the controverey for that actually was.
justice kavanaugh has made his decision, now let him enforce it. if we're already playing calvinball, why does it matter what they say.
just as likely that gov. wolf and the secretary of state force pa to finish counting the ballots as state law doesn't even require counties to start counting until 3 days after the election. preliminary results don't have to be in until the 10th, a full week after the election. final results don't have to be in until DECEMBER 3rd, a full month after the election. short of sending in federal troops and literally starting a civil war, i don't see why there's much point to worrying about this until it happens because again, bigger problems then.
Well partly it's because at almost every level of the US system, there's a lot of lackey's who are content to agree with whatever the right-wing media narrative declares should be. Your government is already infiltrated by confederates, and getting an armed crowd to descend on counting centers is essentially just a matter of Hannity or someone declaring they need to "protect the vote".
How bad this could get, and how quickly, really can't be overstated. Every individual step is some "lolol america am i rite?" ridiculousness right up till you realize no one is actually coming to stop it.
yes i agree totally, but then it would be not an electoral or a judicial problem, it's a coup and that's probably not covered under the bounds of this thread.
Hey, random stupid question. Back in Sane Years, I believe the president elect would start hiring the Whitehouse staff before inauguration day. Is that right? If so, how soon after the election do they tend to do that. I'm thinking that Biden should be starting that shit right quick should he unambiguously win the election (turn three times, spit,) next week.
Transition team has been at work for months already. We'll start hearing cabinet names pretty soon after the election.
It's going to be old mother hubbard when they get there
Sen. Kelly Loeffler says there is nothing Trump has done that she disagrees with. Asked repeatedly about the Access Hollywood tape, she says she’s “not familiar” with it.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler says there is nothing Trump has done that she disagrees with. Asked repeatedly about the Access Hollywood tape, she says she’s “not familiar” with it.
I am pretty sure that is impossible.
I would believe she hasn't personally watched/listened to it and that counts as familiarity.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
It’s amazing how many people in public office don’t keep up with, like, anything
The Trump appointee who steered a $300 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign to "defeat despair" about the coronavirus privately pitched a different theme last month: "Helping the President will Help the Country."
For instance, contractors vetted at least 274 potential celebrity contributors for their stances on gay rights, gun control and the 2016 election before allowing them to participate in the campaign. One promised public service announcement, which would have also featured infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, was nixed because the celebrity who was set to participate with Fauci had been critical of President Donald Trump, according to documents.
The official overseeing the campaign — Michael Caputo, who Trump personally tapped as the health department’s top spokesperson — also sought to overrule the career civil servants assigned to the campaign, directly urging contractors to rush production of ads with celebrities like Trump-supporting actor Antonio Sabato, Jr.
“We must film them ASAP — we need content in the can now,” Caputo wrote in an email to contractors on Sept. 13, three days before he took a medical leave from the health department. A federal official subsequently removed Caputo from the email chain and reiterated that only two career civil servants on the chain could provide “actionable direction” to the contractors on how to proceed.
One document obtained by the committee, “PSA Celebrity Tracker,” includes details about the politics of hundreds of celebrities considered for participation in the campaign, including whether the performers had been personally critical of Trump.
For instance, actor Zach Galifianakis was flagged because he “refused to host President Trump on talk show.” Director and performer Judd Apatow “believes Trump does not have the intellectual capacity to run as President, wants him to be removed out of office in 2020,” read another line item.
At least 22 other performers were flagged for their previous support of former President Barack Obama. Singer Adam Levine was labeled a “liberal democrat who supported Obama and fights for gay rights”; singer Christina Aguilera “is an Obama-supporting Democrat and a gay-rights supporting liberal.”
Some celebrities were flagged for policy stances unrelated to the president. The document lists actress “Julianna Moore [sic.]” as a “Liberal Democrat, pro-choicer, LGBT rights supporter, gun control campaigner.”
While it’s not clear from the documents how many of the celebrities were ultimately approached — or even aware of the administration’s interest in their participation — at least 22 performers are listed as “declined,” including singers like Britney Spears, Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan, and actors like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Hugh Jackman. Restaurateur Guy Fieri is listed as “overcommitted.”
According to a separate document identified as “Celebrity Participant Status Chart,” only 10 celebrities were ultimately approved to participate in the campaign, including Quaid, singer Garth Brooks and television host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler says there is nothing Trump has done that she disagrees with. Asked repeatedly about the Access Hollywood tape, she says she’s “not familiar” with it.
I am pretty sure that is impossible.
Man, defending Trump is way easier when you refuse to acknowledge all the horrible stuff he's said and done.
justice kavanaugh has made his decision, now let him enforce it. if we're already playing calvinball, why does it matter what they say.
just as likely that gov. wolf and the secretary of state force pa to finish counting the ballots as state law doesn't even require counties to start counting until 3 days after the election. preliminary results don't have to be in until the 10th, a full week after the election. final results don't have to be in until DECEMBER 3rd, a full month after the election. short of sending in federal troops and literally starting a civil war, i don't see why there's much point to worrying about this until it happens because again, bigger problems then.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler says there is nothing Trump has done that she disagrees with. Asked repeatedly about the Access Hollywood tape, she says she’s “not familiar” with it.
I am pretty sure that is impossible.
I would believe she hasn't personally watched/listened to it and that counts as familiarity.
I've seen the video with her and I wouldn't believe that at all.
She absolutely knows what the access hollywood tape is but the talking points must reign supreme.
One can hope the American people are acclimated enough to waiting for election results for a few days, given past difficulties, that it won't make a difference.
Nope.
It's been made absolutely clear that a large number of Americans have shown, patience is a rarity, even if the outcome would be beneficial.
Compounded by a media system that is focused almost entirely on the immediacy.
Also doesn't help, that people are fucking exhausted. By everything. And while it's almost a certainty that the majority of voters will choose Biden, and a likelihood that a majority of EC votes will be for Biden, even if turnout for Biden is massive, and he gets 50% more voters than the previous Democratic nominee did, in the year that shall not be named? That's still less than a third of the population.
That approximately a third of the Voting Age Population, who aren't actively being disenfranchised, choose not to vote, will absolutely be in favor of shutting down the election counts so "they can move on with their lives".
The longer this drags out beyond election night, the more likely Trump will not just get the win, but the backing of people who just want it to be over. That's been their play forever. Just exhaust anyone who would oppose it, until there's just a fraction minority, and dismiss them as whatever the modern bugaboo might be (commies, socialists, hippies, elitists, antifa).
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
NBC/Marist poll of Florida
Biden 51% (+3 from Sept)
Trump 47% (-1)
Oct 25-27, +/- 4.4%
Trump is winning with Hispanics and has 14 % of the Black vote in this poll, and is still down by 4.
+21
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The Trump appointee who steered a $300 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign to "defeat despair" about the coronavirus privately pitched a different theme last month: "Helping the President will Help the Country."
For instance, contractors vetted at least 274 potential celebrity contributors for their stances on gay rights, gun control and the 2016 election before allowing them to participate in the campaign. One promised public service announcement, which would have also featured infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, was nixed because the celebrity who was set to participate with Fauci had been critical of President Donald Trump, according to documents.
The official overseeing the campaign — Michael Caputo, who Trump personally tapped as the health department’s top spokesperson — also sought to overrule the career civil servants assigned to the campaign, directly urging contractors to rush production of ads with celebrities like Trump-supporting actor Antonio Sabato, Jr.
“We must film them ASAP — we need content in the can now,” Caputo wrote in an email to contractors on Sept. 13, three days before he took a medical leave from the health department. A federal official subsequently removed Caputo from the email chain and reiterated that only two career civil servants on the chain could provide “actionable direction” to the contractors on how to proceed.
One document obtained by the committee, “PSA Celebrity Tracker,” includes details about the politics of hundreds of celebrities considered for participation in the campaign, including whether the performers had been personally critical of Trump.
For instance, actor Zach Galifianakis was flagged because he “refused to host President Trump on talk show.” Director and performer Judd Apatow “believes Trump does not have the intellectual capacity to run as President, wants him to be removed out of office in 2020,” read another line item.
At least 22 other performers were flagged for their previous support of former President Barack Obama. Singer Adam Levine was labeled a “liberal democrat who supported Obama and fights for gay rights”; singer Christina Aguilera “is an Obama-supporting Democrat and a gay-rights supporting liberal.”
Some celebrities were flagged for policy stances unrelated to the president. The document lists actress “Julianna Moore [sic.]” as a “Liberal Democrat, pro-choicer, LGBT rights supporter, gun control campaigner.”
While it’s not clear from the documents how many of the celebrities were ultimately approached — or even aware of the administration’s interest in their participation — at least 22 performers are listed as “declined,” including singers like Britney Spears, Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan, and actors like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Hugh Jackman. Restaurateur Guy Fieri is listed as “overcommitted.”
According to a separate document identified as “Celebrity Participant Status Chart,” only 10 celebrities were ultimately approved to participate in the campaign, including Quaid, singer Garth Brooks and television host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler says there is nothing Trump has done that she disagrees with. Asked repeatedly about the Access Hollywood tape, she says she’s “not familiar” with it.
I am pretty sure that is impossible.
Media needs to stop asking if the interviewee is familiar with Trump's latest X. The interviewee is just going to deny it.
Frame it like this: "Donald Trump says he likes to grab the genitals of women without their consent and over their protests. Do you agree with him, and if so do you also engage in this practice?"
So to the really annoying BS of "BUT SCOTUS WILL JUST DECLARE TRUMP THE WINNER AND TELL PEOPLE TO STOP COUNTING!" No, they aren't going to fuck do that. Ask yourself this question "do both Roberts and Gorsuch want to continue living and not have to live in constant fear of someone assassinating them?" If you said "yes," which I'm sure anyone grounded in reality will say, that's exactly why it won't happen. They are really shitty, but smart enough to read the room and know how much BS they are allowed to pull. There is zero fucking tolerance for outright stealing the election for Trump. Hell, we have a ton of entities that pride themselves on being political impartial coming out for Biden. Roberts and Gorsuch might be power hungry rat fucking pieces of shit, but they are smart enough to know that you have no power if you're dead or on the run. Hell, they probably sense that an outright coup started by them might result in the US Military telling them to get fucked and if that happens, there will be no civil war or any other shit. It'll be they fuck right the fuck off into prison while the counts are continued and Trump is told to shut his fucking mouth.
The Trump appointee who steered a $300 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign to "defeat despair" about the coronavirus privately pitched a different theme last month: "Helping the President will Help the Country."
For instance, contractors vetted at least 274 potential celebrity contributors for their stances on gay rights, gun control and the 2016 election before allowing them to participate in the campaign. One promised public service announcement, which would have also featured infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, was nixed because the celebrity who was set to participate with Fauci had been critical of President Donald Trump, according to documents.
The official overseeing the campaign — Michael Caputo, who Trump personally tapped as the health department’s top spokesperson — also sought to overrule the career civil servants assigned to the campaign, directly urging contractors to rush production of ads with celebrities like Trump-supporting actor Antonio Sabato, Jr.
“We must film them ASAP — we need content in the can now,” Caputo wrote in an email to contractors on Sept. 13, three days before he took a medical leave from the health department. A federal official subsequently removed Caputo from the email chain and reiterated that only two career civil servants on the chain could provide “actionable direction” to the contractors on how to proceed.
One document obtained by the committee, “PSA Celebrity Tracker,” includes details about the politics of hundreds of celebrities considered for participation in the campaign, including whether the performers had been personally critical of Trump.
For instance, actor Zach Galifianakis was flagged because he “refused to host President Trump on talk show.” Director and performer Judd Apatow “believes Trump does not have the intellectual capacity to run as President, wants him to be removed out of office in 2020,” read another line item.
At least 22 other performers were flagged for their previous support of former President Barack Obama. Singer Adam Levine was labeled a “liberal democrat who supported Obama and fights for gay rights”; singer Christina Aguilera “is an Obama-supporting Democrat and a gay-rights supporting liberal.”
Some celebrities were flagged for policy stances unrelated to the president. The document lists actress “Julianna Moore [sic.]” as a “Liberal Democrat, pro-choicer, LGBT rights supporter, gun control campaigner.”
While it’s not clear from the documents how many of the celebrities were ultimately approached — or even aware of the administration’s interest in their participation — at least 22 performers are listed as “declined,” including singers like Britney Spears, Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan, and actors like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Hugh Jackman. Restaurateur Guy Fieri is listed as “overcommitted.”
According to a separate document identified as “Celebrity Participant Status Chart,” only 10 celebrities were ultimately approved to participate in the campaign, including Quaid, singer Garth Brooks and television host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Just the whiniest babies.
Incredible to see how central the hate for LGBTQI is here. Like.. wow, that's some third reich level hate
Sen. Kelly Loeffler says there is nothing Trump has done that she disagrees with. Asked repeatedly about the Access Hollywood tape, she says she’s “not familiar” with it.
I am pretty sure that is impossible.
Media needs to stop asking if the interviewee is familiar with Trump's latest X. The interviewee is just going to deny it.
Frame it like this: "Donald Trump says he likes to grab the genitals of women without their consent and over their protests. Do you agree with him, and if so do you also engage in this practice?"
Or have the clip or tweet you’re asking them about ready ahead of time. That way when they deny ever hearing of it you can offer to show them right then and there.
+30
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
So to the really annoying BS of "BUT SCOTUS WILL JUST DECLARE TRUMP THE WINNER AND TELL PEOPLE TO STOP COUNTING!" No, they aren't going to fuck do that. Ask yourself this question "do both Roberts and Gorsuch want to continue living and not have to live in constant fear of someone assassinating them?" If you said "yes," which I'm sure anyone grounded in reality will say, that's exactly why it won't happen. They are really shitty, but smart enough to read the room and know how much BS they are allowed to pull. There is zero fucking tolerance for outright stealing the election for Trump. Hell, we have a ton of entities that pride themselves on being political impartial coming out for Biden. Roberts and Gorsuch might be power hungry rat fucking pieces of shit, but they are smart enough to know that you have no power if you're dead or on the run. Hell, they probably sense that an outright coup started by them might result in the US Military telling them to get fucked and if that happens, there will be no civil war or any other shit. It'll be they fuck right the fuck off into prison while the counts are continued and Trump is told to shut his fucking mouth.
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The basis for these decisions is tied up in facts specific to the case; it's basically impossible to imagine them setting up a precedent that would apply to all states equally regardless of what each state's legislature, governor, and secstate wanted.
I'm not saying they couldn't try do that, but it would have no relation whatsoever to the logic displayed in this or any other case.
I agree that they're playing Calvinball a lot of the time here, but the downside (upside?) of Calvinball is that nothing you do creates any kind of durable precedent for a future play.
Some states the mail in ballot has to be mailed back in and not dropped.
All you're saying here is that the D+R|D voting bloc was bigger than the P+D|P bloc, but the scenario in which the furthest left candidate genuinely "earns" support from the rightmost candidate, and is then punished for it, is not a terribly likely scenario. This only happens in computer simulations that don't actually account for how or why people actually vote. The notion of 'strategically' voting for the candidate you hate in order to elect your second choice seems far less effective, or intuitive, than just voting for your second choice first. IE: Pre-emtively compromising. I have no issue with a system that rewards that.
In this case, it happened that the D candidate was ultimately acceptable to more voters than the P, and had the R been eliminated first, that would have been revealed. This is not an argument in favor of FPTP, rather, it is an argument in favor of an overall approval system; a metric which RCV is still far better suited at determining than FPTP.
I'm certainly willing to hear out an approval system, but FPTP would have crowned the R, the least popular of the three, in round 1.
Also, they aren't "reversing" the results. They're reversing the preferences they defined in which A is still the second choice of the smallest group, and now the first choice of the largest group.
They chose those numbers, and those preference ranks. If the second group was BAC, then 'reversing' the results does not select for A, and C is the clear winner. That analysis is either riddled with oversights or incredibly disingenuous.
No, Wright (R) is still IN the race and a number of Republicans DISHONESTLY decide to vote for far-left Kiss over Wright, knowing that the more centrist and therefore better (by the R perspective) candidate Montroll will beat Kiss in a head to head comparison if those are the last two candidates. It's 100% rational on their part, and the fact that it WORKS is insane. In practice it can also mean that a candidate that is ahead in the polls should be wary of picking up too much additional support, as that could cause them to lose because of how it could change the order that other candidates in the race get eliminated.
The fact that ranked choice would have saved us in one election does not mean that it is the right choice for all elections going forward, especially if it can lead to bigger problems down the road. And actually, ranked choice may or may not have saved us in that election because if the election were held with ranked choice then there may have been any number of other candidates on the ballot as well. The whole race would have been different. In a better way? Maybe! But not definitely.
Dunno what you mean because ranked choice is not a Condorcet method. In the Burlington example, Montroll beats everyone else in head to head comparisons. But ranked choice elects Kiss.
Actually it doesn't but you have to read a lot more of the website to get that. Ranked choice unfairly favors extremists (as in, extremists win more than they "should" with ranked choice). Approval voting is shown elsewhere on the site to favor centrists (as in, centrists win more than they "should" with approval). The system advocated by the website, score voting, shows little to no inherent bias.
I believe they mean that plurality based system is better than IRV for minority representation. They are both bad, and the website as a whole is pretty clear about that.
Yes, EXACTLY. We need score-based rather than just crude ranking-based methods.
This looks like a good one, yes. It's fundamentally score-based and avoids many of the incentives baked into other systems (like ranked choice!) that incentivize you to vote dishonestly.
Yeah, the dude who built that score voting page sucks at web design and he seems like a bit of a nutter, but the arguments check out. Personally I'm all for score, STAR, and/or approval. I think there will be some huge unintended consequences with ranked choice, largely because people are uninformed about it. Ranked choice sounds great. In practice it falls apart.
Not score or approval! STAR has pathological results but seems to do a good job of minimizing people's incentives to vote dishonestly.
Pathologies in ranked choice have been found in many real world elections including the Burlington one I talked about upthread. Burlington then voted to get rid of ranked choice a year later!
I agree but I feel like we really need to go down the right path when it's time for that. Fargo started doing approval voting this year!
This was in the context of discussing spoilers. No, the B supporters DO NOT get what they want under ranked choice, because their most hated candidate A wins. They would have gotten what they wanted (C beats A) if B WASN'T there. That's why B was a spoiler.
Pre-emptively compromising is one of the reasons why ranked choice eventually, when held over enough elections, degenerates back into two-party (or one-party) rule. And to pre-emptively compromise, you need to put your second choice ahead of your first choice. So much for incentivizing people to vote for their favorite, without fear of "wasting" their vote!
Since I am the one who started this discussion and I am the one you quoted in your response I feel like you are talking to me directly, so let me be clear: I am not advocating for FPTP. I am advocating against ranked choice. I said in my first post on the matter that proper voting reform requires a score-based system. That would be something like score, approval (which is score but where the only scores allowed are 0 and 1), or STAR.
Harrison is icing if it happens, but I also wouldn't expect it to, so I'm not stressing about that at all, honestly.
If SCOTUS says the count is over the count is over. We can crow about how it’s not legal till the cows come home but if SCOTUS does it it’s legal.
In Bush v Gore SCOTUS stopped recounts before the certification date. They’re already setting up to stop counts from the language Kavanaugh used in his one of his concurrences.
Tournaments don’t, they always select the condorcet winner if one exists, but tournaments take a LONG time.
Anyway you are generally correct and this was proven in 1951
My favorite part about election season is talking about Arrows Impossibly Theorem.
while it might be an attempt at ratfuckery, i do think there is something to the fact that they literally probably don't have people to count them because they're running the election, and this is all new to everyone.
This. This is what worries/scares me. That they find some flimsy excuse to work backward from the ruling they want to make, which need not set precedent if they declare it applies to "this election" as a whole.
Because, well, there won't be any more after that. Or none that matter.
just as likely that gov. wolf and the secretary of state force pa to finish counting the ballots as state law doesn't even require counties to start counting until 3 days after the election. preliminary results don't have to be in until the 10th, a full week after the election. final results don't have to be in until DECEMBER 3rd, a full month after the election. short of sending in federal troops and literally starting a civil war, i don't see why there's much point to worrying about this until it happens because again, bigger problems then.
It's not "oh, we're so hurt from 2016", it's "nobody trusts the SCOTUS because all the Republicans on the court are hacks willing to say anything to seize political power for their side".
Well partly it's because at almost every level of the US system, there's a lot of lackey's who are content to agree with whatever the right-wing media narrative declares should be. Your government is already infiltrated by confederates, and getting an armed crowd to descend on counting centers is essentially just a matter of Hannity or someone declaring they need to "protect the vote".
How bad this could get, and how quickly, really can't be overstated. Every individual step is some "lolol america am i rite?" ridiculousness right up till you realize no one is actually coming to stop it.
"Both?"
"Both."
"Both is good."
You stated a preference for FPTP over RCV ('RCV is worse'), and I inferred this mayoral race to be intended as an example of its relative failings.
"I would prefer R to D, but not as much as I would hate P, so I will support D|R because I don't think R has a real shot" is not worse than:
"I would prefer R to D, but not as much as I would hate P, so I will support D because I don't think R has a real shot"
In FTPT, you need to make this decision if you think your preferred candidate's support will exceed the margin of victory for your least favorite. That's a pretty common situation.
In RCV you need only make this consideration if you think two other candidates, combined, will have slightly less than twice the support of your candidate, and their supporters would prefer the other candidate over yours. That's a far more niche situation.
If that is the situation a person finds themselves in, then their presumably broadly unpopular policy preferences never had a chance in a remotely representative system, so the Burlington result, and the hypothetical canvasing effort required to slightly alter it, seems appropriately unsatisfying.
My main quibble with an overall acceptability system (with no regard to preference) is that it seems* like it would coalesce into a do-nothing one-party system that needn't ever concern itself with activists of any flavor. Socialists and libertarians alike could just be collectively branded "Radical partisans" and ignored by the reformed Democratic-Republican party.
STAR voting, if I understand it correctly, attempts to address arbitrary acceptability with preferential weighting, but, in the context of our current polarized system, reintroduces almost the exact same problem FPTP has: Top-rank support for a third party ultimately hurts the more popular second choice against the rival ideology whose supporters will not spare a single point for anyone on the other side. At the end of the day, the two most popular candidates just compare how many people gave them the highest score, and a candidate who got 15x5 +10x4 is going to lose to someone who got 16x5 + 8x4. It still makes it impossible for the third party to win (ie: does not incentivize the main parties to hear them out), and seems* to penalize genuine preferential ranking more strongly and in more situations than RCV.
*(First impression, I still haven't had a proper think on it)
I mean, people are still bitching about benghazi and I Still don't know what the controverey for that actually was.
yes i agree totally, but then it would be not an electoral or a judicial problem, it's a coup and that's probably not covered under the bounds of this thread.
It's going to be old mother hubbard when they get there
2370 is also fairly apt for this thread.
I would believe she hasn't personally watched/listened to it and that counts as familiarity.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/29/coronavirus-ad-campaign-rebrand-433578
Man, defending Trump is way easier when you refuse to acknowledge all the horrible stuff he's said and done.
re bolded:
what. Why is that...what?!
I've seen the video with her and I wouldn't believe that at all.
She absolutely knows what the access hollywood tape is but the talking points must reign supreme.
Nope.
It's been made absolutely clear that a large number of Americans have shown, patience is a rarity, even if the outcome would be beneficial.
Compounded by a media system that is focused almost entirely on the immediacy.
Also doesn't help, that people are fucking exhausted. By everything. And while it's almost a certainty that the majority of voters will choose Biden, and a likelihood that a majority of EC votes will be for Biden, even if turnout for Biden is massive, and he gets 50% more voters than the previous Democratic nominee did, in the year that shall not be named? That's still less than a third of the population.
That approximately a third of the Voting Age Population, who aren't actively being disenfranchised, choose not to vote, will absolutely be in favor of shutting down the election counts so "they can move on with their lives".
The longer this drags out beyond election night, the more likely Trump will not just get the win, but the backing of people who just want it to be over. That's been their play forever. Just exhaust anyone who would oppose it, until there's just a fraction minority, and dismiss them as whatever the modern bugaboo might be (commies, socialists, hippies, elitists, antifa).
Biden 51% (+3 from Sept)
Trump 47% (-1)
Oct 25-27, +/- 4.4%
Trump is winning with Hispanics and has 14 % of the Black vote in this poll, and is still down by 4.
Just the whiniest babies.
Media needs to stop asking if the interviewee is familiar with Trump's latest X. The interviewee is just going to deny it.
Frame it like this: "Donald Trump says he likes to grab the genitals of women without their consent and over their protests. Do you agree with him, and if so do you also engage in this practice?"
Incredible to see how central the hate for LGBTQI is here. Like.. wow, that's some third reich level hate
Or have the clip or tweet you’re asking them about ready ahead of time. That way when they deny ever hearing of it you can offer to show them right then and there.
can we just make it through Tuesday first?