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November 2020 US Election

It's looking like Wiscon and Michigan are going to Biden. Georgia is a wildcard--NYT still thinks Biden is the favourite to win. That would give Biden a clear win.
 
I think faced with uncertainty people try to ascribe scapegoat reasoning (the basis of superstition) instead of just accepting and observing reality.

A lot of people just don’t care as much about the things you care about. That’s not hate, it’s a different set of priorities.

I mentioned in a previous post that Americans need to feel American exceptionalism as part of their psyche to paper over the reality of their substandard (for a developed country) standard-of-living. Trump understands this and sells it.

By the way part of our psyche is needing to feel superior to America in order to paper over the mediocrity of our achievements.
 
So, as at an hour ago, the State of Maine, on the east coast of the U.S. had only counted ~70% of the vote, some 15 hours after the polls closed.

I think that's nuts.

So I was curious if I could discern why.

Apparently Maine is historically slow to report votes.

Here's what I found:

Among the causes of the slower results reporting is the state’s relatively large size combined with the fact that Maine decentralizes election administration down to the level of towns and cities. Instead of all ballots being counted by the state, or by Maine’s 16 counties, they are counted by each of Maine’s 500 municipalities. More than half of those municipalities contain fewer than 1,000 voters, and more than half of them count ballots by hand rather than with electronic equipment.

Maine law also prohibits electronic transfer of ballot data, no matter how secure the transmission, which means ballots and ballot data (from those jurisdictions that have machines) must be physically moved from each municipality to the secretary of state’s office in Augusta.


The above is from here: https://www.fairvote.org/here_s_why_...ection_results

****

Putting aside that I think the electronic transfer of results rules are nuts.

What glares out at me is that Maine has more than 500 municipalities.

Its 1.3M people.

Ontario, has 14.5M people and 444 municipalities.

There are tenants/condo associations with more voters in them than a majority of Maine's local governments!

😲
 
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So, as at an hour ago, the State of Maine, on the east coast of the U.S. had only counted ~70% of the vote, some 15 hours after the polls closed.

I think that's nuts.

So I was curious to if I could discern why.

Apparently Maine is historically slow to report votes.

Here's what I found:

Among the causes of the slower results reporting is the state’s relatively large size combined with the fact that Maine decentralizes election administration down to the level of towns and cities. Instead of all ballots being counted by the state, or by Maine’s 16 counties, they are counted by each of Maine’s 500 municipalities. More than half of those municipalities contain fewer than 1,000 voters, and more than half of them count ballots by hand rather than with electronic equipment.

Maine law also prohibits electronic transfer of ballot data, no matter how secure the transmission, which means ballots and ballot data (from those jurisdictions that have machines) must be physically moved from each municipality to the secretary of state’s office in Augusta.


The above is from here: https://www.fairvote.org/here_s_why_...ection_results

****

Putting aside that I think the electronic transfer of results rules are nuts.

What glares out at me is that Maine has more than 500 municipalities.

Its 1.3M people.

Ontario, has 14.5M people and 444 municipalities.

There are tenants/condo associations with more voters in them than a majority of Maine's local governments!

😲

Sounds like unnecessary bureaucracy at its finest.
 
So much for that bloodbath, eh?

Yeah. The polls seem to be off, about as much as 2012, this time in Trump's favour. The polls were off 3.2% in 2012. And that benefited Obama. Trump turned out his base and captured a huge chunk of Hispanic voters. There are Hispanic counties and districts that saw 20 point swings towards Trump, from 2016.

Regardless of what the final outcome is, the Democrats have yet again failed to make a decisive win against Trump in a presidential election. The party really should take a hard look at what they're doing wrong, instead of just pushing Russia-gate and smearing progressives.

Oh please. Progressives absolutely failed to deliver anything last night. House seats have been lost. The Senate wasn't captured. And Biden won entirely on the back of white suburban moderates. This is yet more evidence that progressive rhetoric doesn't work in Middle America. And had that been Sanders or Warren last night, we'd be looking at a celebratory Trump this morning.

I'm actually shocked at that, especially from a Fox poll.

Fox News actually has a fantastic polling operation. And even decent news coverage. It's the editorial side that fills up so much TV time and gets to dominate the website that is bananas.
 
I'm glad the Senate is staying GOP. I expect next week we'll see Mitch McConnell declare that the Senate accept the election and will work with POTUS Biden. The GOP wants to be shod of Trump and will seize this chance.
 
I'm glad the Senate is staying GOP. I expect next week we'll see Mitch McConnell declare that the Senate accept the election and will work with POTUS Biden. The GOP wants to be shod of Trump and will seize this chance.

Why would they do that when they can see how split the vote is? Assuming they do retake the senate (and I don't think that's certain yet...CNN is still showing 7 undecided seats), they face negatives either way. Continue to support Trump and all that entails, or face alienating the almost half of the electorate that voted for Trump.
 

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