"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

And Silver literally just a minute ago:

The race is not tightening if you use any sort of robust methodology or look at the better polling. The tightening is almost entirely confined to a group of 3 or 4 pollsters that release a lot of polls and so can dominate polling averages that don't adjust for house effects, etc.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 30, 2020

If anything he sounds bored and wanting to look at other things now.

Meanwhile in Houston:

JUST IN: Harris County, TX has surpassed its final 2016 turnout of 1.34 million, setting an all-time record.

That's about 54% of the county’s 2.48 million registered voters. Per @HarrisVotes, final turnout was between ~61-63% in ’08, ’12 & ’16, when the voter rolls were smaller.

— Jasper Scherer (@jaspscherer) October 30, 2020

That's pretty nuts, i hope they can keep the momentum going through election day.

was gonna say that's why I'm not really worried about "this one county has lower turnout right now"

xpost -- Strictly speaking they can't -- tomorrow is the final day of early voting in Texas. That's why Harris is going to, well, Harris tomorrow, as part of a final push, also why they have 24 hour poll stations open (in large part because they made an accomodation for night shift workers and the like).

At this point, I'm not really worried about the polls. The chicanery keeps me up at night, though. (Also the fact that I still haven't received notification that my ballot has been accepted! It's been almost two weeks!)

Last time I voted in Houston (2004, I believe) the poll worker informed me my sister had voted a few hours before, that my sister was precocious as a child, and that she could tell we were going to vote the same way. I had no idea who this lady was.

Basically, this Susan Glasser piece:

I have a different fear this time: What if the polls are right -- and Trump still wins? The election may be over, but the counting is not. His path to victory through the Electoral College may rest with only a few states where Election Night results are ambiguous enough that Trump could question them and, instead, pursue a win via friendly Republican state legislatures and the pro-Trump Supreme Court.

The pressure to shut down the PA vote count is going to be insane.

Even if the 538 forecast for PA proves accurate (Biden +5), given partisan disparities in mail-in voting, Trump could hold a 16 POINT lead by the end of Tue night.https://t.co/auZtvr1PuP pic.twitter.com/ErmMcjgDGn

— Justin Sandefur (@JustinSandefur) October 29, 2020

I refuse to accept that

I’m now pushing my cowlick and my eyebrow hairs growing longer every day into my eyelashes, the brush of it on my lashes comforts me

My wife and I voted the same day at the same place, a few hours apart. I got confirmation my ballot was received a week later, Monday, but she's still waiting.

GROW IT FOR DEMOCRACY DAN S!

I thought they couldn't shut down the vote in PA on election night?

who is they

didn't the supreme court allow PA to continue vote counting after Tuesday?

Vote counting never came into question. It had to do with when the votes were received.

Trump will probably SAY "i won" if he is winning a state EOB Tuesday but the states will keep counting votes legally received. Trump will thriw a fit but it's how it works

I thought the PA order was that votes that were mailed by Tuesday would be counted if received within 3 days after the election

and even further out for North Carolina

Dan S is correct, from my understanding.

My wife's ballot was finally officially received. She, like I (or rather, I, like she) requested a mail-in ballot but, when all the news about the mail broke some weeks ago, decided to drop it off in the box in person. So as I understand it, until we were notified that our ballots were received, our ballots were I suppose "unreturned" mail-in ballots, which implies to me there's got to be some constant large number of ballots across the country in the same not terribly concerning situation, showing up as missing or unreturned but in reality safe and sound just not entered into the system yet.

With all due respect to Ned, who probably isn't up yet:

Breaking: Texas just surpassed its 2016 total votes cast w/ one day of early voting & Election Day left to go.

The state is reporting 9,009,850 votes already cast, vs. the all-time record of 8,969,226 in 2016. This is massive.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 30, 2020

Ha, was literally about to post that!

wild

This makes me unreasonably optimistic about TX, trying to keep it reasonable

one thing: the Minnesota ruling is infuriating. It says ON THE BALLOT INSTRUCTIONS that it's good if postmarked by election day.

oddly could very well affect rural districts more as many are mail only, and someone on Twitter said it was a 45 min drive for them to drop off a ballot

Just posted this on the Trump containment thread, but meant to put it here. Unfortunately there are too many opportunities to count to express the sentiment.

I can't help but marvel, in a very sad way, at how the Republican message has drifted so fully over the past four years to saying the quiet part out loud. They are just going all in on voter suppression by any means necessary, not even taking the time to pay lip service to the bullshit excuses about theoretical voter fraud. Nope, trying to prevent people from having their votes counted so that Rs can win without more votes is now just a central and explicit piece of their, um, "platform."

Re: PA voting decision: PA statute says only count votes received by the time polls close on election day. PA Supreme Court ruled that due to mail delays, coronavirus, etc., enforcing this statute would violate the PA constitution, so we will allow votes to be counted if they are received within 3 days after election day. PA GOP keeps trying to appeal to US SC to overturn the PA Supreme Court decision extending the deadline beyond what is provided by statute. None of the decisions by the US SC so far have been on the merits - all have been decisions on whether to hear the case at all or hear it on an expedited basis.

Call me naive, but I don't see this happening or the US SC ultimately overturning the PA Supreme Court decision. Even if they did, this does not automatically invalidate the statutes of other states that permit votes received after election day to be counted. It would be one thing for the SC to say a state court cannot overrule the state legislature who set the deadline of election day; it would be another thing entirely for the SC (I know, I know) to actively overrule the state legislature that has passed a law allowing votes received after election day to be counted.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/523528-trump-changes-election-night-plans-cancels-party-at-trump-international

very very busy obviously

I can't help but marvel, in a very sad way, at how the Republican message has drifted so fully over the past four years to saying the quiet part out loud. They are just going all in on voter suppression by any means necessary, not even taking the time to pay lip service to the bullshit excuses about theoretical voter fraud. Nope, trying to prevent people from having their votes counted so that Rs can win without more votes is now just a central and explicit piece of their, um, "platform."

I agree, this is what is most concerning to me. Not just for this election, but in general. It's more than slightly terrifying to me that not only have they even given up trying to present a pretense or excuse, no matter how lame or unsupportable by any kind of facts, but a significant proportion of this country doesn't even care that this has happened. I mean, look no further than the AP itself representing a Supreme Court decision to count all votes being a "win for Democrats". It's as if everyone has just tacitly accepted not only that the GOP is openly suppressing votes, but that this is just a "fine" state of things that we all just have to accept as normal and not be outraged about. We've instituted coups in other countries for less voter suppression than we're seeing presented this year as normal.

Thanks for that explanation, PBKR.

re: ums's statement above, it does completely flummox and infuriate me that courts are making decisions that they know will disenfranchise voters who LEGITIMATELY FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THEIR BALLOT and aren't aware of every ruling that is reported in the news.

Early vote at 83.5 million this morning, 6.5 million up from yesterday morning. If that figure repeats or exceeds, 90 million by tomorrow morning.

i'm very curious to see how this voter suppression plays out. i mean, i'm going to assume it benefits republicans because they are trying to hard to do it.

but...if you start casting out ballots there have to be republican ones that will be cast out too

I'm not sure that "everyone" is accepting voter suppression right now. See the massive turnout of pissed off Democrats, for example. A consensus seems to growing that a voting rights bill has to be a top priority next year.

I know Ezra Klein and Nate Silver are fairly well hated here, but I found this interview to be pretty insightful on election nuts and bolts.

https://www.vox.com/21538214/nate-silver-538-2020-forecast-2016-trump-biden-election-podcast

also if the number of pissed off Dems and unaffiliated voters turn out in record numbers in many areas to vote Trump out, pretty sure they're not going to see an obviously manipulated result (ie, where only like 75 million votes are recorded despite like a turnout of 150 mill or something) and shrug and go "ooh well, next time". like there would be demonstrations in the streets far beyond anything we've seen this year.

i just erally don't want that to happen because I don't trust cops

all predictions that Democrats are going to tear things down are generally wishful thinking

here's my final thought on the election. if Trump wins, I feel like reality will have broken. like, 2016, I get it. Hillary was massively unpopular, Trump was steadily gaining the last 10 days, the undecideds broke for the party that wasn't in charge the last 8 years, it makes sense. we wanted to deny it at the time but all the numbers said "Trump can definitely squeeze out an EC victory". my feeling at the time was that a lot of people I knew were just not taking this seriously, Trump still was widely seen as more entertaining than dangerous, Hillary's email story really did play into everything people didn't like about her. whatever.

this year we're all still shook and maybe experiencing some PTSD but it's all different. Biden is way ahead, there are virtually no worrying polling signs for him, even the outlets like Politico which are desperately trying to turn in some "Trump can still win!!!" headlines are relying on shit like "well early turnout is down in this one county (while it shatters records everywhere else)". he's nowhere near as disliked as Clinton. none of these scandals are sticking and the GOP's last ditch effort to go all-in on Hunter is incredibly pathetic. more important than that, nobody is treating Trump as a joke anymore. the people I know who found him amusing in 2016 are fucking sick of him now. as I've pointed out before, everyone I know who is voting Trump voted for him in 2016. meanwhile I know a handful of people who voted Trump/3rd Party/sat out '16 who are now voting Biden because they can't stand him anymore. It's not like 2004 where you could say "yes the war is absolutely a disaster, but that doesn't affect ME"...this year fucking sucked for everyone, minus Jeff Bezos and Kim Kardashian I guess. For Trump to win right now he is going to either A) need basically all the undecideds to vote for him, which I cannot fathom happening, in fact I'd be fucking stunned if he got even close to 50% there, or B) some massive coordinated "shy Trump voter" effect which thus far has not been shown to exist, in fact his numbers are right in line with a president who has literally never had a net positive approval rating, whose party gave up a ton of House seats in 2018 despite having a fairly favorable map. I just don't see how it happens.

Which leaves C) they literally steal the election. This is the thing I'm really concerned about, but even still, I'm not sure how they pull this off. Like what's gonna happen if Trump "wins" PA by a hundred even though we all know there's 50,000 ballots left to count? can you imagine the insane protests we'd see?

Booming post, frog

Moodles, I agree that federalizing election law should happen, but given the current state-level patchwork (and knee-jerk tenther bullshit) it should be coordinated with state efforts as well

can you imagine the beautiful policing of those protests? beautiful like you've never seen

the type of people who are going to protest on behalf of Joe Biden are probably not going to be torching police cars, and if that kind of thing does pop off they're going to pack their kids back into the SUV and go home.

they're not protesting on behalf of Joe Biden, they're protesting against Donald Trump. protesting against a demon tends to have a much different effect on demeanors.

taking Lyft to the protests

the “shy” Trump voters in 2020 have got to be just the weirdest fucking 55-60 people in this country. unfortunately, I’m willing to bet I’m related to about 9 of them

there are no shy Trump voters, just short Trump voters and shit-stained Trump voters

Wasserman getting bolder:

Four days out, and we're on the cusp of another major evolution in how we view America's electoral map.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 30, 2020

can you imagine the beautiful policing of those protests? beautiful like you've never seen

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, October 30, 2020 2:56 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i mean what we've seen from protests this year is that the administration / regime has no qualms about using full force of power, in the open, to stymie them, and the media cooperates. i think they're itching to take it even further and they have the hardware for it. i think the only thing really stopping them is their own incompetence and ability to make others in power do what they want, although they have managed to eke out significant gains there in the past month. ultimately i don't think it's enough to outright steal the election but i mean it's still very possible.

And the 24 hour thing in Houston adds more votes to the tranche:

Good morning! Between 7PM last night and 7AM this morning 10,250 people voted in Harris County.

This morning County Clerk @CGHollins will be casting his vote at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church.

Still need your #IVoted sticker? 120 locations are open until 7PM. #HarrisVotes pic.twitter.com/cgxok4td12

— Harris County Clerk (@HarrisVotes) October 30, 2020

Amazing. I saw a tweet last night suggesting that a good story would be to interview the voters going to the polls at 3 AM.

agree, but there’s a good chance that person could be a shift worker or in the gig economy and it might fuck up the narrative about who is actually working class in this country