2020 Election Commentary

[Ratman_tf]

Call me lazy, but I really like mail in voting in WA. I probably wouldn't have voted this past year without it.
I have no desire to spend a day futzing around in line waiting to pull a lever to, in my case, watch Inslee get another term of ignoring the homeless and raising my taxes.

[Manic Modron]

Thought experiment for a moment.

Let's say that investigations go forward and the results don't go your way, whether that is sufficient fraud found to keep Trump in office or validation of the projected results.

What would you need to believe that you were actually in the wrong and this election was actually valid or compromised?

[jhkim]

  But I most definitely agree with you, the democrats for certain will make mail in, and as soon as they can google sponsored electronic voting the norm as fast as they can.  Enjoy reaping what that sows.

The funny thing is, purely electronic voting machines are most common in the Southeast within Republican territory. They've been largely rejected in many other states. Here's a map of voting technologies, with electronic voting in gray:



Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/08/on-election-day-most-voters-use-electronic-or-optical-scan-ballots/ft_16-11-07_votingtechnology/


I agree that there are some vulnerabilities from mail-in voting, though I think they can be addressed.

Regardless of whether it's in-person or mail-in, though, the larger problem of trust is that many people believe that election officials themselves are untrustworthy and flagrantly cheat. In-person voting only doesn't help with that. I'm not sure what to do with that. It might be a good idea to establish independent election commissions, but most likely the people who don't trust the current commissions also won't trust independent election commissions.

[oggsmash]

Thought experiment for a moment.

Let's say that investigations go forward and the results don't go your way, whether that is sufficient fraud found to keep Trump in office or validation of the projected results.

What would you need to believe that you were actually in the wrong and this election was actually valid or compromised?

I have a hard time believing elections matter too much.  Period.  I knew, the moment mail in was a thing it was going to be a shitshow.  I guess if we didnt have a pool of candidates FROM ALL SIDES who are the tools of special interests and corporations and lifelong political animals I might start to have some faith?  At this point there is no result that satisfies me.  If it was somehow found that there was chicanery to the level Trump stays in office....well we all have to be fools to not think EVERY election doesnt have this bullshit going on.  I think there are reasons that republicans have no more energy to make election fraud a priority than democrats do.   This country is run by an oligarch political class that is going to do what is best for their flunkies, stock holdings, and their overseas partners in crime (china).   
   This is why I do not think the election regarding trump has too much to do with trump at all.  It is more an attempt at rebuke of some sort by the institutions and establishment powers that be that have been in absolute lock step for supporting policies that largely look like they came from the Bill Clinton administration and calling them -ist, -phobic, etc.  There is some sort of attempt at cultural erosion and cohesion that has been going on that is nefarious to me.   I think the skullduggery was engineered to look shady as fuck.  I think it is an attempt for the powers that be to provoke some of the really edgy sorts to start showing up in numbers armed, so that they can crush them and get that whole gun safety movement pushed.   

[oggsmash]

  But I most definitely agree with you, the democrats for certain will make mail in, and as soon as they can google sponsored electronic voting the norm as fast as they can.  Enjoy reaping what that sows.

The funny thing is, purely electronic voting machines are most common in the Southeast within Republican territory. They've been largely rejected in many other states. Here's a map of voting technologies, with electronic voting in gray:



Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/08/on-election-day-most-voters-use-electronic-or-optical-scan-ballots/ft_16-11-07_votingtechnology/


I agree that there are some vulnerabilities from mail-in voting, though I think they can be addressed.

Regardless of whether it's in-person or mail-in, though, the larger problem of trust is that many people believe that election officials themselves are untrustworthy and flagrantly cheat. In-person voting only doesn't help with that. I'm not sure what to do with that. It might be a good idea to establish independent election commissions, but most likely the people who don't trust the current commissions also won't trust independent election commissions.

What republicans do or do not do has jack shit to do with what I said.  I think the democrats want to move to online electronic voting.  I agree that voting machines are also highly suspect, but again, as I have always maintained,  If you think for some reason I am republican or think anything they do is honest as a group, I am not.  In 2016 democrats decided to take a very odd adversarial stance with the horrible white men of the United states.  They also decided to champion the ideas of boys being in the girls locker rooms and competing against them in sports.  That is insanity, and there is only one way to reach common ground with insanity.  I pass.

[HappyDaze]

Call me lazy, but I really like mail in voting in WA. I probably wouldn't have voted this past year without it.
I have no desire to spend a day futzing around in line waiting to pull a lever to, in my case, watch Inslee get another term of ignoring the homeless and raising my taxes.

I did early (in-person) voting myself: 6-mile drive and a wait time of about 10 minutes...it was about the same as grabbing a fast food meal.

[Melichor]

It's interesting that congress had hearings about voting machine security back in January:
https://cha.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/2020-election-security-perspectives-voting-system-vendors-and-experts

The democrats had concerns then. Ten months later.... not so much.

[Ratman_tf]

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[Ratman_tf]

Thought experiment for a moment.

Let's say that investigations go forward and the results don't go your way, whether that is sufficient fraud found to keep Trump in office or validation of the projected results.

What would you need to believe that you were actually in the wrong and this election was actually valid or compromised?

Dunno. There's a lot of variables that I'm not familiar with. Somebody with more knowledge than me could come up with some rule or law or bit of evidence that proves or disproves things.

Personally, I don't think we'll ever get hard evidence one way or the other. Millions of people casting millions of ballots all over the country gives a ton of wiggle room to argue one way or the other. I think it's going to be nebulous and the American people are, for the most part, going to be further disilliousioned with the process but never have a smoking gun to point to.

[Pat]

Dunno. There's a lot of variables that I'm not familiar with. Somebody with more knowledge than me could come up with some rule or law or bit of evidence that proves or disproves things.

I think that's true for most people. They just aren't familiar enough with the mechanics of vote tabulation to have an informed opinion. But that doesn't mean their opinion doesn't matter, or even that they're unable to make a judgment. What it means is the people responsible for handling the votes should be in the hot seat, justifying themselves, their processes, the norms, and and explaining any remediating measures they're going to take. None of this is rocket science, people can figure out it. But the correct answer is always "okay, let's investigate the claims", not "ignore the man behind the curtain." That just destroys public trust.

[GameDaddy]

What do you suppose the odds are statistically speaking that we have elections in three states PA, GA, AZ with a combined population of 15,400,000 people voting, and the separation of all three combined vote tallies is less than 50,000.

The odds are 308 to 1 the vote should be that close in three states combined.

So this is not an accident. Nor is the narrow race apparently the result of people just voting.

[Ghostmaker]

Thought experiment for a moment.

Let's say that investigations go forward and the results don't go your way, whether that is sufficient fraud found to keep Trump in office or validation of the projected results.

What would you need to believe that you were actually in the wrong and this election was actually valid or compromised?

An ironclad chain of custody between the votes in question and the voters who cast them.

Provenance is key here. It's the same reason art curators get all pissy if they can't track where a given painting was -- because that opens up the prospect of forgery.

And before you say 'But, we can't do that!' that's not my fucking problem, sweetcheeks. You wanted to know what it would take; well, there you go.

[Pat]

What do you suppose the odds are statistically speaking that we have elections in three states PA, GA, AZ with a combined population of 15,400,000 people voting, and the separation of all three combined vote tallies is less than 50,000.

The odds are 308 to 1 the vote should be that close in three states combined.

So this is not an accident.

There are tons of reasons to be suspicious, but that's not one of them. You're assuming that it's equally likely that nobody voted for Biden, that nobody voted for Trump, and that the vote was evenly split. It's not. Most national votes in the US are very close, and fall within a narrow range, with results even 10 or 20 percentage points off so unlikely they might as well be impossible.

[oggsmash]

  I do find a great deal of irony in institutions that peddled the notion an election could be swung by "Russian Collusion" for damn near 4 years now feels that all we can do is honor the election results and move forward.  OR perhaps never be employable again.  I wonder if those dipshits know this is how you get people to finally do what you thought trump was doing,  provocations to hurt people in the press.

[jhkim]

Dunno. There's a lot of variables that I'm not familiar with. Somebody with more knowledge than me could come up with some rule or law or bit of evidence that proves or disproves things.

Personally, I don't think we'll ever get hard evidence one way or the other. Millions of people casting millions of ballots all over the country gives a ton of wiggle room to argue one way or the other. I think it's going to be nebulous and the American people are, for the most part, going to be further disilliousioned with the process but never have a smoking gun to point to.

I think that's true for most people. They just aren't familiar enough with the mechanics of vote tabulation to have an informed opinion. But that doesn't mean their opinion doesn't matter, or even that they're unable to make a judgment. What it means is the people responsible for handling the votes should be in the hot seat, justifying themselves, their processes, the norms, and and explaining any remediating measures they're going to take. None of this is rocket science, people can figure out it. But the correct answer is always "okay, let's investigate the claims", not "ignore the man behind the curtain." That just destroys public trust.

Absolutely we should investigate. But the correct answer also isn't "I *know* for certain the election was stolen because of what I read on Twitter". There needs to be some sort of vetting process and confirmation before I will believe a claim. Maybe they're true, maybe they're not - but it should wait for some sort of check.


In general, nothing can be known perfectly, but some things are more well known that others. I trust the results of an American election more than I trust the results of a Russian election or a Venezuelan election. It's roughly as trustworthy as other First World democracies. I'd estimate my trust is in the range of +-3%. That is, if a party or candidate genuinely has a 53% support or 6 points higher than the opponent, then I think they'll win that election. Most of the variance is due to purely legal manipulation - like gerrymandering, spin control, and the like. The manipulation possibilities are annoying, but it's still a huge step up from corrupt democracies and dictatorships.

Having freedom of speech, free press, and due process rights is extremely important in this. From my mind, I'm quite certain that the country is roughly evenly divided between Trump and Biden, for example. There are lots of checks of this from tons of sources. I'd put the contest between them within margin of error. But we need a process to determine one way or the other, and it should be followed honestly and fairly. Claims of fraud should be given due process, but until there is proof otherwise, the vote should be followed.