At the risk of disagreeing with moderation, I’m discussing a significant point. iiandiiii is asserting that Biden’s apparent Presidential election is a monumental historical achievement. I disagree with that theory. My theory is that Biden, presuming he wins, which seems very likely, will have achieved a narrow victory over an extremely divisive incumbent President. iiandiiii has twice proposed “facts”, or at least concepts, supporting his theory. I’m stating that both times his facts/theories are flawed, and I’ve cited both times why iiandiiii arguments are flawed. Rather than backing up his facts/theories argument, he’s dismissing my argument as a “a pointless semantics discussion”.
I think my statement is a fair rebuttal to his dismissal:
If you would like me to back off on the snark in the interests of civility, I’ll agree to do so. I believe that a cite which states that Reagan’s victory in 1984 was 53.3% rather than 58.8% is a substandard cite. I believe that an assertion that incumbent US Presidential defeats is “very, very rare”, whether it’s a ratio of 12/58 or 2/6 or whatever ratio someone can factually come up with is a substandard assertion. I further believe that an argument that dismisses either of the last two sentences as “pointless semantics” is a substandard argument.
I hope I’ve restated my points in a way that will pass the test for civility.
One concern is that there’s a Supreme Court justice who apparently signaled he’s willing to buy that claim. Then again, I’d be surprised if this hasn’t come up in court before, especially if it directly addresses the constitutionality of state laws about electors. I’m sure Biden’s lawyers have a full bazooka on tap.
I’m no expert on the Australian system, but I will say that I worked for an Australian-funded project from late 2008 to early 2016. During that time, the Australian PM was Kevin Rudd, followed by Julia Gillard, followed by Kevin Rudd again, followed by Tony Abbott, then Malcolm Turnbull. That’s four changes of leadership in fewer than 8 years. And since every change of administration meant we had to change course in our work, from details as trivial as word choices on our website to whether and how we advocated particular policies to the Indonesian government, it was annoying AF. We wasted a lot of time and money, but that’s different topic. My point is, I don’t think the US system accommodates such constant changes of leadership, absent freakish events like multiple deaths in office. Even in the event of a successful impeachment, I doubt you’d see THAT much shifting leadership at the top.
Yes, of course electing the Prime Minister is only one of the duties of Members of Parliament.
But it is one of the duties of Members of Parliament.
The question of Delegates vs Representatives is contentious in parliamentary systems as well as in the electoral college. On the one hand, I was taught that the founding fathers thought of the electoral college as representative selectors: that’s why the system is structured in such a way that faithless electors is a potential problem. On the other hand, many, many, many citizens in many parliamentary systems of all kinds, not just Westminster, think that Members of Parliament should be delegates, not representatives. Hence the Green parties in Australia and Germany, the Labour and AusDem Parties in Australia, and other Union and Direct Democracy parties in other countries.
Many people in Australia, particularly in the Labour Party, were outraged when Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister they thought they had voted for, was replaced by Julia Gillard, the person who their elected delegates wanted. (That is, the representatives who they /thought/ should be delegates). When Tony Abbott was replaced by Malcolm Turnbull in similar circumstances, they weren’t pleased that the conservative party had moved left: they were outraged that the conservative party was able and willing to select a Prime Minister different than the one they had voted against, demonstrating the faithlessness of all conservative parties and conservative elements.
But I can give an argument why I don’t think that was even a distant possibility – but I think it’s a bit off-topic for this thread, not to mention 20-year-old news by now.
But even if the Supreme Court were to take up the case, overturn the extended deadline and order votes that arrived between Election Day and Friday thrown out, the number of late-arriving votes has not been overwhelming so far.
Statewide, “it’s not a huge number,” Boockvar told CNN on Thursday, noting that some smaller counties had received none. Even in the state’s largest counties, she said, the numbers hovered at around 500 at most as of midday Thursday.
“Unless it’s super close, I don’t see this making or breaking this one way or the other,” Boockvar said.
I don’t know how much we’ve touched on the “bad” ballot issue in Allegany Co PA.
Apparently there was a misprint on the ballot. When I first heard this, I thought -Oh,crap - thinking maybe they had sent ballots with the wrong candidates in a local race or something, but it turned out to be a technical issue. There was some sort of alignment mark used by the scanner that was missing or misaligned.
This could’ve been corrected by marking up the ballot and adding the black square, but the courts wouldn’t let them. Instead, the poll workers - working in pairs- had to transfer all the votes from the bad ballot to a new one.
Now they are circulating videos of this process with the claim that the workers are manufacturing votes. And I haven’t seen this one debunked yet.
Jeremy Bash pointed out on MSNBC last night that there’s a Federal statute — sorry, don’t recall the number — which forbids changing the method used to choose electors after election day (i.e., retroactively). Of course, the SC could declare that law unconstitutional, but while the Pubs have shown less than zero shame about the means they use to gain/retain power I don’t think the SC would go that far.
Question: Since 22 states, 10 of which backed Trump in 2016, have a post-election day deadline for receiving ballots, if SCOTUS decides states cannot count ballots received after the deadline on Election Day, what happens to the counts in those other 21 states? Did ALL 22 states put aside late-arriving ballots or tabulate them separately? If not, it’d be impossible to say what the vote counts would have been without those late ballots. Therefore wouldn’t such a decision throw a huge monkey wrench into the entire election?
