If it’s just 2 or 3 states, they may succeed. If they need to stop the vote count and burn the mail ballots in Pennsylvania AND Florida AND North Carolina AND Arizona AND Georgia AND Texas, then this may just be too difficult. Not that they won’t try.
Right. If we win by solid margins in enough states, there will be no possibility of rigging.
One problem with that plan is that Georgia can start counting absentee/mail-in votes already. They are being scanned and stored just like early votes and election-day votes. So I don’t really think Georgia will have any problem having all of their votes counted on election day.
The only issue would be ones that aren’t received by election day. If it’s super-tight I could see that making a difference, particularly if you assume that Democrats are slower to return their ballots that Republicans. Right now there are about 700k mail-in ballots outstanding - it will be interesting to see how much that burns down prior to election day.
Whew, thanks very much for that. I did not know this, and it makes me feel a lot better!
Does 538’s model adjust for the levels of turnout we’re seeing?
If you want to feel worse, there is reason. We are only talking about ballots that arrive after Election Day, but that still could determine the election. Note that PA is polling only slightly better for Biden than it was for Clinton in 2016. Biden leads by 5.1 points, and in 2016 the polls were off by 4.4. So it certainly could come down to the wire.
Late-arriving ballots skew disproportionately Democratic. FiveThirtyEight reports that Pennsylvania or North Carolina may be the “tipping point state,” or the state that delivers the 270th vote in the Electoral College. If Barrett blocks the deadline extensions, she will force these states to throw out a large number of ballots that were mailed on time but arrive late. In a close race, those ballots could be decisive.
This also fits with the Republican efforts to screw with the post office, in order to delay those same ballots.
Having sent my ballot in I don’t know how many weeks ago, it drives me nuts that anyone wouldn’t have exerted the MINIMAL effort required to ensure that their ballot got received in plenty of time.
(Of course, that doesn’t take away from the frustration over R efforts to suppress the vote, and the ridiculously stupid patchwork of rules we have for voting in the various states.)
I think that’s quite unfair to the person having their vote disqualified. If I asked you what “plenty of time” was in April, what would you have said?
I woulda said there is not advantage to NOT doing it as early as possible. I feel the same about some moron who plans on getting somewhere just before it closes, but complains because they ran into traffic and the place was closed. Fucking idiots.
Of course, the stupidest, most irresponsible person’s vote is equal to the most responsible person’s…
I don’t know the specific answer to your question but wouldn’t more early voting help lessen the chances of surprise final results? I can’t be more sure of my answer because it’s 2020 and one political party has declared war on voting.
Trump pulled Florida ads due to money problems
I really do have to wonder where that money went. Do his donors even ask questions?
The assumption that people who are really good at navigating voting instructions are going to vote for better candidates is flawed. For almost everyone, and especially people who really need political representation such as single parents, poor people, people working multiple jobs etc. voting is low on the list of things to do. The people who are most likely to be really good at voting aren’t really smart,thoughtful people; they’re the most fanatical supporters of one side. If you cut the most vulnerable and disengaged voters out of the process and increase the representation of ideologues you end up with a government that doesn’t actually represent the people who need it most.
Good post, DTS.
People who consistently vote are probably likely to be literate and familiar with bureaucratic procedures. I don’t know of a nice way to say it, but people who are poor and uneducated are less likely to navigate administrative systems without having complications. They’re more likely to have problems complying with rules and regulations, more likely to have their utilities shut off - and probably less likely to vote successfully.
Republicans know this and have no incentive to help such voters navigate the voting system.
Yeah - well if they are too stupid to vote, fuck em. They are going to be hurt far more than I if this idiot is re-elected.
You don’t have to be “really good at voting” to realize there is an important election coming up, and figure out how to participate. Like I said, I abhor the Repubs’ efforts to stifle voting, but I’m often dismayed at “the most vulnerable and disengaged” persons failure to make the smallest effort.
IMO you left out a few words:
Right. If we win by solid margins in enough states, there will be no possibility of rigging things so thoroughly as to change the presidential outcome as measured by total EC votes. But there can still have been (and very probably is now and will be going forward) enough rigging to change House races, Senate races, governor’s races, statehouse races and many others. Plus alter the official goes-down-in-history popular vote count for President to be a very different number from the truth.
Point being we may be able to prevent them stealing the crown jewels, but they may still make off with an awful lot of secondary loot and do a lot of damage breaking and entering.
Fair enough.
I think this has been somewhat mitigated by the constant refrain among Democrats to get your mail in ballots in early due to Republican fuckery. So a lot of people have sent theirs in, or voted early, who would have waited in the past.
If you want to follow the results of early voting (party affiliation, total votes, etc), this looks like a decent site:
Lots of ways to slice and dice the data there.
The important ones right now are the battleground states, where early voting is nearly tied between registered Republicans and Democrats. Note that just because someone is registered Republican does not mean they voted for Trump.
In the Battlegrohnds so far we’re not seeing the kind of huge lead in early voting for Democrats that was projected to occur.