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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30572 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

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A Tuesday Morning Black Pill: What's the Margin for Error on an Election?

TLDR: Pennsylvania is the most likely deciding state for this election. In the last two elections running, both featuring Trump, the deciding margin of votes has been so small, that in any other context in which untrained people filled out a form, we would expect more than that quantity of people to fill out the form wrong. Have a nice day.

NOTE: This entire post is premised on the idea that the results are more-or-less actual results.

Greetings from the swing township of the swing county in the swing region of the swing state. What's been on my mind lately, but which I can't find anywhere: what's the rate of people filling out their ballots incorrectly? What's the error rate? Not spoiling their ballot or otherwise destroying it so that it doesn't count, but voting for the wrong person. The voting equivalent of walking to the fridge, pouring yourself a glass of milk, then putting the glass in the fridge and carrying the jug to the breakfast table. I'm looking for the people who walk in saying "I plan to vote for [A]", walk in and mistakenly fill out their ballot for [B}, then turn it in and walk out thinking "I voted for [A]!"

Most business studies and data analysis texts put the base assumed error rate on manual data entry at around 1%, though that feels like a round number bias more than a legitimate estimate. And, of course, election day is just about the worst case scenario for manual data entry! Even the best voters only fill out a ballot twice a year, more commonly it's somewhere between every two and every four, and for many voters it will be even longer. Millions of voters will be filling out this particular ballot for the first time, either because they have never voted before, or because the ballot layout has changed since they last voted. Voters will often be waiting in line for hours before they have the opportunity to vote, often at the end of the day after work. Mistakes will be made.

But it's impossible to measure under actual conditions, as it's impossible to distinguish voting by error from voting secretly (except under particularly egregious conditions, like tens of thousands of liberal Palm Beach Jews mysteriously voting for Pat Buchanan in 2000). It's totally permissible, to return to my platonic ideal scenario, to walk in wearing a "WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" T shirt and vote straight Republican once your wife isn't looking over your shoulder. America considers that not just permissible, but your right, and an important part of the system. The votes are immediately anonymized anyway.

But I've been unable to find anyone talking about plain voter error, any studies done under laboratory conditions to determine a likely percentage. Because, for the Cathedral construed most broadly, this idea is just too scary, it's too existentially dreadful: for some closeness of election, the result doesn't actually reflect anything but luck. A 1% error rate, which is the bare minimum and it is likely higher, would quite frequently swing an election as close as several swing states have been in recent elections. Our political parties have optimized us right out of democracy, the choice is so narrow that there is no real choice occurring. The result will likely reflect the will of the people only in the most tenuous sense.

This is, of course, leaving aside things like voters who just don't get the joke.

Puerto Ricans in PA, apparently offended by the "floating Island of Trash" comment, interpreted Trump's use of garbage trucks in his rallies as doubling down on the comment calling them trash. Being unaware of the interplay of Biden saying "no, you're the trash!" to the MAGA base, which Trump was then slur-reclaiming by using garbage trucks, voters simply took it as:

Pacheco saw Trump’s decision to pose in a garbage truck at a campaign stop in Wisconsin the following day as an additional insult. “If he didn’t have nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” Pacheco asked.

That's some great median voter energy right there.

Voters aren't obliged to get the joke. In so far as the punching up/punching down framework is helpful, a platform speaker at a Presidential campaign rally attacking a group of voters is always punching down and always fucking up.

Trump hired an edgy comedian to introduce his rally. Said comedian insulted Puerto Ricans. Biden (probably misspeaking) turned the insult around on Trump supporters. Trump decided to treat this as the worst thing ever. Doubling down on a row when both parties screwed up and were rude, but your side was racist as well, is stupid.

In so far as the punching up/punching down framework is helpful

This is a personal crusade far removed from the much more important topic of the election, but it isn't. It has never been, and it probably never will be. The person who introduced it is a cartoonist who has never made anyone laugh in his entire life, and it hasn't been endorsed by anyone who's actually funny (except maybe Bo Burnham, I don't know that he has, but he might've).

It doesn’t make sense to look at and functions better as part of a more broad “error rate” (somewhat organic inherent noise). First of all in aggregate an error like this is typically symmetric, ie does not “bias” results. Second, on a basic level it’s like asking how many people fill out their gender wrong to what they intended? I’m imagining quite low. I honestly don’t think it’s ever happened to me at least. But if you want to ask the related question about how many people mistake one name for another, well then you’re taking about name ID, which is studied, and better treated as its own thing. Or if you look at bias towards the first name appearing on the ballot, again that is studied and is its own thing.

Edit: However I should add that a pretty close analogue is the debate about whether an online poll should or should not provide a “back” button. I don’t have any literature on hand, but some say a back button can provide greater accuracy, but IIRC most people use the back button to rethink an answer as opposed to fixing an error, although one potential trade off is that this can lead to more bias (some claim and I agree) because “motivation” to click the back button can vary, potentially/in theory, by response. But most post election polls are not this type anyways and pollsters are more worried about deliberate lies to pollsters because they are inherently biased in a statistic sense (again are plausibly non symmetric)

The result will likely reflect the will of the people only in the most tenuous sense.

This conclusion seems to require two very specific assumptions to hold:

  • Election outcomes reflecting the will of 49% of the voters rather than 51% of the voters is a "most tenuous sense" of "reflecting the will".

  • For each voter coming in to vote, the option they intended to vote for reflects their will 100%, and the other option reflects their will 0%.

The first one is an assertion about the meaning of elections, and the second one is an assertion about the alignment between candidates and voter intent. Both of them seem sketchy to me, though I think that my objection to the second one will be the more compelling one.

For the first one, I think the underlying assumption that the majority winner, however narrow, gets the moral label of representing the will of the people and can do whatever they want is already flawed, and treating the 50% mark as magical has similar vibes to me as that often-mocked idea that by lusting after a 17-years-and-364-days-old you are a filthy pedophile, but the 18-years-and-0-days-old one? You go, boy. Democratic elections aren't some game you play where the winner gets to rule in whatever way they want up to and including "execute everyone who voted for the loser" and sportsmanship demands that the loser go along with it, but primarily a common knowledge machine for support, coupled with a power assignment mechanism that is meant to give the ones that are most likely to benefit from the common knowledge a shot at governing. This is why many systems give election losers a chance to form a government if the winners failed to get an absolute majority coalition, and why big political vibe shifts are often secured by votes of confidence or technically-unrelated polls/plebiscites that are advertised as such. ("Let it be known that a vote for Prop 1234 is a signal of continued support for me!")

The primary function of having 51% of people vote for you is that every individual knows that if they tried to start an uprising against you, about 51% of people would tend to oppose it, and everyone know that everyone knows, etc.; coupled with common-sense understanding of status quo bias even among those who did not vote for the ruler, the hope is that prospective revolutionaries know that it's not worth to try and start an abortive attempt (that would be negative-sum for the polity). The ruler, on the other hand, knows that with a 51% result their options are limited, because if they do things that might really piss off the other 49% while leaving their 51% supporters at most lukewarm, the common knowledge that a revolution is doomed will disappear.

None of these considerations change by a lot if the 49% and the 51% figure are swapped, since the genuine 51% winner already has to govern in a way that keeps the 49% somewhat happy (and thus reflect their will) under all but the most extreme assumptions of voters being emotionless optimiser-bots for completely disparate value functions and equal combat stats, so 49% don't revolt because they would lose and 51% do whatever they want because they would win. In reality, 51% motivated vs. 49% unmotivated win by about as much as 49% motivated vs. 51% unmotivated.

For the second one, why do you think it comes to pass that election after election in the US two-party system is this close? Is there some mystery biological mechanism that makes about 50% of Americans 100%-Democrat-0%-Republican and the other half 0%-Democrat-100%-Republican, like about 50% are female? Clearly the more sensible theory is that the parties are the ones that, for whatever reason, shift every election season so that about 50% of voters vote for them. You could postulate all sorts of mechanisms for why this would be the case, but the details don't particularly matter for this argument. All that matters is that parties must have the liberty to shift the margin of their votership quite freely, and this implies that the marginal, for example, Democrat voter can't plausibly be one whose will is actually 0% represented by the Republican option, because otherwise how could the Republican party slightly tweak their platform/message and turn that voter into a Republican voter? Instead, there must evidently be a band of voters along the middle who, in a given election, are just slightly more in favour of one party than the other, and considering the stability of the approx. 50-50 split, this band is surely wider than 1%. For these voters, if the other party wins, their overall political will is maybe reflected by 49%; but also, if the party they voted for won, their will would only be reflected by 51% or so, because they were equally marginal pickings for their own party as it shifted its platform to "ride the margin"!

In short, for a number of people well in excess of 1%, the election outcome being flipped by 1% worth of noise is not the cataclysmic event of "their will being reflected in the most tenuous sense", but the fairly mundane event of their will being reflected a tiny bit less than otherwise. The only ones for whom this event is cataclysmic are those deeply aligned with one or the other party, the actual near-100% D/Rs (who I'm sure are overrepresented here), but why are they specifically entitled to have their will reflected to any significant degree?

On top of everything, if the wrong votes bother you, why aren't you bothered by the non-voters? What percentage of those actually reflect a will to not vote, as opposed to people who fully intended to vote for one party or another but couldn't, be it because their car broke down on the day, their employer didn't give them a day off, they overslept, their postal vote got lost or whatever? What percentage of people who did vote did so because they were idle on the day and found themselves near a polling station and thought "hell, why not" without having any opinion on the election? (Happened to me once!)

I'm feeling some of the vibe I was trying to channel in my not-well-liked, but at least not-hated comment a couple days ago. One perspective on realizing that close elections have some randomness involved is, "HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO CLOSE EVERY LITTLE THING MATTERS I MUST REORGANIZE MY LIFE AROUND PROVIDING AN EXTRA EPSILON IN MY PREFERRED DIRECTION," while another perspective is, "Eh, if it's close enough that a little randomness can change things, the country must be mostly okay-ish with either result, so from a long-term institutional perspective, it'll probably be fine." I'm shooting for the latter, as I think it turns the temperature down a bit.

Of course, one could also think that the country is strongly divided, but I think the country could be strongly divided 60-40, and whether or not it's close enough that some randomness can change things isn't really the best indicator of dividedness (first moment vs. second moment).

Bush v. Gore involved over 5.8 million votes. At least 113,820 of those marked multiple candidates and thus could not be counted. That suggests a 1.95% baseline.

Here MIT corroborates the 1% number, but they don’t give their source in turn.

I can’t remember if my voting machine even allowed that sort of error. It definitely said “CHOOSE ONE OR NONE.” next to each office. Did they use checkboxes or radio buttons?

Anyway, I don’t see any reason to invoke the Cathedral. Research is rare (but not verboten) because it’s hard, not because it’s existential. After the “butterfly ballots” it was a reasonably popular topic.

I think your search results were just clouded by news stories about polling error, which is much more important to organizations trying to make their predictions.

Method varied by county, but in 2000 Florida a lot of the recount counties used punch cards. You needed to poke a hole with the stylus on a paper ballot and then they were machine counted. So it was easy to poke multiple holes or not poke all the way through. There were also overvotes where someone would punch "Gore" then write in "Gore" in the write in space.

La Griffe Du Lion had a take on the 2000 Florida ballots back in 2001, http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/elec2000.htm

Right, and then a big chunk of election law was passed to make this less likely. Did it actually yield an improvement? The next few elections didn’t have any similar complaints.

People are already sowing rumors about the touch-screen-and-printer devices popular in the last few years. I didn’t have any trouble with mine; obviously, that doesn’t rule it out.

or not poke all the way through

Oh, no, the insanity of the "hanging chads" was much worse than that.

First, you could poke all the way through and not have the machine count it, because the chad happened to still be attached by one or two corners and could thus fold out of the way of your punch but then fold back into place to prevent the scanner from seeing a hole. In the Palm Beach County recounts they had to decide on rules about how a "Tri Chad" with only one separated corner would still count as a vote but a "Pregnant Chad" pushed out but still attached at four corners would not count.

Second, in theory you could not poke through a chad but still have it get counted, because the whole process of the recounts was that you got a bunch of partisans on all sides to manhandle a bunch of paper designed to be easily torn. You think it's bad when a printed paper ballot isn't immediately read perfectly by the scanner/tallier? Imagine if each time someone tried to scan it it got more smudged than the last...

Eh, people filling out their ballot wrong have it their own damn fault. I’ve no sympathy at all.

I have to get up early AF so I'm going to bed (it's 9:15 pm in Japan, yes I'm on farmer's hours).

I hope when I awake the country hasn't exploded. Good luck, my fellow countrymen and women.

I want to stay up and F5 Twitter/4chan for hot election shitposts but I have to go to work tomorrow. D:

It depends on how contested it is. Often we basically know who won by around midnight on election day, so about 16 hours from now. But famously in the 2000 election, no one knew who the winner was for weeks because no one could agree over who won the state of Florida.

In 2020 PA was not called until November 7th and may well be similar this year if it is as close. We are not allowed to start counting mail in ballots in advance as some other states are (like Florida I believe), so it is likely we won't be done counting for a few days. The State might still be called in advance of the count being complete if the gap is wide enough of course.

Does the US media release exit poll results soon after polls close, or is the "calling" of states entirely based on partially counted results?

In the UK the national exit poll drops a few seconds after polls close at 10pm, so we know the results to within 20 seats or so before any votes are counted. Obviously the exit poll isn't always accurate - the exit polls in 1992 predicted a hung Parliament rather than a small Tory majority - but the actual error was only 30 seats. (The UK only has one race to count in each constituency, so we can count by hand overnight and the only results that aren't in by breakfast time are where multiple recounts were needed and a few Scottish seats where it isn't safe to transport ballot boxes in the dark on iffy rural roads.

As a keen election watcher from the UK timezone, I would stay up for an exit poll and then catch the real results on Wednesday morning my time (2-3am EST). I suspect we will know if PA is the tipping point state by then. We won't know which way it is going to tip because there isn't an obvious Dem bias to the postal votes the way there was last time.

The over/under from the pros is basically Saturday as when we will know. Usually actually “calling” a state is based on some decent statistics, not infallible but a state being “uncalled” is typically rare.

The whole calling of states thing is a mix of exit polling, turnout analysis, guesswork about the outcomes in other similar areas, and early results. It's a lot of sausage making, it's normally correct, but it has a tenuous relation to concrete facts.

is the "calling" of states entirely based on partially counted results?

Partially counted results, but they are at least smart enough to weight the partial count by source precinct, so when Trump's solidly winning the rural Wisconsin in-person votes but the Milwaukee mail-in vote count hasn't been finished they're still not going to call the state for Trump.

Well, they're probably not? There's always tension between "if we call a state first we get a lot of attention" vs "if we call a state too early we might horribly embarrass ourselves". Fox called Arizona for Biden in 2020 with 73% of the votes counted and a 8.5 point Biden lead, despite the expectations for uncounted votes heavily favoring Trump, and Biden only ended up winning by 0.3 points. I'm not sure whether the takeaway from that by 2024 media is going to be "we might also piss off a lot of people and risk having to backpedal embarrassingly if we call it that close" or if it's going to be "they got away with it last time so we might want to play the odds too".

By far the most serious embarrassment I can remember was Florida in 2000. Networks called Florida for Gore before voting in the panhandle region of the state (which is in a different time zone) even closed, then had to retract the call, then called it for Bush, then had to retract that call - after which point Gore, who had already called Bush to concede, retracted his concession.

I also remember CNN's refusal to call Ohio for Bush in 2004, even though it was clear by the time I stopped watching the results that Kerry had no chance of winning. It was a lot less close than 2000 Florida.

Typically there will be exit polls, but with an increase in mail in voting, they are less and less accurate. in PA at least there will be around 2 million postal ballots to count, which is lower than 2020 by about half a million. About 20% of registered voters are using mail in ballots. So far about 56% are from Registered Democrats and 32% from Registered Republicans (although that of course does not mean that is who they are voting for). But mail in ballots are likely to lean Democrat still, by around 2 to 1 or perhaps slightly less.

This just seems like an odd argument for why it takes so long. Hire a few more people.

Why? Nothing changes if you don't know the outcome the same night. The switchover doesn't happen for months. Why spend more budget on counting faster when it doesn't actually change anything. It is ok if it takes a few days before the outcome is decided.

And if Republicans want the answers faster they could allow PA to start counting votes earlier exactly as Republicans in Florida decided. It was Republicans in PA that keep voting against that change. So clearly they aren't that invested in a swift outcome. So why should the city or state spend more to get it faster?

Because in the world in which we live, for whatever reasons the late-counted votes seem to lean pretty heavily to the left -- the impact of a narrow win from the right on election day with 98% of polls reporting or whatever shifting to a narrow Kamala victory a week later on election confidence would be quite profound I think, especially in PA.

Do you want civil war national strife? This is how you get national strife.

(Not sure why you are so supportive of PA Republicans -- maybe they have undesirable goals here?)

Not sure why you are so supportive of PA Republicans -- maybe they have undesirable goals here?

Well my point is that they obviously don't think counting the votes faster is necessarily better. They also didn't think that mail in ballots were less secure, when they thought that increase would help them.

So if Republicans claim to be worried about the length and security of the process, but do things that make it longer and less secure when they believe it is of benefit to them, then it points to a certain direction about their motivations.

So given that, it is up to the Republican party to manage those expectations about how long it will take and that yes, later counted votes will skew Democrat, and that this is entirely normal given the situation they themselves set up. If they don't want to make it easier/more secure, but won't tell their supporters what that outcome will entail, then they are part of causing the problem themselves.

Otherwise what you are saying is that the actions of Republicans in PA will lead to an increase in civil strife therefore the state governments must spend more money and time, in order for Republican supporters not to think the election is rigged. You can see how that is potentially an issue? It leaves no incentives for the party to actually do things better.

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The maximally-cynical view here is that all three ways of resolving a election that is fucked beyond the ability of state courts to adjudicate (state legislatures nominating electors, a contingent election in the House, and SCOTUS deciding the election Bush v Gore-style) favour Republicans, so anything that fucks elections is good for Republicans and anything that unfucks them is good for Democrats. This view predicts the views of national MAGA leadership reasonably well, but not the behaviour of the locally elected Republicans who actually administer elections.

if Republicans want the answers faster they could allow PA to start counting votes earlier

But you're also defending accepting new ballots days after the election anyway, so that's not a real argument for getting it done faster. It's so transparent.

I think it is ok to either have the cut off being received by election day or being mailed by election day, depending what the state or municipality prefers. I was defending that one of those is patently wrong. I think both are defensible. The second would have the trade off of taking more time in close elections, that is true. But as I point out elsewhere that isn't necessarily a problem. It's just a problem if you choose a course of action that will make it slower, THEN claim the very slowness is evidence of possible fraud.

not sure when the election results will be announced

You and everybody here. I presume that explains the "(Day?)" quip in the title.

Most amusingly: Nevada's a swing state, and it's going to be counting mail-in ballots with postmarks up through election day (or with smudged postmarks) if they're received up to 3 or 4 days later. Even if everybody counts competently and instantly with no errors and no recounts there's a small chance we might not know the final outcome before the end of the week.

I still cannot fathom how any reasonable, good-faith interlocutor thinks this is a good way to run an election. Not having a denominator for vote count on election night is just staggeringly irresponsible if you actually care about legitimizing your democracy.

Not counting valid votes from legitimate voters, can also be irresponsible for legitimizing your democracy. That's the tension. There is nothing special about election night. Nothing changes for a couple months. It's just an arbitrary cut off point, and if it takes days afterwards to declare a winner, it doesn't actually cause any real problems.

So there is nothing fundamentally wrong with saying that if you allow mail in ballots, those posted by the election day should count. You could even build that into the process. Election day is today. The Election decision day is November 10th. There doesn't need to be an expectation we will have a winner overnight. Indeed in close elections probably you want to take a few extra days for recounts and the like.

I don't think it a huge deal to only count those received on or before the cut off, but I don't think it a huge deal to choose mailed by the cut off either. They are both reasonable choices on how you are determining what makes it in time, based upon your preferences.

This all just seems absolutely bizarre to me. Like, I'm capable of understanding the words and following the train of thought, I'm not saying that you're being incoherent, but I'm just completely baffled that this doesn't seem insane to others. The idea that it would delegitimize democracy to tell people that they need to vote by election day seems quite literally crazy to me. The idea that we keep accepting votes that come in well after election day just seems like something that everyone knows is wrong. The fact that states can't even tell you how many people voted a couple days after the election seems impossible to justify. I feel like if I explained that process to someone that was voting for the board in the local running club, they would be confident that I was doing something janky to steal an election, that obviously everyone should cast their vote by the time the polls close on election day.

I don't know man; this just seems like an unbridgeable divide.

Everyone does have to cast their vote by the time polls close on election day. Just some states think it's good enough for the ballots to be in the custody of the postal service (i.e. requiring a postmark by election day) as opposed to requiring ballots to be in the custody of the elections organization by that time. The argument is approximately that in a mail-in voting system, the postal service is effectively part of the elections organization.

I think it is certainly fine to prefer the former. I am just pointing out it isn't that insane as long as you don't count election day as something special. It is just a day we choose votes to be cast by. Therefore if we choose to allow mail in votes (and we don't have to!) and we want to make sure that the most eligible votes are counted, then saying votes must be sent on or before election day isn't in and of itself crazy. Predicated on the idea you are not expected to have a result on election day.

For the running club let's say you told them votes must be cast on or before November 3rd. And you can cast them at the club in a box, or by handing them to Walterodim or SSCReader for people who live closer to them than the club house. We will then get together on November 5th and count the ballots.

At that point the ballots given to me or you would not reach the club house until November 5th, where we would add them to those in the box and count them. So as long as the ballots were entrusted to us (or the box) by November 3rd, the fact they don't get added to the big pile until we go to count them is not a problem. They are still eligible ballots cast by the members, who found it easier to give them to us than put them in the box themselves. November 5th is then the important day. November 3rd is just the cut off for them being submitted to the process set up.

And if that process was instead the mail then it is certainly feasible to say it must be mailed by November 3rd and received by November 5th when we actually go to count them. That they are received by the time the count is expected to end is really the important part. Having a cut off, is just a way of trying to ensure we aren't counting ballots until December. The cut off isn't the ends, it is the means.

Whatever Florida is doing is clearly right and everyone else should copy them.

I wouldn't disagree to be honest. If you are going to have mail in and early ballots and you want an outcome quickly then doing some work to them prior to the election is just good sense.

FWIW, usually the justification has been that the margin of victory of the winning candidate in most races is much higher than the total volume of mail-in votes, so it doesn't actually matter. At least besides the pseudo-religious justification of having those mail-in voters believe that their vote "counted".

It remains to be seen just how many more mail-in votes (legitimate or questionable...) will take place in this election.

I’m predicting fewer mail-ins than 2020, even if the total is higher.

2022 was a drop from 2020, but we still had 30% of votes cast by mail. Even before the pandemic there were mail-ins by the tens of millions, in numbers rapidly increasing. "There's still some to count but not enough to change the Presidential result" was a thing I recall hearing in 2000, back when they were called "absentee ballots" and they were just a thing for invalids and active-duty soldiers and out-of-state students and such, but that time is past.

People keep talking to me about "civil war" and "post-election violence" and so on. Are any of you preparing for that in any particular way?

I can't really envision anybody messing with things in my inner-ring suburb, or my dumpy little house in particular, but who knows, I guess. I could sit on my porch with my shotgun but I'd just feel like a tool.

I suspect there will be some "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" regardless of the outcome. I do not expect them to be any more serious than usual, though conditional on a Trump victory (which I doubt will be allowed to happen) I would avoid planning any DC trips for January.

Nah.

The traditional practice is dumping $2000 on a tacticool AR before Kamala bans them. Whether or not she wins, you must then sell it by Christmas. I figured I'd skip those steps and just buy ammo/accessories after the election, once prices sag.

Ammo is probably more liquid and has less oversight as well.

I can't really see it happening. The cabin-fever Extremely Online rage just isn't in the general pop like it was before; this has become boring and everyone is going through the motions in a timeline no one wanted. That's my vibe, anyways.

I live in a very politically homogenous state with lots of guns. I'm not concerned about any political violence in my area or civil war.

Yeah, if things get that bad, we can just save time and end it.

No white person needs to be personally concerned, outside of what ought to be standard prep for a hurricane or blizzard, food and water and batteries and gas in your car and whatnot. We won't see significant violence, but I wouldn't be shocked by minor disruptions to supply chains or travel.

People keep talking to me about "civil war"

Only if we're lucky.

I don't think anything is likely to happen tonight or tomorrow, assuming nothing massively and obviously wrong happens.

Risk might possibly go up significantly in the weeks and months after, depending on who is deemed to have won, by how much, etc.

The far left has been strongly focusses on Gaza for the past year. It's not clear they have enough gas in the tank to gather mobs in the case of a Trump victory.

Focused on Gaza, and specifically blaming Harris for enabling Gaza. "If we push hard enough against her we'll get her to cut off support for Israel" was a gambit, and it failed, and now it'll be hard to admit it was just a gambit if she loses, even if her opponent was literally the guy who had the US recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"Left-wing antifa riots in response to Harris win" was not on my bingo card...

No. There might be a few damn-fool riots nearby if things get really bad but Texas cops will just crack skulls. Nobody gives two shits about my suburb and that includes the rioters, so at worst I just won’t go into certain areas for a day or two.

Vox has an interesting article with 4 reasons why Trump will win and 5 reasons why Harris will win.

Longtime forum dwellers may know me as someone almost universally wrong when it comes to electoral predictions that are non-obvious, but I find the reasons for a Trump win more persuasive than the reverse, particularly when it comes to polling on the economy, more registered republicans than democrats, and the democratic candidate being VP to a very unpopular president, which has historically been a near ironclad portent of defeat.

But I’m still not sure. I would not be surprised with a Harris victory, but I would rate it as less likely than a Trump victory based off my impression of polling and voter priorities so far.

the democratic candidate being VP to a very unpopular president, which has historically been a near ironclad portent of defeat.

On the other hand, the Republican candidate was an unpopular President. I don't think we have much data on former Presidents running for a non-consecutive second term after losing reelection once. How many have done that, just Cleveland and Roosevelt?

Technically, Roosevelt didn't lose reelection. He was very popular but didn't seek reelection in 1908, and Taft was his chosen successor.

He feuded with Taft and ran again in 1912.

I know; I'm pointing out that he didn't run for a non-consecutive term after losing reelection once.

You're right of course. I responded to you without viewing the post you responded to.

Right, that makes sense. I forgot what I had said in my original comment, so I misunderstood your response.

I was referring to his 1912 run for President with the Progressive Party, beating out Taft for second place, leading to the unfortunate election of Wilson with only 41% of the vote.

Technically that was a campaign for a non-consecutive third term, not second.

Edit: Oh, I see what you mean. I forgot that I had specified "after losing reelection once" in my first comment.

I'm also split 50-50. I know who I'd like to win, but I really do believe it's an overall tossup, even if polls are hedging.

Busy day at my local poll mines! I was at the polling station a bit after 8am and there had already been over 200 voters this morning. There remains something wonderfully non-cynical about everyone going to the voting booths on election day, secure in the knowledge that they can vote their conscience without fear of reprisal. I am in a deep, deep blue city and it's all civic good cheer here.

I couldn’t agree more. Even going last week in a Texas suburb, it was bustling. Local candidates out campaigning. An actual presence from both parties. And, of course, the powerful “I voted!” Sticker. Whoever thought of that was a genius.

Absolutely agreed on the power of the sticker. And it's awesome how local businesses are getting into it and giving freebies and discounts for people wearing one. It's like a remaining vestige of civic pride and community involvement.

Which sticker?

Mine was round, the middle third taken up by a white bar stating “I ✅oted!” Above the bar, stars, with stripes below.

But any will do. It’s the civic religion of it that matters!

Mine was a unicorn shitting glitter or something.

I really, really hate it.

all civic good cheer here

I don't think I have ever had a negative interpersonal experience with another voter while voting. This is been my experience all the times I have ever voted by myself of with my parents as a kid.

I've got a comment saved form /r/PoliticalDiscussion:

I'm calling shootings in at least six polling locations tomorrow, if not more.

I would take the under on that one

Pawn stars meme: Best I can do is bomb threats from Russia to Georgia.

No, our Georgia this time.

I've always had only positive experiences with other people in voting lines. But I do cynically wonder whether that's only the case because the norms are "no campaigning within 100 feet of the polling place" rather than "everybody talk about what you really think about the candidates".

I've bet a small amount on the outcome on the elections. The Kelly criterion suggests being more aggressive than what I've been though.

Not unless they go full tanks in the street, which is still IMHO a slight probability. If Trump wins, the blob is defanged. They'll do literally anything to stop it.

Well I'm calling it for Harris - the people I know in D.C. are very calm and expecting a Blue victory. Could be underestimating him like previously, but in the context of the Selzer poll it seems like people don't want to be blamed if the predictions are off and are seeing a Harris win as very likely.

Come back to laugh at me later if this wrong.

Edit: Leaving this up for posterity. :)

I looked up some of the reddit reactions to Selzer's poll from four years ago (1 2) and it amused me how similar they were to the reactions to the 2024 one here, just with allegiances flipped.

I called it for Trump based on the slightly hysterical attitude here on the best coast, but we can't both be right.

I'd also bet Harris wins if you gave me 50/50 odds, but if there's storefronts being boarded up in DC then I wouldn't say the expectations there are completely calm. Right-wing rioters would be less likely to go after local businesses than left-wing rioters would, and the guys shelling out for plywood know that.

Sorely wishing I could join the riots just to score a truck load of free plywood, but I bet it's all quarter inch, and half of it looks like fucking osb.

If you know of a riot where I could score some free cement ping me.

I heard people sometimes leave pallets of bricks just lying around commercial areas...

That's a fair point, although quite a few of the people I've talked to today are under the impression that Trump has a magic ability to instantiate an army from the aether. TDS is still real.

Although on a counterfactual note I think we should be pleased that institutions seems to be prepping either way. That's more competence than I've come to expect as of late.

Can they really rely on the rational calculus of anybody dumb enough to go out and riot?

I'm not sure that's saying much, statistically.

The premise seems to be: for some store owners the expected amount of damages exceeds the cost of boarding up windows. Going with the implied assumption that damages occur only if Trump wins, the expected damages are the product of (probability Trump wins) × (probability angry Democrats smash in my windows) × (cost if they smash in my windows). (It's a little bit more complicated because there are also probability for smashing in windows, smashing in windows + looting products, smashing in windows + looting products + setting the store on fire, etc., but that's not really important for the argument.)

My point is that (probability Trump wins) is not super variable. It's almost certainly between 40% and 60%. But that means the expected damages can increase by only 50% from the absolute minimum. The expected damages and the costs of boarding up windows have to be really close for a difference in that probability to affect the decision to board up the windows. For most stores the decision is going to be the same whether the probability is 40% or 60%.

In short, while you could argue that there would be more stores boarding up the higher Trump's chance of victory is, the mere fact that some stores board up windows does not tell you much about Trump's odds. Most of those stores would be boarding up if Trump's chance of winning were 40% or even less, too.

Pinging @FiveHourMarathon and any other fellow Pennsylvanians for thoughts on some of the downballot races that nobody else on here cares about (and that very few Pennsylvanians actually care about.) Obviously, who you vote for is your own business, but I always find the dynamics of these races interesting.

First, is there something about the AG race that manages to filter out major party bozos? I'm sure the requirement to be admitted to the PA Bar has something to do with it, but there are plenty of bozo attorneys in the state. This is honestly the one race where I have zero preference on who wins. I get the impression that DePasquale is trying to use the office as a stepping stone for a gubernatorial run once Shapiro goes on to bigger and better things, and Dave Sunday comes across like one of the brass-balls types whom you hope isn't the father of your high school girlfriend, but other than that, they both seem qualified and reasonable, especially given that their platforms are so similar. I got the same impression last cycle, where I voted for Heather Heidelbaugh over Shapiro. She represented the kind of old-style Pittsburgh Republican (like Bill Green or Jim Roddy) who would go on public affairs programs nobody and have serious policy discussions with their Democrad friends. This is a dying breed, as was evidenced by Melissa Hart's utter failure in the GOP primaries, where she dropped out a day before the party nominated Doug fucking Mastriano.

Next, is there something about the Auditor General race that attracts Democratic perennial candidates from Philadelphia? In 2020 the party nominated Nina Ahmed, whose lone credential was serving on Philadelphia City Council and who didn't seem to even know what the Auditor General actually did. Even the Libertarian candidate was a CPA who chaired his township's audit committee. This year, we have Malcolm Kenyatta, another non-accountant politician who previously got a lot of the early endorsements in the 2022 Senate primary before being a total non-entity in the primary. What qualifies him for the position is beyond me. At least DeFoor is an actual accountant.

For the Treasurer race, there's Stacy Garrity, who seems to be doing a competent job but who I can't vote for on principle because I refuse to vote for anyone who makes military service the centerpiece of a campaign for an irrelevant row office. She also seems to be flirting with election denialism and comes across as uncomfortably Trumpy. I can't vote for the Erin McClelland, either, because, in addition to being unqualified, she's out and out said that she plans on using the state spending power for political ends and won't sign checks if she doesn't agree with the purpose. I ended up going with the Forward Party candidate, who is somehow even less qualified than the two major party candidates (he's a career tennis instructor), but this is a race where I can confidently throw my vote away.

Now for some quick hits: The Libertarian AG candidate went to Point Park College University and a Law School I've never heard of. He evidently works at firm in Downtown Pittsburgh that's notorious for requiring their attorneys to be in-office 9 hours a day and pays like 50k/year. PCN interviewed him from his office via Zoom and he spent more time explaining libertarianism than he did explaining what he would actually do in office or why anyone should vote for him.

The Constitution Party candidate for Senate has a series of self-produced YouTube ads where he says you should vote for him for Senate and Trump for president. It seems like poor party discipline for him not to be endorsing Randall Allan Terry for president, though to be fair, Mr. Terry is not on the ballot in Pennsylvania.

I base my downballot election decisions on voter's guides published by various outlets including The League of Women Voters, the local NPR station, and major newspapers throughout the state. Regardless of my opinions on his politics and the fact that he lives in Connecticut, Dave McCormick is automatically disqualified for not responding to any of these questionnaires. He's the only major candidate for any office who apparently thinks that this is beneath him. At least with his advertising budget it's understandable. What's not understandable is the third-party candidates who don't fill these out. When you have no money to advertise, and no one who is going to vote for you based on party affiliation alone, the least you can do is respond to one of these. Every candidate on the ballot gets one and participating is completely free. It's probably the only chance you're going to get to tell most people about yourself. This is literally the least you can do to mount a campaign, so if you don't do it I can't vote for you, unless there's some super-compelling reason to.

I also want to comment on State rep Leslie Rossi, who is my least favorite rep in the state house and who is emblematic of what is wrong with Republican party in general. In 2021 the rep in the district where she resided died unexpectedly. Her qualification for office: She owned the Trump House. During the 2020 election she painted a farmhouse she owned (but did not live in) as a massive Trump advertisement. What's surprising isn't that a bunch of morons elected her in a primary (morons from both parties get nominated all the time), but that she was specifically chosen by the party over the widow of the late representative. House GOP leaders in Harrisburg seemed pretty incredulous when they were asked about it. There was some discussion also about her being an "entrepreneur" but a friend who lives in her district told me that her husband actually runs the business and mentioned something about an extramarital affair that I can't remember.

The AG has a lot of power to go after individuals in the state. So if a dangerous nutter starts gaining steam in a major party primary it's easy for a better tempered opponent to raise money against them. People on both sides face risk so the other primary candidates can get funding from people who normally wouldn't donate.

Also voters usually just want someone polished and respectable to be AG. There's less demand for someone ideological.

Also voters usually just want someone polished and respectable to be AG. There's less demand for someone ideological.

Laughs in Ken Paxton.

I voted against Kenyatta due to personal antipathy towards him.

I voted for Sunday, just seems like the right type for AG.

McCormick is, to me, like a frustrating pitching prospect with a huge fastball who just never finds his command. He should be so much better than he is, but he never gets there. Maybe he was right about how to campaign and will win, then govern as the fantasy McCormick I imagine him to be in real life. Or maybe he is this finger-in-the-wind empty suit when he gets there. Hard to say.

McCormick's problem is that he basically hitched his wagon to a Trump win without actually jumping on the Trump Train. Notice that none of his TV ads are actually about him. Or Casey for that matter. They're about Biden and Harris, and only about Casey insofar as he supported Biden's policies. They do nothing to appeal to the kind of voter who would split his ticket. Maybe this is a good strategy, because we've become so polarized that no one who votes for Harris will trust a Republican senator to not vote in lockstep with the MAGA nonsense du jour. But the guy is basically Romney, and going full MAGA is probably both a bad strategic move and one that goes against his principles. So all he could really do was dunk on Kamala and hope that the R next to his name was enough to win. It might be, but man, was his campaign depressing to watch.

Maybe I'm just naive, but I'm baffled by McClelland's comments about pensions. PSERS has mismanaged the teachers' pension fund to a funded ratio just above 60%, placing PA comfortably in the bottom quartile. Historically somewhere around half of AUM are in "alternative investments" with high expense ratios.

And McClelland just ignores this mess and instead targets the Keystone Saves program requiring more employers offer self-directed IRAs to their employees. As if the average working class citizen could compete with PSERS when it comes to "invest[ing] retirement funds in "alternative assets"". At least PSERS' use of Bridgewater Associates was useful for McCormick attack ads.

There was some discussion also about her being an "entrepreneur"

Wouldn't that be entrepreneuse?

It would actually be degenerate, two-bit proprietress.

Voting this year was much less chaotic than 2020 and 2022. The polling place was actually clean and organized as opposed to there being boxes scattered everywhere. And the electioneering folks stayed behind the line for once.

Very improved. Visually. Now if only they could get the mechanics down. Still a seemingly 0% signature rejection rate. Chain of custody is better, but I saw at least 2 people have to spoil ballots and the COD on those was wonky, and they just sat out for far too long.

Saturday night, my partner & I filled out our respective ballots. Sunday morning, we dropped them in the mailbox by our local library.

This morning I got an email from my county. My mail-in ballot was processed & my vote was counted. The voting system in my state is working as intended, from my vantage point.

Hopefully more states can vote in the same manner I am. No theater, no drama, just a couple selections & bada bing bada boom. I just want more people to have my level of privilege, whatever their candidate of choice is.

I remain firmly in favor of restoring secret ballots. While I trust that you and your partner have a lovely relationship and are free to vote your conscience in full view of the other, that is plainly not the case for everyone. Mail-in balloting provides too many opportunities for coercion or otherwise illegitimately changing the votes of others.

National election day!

In my experience, people complaining about mail-in ballots are not usually thrilled about giving federal employees another holiday.

Move the Veterans Day slightly to coincide with the election day, then?

Compromise: Move MLK day to October and put the election on it. I'm sure the Reverend would be fine with it. Republicans are happy because it doesn't create a new holiday and also it reduces the stature given to a black guy, Democrats are happy because black people and minorities get time off to vote and also it ties MLK even more tightly into the civic mythos, plus they can put pictures of him up in the voting room.

Republicans are happy because it doesn't create a new holiday and also it reduces the stature given to a black guy,

I think you misspelled "Democrats".

Democrats claim to be "pro black" but the moment any individual black man starts to have some success they immediately shift to tearing him down, eg MLK and Clarence Thomas. There is nothing a democrat hates more than a nigger who escaped the plantation.

Uh, what’s the actual mechanism for giving non-federal employees a holiday?

Like heck yes I’m opposed to giving federal workers a paid day off on Election Day when I ain’t getting one.

It’s a legitimate point. We can barely manage to get most of the country free for Christmas.

My toddler had a massive blowout this morning and I’d like to think this is a Groundhog Day style prophecy.

It was on his right side.

As I was walking into the polling station a very unhealthy gentlemen fell to the ground. He rolled to the right.

An Augury! An Augury!

I'm going into the crosstabs and your sample size of one is highly suspect. Young males (especially those in the 0-3 demographic) are extremely low propensity voters. If Trump is counting on the baby vote to get elected, he's about to be very disappointed.

Four more years of shit... but whose shit?

And out of which nostril?

Gas was up 45 cents between this morning and the time I got off work. I can’t tell if that’s a pro- or anti-Trump portent.

How do you in-person voters... remember anything meaningful? Grew up in Oregon and opted for a mail-in ballot even here in conservative Utah purely for the convenience. I actually love being able to dedicate a little time one evening to reviewing the mailers I've set aside, the websites of a few candidates, and making sure I could remember the background behind things. Do you just quickly Google stuff? That sounds kind of dangerous as the #1 result isn't always a holistic or accurate portrayal.

Which (voting by mail) was almost incredibly useful this year. I don't know how much y'all may or may not have heard about this, but the Utah Legislature tried one of the most blatant and anti-democratic power grabs in memory, trying to give themselves power to effectively ignore or rewrite ballot measures even after they pass -- which isn't great IMO to start with, but the wording they put on the actual ballot measure/amendment to give themselves this power was an EGREGIOUS misstatement of the actual content of the measure (basically, a bald-faced lie). This happened with not one but TWO measures, both struck down by courts for being misleading to voters (though the second was less overt) -- but weirdly, this decision came too late to reprint the ballots, so votes on both will not be counted but will still appear. (Even worse, the whole thing wasn't prompted by anything understandable -- it was specifically because an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure passed that the legislature didn't like and got caught ignoring)

My point? Although the system worked in this case, if the courts hadn't managed to rule in time, or dropped the ball, a ton of voters right there in the booth may have been confused which one out of the four was the lie, which one was the exaggeration, which one was the one everyone likes, and which was the one that is probably useless (formalizing the election of county sheriffs, which... is already the case?)

But if you take home the ballot, and get to research as you vote, this becomes much, much easier. Professional politicians, hot take, take unfair advantage of voters, even well-informed ones, when voting in person. Vote by mail!

You can just write it down on paper and take it in, or even put it in a note on your phone

the Utah Legislature tried one of the most blatant and anti-democratic power grabs in memory

...more anti-democratic and blatant than anointing Kamala the Democratic nominee without a primary process?

trying to give themselves power to effectively ignore or rewrite ballot measures even after they pass

Do they have any choice, really? Referendum voting is terrible, and often saddles legislatures with impossible choices. People are in general pretty happy to increase spending and cut taxes forever, and the process is inevitably infected by special interest groups looking for ways to manipulate a gullible electorate into false consensus building.

Admittedly, I have a much bigger problem with "power grabs" than with "anti-democratic." As someone once apocryphally said--the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Referendum voting is terrible, and often saddles legislatures with impossible choices.

A legislative veto is one thing but rewriting the referendum is just ridiculous.

Legislatures are usually the ones proposing spending related referenda anyway IME, so it's kind of a case of "stop hitting yourself".

...more anti-democratic and blatant than anointing Kamala the Democratic nominee without a primary process?

I don't understand this complaint. The nominee is formally selected by convention, and has been since the 1830s. Primaries played no role in the selection of delegates prior to 1972; prior to then most states didn't even have them, and the ones that existed were mere "beauty contests" to demonstrate voter preference to the actual delegates. There was a brief period when Democratic delegates were bound to the candidate they had been selected for unless the candidate formally released them, but that hasn't been the case since 1984. When Biden dropped out of the race, the same delegates who were selected in the primaries were the ones who participated in the convention. They could have voted for anybody, but nobody besides Kamala made any serious play for the nomination.

If Donald Trump's assassination attempt the Saturday before the convention had been successful, do you seriously think that the Republicans would have postponed the convention so they could hold anything remotely resembling new primaries in all 50 states? As presumptive vice-presidential nominee and with Biden's endorsement, at least Kamala was an obvious choice. The GOP didn't have this luxury, and Nikki Haley, Ron Desantis, and anyone Trump had talked to about possibly being vice president would have all been jockeying for position. You're also talking about a party that's still hanging on to a caucus system that nobody outside of the relevant states seems to understand.

Sure, those are all very pragmatic reasons to do undemocratic things.

That's just my point, though. There are a great many reasons to not fret if the democratic process of referendum elections gets disrupted.

You get that it's not 1972, right?

Do you really not question why literally no-one in the Democratic Party has addressed this issue by going on to CNN and saying "What gives? The Party decides the nominee, not the voters; why do you all care so much how badly we're rat-fucking you?"

Voters expect the parties to put forth the candidates they voted on, not whoever they selected behind the scenes. This isn't "let's get together and decide the nominee behind closed doors in a cigar smoked room" anymore.

So here's the language voters see, and I've bolded the most problematic parts:

Should the Utah Constitution be changed to strengthen the initiative process by:

  • Prohibiting foreign influence on ballot initiatives and referendums.
  • Clarifying the voters and legislative bodies’ ability to amend laws.

If approved, state law would also be changed to:

  • Allow Utah citizens 50% more time to gather signatures for a statewide referendum.
  • Establish requirements for the legislature to follow the intent of a ballot initiative.

The impression is clear: a voter who trusts the descriptions to be accurate would get the impression that the initiative process is currently weak, and that the legislature doesn't have to follow ballot initiative intent. In reality, the exact opposite is true!

Again I note that the issue is not that there was a few ballot initiatives that failed miserably. Most of the ones that make it to the ballot at least in Utah are typically just fine or even good -- the amendment that made them mad was literally an anti-gerrymandering one, which most all regular people agree is a good idea. It would be something else entirely if there were any cases of actual disasters or actual foreign influence (even proponents admitted this had never happened).

I solve this problem by typing up my selections as I research them, then I bring the notes to the polling place. This usually works out fine for me, but unfortunately during the first election I owned a smartphone, I had my notes on it and I had a little trouble because the poll workers didn't want anyone to get out any device with a camera. I hurriedly memorized things outside for that election and then I switched back to paper printouts afterward. These days the printouts don't seem to be necessary, because "a camera could enable someone to coerce your vote" is a joke in an election where a third of ballots are mailed in.

When I looked into it, a supermajority of voters solve this problem by selecting "party line R" or "party line D". This seemed like a reasonable button for voting machines to use to filter out people who shouldn't be voting, but it turns out that poll tests are illegal and the machines actually record those votes, so basically in non-off years we're just picking all our winners based what each local district thinks about the Presidential candidate from the same party.

To be clear I do quite like the option of in-person voting, if for nothing else to give an opportunity for a theoretically-coerced individual to overrule their mail-in ballot, just in principle. Seems to me to be the best of both worlds if in-person is still available but the system is set up for and encourages mail-in ballots as the primary method. But if most people end up voting party line straight down that strikes me as fairly problematic. It's not uncommon for there to be at least one bad egg in a party-line bunch, as it were.

Since I'm registered to vote, my county provides a sample ballot in my e-mail. I do my research online, then write down my selections on a text file. In previous years I would put the text file in my Kindle and open it at the voting booth. This year I went with the lower-tech solution of simply copying my choices into a notebook. Never had any trouble with either.

Interesting but makes sense. Do you think most in person voters do this?

What is particularly difficult for you? I understand that perhaps your referendum are poorly (perhaps intentionally) worded, but what else is so hard? It is perfectly fine to simply not vote in races where you dont know or dont care enough to know. I know most of the judges, so I vote on judges. I care about schools and law enforcement so I take time to make my choice. I don't particularly know about water reclamation so I tend to abstain. Perfectly acceptable.

A typical ballot contains anywhere from 15 to 25 positions/questions, and anywhere from 20 to 40 candidates (not exact, totally spitballing based on previous experience). That's a lot of names. Hard to keep them all straight, yes?

Are you deliberately abstaining because you view yourself as not sufficiently educated, or are you not bothering because it's not practical to retain all of that information between when you roughly decide and the actual voting booth? I'd say the former is fine, even if I disagree, but the latter is exactly proving my point -- you could have contributed to the democratic process, but didn't, largely because you didn't have a paper ballot to consult at home with plenty of time to consider your options.

As an additional note, if ranked choice/IRV is implemented this becomes an extra important point -- because now you can potentially concern yourself with previously ignorable decisions.

A typical ballot contains anywhere from 15 to 25 positions/questions, and anywhere from 20 to 40 candidates (not exact, totally spitballing based on previous experience). That's a lot of names. Hard to keep them all straight, yes?

Not really if I care about them.

We had 3 statewide advisory questions. Easy enough to remember. 1 State and 2 federal. A few LE-related questions. A school board choice. And about 30 judges to vote on, all that I remembered. There were also 2 local advisory questions, again easy to remember. The remainder were niche like water reclamation.

Whether I am deliberately abstaining, or not bothering is kind of subjective. My opinion is its not worth my time to educate myself about water reclamation not just because its so niche a subject, but also because I don't think any of the sources will be particularly trustworthy. If you wanted to, of course, for most of these niche questions you can vote party line and expect a pretty average result from whatever party you favor.

In any case, if you want to you can always get a sample ballot at home, fill it out and copy it at the booth.

Typically for the general I just remember races where I won’t vote straight r and no on the propositions. In primaries I fill out a sample ballot(regular Republican primary voters get them mailed by numerous orgs where I live, I just mark one up to select the local far right candidate).

How do you in-person voters... remember anything meaningful?

I go over the sample ballot, make my choices, and either mark them down on the sample ballot or print them out.

Then I bring that in as a cheat sheet and just follow it.

I used to write it down on my phone, but the state I'm in disallows phones while voting, so, paper solution.

Can we have an election day without Drama?

  • In Cambria County, PA, all precincts are reporting issues scanning completed ballots. Lines are getting longer as some choose to leave unscanned ballots in a secure box and others choose to wait for the scanner to work. Local judge has permitted voting hours to extend to 10 PM due to the issues.

  • In Georgia, a couple of polling stations have received bomb threats. Georgia Secretary of State claims they are coming from Russia.

  • In Harris County, TX, someone running for the State Senate is claiming that voter totals have been shifted from Red precincts to blue precincts. This one is weird but the main gist is (1) First published record of early voting had numbers in 1-2 Thousands for HCC West Loop South and only 800 for Kashmere. The second record of early voting decreased votes in HCC West Loop South and increased for Kashmere. (2) The Senator candidate says he was at HCC in person on one of those days and personally handed out 1000 buttons that day, now it is showing fewer people voted than he handed out buttons for. (3) Someone who participated in Early Voting at another precinct that had the vote counts lowered is reporting that she is not showing as someone who voted yet. (4) Ann Harris Bennett, the Tax Assessor for Harris County, TX, apparently has not gone to work since 2020. She is "in charge of voter registration and tax collection."

In Cambria County, PA, all precincts are reporting issues scanning completed ballots.

Does anyone know how Coheed County is doing?

Also curious about Trump County, CA

Time to pull out an old playlist with some AFI and Hawthorne Heights, too.

I was wondering about Calibri and Candara Counties

Do you mean the favored house rep, Mid-Atlantic?

Is he running again? I thought he had stormed off to scar the armada.

And what about Ordovicia County?

I hate this. I hate these fucking machines.

The exact same garbage happened in Maricopa county in 2022, which resulted in Katie Hobbs being elected as their governor.

Was the mysterious day of scanner problem a factor in her win? Hard to know, but it looks suspicious as hell.

(4) Ann Harris Bennett, the Tax Assessor for Harris County, TX, apparently has not gone to work since 2020. She is "in charge of voter registration and tax collection."

A woman with the middle name Harris, in Harris County, in an election year with a major candidate named Harris...

What.

Sometimes unsophisticated random number generators can get stuck on a number. Usually you try to detect those cases and jump out of them.

But yes, the simulation is showing.

unsophisticated random number generators

Do linear congruential generators count as unsophisticated? RANDU was particularly infamous for being able to see the periodicity. Apparently one of the hyperplanes is along the Harris dimension. You would think they would use some sort of elliptic curves over Galois fields for simulating the election. Seems more apt.

Harris county had some minor shenanigans in the midterm, too, IIRC.

Procedural question: what happens in the case of the death of both a President-Elect and VP-Elect before inauguration?

Harris wins, but both Harris and Walz die after taking fentanyl tainted drugs at the after-party. Who becomes president?

Somehow, I don't think that that's the likeliest mechanism by which a President-Elect and VP-Elect could die before inauguration.

No but others tinge the likely political outcomes and I wanted to keep it clean.

Depends. If they die before the official electoral college vote day in December, then I assume that a replacement candidate will be agreed upon (Joe Biden?) and will get elected instead. If it happens after the vote, then congress gets to decide what happens (20th amendment)

Mechanically, the electors would all still the valid Constitutional lynchpin of the system. If there were a majority of Harris electors, state law might constrain some, but presumably they'd all be free to coordinate around another candidate. There would no no special mechanism for facilitating this, but a few things could happen:

  • The Democrats organize behind the scenes and pick another candidate. This person becomes President.
  • The Democrats don't organize electors behind the scenes. Come electoral ratification in Congress, nobody has the requisite 270 electoral votes. The president is then picked by a special election of the House (each state has one vote). The mechanics of this option favor Republicans, so it would be in Democrats best interests to go back to (1).

Please note that, if Harris died, Biden is still president in the interim, and he could attempt to nominate someone new as his VP (to force a consensus). There is also the chain of succession that goes underneath the Vice President, and someone from that could be elevated as a compromise candidate.

For simplicity's sake, we'll assume that Harris won the same states Biden won in 2020. In your scenario, neither Harris nor Walz will have been formally elected, since that doesn't happen until the Electoral College meets on December 17. So, as far as Federal law is concerned, no election has even taken place yet, and the electoral vote will determine the presidency. The party has plenty of time to find new candidates and convince everyone that the Shapiro–Whitmer ticket doesn't represent a significant change. A problem arises, though, in that some state laws require the electors to vote for the candidates whose name appeared on the ballot.We don't have to worry about Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Georgia, or Illinois, since those states allow electors to vote for anyone. We don't have to worry about Wisconsin, Oregon, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia either, because although those states technically prohibit faithless electors, the votes are still counted.

As for the others, it would depend on whether the state legislatures could enact emergency legislation that either created a one-time exception or implemented an alternative system in the event that a candidate was deceased. If that couldn't be done, then things get goofy. The enforcement mechanism for most of these laws is that the faithless elector is replaced with one who will cast a ballot for the winning candidate. This presents us with two scenarios. In the first, the Secretary of State certifying the election accepts the faithless ballots, and is then sued by Trump for contravening state law. the state Supreme Court then issues a ruling affirming that since the intent of the law was to ensure that the will of the people is recognized by the electors, given the extraordinary circumstances, allowing the faithless ballots satisfies that will better than simply invalidating the majority of the votes.

In the second scenario (which would only happen if it was clear that the other way wasn't going to work), the electors simply elect Harris/Walz and treat it as though they both died simultaneously after becoming president. If the Democrats have won the House in this scenario, then Hakeem Jeffries becomes president. If the Republicans win, then a huge argument erupts over how the next speaker is going to nominate Trump for vice president and immediately resign so that Trump can become president. Unfortunately, there's no one believed to be sufficiently loyal as to give up the presidency in what is likely their only shot at it. So we spend the first few weeks of January in a huge floor fight where most of the Republicans nominate Mike Johnson again under the premise that he'd just be the president and could go from there, while the hardcore MAGA wing takes turns with a bunch of sacrificial lambs who nobody trusts to actually resign when the time comes and who would then face the added hassle of having to re-win their House seats if they actually did resign.

In the meantime, Inauguration Day is approaching and we don't have a speaker. This scenario only works if the Republicans also have the Senate (otherwise Trump would never get confirmed as vice anyway), so Chuck Grassley would become president. Since Grassley is approximately 10,000 years old there would be more credible calls for his resignation, but he'd surprise everyone and either stay on or nominate someone other than Trump. But these are pretty murky waters so that's just a theory.

They could just make the next speaker Donald J Trump and avoid the resign point

Today I learned that the Constitution does not explicitly require the speaker to be an incumbent member of the House of Representatives, although every speaker thus far has been.

4chan

I wish I knew. People I considered straight shooters previously have all gone deranged one direction or the other. I used to enjoy Breaking Points, but ever since 10/7 Krystal Ball has had full blown derangement syndrome and just shouts and moralizes at her cohost. The rest of the crew is still pretty good, and Ryan Grim, though a progressive, usually cites actual events, headlines or history to make his point instead of shrieking like a harpy. Emily is a little weak and mostly operates on vibes, and Saagar is maybe a little too humble with a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of political history. Tends to let the others walk all over him.

I'd previously enjoyed Joe Rogan's election podcast. The 2016 one with a huge roster of comedians was an especial favorite of mine, especially Bill Burr roasting the crowd continuously no matter who they were rooting for. But I found his 2020 podcast less fun, with Kyle Kulinski (Krystal's husband) calmly assuring Joe that the sudden vote dumps were totally expected, and all the plausible reasons they were happening. Maybe they were even true! But it just wasn't as fun.

Of course Joe has endorsed Trump this time around, and I'm not even aware of him doing another "End of the World" podcast. So yeah, I got nothing. I might attempt Breaking Points tonight assuming Krystal doesn't get too obnoxious. But truthfully I'm too worked up over this one to "enjoy" it like I have previous years.

I stocked up on some Laird's Applejack and Apple Brandy, because they are America's oldest distillery, making a distinctly American spirit, in my home state. Because MURICA. It was nice while it lasted. I'll probably be drinking until I black out, and may or may not continue into the next day depending on where we are.

Mark Halperin is basically the journalist that all other journalists are cosplaying as. Here’s his livestream:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qbs9Wka8bpo

Very non partisan by Mark, but has several partisan cohosts. One of the cohosts is Sean Spicer.

I’m unironically hyped as fuck to watch Steve Kornacki and John King work their magic on the big board tonight.

In previous elections, I always kept the 538 liveblog refreshed as I followed the election results. Now that it was purchased by ABC/Disney and Nate Silver went independent, I'm not sure if there's a point. I'll follow Nate's substack (but most posts are subscriber-only) and twitter, but I expect it won't be nearly as high-quality.

ElectionBettingOdds (another past favorite) seems to be glitching out for me, or at least causing my screen to freeze -- perhaps too much traffic? I am planning to keep my eye on Metaculus and other prediction sites, but not sure how useful they'd be either.

On Reddit, /r/moderatepolitics tends to be tolerable -- it's the best of a bad lot, as far as politics subreddits are concerned. The top posts seem to lean heavily Democratic in the last month, but I've encountered a bunch of pro-Trump and pro-Harris shills in the comments, and the overall split is much closer to 50/50 than any other subreddit I've found.

Basically: if anyone knows of high-quality liveblogs or election news roundups, let me know!

Richard Barris is doing at stream starting at 6:30, https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9hRIV2amiI

He gets a bit scatterbrained when he doesn't have a guest on and jumps around data topics. But he'll have a good analysis of how the information coming in compares to past results and who's turning out to vote.

DJT real time stock quotes is the closest thing to a real-time barometer as to how the election is going for Trump. Or polymarket odds. But as for feeds, anything will do. There are hundreds of streams broadcasting the same stuff.

Under what circumstances will you (interested in a sample of opinions) accept the election as legitimate and not having been tampered with to any significant degree?

My question is predicated on the fact that I see a lot of Trump supporters preemptively asserting that there will be significant voter fraud this election. I do think it is quite an increasing trend among the left as well.

For the people on both sides that say the above, what does their candidate winning mean to them? Does it mean that their political rivals did not commit fraud and decided to conduct the election honorably? Or does it mean they committed fraud which was irrelevant or not on a scale large enough to matter? Does it imply that there was fraud committed on both sides? Does it imply they believe their candidate committed fraud but because it's their candidate they don't particularly care?

Does fraud require positive evidence for you, or is it assumed without direct evidence of significant fraud countermeasures?

This might seem like a facetious question, but I have a hard time understanding what political assumptions people have baked in when talking about election fraud (for example, whether it is expected to be a magnitude worse this time than previous elections, or whether it is a common thing that has happened in every election)

My own intuition is that (absent direct evidence of fraud which moved the needle one way or the other) the overwhelming likelihood is on either no significant fraud or fraud here and there on both sides which should mostly cancel out, regardless of which candidate wins. I assume there would be more this election than previously but not an order of magnitude more

Everyone wants to look at this as a black and white issue. I think that's a mistake.

Elections can be more or less legitimate. The most legitimate elections are victories that are "too big to steal". I'm pretty sure the 1984 election was 100% legitimate, for example.

But U.S. election security is a joke. There's almost certainly a low level of fraud and incompetence in every election, although it's hard to measure by design. Many razor thin victories have fallen well within the margin of error for fraud and incompetence. For example, it's possible (even likely) that Nixon was the rightful victor of the 1960 election, but was defeated by fraud engineered by Democrat machines in Texas and Illinois.

More recently, it's almost certain that Gore would have defeated Bush in 2000 if not for poorly designed "butterfly ballots" in Florida.

So unless one candidate or another wins by a convincing margin, I'd withhold any judgment on full legitimacy.

In terms of things to watch this election, I'd look at Trump's relative performance in states that have adequate election security (Virginia, Florida) vs. those that don't (Minnesota, Pennsylvania).

VA going red would be a dream come true. But Northern VA is TDS ground zero, and very populous. I still see people, alone in their car on 66 wearing their stupid little covid mask. Although less this year than last, finally.

I've seen a lot of trump signs, it's hard to tell if it's trolls enjoying a layup or some real groundswell of support.

The road I live on in a rural exurb has a pretty solid mix of Harris/Trump signs along the 20 miles I take to drop my daughter off at school. I wouldn't take anything for granted.

although it's hard to measure by design

I've been wondering recently if there is a term for the science/art/engineering of organizational structures for a specific goal. I know it very peripherally in how IT security engineering starts overlapping with physical security (two factor, physical access control, social engineering attacks), but I haven't seen a collected book or corpus of "how to design your organization to align incentives and ensure people can be kept honest". Does such a thing exist? Or is it too broad and disorganized of a topic? On the gripping hand, would I even trust something based on psychology and human factors research given the replication crisis?

Unsure, but interested in reading more.

Would like to know this as well

Institutional Design?

For me personally, I’d want to see significant statistical anomalies— over or under performance, precincts in which apparently every single person voted for Kamala. Places where more people voted than live in the district. Stuff like that. I think the statistics will be much more likely to show the fraud than anything else.

We've had this discussion a few times now and my answer remains the same.

2017 will go down as one of the most interesting years in recent US politics. So many names and ideologies competing for attention and relevance to fill the void from the end of bush/cinton/obama-era politics. Neoreaction was fringe, but almost everyone who was in a position of power knew about it, that's how deep its influence was.

I think we stress out too much about this shit because terms are too long. If we had Presidential and Congressional elections every six months people would be a lot more chill about it all. People would argue that such terms would be too short for the winners to develop any sort of continuity once in office but you know what, it's not the 18th century anymore, they have access to much more powerful tools than before. And in any case, that's their problem.

Shorter terms would also give us more opportunity to see how different politicians handle relatively similar issues. So much changes in four years that there's relatively little way to get a feel for how two politicians would handle the same issue.

Would liquid democracy be stressful?

that would be a logistics nightmare

Counter-argument: make all political appointments for life and multiply the salary many times over. This way politicians can spend their life going after whatever entity they think does the most damage (whether big tech / Amazon, school unions, pharma, etc) without worrying how it affects the party or the next election.

Maybe give them cool hats to wear as symbols of their office, while we're at it. But unironically I think it's a better plan than what we're doing now.

I think if anything that would be worse. As it stands now, I’d minimally double the terms of most offices. The trouble we have now is due to short terms. The house barely gets settled in and knowing where the bathrooms are before it’s time to run for office. And this kind of short term means that they really don’t have to do anything concrete to fix problems. Worse, if you can make it looks like you’ve fixed something but the consequences of your bad fix don’t show up within two years, you’ll be gone before the negatives hit. Even four years for president is pretty short. By the time the economic impact of your policies hit the mainstream, you’ll be packing up to move out.

The second thing is that really, the short terms mean politics is taking up an extraordinary amount of the collective bandwidth of the public imagination. Every two years we’re choosing new leaders, and that means 6+ months every two years of constant speculation, political ads, push polling, and punditry aimed at convincing the public to vote in a given way. Worse, because fear and anger are the most effective means of inducing people to care about politics, we spend those six months learning to hate those who disagree with us politically. You hate abortion? You’re killing women, you sexist. Oh, you’re pro abortion? Baby killer! And so on, through every major issue. This tends to create tensions between people that shouldn’t exist. And the wounds caused by this short cycle never completely heal.

In my opinion, politics, ideally would be such a minor part of life that they really don’t matter. The general public is not served by a system so broken that it’s near top of mind what a political figure said or did today or any other day. It’s not supposed to be that important, and frankly, if the government worked properly, you wouldn’t have to constantly baby sit it and change its nappies.

As it stands now, I’d minimally double the terms of most offices.

One interesting thing is that IIRC the Federalist Papers contemplated that Cabinet Secretaries would need Senate advice and consent to be replaced, and generally serve across administrations. That might be a reasonable blend of longevity in office but with rapid accountability for particular screwups.

I believe that most things that effectively reduce the impact of each particular politician have the net effect of transferring power to what we would call the "deep state", all of the unelected aides, assistants, bureaucrats, etc that actually stay in the same jobs for long times. This is usually in reference to tougher term limits, but I think it would apply to dramatically shorter terms too.

There is tremendous power in having long experience in a system, knowing what has and hasn't worked in the past, all the ins and outs of all the little rules, who knows how to do what, etc. The more we limit the amount of time actual elected politicians spend in office, the more we transfer that power to their unelected aides who actually know how to get things done, and can slow-walk anything they don't like while accelerating anything they do.

I don't think any "tools" can fix that problem, because it's about power. Tools that actually increase a politician's power effectively versus the system will never be built, because it's not in anyone's interest to make it easier for any newcomers to accumulate power. Power is only effectively increased at the expense of other people with power, who can't be expected to cooperate in the process.

Exit polls looking good for Trump in Georgia if Fox is to be believed. Blaxit seems to have materialized.

Blacks declining to vote for Democrats in their usual percentages. An adaptation from "Brexit".

Very significant, and much more likely if it holds.

African Americans have been voting Democrat at about 80% or above for the last half-century, and in the upper 80s/low 90s since 2000. Any sort of notable decrease from that has significant follow-on consequences.

The reason for that is that by the nature of bi-partisan gerrymandering, parties want narrow-but-reliable margins in various voting districts (so as the maximize the value of their voters / increase the wasted votes of the as-big-as-possible-but-minority opposition. For several census periods, African Americans have been that reliable voting block. As such, a decrease in their turnout threatens to flip various narrow-held seats. This could, for example, help ensure a Republican Senate for the next two years (which would mean considerably more for a Trump presidency on issues like judges).

It also matters because African American are a core part of the lower-income-strata of the Democratic coalition, and so serve as a better proxy for that end of the Democratic base turnout than the upper-middle-class Professional Managerial Class (PMCs). Kamalla Harris was specifically chosen as Biden's VP / became the candidate specifically because she was supported by the African-American political machine wing of the Democratic Party, who were Biden allies. Harris is supposed to run exceptionally well with them, and thus if her strongest part of the coalition is underperforming, it's more likely that related parts of the coalition will also do so.

If Harris loses the Democrat's working class, she loses, as the PMCs are too concentrated in urban centers and the coasts to carry the rest of the country.

Trump polygon odds surged from 59% to 66%, but before we get too excited, a reminder of 2020:

https://www.charlesrubenfeld.com/content/images/2020/11/image-11.png

This is why so many people thought it was stolen. Trump looked like he had it in the bag, and then gone

I tried to insert a blank paper ballot into the voting machine without coloring in any circles. The machine displayed a "blank ballot" error message and spat it out. I told a poll worker what I was attempting to do, and she made a phone call to ask whether my blank ballot could be accepted and counted. After waiting for five minutes, she got off the phone and informed me that I was obligated to color in at least one circle in order for my ballot to be counted. So I ended up voting to legalize abortion in Missouri.

Makes sense, I'm glad you selected an uncontroversial topic for your protest-vote-indication.


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