Biden Wins Presidency, Ending Four Tumultuous Years Under Trump
nytimes.comIf people agree it was tumultuous why was the race still so close?
I really think adding little adjectives like that undermines the respectedness of the NYT
> If people agree it was tumultuous why was the race still so close?
It wasn't all that close. Of six elections (including this one) since 2000, at least 3 and possibly 4 (votes are still being counted) were closer in popular vote, and 3 were closer in electoral vote (based on what has been called so far, regardless of how the uncalled states go.
But it was particularly actively contested, with both high turnout and high passions on both sides, which is exactly what “tumultuous” means.
It was incredibly close, so close that we waited for days to figure out who's going to win. Biden has ~50.6%, if that's not close I don't know what is.
The fact some previous was closer, doesn't mean this one wasn't close, not sure how we even need to point this out on a site like hackernews.
> It was incredibly close, so close that we waited for days to figure out who's going to win
We didn't wait for days because it was close; races which were much closer were called much sooner.
We waited because calls are made by projections, which are based on statistical extrapolation, which are sensitive to patterns of comparable comparable ballots, and the high mail in count and partisan divide in mail-in ballot usage made projection much more difficult than it normally is.
> Biden has ~50.6%, if that's not close I don't know what is.
A >3 percentage point margin isn't close by standards that make any sense applied to US Presidential elections.
That said, even if it was particularly close, the bigger point is that that wouldn't be evidence that it wasn't tumultuous, since “tumultuous” isn't in any way opposed to “close”. That it also wasn't particularly close is a secondary issue.
We waited because of mail in voting. Biden got 50.5% but Trump got 47.7% of the popular vote. That's a pretty big spread. 74.5 million to 70.4 million. So by popular vote it was pretty significant. By electoral votes it's a much wider percentage.
Because the only thing between him and chaos was Democratic House of Representatives. That's pretty tumultuous. Also the world hates us a lot more than when he started.
It was tumultuous because it was close.
Was it close? Seems like it just took a long time to process mail in ballots because the administration tried its best to invalidate them and decrease their legitimacy.
Furthermore tumultuous does not equate to unpopular. Perhaps his supporters enjoy the chaos.
it is close
2016 was closer actually. This was more of a landslide compared to 2016. Plus 5 million more voters for Biden
These are not mutually exclusive...
There is no doubt that Trump's presidency was tumultuous and there is no doubt that the race was indeed quite close.
A news agency doesn't have to cater to everyone.
This is unfortunately true, but important to point out that it is only a recent truth. Historically news agencies were neutral, striving to report unbiased news. Politicizing current events is relatively new and I do not think has been a positive innovation anywhere in the world.
Media has not been neutral ever.
Any choice in publishing one news is simultaneously an active a choice in not publishing another. Furthermore, there is not one singular truth to report in the vast majority of news, in particular of political nature.
The solution is not to find another news outlet that feels more like truth. Instead, find a few different news outlets and understand their biases.
No they absolutely were not.
News and media has manufactured consent and outrage since their inception.
They're directly responsible for uncovering heinous crimes and for causing them.
It doesn't, and thats total fine. But if it doesn't, it shouldn't say it does and is unbiased.
It was "close" because the counting was so slow. If Pennsylvania was allowed to count early votes beforehand, it would've been obvious that Trump was not going to have a chance there.
Eh, 20k vote margins in states that used to be taken for granted is pretty bad. Not to mention the down ballot disaster this has been for Dems.
Biden is going to win the popular vote by around 4-5% (~7 million votes) but the tipping point state (probably WI) by only 0.6%. If he had done 0.7% worse across the board he would have won the popular vote by 6 million votes and still lost the election. The electoral college is a monstrous indignity.
The electoral college system affects both the campaign strategies and people’s decisions about whether to vote.
It’s why voters are making the very rare move to unseat a modern president. Joe Biden is not an exciting president, so why are people so energized during a pandemic?
It's not close at all! When California and NY and Illinois finally finish counting votes Biden is going to be up around 7 million or so votes. It's going to be the 2nd least close election since 1996 (behind the Obama 08 landslide).
Thank you HN for not being completely dominated by this topic over the last few days.
Reddit is repeatedly failing to load and I assume this is why
https://www.redditstatus.com/#month Probably this news is not the reason. no traffic peaks.
I thought it was only me :)
Feels more like closure rather than a true victory. It's going to be fun living in an utterly balkanized country the next four years.
How united was the country the previous four years? Why do you think that is?
And AOC openly calls for hunting down Trump supporters: "Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? ". So much for political freedom.
Elections have consequences.
If "consequences" = "documenting and punishing millions of people for expressing different political opinions" then there is something seriously wrong with our political system.
Over 70 million people voted for Trump. If you hand-wave away his popularity and call all of them bigoted, then you are part of the partisan problem in our country.
No one said anything about punishments (except you). I don’t know if she is talking about citizens or public officials, but I think we should remember the public officials who helped trump’s attempt to destroy our democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to naysay their support for him.
The Trump Accountability Project is what I was referring to.
> then there is something seriously wrong with our political system.
There's something seriously wrong with the far left. I've seen several articles and interviews now where the leftists can't believe that someone can hold a different view than theirs and vote for Trump. It's as if only they hold the absolute truth, and everyone else is the manifestation of evil. It's quite ridiculous.
We haven't seen any protests or destruction by the right after Biden won. Had Trump won, we'd seen wide spread chaos and looting and burning. It's not for nothing that many stores in large cities boarded up.
What they're doing by keeping these lists is not that different from the Nazis keeping lists of Jews. Very ironic.
Both left and right are becoming more partisan and more unable to form any sort of consensus or compromise. I think that's the real issue, when the goal of each side is only to crush their opponent.
I don't disagree. However, it's ironic that we're seeing Nazi/Fascist approaches taken by the left, who claim they're anti-fascist. I haven't seen that from the right so far.
Do they include instilling Nazi policies?
Like keeping and making publicly available a database of people who publicly supported a political candidate? Is that the Nazi policy you're referring to?
Correct. Cancel culture is destructive and toxic. The goal is to set loose the SJW mobs after those individuals. Ironic that they don't see that this very similar to what was done to the Jews in Nazi Germany. They don't see it in the midst of their virtue signaling destructive behavior.
This is far right talking point nonsense. Get a grip, or bring it to Facebook. This is not the place for this.
Notice how you didn't answer the question that they're doing the same as the Nazis, and try to dilute the discussion by saying to take it to FB (which I don't use). Just exposing the hypocrisies of the far left. Seems some people can't comprehend it.
That sent a chill down my spine. A giant red glowing: "WARNING".
Were we not doing that for the past four years?
As anarchists march in Portland, Miamians are worried about socialism.
Secular policies dominate in California and New York, while religion is invoked by close to every Southern Senator.
This is getting flagged every 2 minutes. What is going on?
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Presidential election results of a major nation is extremely relevant despite being political, thus the qualifier most.
Relevant to what?
Maybe I'm wrong here but if a there were a new Russian President of Queen or England I'd want to be informed, as we all have to interact with each other.
But again, maybe I'm wrong and it's just me. I never flag and can't downvote so maybe the people that do are correct.
edit- spelling.
> a new Russian President of Queen or England
I'd say you are wrong, yes. HN isn't supposed to be your source of news, it is supposed to be a source of interesting topics to discuss. Hence "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" (from the guidelines).
This rule is one of the main reasons HN hasn't gone down in flame wars yet - topics like these routinely result in people losing their temper and the rational discourse goes out the window.
edit: looks like the mods decided to save one canonical thread on this subject after all (with a big plea to stay calm at the top): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967
Probably upset Trump supporters (if the election went the other way, it'd likely get flagged by Biden supporters) - HN is a diverse group.
The HN guidelines do say politics should be considered off-topic: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
There's a ton of duplicate (even if separate URLs) submissions.
Lets be realistic, the comment threads on this site almost always lean right.
I don't know that I'd agree, but the point is, we don't have to care. Whether the comments are left or right, we don't want HN to become a political comments free-for-all. There's plenty of places on the Internet (as in, everywhere that isn't HN) for that.
The title is an opinion it's an opinion piece
HN has a double standard. One from 2016 election night not flagged, and the other flagged.
Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201
[flagged] Joe Biden is the president-elect of the U.S. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967
Yes, but during that time, there was a TON of submissions that were flagged. In all likelihood, HN admins will pick ONE article to remain. "Duplicate" submissions should be flagged.
It's sort of premature to call this "decided." Georgia is likely to do a recount and three states seem to still be outstanding (when I checked moments ago).
That may be why.
Biden doesn't need Georgia to win. Pennsylvania gave him enough electoral votes that he can lose Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia (assuming he wins the other states the media says he won)
Yes, I'm aware. And Trump is talking of suing (claiming election fraud) as well, or so I understand.
My best understanding is this is not really settled yet. I'm guessing this may be a contributing factor to why some people -- not me -- are flagging these articles.
Articles get flagged by users. Unless someone doing the flagging is willing to speak up, speculation is all we really have and even having some people speak up doesn't mean we know all the reasons why people choose to flag a piece.
I'll believe it when they are out of the White House at the end of January.
This thread has more points, but the CNN thread is older and has more comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967
And now they are both flagged. Ridiculous. I doubt the no politics rule on HN is fair at this point. I understand why it's present, but I feel it just silences waves of valid discussion about important topics.
I can not help but feel that Trump supporters are brigading these threads and actively trying to bury them. The fact that only old enough accounts can downvote means these are experienced HN contributors. Unsettling, really.
Voter suppression. Voting in a working day. Need to register for voting. Legal battles. Inconsistent rules. A refusing to leave president.
Is this the model of government that the USA bomb other countries for?
Unfortunately the red team has been working to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. The country is far bluer than the electoral map would suggest, thanks to years of voter suppression.
Are we watching the same election? We just had an election with historic turnout and easy voting and Biden will have won by less than Obama did twice. Against a historically unpopular President in the middle of a pandemic. Doesn’t that suggest the map is about as blue as we thought?
Also, the “red team” has been actively helping expand voter access all over the country. The Republican Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican state legislature played a major role in expanding voter access in Georgia the last couple of years (obviously they’re the ones with the actual power to change the election laws): https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/vote...
> Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the increase in registered voters shows the success of automatic voter registration and highlights other ways election officials have improved voting access, such as absentee voting for anyone who requests a mailed ballot and three weeks of early voting.
This election should be a wake up call to entire country and Democrats in particular. There was no blue wave, if anything Biden has barely squeaked past the post.
If it were not for the pandemic I'm convinced the Trump turnout for this election would have produced results rivaling Reagan in 1984. Even with a pandemic he was able to drive more voters to the polls on election day than any point in American history.
> There was no blue wave, if anything Biden has barely squeaked past the post.
Trump under-performed his 2016 margins in 38 states, including many deep red ones.
In an election where polling was showing him losing the 60+ vote in Florida. Hispanic people may not turnout for Republicans the way they did this year, but retirees certainly won’t be doing the same for Democrats.
Trump is historically unpopular among people in the suburbs. Biden won my county by 15-20. It hadn’t voted Democrat before 2016. And Larry Hogan won my county by 38 points in 2018.
Yes, Trump underperformed relative to 2016 - and yet the Republicans made gains in the House, and maintained control of the Senate. The fact that the presidential race is close enough to still be under contention days after election night should be evidence enough that there wasn't a significant blue wave!
>The fact that the presidential race is close enough to still be under contention days after election
There were a number of factors that pretty much guaranteed the delays we've seen, all of which had lots of press coverage long before election day[0]:
"There’s a good chance we won’t know who won the presidential election on election night. More people than ever are voting by mail this year due to the pandemic, and mail ballots take longer to count than ballots cast at polling places. But because each state has its own rules for how votes are counted and reported, some will report results sooner than others. Those disparate rules may also make initial returns misleading: The margins in some states may shift toward Democrats as mail ballots (which are overwhelmingly cast by Democrats) are counted, while states that release mail ballots first may experience a shift toward Republicans as Election Day votes are tallied."
[0] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-results-timing...
Yes, Trump performance decreasing as mail-in votes were counted was predicted. But people also predicted a lot more of a margin for Biden than actually appeared, and if we had had those margins the races currently under contention would not be. Sure, PA might still be waiting on another 100k mail-in votes - but if Biden was 300k in the lead, no one would really care.
49.7% to 49.2% is a HELL of a lot closer than the D+6 projections I saw.
The Democrats maintained control of the House. There were 435 seats up for election, and a majority went to the Democrats. In 2018 they had their biggest House win ever, so it's not that surprising that a couple seats when back toward the Republicans.
Senate control is still an open issue. There will be a runoff in GA in January to determine control.
The only reason this was under contention days after the election is that PA wasn't able to start counting their mail in ballots until election day. This was a choice made by the PA legislature. I don't know why. If PA was allowed to precanvas, PA would have announced like FL on election night and this would have been over Tuesday.
> so it's not that surprising that a couple seats when back toward the Republicans.
My understanding is that Republicans were projected to lose even more seats this election - in the 10-20 range - and instead gained seats. So yeah, surprising.
I'm not entirely sure how Georgia's senate runoffs work.
> The only reason this was under contention days after the election is that PA wasn't able to start counting their mail in ballots until election day. This was a choice made by the PA legislature. I don't know why. If PA was allowed to precanvas, PA would have announced like FL on election night and this would have been over Tuesday.
Well, maybe. PA still looks to be within 50k votes, and while it's possible that precanvassing would have allowed the election to be called on Tuesday night, the policy of accepting votes postmarked up to election night even if they arrived late would still leave things potentially up for grabs. And there's a LOT of close states this year. (And to answer "why", I believe it's to prevent vote counts from leaking before people actually go and vote)
The more general point that "If there was a blue wave, we wouldn't be worrying about states with margins of under 50k votes or talking about how control of the senate will be determined later" still stands.
> and maintained control of the Senate.
That's kind-of true. They've definitely maintained it through the end of the Trump Administration, since when the Senate convenes it will be 48-48 with two vacancies to be settled by runoffs two days later, and Pence will still be VP. But as of January 21, the outcome of the two Georgia runoffs will decide the balance of the Senate.
> The fact that the presidential race is close enough to still be under contention days after election night
It's not particularly close, it just has an unusually hard to project due to the pattern of vote counts resulting from one candidate urging voters not to vote by mail-in ballots, large mail-in vote totals, and the timing of mail-in ballot counts vs. counts of in-person ballots in various states. Both by popular and electoral votes, it's going to be less close than the average election of the 2000s.
“Easy to project the winner” and “close” are generally correlated, but fundamentally different, qualities, and this is a case where the usual relationship between them did not hold.
Perhaps we're using "blue wave" differently. To me, a "blue wave" would be Biden scraping a win on election night and then solidifying it into a 338+ blowout, not "Trump wins on election night and then loses as mail-in votes are counted". Having a 50-50 Senate at best isn't exactly a "blue wave" either. (Which is what happens if the Republicans win NC and AK, but lose both the Georgia Senate seat runoffs)
Even the Trump campaign said their base of old, white voters were dying off [1]. In another 4 years, another 7.3 million older voters (typically conservative voters) will have aged out. The country will continue to turn blue [2]. Democrats still have a lot of work to do on messaging.
This was high tide for conservative votes. [3]
[1] https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/11/04/old...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/20/a-wider-par...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/29/gen-z-mille...
Not necessarily. Note that minority votes for Trump increased (even among blacks) in the 2020 election: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/here-are-the-voter-d... The Democrats really need to get on the ball and start listening to the public.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned that President Trump should not concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election in part because Republicans will "never" be able to elect another president from their party again.
"If Republicans don't challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again," Graham said Sunday on Fox News. "President Trump should not concede. We're down to less — 10,000 votes in Georgia. He's going to win North Carolina. We have gone from 93,000 votes to less than 20,000 votes in Arizona, where more — more votes to be counted."
https://thehill.com/homenews/525063-lindsey-graham-if-trump-...
Trump appears to have done better with minority voters than any other Republican presidential candidate in recent memory, which will do something to counter the 'aging out' that you describe.
I haven’t dived into the exit poll data yet (by county, race, income, and age), but it really depends on which states those voters reside in. If they’re in states almost blue (Texas and Georgia, for example), it’s moot.
Florida is likely a lost cause (between conservative minorities and the elderly), but you don’t need Florida to win national elections (clearly). If the electoral college is done away with, it’s also moot, as there is enough popular vote margin at the national level to always go blue.
I don't understand your meaning. Texas and Georgia are almost blue at least partly because minority voters overwhelmingly vote blue, and the proportion of minorities has been increasing over time. Changing that vote share to 60-40 instead of 80-20 would do quite a lot to solidify republicans in those states.
And with Trump showing that it's possible to increase the Republican vote share among minorities... I'd expect political strategists to focus more effort there in the future. A self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way.
Across the board, the GOP would need to convert minorities to consistent GOP voters faster than the electorate conversion (where the electorate tilts progressive) occurs naturally due to older voters dying and newer voters turning 18 or naturalizing, and this conversion needs to happen even faster in states that are turning blue (to overcome sociopolitical demographic momentum). I will add that just because Trump was able to pull more minority votes doesn't mean the GOP will be able to do the same; different messaging. Someone supporting Trump is unlikely to vote for Mitt Romney (who is, imho, a reasonable conservative), for example. Also, historically, the GOP typically doesn't put forth public policy that is friendly to most minorities and immigrants.
Sorry my thesis wasn't clear, although I appreciate the opportunity to refine the message. Better to get the kinks out here before speaking to an audience IRL.
In general, a two-party system will evolve such that both parties control ~50% of the relevant votes averaged over multiple elections. Individuals might stick to their principles and refuse to compromise, but parties are not so limited.
Losing a solid voter base might mean that the Republicans need to change their platform to appeal to more voters, but it doesn't mean that they're forever doomed and will never win another election. Maybe that means compromising on abortion. Maybe it means immigration reform - but from the Republican perspective, and not giving amnesty to illegal immigrants. (And funnily enough, IIRC amnesty isn't particularly popular among LEGAL immigrants) Maybe it means pulling their heads out of their asses re: climate change, and running on a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
All of this means changes, but not an end to the party.
I don't disagree with you. I think the question is, how much will the Republican party be willing to compromise on (immigration [1], abortion [2], social safety nets [3] [4] [5], drug reform, income and wealth inequality, discrimination) before they're no longer Republicans in order to gain enough votes to remain relevant.
As you said, neither party is going away, but they will both have to change to accommodate an evolving electorate. As someone said upthread, both parties need to stop taking their voters for granted and go out and listen to them.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/06/28/shifting-pub...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/08/29/u-s-public-c...
[3] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/03/21/retirement-social...
[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-...
[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/03/most-contin...
Democrats have been saying this for decades and it hasn’t panned out and won’t pan out: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-losing-ground-...
> While older Black voters look as if they’ll vote for Biden by margins similar to Clinton’s in 2016, Trump’s support among young Black voters (18 to 44) has jumped from around 10 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in UCLA Nationscape’s polling.
> It’s a similar story with younger Hispanic Americans, a group where Trump has also made gains. According to UCLA Nationscape’s polling, Trump is attracting 35 percent of Hispanic voters under age 45, up from the 22 percent who backed him four years ago in the CCES data.
UCLA polling in battleground states shows that Black voters 30-60 are three times more likely to trust congressional Republicans that Black voters over 60 (21% versus 8%). In the 18-29 group it’s almost four times (29%).
> Are we watching the same election? We just had an election with historic turnout and easy voting and Biden will have won by less than Obama did twice.
I won't comment on whether the US is red or blue or purple.
However, it's quite clear that the Trump administration specifically and the Republican party in general have been engaged in actively suppressing voters in general, and the democratic party's electorate in specific.
We're talking about an administration that, while fully aware that there was a disproportionate and significant amount of pro-Democratic party voters who depended on mail-in ballots to cast their vote, they did their best to:
* sabotage the USPS's ability to process and ship mail up to the election,
* enforce rules refusing to account for all mail-in ballots,
* and prop up their own electorate to vote in person to avoid the risk of their votes being filtered out by their sabotage campaign.
We're talking about a campaign designed to filter out votes to competing candidates, hoping to skew election results in your favor.
This is not how a party that values basic democratic values operates.
The thing is that Republicans, or more precisely, those on the right, aren't even hiding this. They openly state it. Republic, not democracy is the latest form of this rallying cry.
The financiers of the right are increasingly open about not wishing for a democracy in the US. The similarity here with the industrialists during the Weimar Republic is by the way striking.
Good god please do not go into the next election with that thought process. Admit what has happened and start to work out why.
There is literal evidence of this happening. The Republican playbook for the last decade has been disenfranchisement of people who don't vote for them. Killing or hobbling USPS was this year's novel strategy.
What I see is 4 million more votes for Biden than Trump. In any other electoral system this would have been a rout.
No, they won't bomb you if you bow to their interests.
Just take the L.
How on earth you got to thinking OP is Tramp supporter?
> A refusing to leave president.
No legal process has taken place that has declared Biden the winner.
No, and it won’t until December. However it is now clear that it _will_ happen. Traditionally, once it becomes inevitable, candidates concede.
Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen. Certainly I won't deny that among the people who have faith in the media (Biden supporters) they are convinced it will happen.
If you give a big probability for a Trump win, you can bet on it and be a millionaire easily with the current odds.
You mean besides having the necessary number of delegates?
He's been literally throwing lawsuits around to stop different states from continuing the counting. That to me says OP's words were accurate.
The elections aren't certified until a few weeks from now. The exact date varies from state to state. At that point each state selects its electors.
No electors have been selected yet.
The election is a legal process and it's declared him the presumptive winner. Same as Trump on election night in 2016.
Everything else that happens are formalities, however important and necessary. Other than the 2000 election, we haven't waited this long to announce the next president following a presidential election.
And it isn't even close, Biden has more differential votes by percentage than Nixon, Truman, or Reagan.
False. These are not just formalities. Corporate media making their declarations have no weight whatsoever.
I dig the HN fanfiction these days. refusing to leave? He's the president. The next one has not been decided.
Correct, he doesn't have to leave until January 20, 2021.
That hasn't yet been decided, but that's not even the point.
edit: so i've now been rate limited for posting three things. What the posters beyond assume is not what I meant. I'll not be able to answer for about two days or so. nice
Yes, we still have the lawsuits to go through, states must certify their results, and the electoral college must meet on December 14. In other words, the exact same process that happens in every other election (obviously the lawsuits are a slight wrinkle) There's a tiny, tiny chance the results could be changed.
Did you also go around insisting that the election hadn't been decided yet after the media called it for Trump on election night 2016, or are you only doing it this time around because he lost?
We just had an election with widespread mail in voting with extended deadlines and historic turnout. And if anything Trump’s support among non-white voters went up. What does that suggest re: the scale of voter suppression?
The GOP actively sought, across the country, to handicap or prevent mail and absentee voting to suppress votes that typically fall to Democrats. The president tweeted about unproven voter fraud and to stop counting votes. If that isn’t attempts at brazen voter suppression, I don’t know what is.
Democracy was stress tested, and it still worked.
Oregon and Colorado have successfully done mail in voting for years, with safeguards like ballots having to arrive by Election Day and signature verification. Democrats fought to get rid of rules like that all over the country, and succeeded in Pennsylvania.
Requiring ballots arrive by Election Day is unreasonable when the executive branch is handicapping the postal service for partisan reasons.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/2020-presidential-election-p... (Postal Service data shows poor mail-in ballot delivery rate in key swing states, judge suggests Postmaster General DeJoy might have to testify)
Requiring ballots to arrive by Election Day is the only reasonable thing to do. Otherwise you leave open the possibility of fraud as has been alleged in PA with multiple USPS workers coming forward and testifying that they witnessed backdating of mail in ballots.
In Washington state where I used to live has had universal mail in ballots for many years and they had ballot drop boxes that were swept on election day. There was extensive information that was put out informing people of the last day they could mail their ballots in.
Election law doesn’t agree with your assertion.
I was making a qualitative judgement. However, to your point election law differs form state to state so what you've said is nonsensical.
In PA this is under review by the state and US supreme court: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/110620zr_g31...
Welcome to a crash course in civics.
This is actually not under review by the PA state courts, and the case was rejected by the SCOTUS twice already. Moreover, the segregated votes were not included in this projection, so the result of the case is irrelevant to the outcome of the election.
Welcome to a crash course in reality.
Requiring ballots to arrive by Election Day is the only reasonable thing to do. Otherwise you leave open the possibility of fraud as has been alleged in PA with multiple USPS workers coming forward and testifying that they witnessed backdating of mail in ballots.
No, there are allegations of USPS workers coming forward from conspiracy boards. In truth, there were no such USPS workers testifying, or even claiming, any of that. Even FOX News and One America couldn't find any evidence supporting the existence of these supposed USPS workers.
And on another note: military votes have been allowed to arrive after election day since at least WWII. Are you saying that most of the military votes cast in the past 6 decades are fraudulent?
And on a final note: it hasn't been possible to backdate postdates for at least a decade, as the USPS records when mail is received separately and in addition to the postdate, and it isn't possible to backdate that data unless you have access to the USPS database. Considering that the USPS is run by a Trump appointee, it is very unlikely that Democrats have that sort of access.
You're quite literally lying or severely misinformed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-D-2GOswwA
Ah, Project Veritas, an organization whose founder has been convicted of fraud and who has a history of falsying and modifying evidence.
Fox News and One America refused to air these videos because they couldn't track down any of these supposed whistleblowers and in fact, Fox News said they couldn't find any proof that these supposed postal workers even exist.
Also, you do know that the USPS Postmaster is a huge Trump Supporter so any allegations of backdating involving the Postmaster would relate to backdating Republican ballots, not Democratic ballots? And in such case, Project Veritas has provided evidence of voter fraud by the current sitting president of the USPS.
Next time, you may want to think before you link.
> Ah, Project Veritas, an organization whose founder has been convicted of fraud and who has a history of falsying and modifying evidence.
False on both counts.
Convicted of fraud. https://thehill.com/capital-living/in-the-know/100105-filmma...
Falsifying and modifying evidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approa...
Signatures are still required in Pennsylvania, and many states have allowed ballots to arrive after the election for decades, including 3 of the states still uncalled (NV, NC, and Georgia).
Moreover, military votes have been allowed to arrive after election day in nearly all states since at least WWII.
It’s one thing to allow a limited number of ballots to arrive for military or absentees. But states that conduct elections primarily by mail (Oregon, Colorado) require ballots to arrive by Election Day.
That is false. Washington and Utah also vote primarily by mail and both allow ballots to be received after the election.
Washington allows ballots to be postmarked the day of the election: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/dates-and-deadlines.aspx
Utah allows ballots to be postmarked the day before the election, so long as they are received before noon of the day of the county canvass (generally, the day after the election but as late as ten days after the election, depending on the county). https://www.vote.org/utah/
(I have participated in election litigation in multiple states. I know more about election law than you do. You will not win this battle.)
California, Utah, and Washington don't.
> Signatures are still required in Pennsylvania,
Requiring signatures yet refusing to reject ballots for mismatched signatures isn't much of a requirement: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-...
Signature-matching results in the rejection of more authentic ballots than invalid ones.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/signature-...
The point of requiring signatures was never about preventing fraud, since it was never an issue historically. The requirements were issued in the 20th century to reject black votes, as at the time the requirements were passed, many black voters couldn't write.
States like Oregon and Colorado imposed signature requirements in mail in voting systems designed in the last few decades. Switzerland requires signatures for mail in votes too.
I’m not arguing that signature verification is particularly consistent.
I’m saying it being non-existent disqualifies claims that signatures on ballot envelopes prevent fraud.
> Democracy was stress tested, and it still worked.
The fake allegations of voter fraud and the extensive efforts to suppress votes will damage future elections. And the presidential election survived attacks, but the senate could be impacted.
There have been serious irregularities that suggest voter fraud in Democrat controlled precincts within swing states.
If you are talking about the “fraud” donnie diaper keeps making up then I’d hate to tell you that they have been fact checked and proven wrong.
Here is an article from four years ago with various republicans openly admitting to votee suppression.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/07/re...
edit- spelling.
Your comment about the first president to not start or accelerate a war since last 6 or 7 terms, at least, is too rich in irony. Trump had many issues but bombing wedding parties to extinction was more of an Obama thing.
Is this a joke? Trump revoked Obama's rule on reporting drone strike death.
He got very close though with a lot of brinkmanship. It could have ended much worse.
Funny enough, the US usually supports a more European model of government when it does nation building.
Should have been a tell when neither Germany nor Japan looked anything like our government when they were redesigned.
> A refusing to leave president.
Bait him out with a cheeseburger !
My expectations no matter what the outcome.....
Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss
-The Who
that is right.
Headline is false. Biden is projected by the media to defeat Trump.
Biden is not President-elect. The President is elected in mid December by the electoral college.
Tens of millions of people are about to get a crash course in civics.
Don't forget that this is coming from the Twitter ACAB folks celebrating a cop as vice president and potentially taking over the presidency.
Guess they're also blind to that one aren't they?
Salvation within progressivism is gained through faith, not through works.
This is why they are completely immune to accusations of hypocrisy.
Note to all: it looks like all parts calling Biden the winner are getting flagged.
With a lead of only 34k votes in Pennsylvania, and 135k ballots still left to count, considering the tensions in the country, IMHO the Associated Press should have waited a bit more before declaring Biden as a winner…
Everyone with the numbers called it back on Wednesday when Trump technically still had a lead. It's a double whammy: all of the votes left are not only in overwhelmingly blue areas, they're also mail in ballots. They're blue at >80% rate.
It was clear to me looking at the PA numbers that Biden had this in the bag by Wednesday morning. All you had to do was look at the fact that even though Trump won the early red states, he was not performing as well as he did in 2016. There was a lot made out of FL going for Trump early on, and he was in fact up there compared to 2016. But that was pretty much one of the only places he was. He ran down 3 in TX, down 5 in GA, down 2 in NC, down 2 in IA, down 4 in WY, down almost 7 in MT and KS, down 7 in ME, down 7 in NH.
All told by the end of Tuesday he was down in 30+ states (as it is settling now, he's down in 38 states compared to his 2016 margin). He won PA, MI, and WI by less than a point each in 2016. So if Trump was seeing shifts of 3 away from him in Texas, it didn't take a psychic to know he'd be losing those states he won at such a small margin.
If you looked at the numbers in PA on Wednesday morning, what you saw were tons out outstanding ballots in Lehigh, Bucks, Monroe, Philadelphia, and Allegheny counties, all counties that went for Clinton in 2016. You combine that with the fact that Democrats returned mail-in ballots at a rate of 65% compared to 23% for Republicans, and this thing seemed inevitable since about Wednesday morning.
Yes, technically Biden is almost certain to win. But this is about taking the high road and not leaving any doubt (that might be exploited to sow more doubt).
> Ending Four Tumultuous Years Under Trump
Not a true statement I'm afraid. Look at the number of votes he got. Trumpism isn't going away any time soon.
>> Ending Four Tumultuous Years Under Trump
>Not a true statement I'm afraid. Look at the number of votes he got. Trumpism isn't going away any time soon.
Tumult(n.)[0]:
"1. violent and noisy commotion or disturbance of a crowd or mob; uproar: The tumult reached its height during the premier's speech.
2. a general outbreak, riot, uprising, or other disorder: The tumult moved toward the embassy.
3. highly distressing agitation of mind or feeling; turbulent mental or emotional disturbance: His placid facade failed to conceal the tumult of his mind."
I imagine that many on every side would agree with that statement.
Eh, I was referring to the 'ending' part not being true.
I think this very much remains to be seen. There’s a history of movements like this, essentially based around one figure and lacking a coherent ideology, crumbling once Dear Leader is perceived as a loser. It’s not inevitable that that will happen in this case, but it’s certainly plausible.
I would assume that most of his bluster about actually winning is aimed more at casting doubt on this in the minds of his followers than any realistic hope of overturning the process.
Not to make people nervous or anything but the US has had a president with non-consecutive terms before. It's not implausible to imagine Trump continuing to direct the Republican party while out of office.
First thing I am going to do is submit my resume for open tech leadership and policy positions in the new administration.
If you are in a position with experience and financial comfort to serve your country with regards to science and technology, the Biden administration will almost certainly be a great place to land. Look for policy and leadership positions in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
I'll be submitting my resume and cover letter just as soon as the transition team site opens.
What's more surprising is how close this was given the past four years.
Close in the Electoral College, where it matters; quite distant in the popular vote. The gap is estimated to be about 4 million more votes for Biden at this time, it is also the most votes for a president in US history.
e: I will concede that it is not "quite distant", though it may not end up close in the EC when it's all said and done either.
4 million is not a lot in country of 330 million. The popular vote was close to 50/50.
It's probably going to be quite a bit more than 4 million. There are still several heavily blue states that have a lot of votes left to count.
California, for example, has only counted 77% of their votes. New York has counted 84%. Illinois has counted 89%.
I just caught the end of some discussion of this on NPR. Based on the number of votes left to count in the various states and how they are expected to turn out, there is a good chance it will end up at around 8 million.
Also, it probably makes more sense to look at it out of the number of voters, or the number of people who could have voted, rather than out of the whole population.
The impressive thing is how the election is going to be decided by a measly -100k to +170k (mean +35k) Biden lead in Pennsylvania !
It's currently 4 million of 145 million votes, since not all 330 million people are voters, and that number will go up since the outstanding votes are in large, overwhelmingly Democratic states.
According to Nate Silver:
> Biden is likely to wind up with one of the higher percentages of votes as a share of the U.S. population that we’ve seen in a long time
Referencing this tweet, text copied below as well https://twitter.com/jtlevy/status/1324408585590329345
[credit: Jacob T. Levy]
vote share * turnout Reagan 1984: 53.3*58.8= 31.3% W Bush 2004: 50.7*56.7=28.7% Obama 2008: 52.9*58.2=30.8% Biden 2020, estimated: 51*66 = 33.7% counted so far: 50.5*60.3=30.4% (as of 2020-11-05)
As if 50% of the US population is going through some kind of collective psychosis. Just looking at how a significant portion of his fans act and look on those rallies. Dressing up with jumpsuits having flags and his face allover or wearing stupidly huge hats with a motto printed on it. As if they are on some comic con where Trump is some sort of super hero. Carrying assault rifles like they can't wait to save the world from imagined threats, dressing up like Romans with shields and helmets. Totally delusional. This level of celebrated infantilism I've never seen anywhere else so far. There are nuts everywhere but that many?
That's because, despite all the "it's Russia's fault" hysteria, Trump more or less represents about 50% of Americans- as these elections have just shown. The scary part (to me, as a European) is that this means that a good chunk of the other 50%, while certainly despising Trump, cannot be ideologically that distant- they live in the same country and immersed in the same culture after all.
The US is a very large country and a lot of legal powers are left to individual states. It's like saying that Poland represents the same views as Germany in Europe because they're both in the EU.
It's actually way worse than that. About a quarter of eligible voters voted for each. Half the population sat and watched the last four years, and still couldn't be bothered.
Look at a county by county election map. You find the divide is starkly rural versus urban. The cultures are extremely different.
Also he is a sitting president with a decent economy. It takes a lot for an incumbent to not win re-election at that point. Somewhat sane coronavirus response and Trump would have an easy victory.
It's probably impossible for Trump's coronavirus response to have been seen as sane or reasonable, regardless of what he did. For example, Biden very publicly claimed without basis that Trump's China travel ban actually made things worse, whilst meanwhile here in the UK one of the avenues of attack on our government (which is seen as Trump-like) is that our scientists reckon that not introducing a ban on travel from China almost exactly like Trump's made things worse. Trump gets attacked for not imposing a centrally-mandated lockdown, ours gets attacked for imposing too much centralized command and control and not leaving things up to regions. And so on and so forth. Also, no matter how much Covid testing either the UK or US does, it's always described as though it's falling behing the rest of the world regardless of facts. (I wonder if that will magically fix itself once Biden takes office.) And as for hoping to get good outcomes overall... look at what's been happening throughout Europe. It would take something more like a miracle than a basic, workable response of the kind you could expect from a government of typical competence to get good enough results that it wouldn't be seen as a failure. France, run by someone the entire media spun as basically the anti-Trump, has been reporting about half as many cases a day as the entire US with a rather smaller population and they don't seem to be slowing down.
The coronavirus pandemic seems close to a no-win scenario. Even most of the success stories (which, I should note, always seem to be countries very different to Europe and the US) are a lot messier and more ambigious than they look from the million-mile foreign press view.
It's one thing to put the best minds in charge of a no-win response and for it to fail. If Trump had put the best minds in the CDC and the NIAID in charge of the Covid response and just allowed them to do their thing (instead of undermining them at every turn), that would be one thing.
Instead he puts his son in law in charge of the Coronavirus response, so we are all left to wonder how it could have been if the experts were in charge. Maybe it would be different, maybe it's a no win situation like you said. But at least then we would know there was nothing more to do. No one would be wondering "Maybe things would have been different if Jared Kushner were put in charge of this..."
We all see the pandemic and how it affects our lives. When Trump tells us that it's no big deal, that it's a media hoax that will go away with the election, that doesn't make him look good. That's a choice he's making to do that. It didn't have to be this way.
Actually about 30% of America voted for Trump so I wouldn’t rush to give him another 20%+.
Or alternatively, the team that chose Trump has disenfranchised so many of the other team (and relied on the ancient electoral college) that their undersized votes have outsized effects.
Yeah, no new wars in the middle east and troops are coming home. How can a president win reelection with that kind of record? Luckily CNN will save democrazy.