These close elections are a PITA. Landslide victories are much simpler. I guess it just shows the country is equally divided these days and we really can't agree with each other anymore.
These close elections are a PITA. Landslide victories are much simpler. I guess it just shows the country is equally divided these days and we really can't agree with each other anymore.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
I just wish we could agree to disagree peacefully....I don't understand the protesting in a city that voted exactly the way you did?
Who are they talking to?
As usual, Trump just needs to shut his f’ing pie hole and let the process play out before he starts running his mouth about election fraud and lawsuits while claiming victory. He’s his own worst enemy. He got my vote, but all that means is that the opposition is a bigger pile of shit than he is.
Maybe if people who are whining about how divided we are stopped calling the other side big pieces of shit we wouldn’t be so divided.
Just a suggestion from one of those bigger pieces of shit.
BKB
Viva Renaldo!
I definitely agree with both of y'all....
I think I'm going to put some Jimmy Buffett on while I put this laminate floor in my hallway and washroom...
You must have a guilty conscience. I never mentioned your name. Let me clarify so there won’t be any confusion. Trump is a pile of shit. Biden/Harris is a HUGE pile of shit. Is that better? 🙄Originally Posted by BarryBobPosthole
sigh. Forget it.
BKB
Viva Renaldo!
If they stopped counting now, Biden would win. Does Trump really want that now?
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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Raoul Duke
People are clearly divided I think we need to just accept that. This was built as an easy win and it's a lot closer than the media told us it would be. What we should stop accepting is people being divided and showing it through rioting, violence or looting. I can't believe that we've become so accepting of it that our response is to board up places rather than protect the business owners who pay taxes.
This thing is going to the U.S. Supreme Court, if only the conservatives controlled it. Oh wait!!!
“ No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave”
James Burg, An Enquiry into, Public Errors, Defects and Abuses 1775
Kind of a surprising result happened in Indiana’s Governor’s race. Not with the winner, the Republican won, (the last Democrat was elected 20 years ago) but that the Libertarian candidate ended up with 13% of the vote.
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"Never try to fight an Old Dude. If you win, there's no glory; if you lose, your reputation is shot."
I think a viable Libertarian could have easily changed the outcome of this pres race.
BKB
Viva Renaldo!
Trump should have secretly financed a libertarian!....just kidding but there is a word for that I just ain't had enough coffee to figure it out.
Jimmy,
I remember going off when Iowa had all of that caucus foolishness a while back. That is nothing compared to what I see around today. Don't get me wrong. There was some obvious fraud. There always is. And in a close election it makes it even more important. There were a couple cities and one state where it was obvious that serious fraud happened. And for the state we knew going in it was going to be that way.
But that said, fraud is always present and it shouldn't excuse what we see around us.
I find it hard to believe that a nation that first put men on the moon cannot effectively and accurately count a fucking ballot. It's not that fucking hard and it happens every fucking election now. If we cannot agree on rules that allow mail in ballots to be secure, accurate, easy to process, and a fair framework to allow them to be sent out then do away with them. Period.
Stopping vote counts? And then resuming them hours later? Requiring a time stamped postmark? And then not requiring one? Sending them out late for God's sake? And then NOT starting to process them until the day after the election? And then not even knowing if a signature or valid address needs to be included for God's sake?
Jesus Christ! Are we going to have to ask Belarus or Nigeria to come in here and show us how to run an election that inspires confidence instead of conspiracy theories?
And before any of you say I'm overreacting or that it is just the way it is, I want to show you exhibit A that it can be done right: Colorado. They have mail in ballots and an easy registration process that is above reproach. Compare that to the goat fuck going on in Pennsylvania right now. Is there a single person on this forum that is going to argue that the amount of fraud in that state isn't going to end up being larger than the margin of victory? Seriously?
Will
Last edited by Penguin; 11-05-2020 at 09:03 AM.
Note: My mom passed away in May of 2019 and we received her mail-in ballot in the mail this year. Ummmm, yeah, I thought about it, but thought better of it and sent it to the shredder. BUT ... I have to wonder how many similar scenarios could have ended differently?
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
Good example. You have to scrub the voter rolls and keep them clean to eliminate that kind of stuff.
Ah well, we have good and bad examples. For instance, unless things have changed radically since I lived there, that recount in Wisconsin won't change a thing. They have a good clean system in my opinion. I'd bet good money that there isn't even a couple hundred votes difference once the recount is done. Conspiracy theories aside, there was an enormous turnout but they allow same day registration so they just simply got out the vote.
Some other states? The ones still trying to figure out who won? That's where the monkey business is going on.
Will
The main thing I wonder about WI is how a 120k votes can come in all at once and not a single one was for Trump, that just doesn’t seem very probable.
“ No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave”
James Burg, An Enquiry into, Public Errors, Defects and Abuses 1775
The big spike was because the big cities use a central counting location for all of their mail-in ballots and reported them all at once. The small locations count them and report them as they go along. They use a statewide voter database that polling locations can assess so it makes it very hard to get a double vote. They're clean as far as I experienced.
We need some transparency and some easy to access ways to check if your vote was counted. That would eliminate a whole lot of suspicion. And under no circumstances should we go into the counting process without knowing exactly how many early ballots or mail ins are to be counted. Better yet, do it ahead of time. What the fuck is so hard about that?
Will
I think you’re right about the recount in WI, Will. Even Scott Walker says it’s a waste of time and won’t change more than a couple of hundred votes.
Both VA and MD (and I assume other states) allow you to go online and check when your mail in ballot has been received and when it has been counted. It’s not rocket science. Hopefully, these states that prohibit even starting to count mail-in ballots until Election Day will take a hard look at changing things.
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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Raoul Duke
These election laws, from a certain perspective, look like the work of deranged interior designers. Laws plopped on top of other laws with pieces clashing one with the other. Color schemes that shock the senses. Untucked corners of forgotten laws sticking out all over the place. And a battle royale cage match to see who gets to splash on the next bit of mismatched psychadelic top coat.
The whole thing needs a good scrubbing.
I swear to God I am going to trade in my face mask for a set of those Bose noise cancelling head phones for the next 4 years. We all know damned well after what has went down the last 4 years that we are going to have to listen to the complaints over this for the next 4 years! 4 more years of "Not my president!" and batshit crazy conspiracy theories.
Ghastly. It didn't have to be this way.
Will
I heard that! I’m going on a serious news/politics/people in general diet as soon as the excitement is over.
I was just talking to someone this weekend about it seems like its easy to enact stuff in any level of ‘government’ and damned hard to change or end it. That seems ass-backwards to me.
BKB
Viva Renaldo!
Viva Renaldo!
Yep, and still going.
I finally got a chance to catch up on the news of the election, and the reaction to it which is probably more important, and this is one for the books. Taibbi, Tonelson and a few others have wrote about what I had seen in terms of a possible Trump populist party forming from the GOP only they don't think it is as likely to be abandoned as I did (do... I'm still not sure) with a Trump loss.
The election itself?
I don't know about you guys but the process itself almost 3rd world to me. Voter fraud has always existed and it always will. But I have to tell you that the looks of this were very bad. I'm NOT saying the election was rigged or the fraud rampant. But I've seen comments from people in Germany and England and so forth where they just cannot believe some of the things they have seen. I'm not talking about Trump fanboys either. Normal serious people who are just gobsmacked at what they saw.
I hope we can all agree that plague or not we just can't allow mass mail in ballots ever again. The process needs to be so clean and so clear cut that any doubt on the results can be rightfully be dismissed as paranoia or sour grapes. For the first time in my life, in a couple cities and one state at least, I am not sure that is the case. If fairly large states like Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and so forth can do fast, accurate counting then by God the rest of them can. Having this constant drumbeat of large segments of votes coming in at 3:00 in the morning, or qualified election observers being thrown out of the counting rooms, and election officials so grabastic that they can talk on tv about finding 20k or 30k batches of votes that were floating around in the ether without hanging their heads in shame and vowing to resign after the count is finished, etc, is a recipe for conspiracy theories. Long election counts that drag on for days is the mark of a 3rd world nation.
We need an election commission with the express purpose of coming up with a set of transparent and clear cut rules.
Will
Last edited by Penguin; 11-06-2020 at 08:53 AM.
I’m still waiting for any proof at all of mail in voter fraud at any scale. nor have I seen any valid criticism of how this election was handled.
Can you cite any provable stories of voter fraud?
BKB
Viva Renaldo!
I haven’t done an exhaustive study of mail-in voter fraud. I known several states have done it broadly for years and I seem to recall some sort of study that there was only a very insignificant difference in the amount of fraud. (Insignificance can be relative if a state like Georgia gets decided by less than a thousand votes.) I do think this legally mandated requirement that mail-in and early votes can’t be counted by Election Day (in some states) is contributing to the appearance of impropriety and needs to be addressed.
I think what I’d like to see is more early in-person voting. Let’s make it an election month that culminates on the first Tuesday in November.
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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Raoul Duke
Off the top of my head there were what, 4000 or so ballots in Nevada that were rejected because of signatures that did not match the one on record? There's been a bunch more. In times past when we saw a red flag like that we would call in the law and wonder how in the hell people obviously not the correct voter got a ballot in the first place. And then half the time make the state redo their election. Whether it was actual voter fraud or not is irrelevant. It looks bad. It spawns doubt in the minds of the hard boiled who are on the wrong side of it. We cannot have a lot of ballots floating around like that. It is crazy on the face of it. It's why we never allowed things like this before.
And having even a whisper that qualified election observers were thrown out of counting locations is unacceptable. Period. It cannot stand. The US marshals should have rectified that in about 3 seconds. And now that we know how mass mail in ballots work we just can't allow that again either. Even if there was no crimes committed on a grand scale, we now all understand how easily fraud could possibly occur countless times on a small scale . You just cannot rule out that lots of fraud on a small scale occurred and now we know that even if it did most of it could not be even detected once the ballot is put in the mix and counted. You get it past the first pass and it is gold.
Above reproach. That has to be the standard. So squeaky clean that not one person in a thousand would question the results. Some states have met that standard already for normal voting. I'm not sure that mail in voting can meet it at all. That's why it has to go.
But don't get me wrong. I've been railing against things that cut Republican now. But there are things I'd like to see done which would cut Democratic. I think the mass use of early voting was a charmer. That ought to be expanded and done on a national scale going forward. Eliminate the long lines and waiting times to vote as much as possible. I think same day registration is great as well. We have pretty much standardized state issued IDs now, make us of them. Let anyone with a valid ID walk in, register, and vote. And have statewide computer rolls to let it happen immediately. Party objections be damned!
I say get a voting commission together and get this done.
Will
I agree Will. I’ve commented to friends that this has seemed like a third world election also.
I also don’t like the idea of mail in voting. I just don’t see how it can be kept free from large scale fraud. I’ve seen the videos supposedly from Houston and Minneapolis of ballot buying. I also wonder how many dead people were mailed ballots. Hell, my Mom died in October of 2018 and was mailed a stimulus check in April of 2020.
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Last edited by DeputyDog; 11-06-2020 at 09:27 AM.
"Never try to fight an Old Dude. If you win, there's no glory; if you lose, your reputation is shot."
Something I’m finding pretty funny is watching the people who hollered like a stick pig about election interference for the last 4 years, are now saying there’s no way the election can be rigged.
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I too think that valid government issued ID should be required. I don’t get the arguments against that requirement.
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"Never try to fight an Old Dude. If you win, there's no glory; if you lose, your reputation is shot."
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