Sonic Youth Gossip - The 2020 USA Election Thread

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After giving this some consideration, I would like to see the following changes by our next presidential election.

Alaska & Hawaii election deadline would be 7PM local on the first Monday in November. By doing this, their results “should” be known before the first ballot was cast in the lower 48 on the First Tuesday morning in November.

On the first Tuesday in November:

East coast voting stops at 5PM
CentralST voting stops at 4PM
MountainST voting stops at 3PM
PacificST voting stops at 2PM

With the above scenario, all lower 48 voting stops at the same time. Networks or tweets wouldn’t have the opportunity to “call a state” while other voters were standing in line.

YES - citizens in California would have three less hours to vote than citizens in New York, but that’s a small concession for all voting being done at the same time.

Curious if any of you see an issue with my proposal?

How about the media just go to bed early that day and start fresh Wednesday. Why should California have 3 less hours to vote with their population size?

How about people just not put so much stock in "early predictions" based on incomplete results?

Quote:

Originally Posted by tw2113

Normally I would agree. But are these normal times? They sho ain't. Which brings me to Paul Krugman's opinion piece in his NYT newsletter, dated November 3. Read on, young Padawan:

Quote:

The fierce urgency of nowcasting

It’s Election Day. My plan is to spend the evening paying no attention to the news, reading Marcus Aurelius and listening to baroque music.

I’m lying, of course. Like everyone else I’ll be scouring Twitter and the election websites minute by minute, trying to pace my bourbon consumption to stay on that fine line between calm and comatose.

But one thing I’ll be doing in particular is following a variety of number crunchers — not least The Times’s Upshot, which is bringing back a version of its dreaded “needle” — trying to assess what early returns mean for the likely outcome. In normal circumstances, or at least what used to be normal circumstances, this would be a waste of time, since the votes will already have been cast and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. This time, however, modeling based on early returns could, just possibly, save the Republic.

Let me back up a minute. Among economists there is, alongside forecasting, a well-established practice of “nowcasting” — typically estimating the economy’s growth rate in the current quarter before the quarter is over, and weeks before the official estimate from the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The New York Fed and several other Federal Reserve Banks, as well as various private firms, do nowcasting, and some people follow those estimates eagerly.

Why not just wait for the official number? Ordinarily nowcasts help for planning purposes — they help businesses make production and investment decisions, they give local governments some advance warning about likely revenue, and so on. They may be worth something to investors. But they sometimes have political relevance too.

For example, GDP growth in the third quarter was a huge number. But everyone already expected a huge number thanks to nowcasting, so it had very little political impact — which was appropriate, because it was a backward look at the economy’s partial snapback earlier this year, not an indicator that things were going well looking forward.

So what we’ll be seeing tonight is a lot of political nowcasting. As everyone knows, many votes have been cast by mail, and it may take days or even weeks before all those votes are counted. We will, however, have fairly full information on some states, and some counties within states, relatively early.

These early results may provide important information. In particular, if they look a lot like what the polls are telling us to expect — especially if it appears that Joe Biden has won at least one major Sunbelt state — we may be reasonably confident that Biden has won the nation as a whole despite those outstanding mail-in ballots and, perhaps, despite caution on the part of news organizations unwilling to call the race based on incomplete results.

And this may matter! This year Democrats, who take the coronavirus seriously, are much more likely than Republicans to have voted by mail. And in states where tabulation of mail-in votes didn’t start until today — most notably Pennsylvania, whose Republican legislature prevented early counting — this will mean a spurious Trump lead in early vote counts.

Trump has more or less telegraphed his intention to try to prevent those mail-in votes from ever being counted — to find some excuse, any excuse, for stopping the clock tonight. This would be crazy, a violation of every democratic principle — but with a 6-3 Supreme Court, it could happen.

Even this stuffed court might well balk, however, if number-crunching on early returns makes it clear that Biden won, so that this would amount to raw election theft.

So bring on the nowcasts. Following them isn’t just obsession, although it’s that too. They might, just might, be the salvation of America as we know it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

This is ridiculous. The ability and time frame to vote should be the same across the board. It's not like the President will begin the following week, why rush this process?

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

This is ridiculous.

lmao!

i too think bytor inhaled too much insecticide as a kid

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i too think bytor inhaled too much insecticide as a kid

Wait - I thought he was still a kid. Are you telling me an adult is posting that shit?

Trump just said "he will win easily, with a lot of litigation" .

He's a very bad loser, that's all. Judging from the live tweets of the press conference on Foxnews, read between the lines, even they don't follow him anymore
CNN calls him pathetic and a whole lot more. :D even Rick Santorum, former Republican candidate, agrees.

Erie County in North West Pennsylvania and Allentown county in south east have just flipped from red to blue.

La-ah-ah, la-la-la-la-la
Ah-ah-ah, la-la-la-la-la
I predict a riot, I predict a riot
I predict a riot, I predict a riot

Sad but true, but stupid armed Trumpists will be attacking the polling stations

Quote:

Originally Posted by _tunic_

Reminds me of one of the final scenes in Batman Returns, when the Penguin's minions desert him one by one. BUT! The people and the facts-based media must NOT let their guard down - psycho judges all the way up to the Handmaid can still intervene...

MSNBC cut away from Trump in about 30 seconds

Same did other major channels like ABC, CBS, CNBC
Poor Trumpie, nobody's listening anymore

‐-‐-----------------------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Pascrell, Jr.

@BillPascrell
UPDATE The Special Counsel’s Office informed me today they’re investigating the trump campaign’s use of the White House as an Election Day campaign command center and party room for violating the Hatch Act.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

This is ridiculous.

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

lmao!

i too think bytor inhaled too much insecticide as a kid

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Wait - I thought he was still a kid. Are you telling me an adult is posting that shit?

Ridiculous as it may sound, this adult realizes mass-media has interfered with our election process far more than Russia ever has!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor

Ridiculous as it may sound, this adult realizes mass-media has interfered with our election process far more than Russia ever has!

No they don't, the votes are being counted.

The "problem" is that the process is different in the various states:
In e.g. Florida and Ohio the mail-in ballots were counted first, so there Biden was leading first, and then Trump gained in as the physical votes were counted.
In Pennsylvania and Georgia the physical votes were counted first which Trump won. Now the mail-in ballots are still counted, which Biden is winning.

It would have been more transparent if the process was the same in all states.

It's Trumps own fault, he told his followers not to vote by mail.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Schunk

Even should he lose, however, NBC's very astute (albiet highly anti-Trump) political observer Chuck Todd has pointed out that Republican senators, representatives, and Governors have won in states he carried (in US political parlance he is said to "have coattails"), so he will remain a powerhouse in the Republican Party. Secondly, the Democrats needed a massive win to say that the election represented a repudiation of Trumpism. That obviously has not happened, so Trump's populism will remain a force in Amereican politics for years to come.

What CNN correctly claimed is that when Trump is no longer President he can be sued his ass off, over a whole lot of different cases such as the Mueller Report. So that is a very good reason for Trump to desperately cling on to his seat

So Trump's lost Rick Santorum, fox news, AND fox news, but not Bytor. Least he's got his desperate supporters to the death.

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ah ah ah

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Ridiculous as it may sound, this adult realizes mass-media has interfered with our election process far more than Russia ever has!

listen to yourself man. you're sounding like a tin foil hat wearin' dude.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _tunic_

No they don't, the votes are being counted.

this. we're experiencing an election during a pandemic. this process is going to take a little longer than usual. and probably even more so considering how close this race is. 2000 election wasn't actually officially decided till like the following month? so like....everyone just needs to shut up and let these people count the damn votes.

EDIT: and trump can't hold an L, he's already suing states? I'd be mad ashamed if I looked up to a giant douche like him. he can literally have/be anything he wants, but never once decides to have some dignity or class.

maybe next summer I'll try some edibles...it'll be legal-ish here by then

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Ridiculous as it may sound, this adult realizes mass-media has interfered with our election process far more than Russia ever has!

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

listen to yourself man. you're sounding like a tin foil hat wearin' dude.

2016: “Russia rigged our election!”

2020: “It’s not possible to rig an election!”

......only the easily duped are naive enough to not know the difference!!!

Difference in gaps overnight :
Made a screengrab of the gaps last night, 0:30 my timezone, which is 6:30PM ET. Compared to the scores now, at 10AM my timezone :

Georgia was 9,426 fot Trump, it's now 463
Nevada unchanged at 11,438 for Biden
Pennsylvania was 75,427 for Trump, it's now 18,229
Arizona was 65,179 for Biden, it's now 47,052

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

2016: “Russia rigged our election!”

2020: “It’s not possible to rig an election!”

......only the easily duped are naive enough to not know the difference!!!

Look at it this way:

Who is claiming that the elections are rigged? Trump, his family and his followers
Who is claiming that the elections are not rigged? Every body else, all over this planet (except for the Slovakian PM)

Even several Republicans tell him to "stop spreading debunked information". That link comes from Foxnews.
(My browser is flawy and not allowing me to select more than one word, otherwise I would have copy pasted the entire article here)

Edit:
Speaking about Russians:
From NBC
The Russians have no need to spread misinformation. Trump and his allies are doing it for them