Vote who will win and.... (anonymous natch')

[Corso]

...There ought to be a single body that determines when a state is final and then releases the outcome.

This exactly, and to expand on the thought: The fact that we do not have a single, consistent fool-proof way of voting make me crazy. Remember "hanging chads"?
With so much at stake, with elections being a cornerstone of our democracy, it always seems to come down to multiple state by state old fashioned procedures.

As they said in the 6 Million dollar man: "We have the technology..."

Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

[HorsCat]

This exactly, and to expand on the thought: The fact that we do not have a single, consistent fool-proof way of voting make me crazy. Remember "hanging chads"?
With so much at stake, with elections being a cornerstone of our democracy, it always seems to come down to multiple state by state old fashioned procedures.

As they said in the 6 Million dollar man: "We have the technology..."

Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

If you are serious about wanting to reform the way voting works in the USA, vote Democrat.

Your comment about "no election fraud" completely misses the point. But I'm sure you're well aware of that.

[choke]

You're not wrong... Ran across this in my travels.

I suppose that you can interpret that as racism....

Or you can interpret it as a typical pattern. This graphic is from before the 2016 election. From what I can find, in 2016 Clinton received 37% of the white vote and Trump 58%.

[davids]

Feel free to re-locate to any other country of your choice. You have that freedom, so why not take advantage of it?

Did you really just tell someone, "America, love it or leave it"? Come on.

One of the things that makes the USA exceptional is the freedom of dissent.

I'm taking a short break from writing my MA capstone. I'm writing on the Lost Cause myth including Confederate monuments. Racism, what do we do now? We elected a black President, racism persisted, Trump was defeated, racism is unchanged. We elected an old white guy who has taken racist stances and made racist comments in the past, but was he any different than other politicians at the time? Biden declared he would pick a black female VP, will that change the nation's systemic racism? In the past decade, it seems like we want to pat ourselves on the back for choosing the right candidates, changing the background on our facebook profile, posting outrage at racism, but what have we really done? A friend told me he was raised to believe that there was no difference between white and black people, and he still feels that way. I really don't care how we feel as a nation, I want to know what we'll do. If you ask someone if they are racist, unless they're currently sporting a white robe and hood, they'll say no, but actions tell a different story.

Around 1870 when Robert E Lee died, the retelling of Southern history began in earnest. The South lost because the North waged open warfare, the South lost because Lee had imcompetent generals, the war wasn't about slavery, blacks were better off when they were slaves, slavery was going to end anyway, and the war was the fault of the North. To reinforce this false narrative, we erected Confederate monuments. If the event had a monument, it had to be true. We put monuments on courthouse lawns to reinforce Jim Crow. We segregated everything from trains to neighborhoods to schools. Entire generations were raised believing the lie, and not just in the South, it was in our textbooks. Anyway, I'm being preachy, we need to teach people the roots of racism and white supremacy or it will never make sense. Ryan A. Newsome wrote Cut in Stone: Confederate Monuments and Theological Disruption. My favorite quote from his work, "Better to confront such a past...than to wait for its resurgence."

This is great. I listened to a (mediocre) podcast last weekend that dealt with this issue. I learned a lot, and was struck by how Lee was raised from the dead to become this icon.

Robert E. Lee, traitor and loser!

Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

At such vanishingly small numbers as to be (barely) noise.

[htwoopup]

I suppose that you can interpret that as racism....

Or you can interpret it as a typical pattern. This graphic is from before the 2016 election. From what I can find, in 2016 Clinton received 37% of the white vote and Trump 58%.

Do not forget that Donald started his campaign with a racist trope about Mexicans being rapists. His racism was well-known in NYC circles and golf circles for as long as I can remember and he did do a lot of racist talk in the 16 campaign. So, I still put the racism label on him...some liked him for it and some chose to ignore his racism for their own reasons that I can’t fathom. I could also make the argument that the Republican Party has long had racist tendencies in policy...some argue it wasn’t race based as much as an «economic class » policy and POC happened to fall in the wrong end of the equation. But I would argue that too many of the Republican policies kept POC in their economic straits and a good part of that was intentional.

[Corso]

If you are serious about wanting to reform the way voting works in the USA, vote Democrat.

Your comment about "no election fraud" completely misses the point. But I'm sure you're well aware of that.

Your first sentence is simply hilarious.

Your second: I guess I'm unsure of what point you believe I'm missing.

Considering your reply ignores my thoughts on election fraud, am I to assume you don't think it's possible?
And again, I'm not talking specifically Biden/Trump.

[Corso]

Did you really just tell someone, "America, love it or leave it"? Come on.

One of the things that makes the USA exceptional is the freedom of dissent.

No, those were not my exact words, but yeah, I said that. Perhaps if the person that was aimed at ever said a single positive thing about the country on this site, I wouldn't have been inspired to ask "why bother staying?". And yes, I did apologize.

Small numbers: local elections have been decided by a handful of votes. I simply wish we as a nation, could spend $ on developing a secure, foolproof way of voting. Maybe part of reform could include a percentage of political media spend from all parties goes to developing such a vehicle.

I am not going to wade into the mess of what's going on now. Appears Joe has won. I'll accept that.

Welcome back, I've missed your contributions!

[monadnocky]

... [snippage]... Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

Ok, so there may be some bad actors pertaining to elections on a frequency no less than - or no greater than - every other human endeavor? That's not evidence of widespread fraud or cheating, yeah? I don't think anyone is claiming transcendent honesty in the election process; rather, there's no evidence to suggest that "fraud" is systemic, widespread, or to blame for results that otherwise wouldn't exist?

And, given probability and all, wouldn't this generally cancel out, across parties, over the long term? Or is one party more prone to fraud compared to the other?

I would guess, given the trajectory of American political transparency (think smoke filled rooms and all that), that there is less "fraud" in elections in 2020 than there has ever been in our history as a nation.

[bigbill]

This is great. I listened to a (mediocre) podcast last weekend that dealt with this issue. I learned a lot, and was struck by how Lee was raised from the dead to become this icon.

Robert E. Lee, traitor and loser!

And not a good general. He had no real experience in combat and lost 50,000 troops in the first six months. The Holy Trinity of the South, Lee (Jesus), Stonewall Jackson (Moses, because he died before the war ended), and Davis (lesser god). Davis was the scapegoat for losing the war until he wasn't. The Lost Cause corrected the story and made Davis a hero then a martyr when he died. Jackson was so deified that his amputated arm had its own grave. Lee's position was more about caste than ability. Then there's the United Daughters of the Confederacy........

It really comes down to changing people's beliefs, but just telling people they're wrong is not effective. The history must be taught, and to do so means we relocate monuments away from public venues, and we teach the Lost Cause for what it was, a myth. I think the drive to erase the past is counterproductive, we need to have our noses rubbed in it for a while.

[theflashunc]

This exactly, and to expand on the thought: The fact that we do not have a single, consistent fool-proof way of voting make me crazy. Remember "hanging chads"?
With so much at stake, with elections being a cornerstone of our democracy, it always seems to come down to multiple state by state old fashioned procedures.

As they said in the 6 Million dollar man: "We have the technology..."

Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

If anything a decentralized, thousands of local elections process makes outside election tampering, or even internal tampering, more difficult to pull off. One big national election? Possible to rig. Thousands of local elections all at the same time? Much harder to do.

And why do we think election fraud is rare and doesn't happen? Because there's literally no evidence of it. The President convened a commission after the 2016 election to show exactly this and they found nothing.

This stuff has been studied extensively, and voter fraud is exceedingly rare. The likelier issue is voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other tactics before an election even happens that seek to determine particular outcomes.

[72gmc]

Small numbers: local elections have been decided by a handful of votes. I simply wish we as a nation, could spend $ on developing a secure, foolproof way of voting. Maybe part of reform could include a percentage of political media spend from all parties goes to developing such a vehicle.

Yes. Was this part of Mcain’s proposal? I can’t remember and I am too tired to look it up. But, yes. I recently revisited the story of the Florida butterfly ballot from 2000 and I am still mystified how anyone approved that. So, yes, national standards for ballots and timing and in-person and mail, times however many voting age citizens we have in this country.

[bcm119]

This exactly, and to expand on the thought: The fact that we do not have a single, consistent fool-proof way of voting make me crazy. Remember "hanging chads"?
With so much at stake, with elections being a cornerstone of our democracy, it always seems to come down to multiple state by state old fashioned procedures.

As they said in the 6 Million dollar man: "We have the technology..."

Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

Election fraud rumors are all based on the Heritage foundation's election fraud database. When objectively analyzed, this database is actually the best evidence we have that fraud is exceedingly rare.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-wo...ase-assessment

[choke]

Are you unable to look at the USA and render a dispassionate analysis of what we're becoming, of why one might feel we're not really that exceptional in the grand scheme of things?

Do you have any idea what the USA has done to other countries while preaching "democracy" and "human rights"? Which country in the post WWII era has delivered more war and instability to the rest of the world?

I missed this earlier but I want to comment. It's a rare thing but I'm total agreement with you.....mark it on you calendars folk. I hate what this country has become, how the US engages in endless wars and tries to shape the world to 'our vision'. The US will even do things that hurt our allies, i.e. sanctions on Nord Stream 2, because the US wants every other country dependent on it. Economic sanctions are the norm these days. The foreign policy of the US is a joke and the US has become the biggest bully in history IMO.

I never would have thought that I would feel the way that I do, but for the past 5-6 years I've felt that I would like to leave this country and live elsewhere. If I was in a position to do so I most likely would have already....

[Chik]

You're not wrong... Ran across this in my travels. (Source)

It suits my confirmation bias, but is it credible?

[jclay]

It's over and Biden won.

Now we get to see a bunch of whining; in fact it has already started.

I think I'll have a beer.

And now, having truly saved our democratic institutions from further destruction, we will have the opportunity to evolve in a positive direction.

[Chik]

Without majorities in the Senate and the House, is there still a risk of him ending up a lame duck?

[jclay]

Of course; but we just dodged a big honking bullet.

[GrantM]

Also boggles my mind when some declare "no election fraud" (note- I'm NOT talking about this Presidential election, just national elections in general). People cheat. Period. In all sports, at work, relationships, kids playing hide and seek, basically, take any human interaction and you will find some who do not walk the straight line. So why is it hard to believe elections are run and counted with angels halos on?

You're correct, the R's have cheated so much the system is totally rigged.
That's what you meant, right?

[GrantM]

You're not wrong... Ran across this in my travels. (Source)

Except land doesn't vote, so i hate those red/blue maps entering people's consciousness for how America is divided up.
The fact that representation is "winner take all" in the EC shouldn't be confused with the way people vote.
"Electoral" maps are only accurate for the way government is apportioned, and not accurate for the way Americans vote.

[davids]

Welcome back, I've missed your contributions!

Thanks my friend.

The last few months have been harder than usual, even for COVID times, but there's light at the end of the tunnel.