plutherus | Entries tagged with election2020

OK, continuing the rest of the speech:

Repeating, repeatedly, his absolute astonishment that the mailed ballots heavily favor Biden instead of him.

Then he goes on to say that the law is that every ballot must be received by election day. Kind of betrays his reasons for the attack on the post office, if he actually thought that. It's not even spin, though, it's just an outright lie.
Oregon, interestingly, with its 100% mail in voting, does have such a law, but most states do not. The date it's mailed is the important date, just like when you file your taxes. (I guess he wouldn't know about that, either, though.)

He goes on to claim there is widespread voter fraud with mailed in ballots, despite the fact that nobody's ever been able to find any.

"Tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification whatsoever" - straight up lie. No such thing.
"I told everybody this would happen." And yet it didn't.
"They refused to include any requirement to verify signatures" - uh, no, no they didn't.
"Unprecedented in American history" - except, you know, the states that have been doing it for decades. Oregon started doing it 40 years ago, and has been doing 100% mail in voting 20 years ago.

"No attempt to even determine if they're eligible to vote" - this is a lie. Everyone has to register to get a ballot, and ID and US citizenship status and local residency are all checked in every state.
"They have no idea. They're just taking numbers and writing down things and doing very bad things and we have a lot of information coming and litigation that's shake even you people up." If anyone can parse that, let me know. I'm not sure how to make sense of it and I had to listen to it four times to get it down verbatim.

They've got ballots coming in three days after the election (the election that was two days ago? How does he think that works?) "You don't have post marks. You don't have identification..." - both just flat out lies.

"These were legal observers who were supposed to be there..."
No, actually, to be a legal poll watcher actually requires going through a process, not just dressing up in your best tacticool gear, grabbing your gun, and demanding entrance to the counting locations in answer to trump's tweet.

A lot of people, from both parties as well as independents, did go through the process and were in the room legally, rather than just outside screaming threats.

"unexpected delays" - it takes time. "Nobody knew were they came from" - just because you don't know doesn't mean nobody did. I guarantee there are people who know exactly where every ballot comes from.

"Illegal votes being cast after election day" - well, great that you don't want that, because there weren't any. He is lying again. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" - that used to mean something to the people who are now followers of trump. (Heh, just kidding, a lot of them have always been hypocrites. Even when I was in high school being taught creationism it relied mostly on flat-out lies)

"He's claiming states, and I'm claiming states..." That's not how it works, dumbass. I've pointed out before, you can't just call dibs. There is a process, and it involves counting ballots. And the counting process involves one candidate being up for a while, then another, and back and forth sometimes. You can't just declare an end to it when you're ahead.

He has a lifetime of privilege and being given everything he wants without ever having to think hard or work for anything or ever having to face the consequences of any of his decisions. That explains why he thinks he can just have another term because he thought he was going to.
I don't know what his followers excuse for believing him is, though.

Guess I'm doing another entry about the election.
I'm watching trump whine about how he was winning and now he's not and it must be because of the corruption.

Not that he can cite any evidence of corruption.
He thinks they should have stopped counting ballots as soon as it looked like he was winning.

Let's review a bit, here, though.
For months he's been urging his followers not to vote by mail.
Now he says "In all cases these mail in ballots are one sided. It's amazing how they're all so one sided."
Seriously? After telling your flock not to vote by mail, you're really that surprised that most of them didn't vote by mail?

OK, let's review a bit here:
1. Democrats (mostly) expand voting choices so people don't have to crowd together at the polls during a pandemic
2. Republicans try to block them, knowing that the easier it is to vote, the more votes the Democrats would get. They know the majority doesn't want them, so their only recourse is voter suppression. It's been their tactic for a few decades now.
3. Attempts to block mail in voting (mostly) fail. DeJoy begins sabotaging the post office - removing sorting machines, banning overtime, etc., in a move widely called out as an attempt to slow down mail to interfere with the election. He is ordered to restore sorting machines but the damage had already been done.
4. Republicans pass laws in many states forbidding counting of mail-in ballots before the polls close.
5. Republicans sue Pennsylvania, who, along with several other states, have stated they will consider a ballot postmarked by november 3rd to be valid, even if, in the now slowed down post office, it takes several days to get to the election office. They lose their case, as even the packed supreme court can't find any reason why that would be unconstitutional.
6. November 3rd, as polls close, and votes begin to be counted. In-person votes were mostly counted first. Then, they began counting the mailed in votes. Two days later, ballots are still arriving, and being counted. The trump administration tries to get the supreme court to stop the counting, but so far they are not doing so.
7. Trump declares himself victor, and his followers don't understand why that doesn't work. Early results (from in-person voting) seem to indicate he'll win. Many people - myself included, a few posts ago - accept that this is likely the case.
8. But, as the voting continues, they get to all the mailed ballots. Starting with the ones that arrived by election day. As these ballots are counted, the votes begin to swing the other way, indicating Biden has a chance at winning. Many pundits had already warned that this would happen and, it seems obvious in hindsight.
9. These are the ballots that trump is pretending to not understand where they came from or why they would heavily favor Biden (maybe he really doesn't understand. It's possible that he's just stupid, not lying.) His followers eat it up of course.

And that brings us to today's press briefing, which I'm gonna go finish watching now that I've got that out of my system.

So, it looks like there are only six states left in play this morning: Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Last night these were all leaning towards Trump, which would have given him victory in the election. Now, with more votes being counted, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan are leaning toward Biden (albeit barely, in the case of Michigan, which has a difference of less than 20,000 votes.) North Carolina and Georgia each have less than 100k votes difference.

If Biden actually wins the three he's currently leading in, he'll have exactly 270 electoral votes, just enough to squeak out a win. If he loses any of them but picks up Georgia or North Carolina, same thing.

So, there is a path to victory. This could become even clearer as more absentee ballots are counted.

Still a toss up, but at least it's a tossup now. I feel a little better.

I just did a spreadsheet with the remaining undecided races. It doesn't look good. The only path to a Biden victory looks like flipping Texas blue, and Biden is now down by 6% in Texas. It was neck and neck earlier.
The "Red mirage" doesn't look like it's a thing, either. So far, it looks like all the red states become more red as more precincts report.

Looks like the republicans are picking up seats in both the House and the Senate as well. McConnell stays in power, and gets more. The House goes Republican.

It's fucking 2016 all over again.

And, I should point out, everything I predicted then happened, only it was even worse than I expected.
Yes, there's a lot of voter suppression, and there's tons of Russian and Saudi and probably Chinese money pouring in through SuperPacs and through huge social media propaganda efforts. But even with all that, it's American voters who own this, and the fact that it's even close, after everything this monster has done, all the lives he's ruined, even before he let a pandemic kill off a quarter million of us, is depressing as hell.

And don't even come at me with "It's just politics". All that means is that you won't be greatly affected one way or another, and you don't give a shit about the people who will be, so fuck you. He's already ruined lives. He's destroyed families. He's disappeared good people. He's sent refugees back to be tortured and killed, and just because you don't personally know any of the people who've suffered doesn't mean they aren't important so fuck you with your "it's just politics" attitude.

Not to mention a quarter million dead, and counting, and soon to be rapidly increasing.

And all trump's blatant corruption, and with McConnell still around to have his back with a willing senate, and possibly the house, there's nothing to stop them continuing their looting of our country, of selling migrant children to sex traffickers (while a bunch of people play alternate reality q-anon games of trump being some kind of undercover anti-government freedom fighter), his proud boys and other white supremacists continuing to be encouraged and going unchecked. And let's not forget the millions who are about to lose their insurance, and the tens of thousands who are going to now suffer and die from treatable conditions because they aren't going to be able to afford treatment. Congratulations on not being among them and convincing yourself that they don't matter. Fuck it. It's too much.

This sucks.

This sucks a lot.

And a bunch of you are gonna read this and laugh and crow about winning because you're too goddamn stupid to realize that you didn't win. Trump won. McConnell won. Putin won. The oligarchs won. You're not one of them and you never will be and you're too goddamn stupid to realize it. Or, maybe you're not stupid. Maybe, like trump and Miller, you're just racist and cruel, and that's not any better.

So... West coast states reported in. All four ballot measures in Oregon passed, by a large margin, including legalizing psilocybin therapy, which surprised me.

We also voted to decriminalize all drugs and fund addiction treatment centers. Also, to limit campaign contributions and expenditures, basically overturning Citizens United within Oregon, which will make it much harder for oligarch candidates to even run -- they'll have to have a message of some kind and communicate it on a level playing field instead of just being backed by megachurches and the king the Saudi Arabia.

And Portland is getting a new citizens oversight board for the police, so that's cool.

New Jersey legalized mushrooms for private use as well, apparently.

Overall, it's been good here for progress. The war on drugs was a disaster from the beginning, solving none of the problems that drugs create while creating a whole lot of new problems.

Oregon doesn't have private prisons so other than police unions there're no huge financial incentives to keep the war going. I'm glad we're finally starting to dismantle some of the damage it causes.

I'm not surprised about the police oversight. In a complete betrayal of our founding fathers' ideals, a lot of Oregonians believe that Black Lives Matter.

My representative, Peter DeFazio is up 10 points over the latest Republican offering, which is a relief, but not surprising. Everybody here loves him because he's a damn good representative, and even being outspent ten to one he's still winning by large margins.

Likewise, Senator Merkley is retaining his seat against challenger who the Republicans thought might have a chance because she's a woman, but they were wrong. But at least now they get to say that Democrats are the real misogynists because they voted against her no matter how much Russian money was pumped into her campaign.

Back to Federal elections, it looks like Biden is going to have to pick up votes in at least a few of the states he's currently behind in, or we're going to have trump again. And, once again, the Republicans may end up picking up some seats in the House. Hopefully, it won't be enough to flip it. I'm worried about that, too. I'm still pissed that people were stupid enough to vote for both Graham and McConnell again.

If Biden does pick up votes in contested states, it'll be from absentee votes and mail in votes, which may not be all counted for several days, so look for Trump to declare himself the winner later tonight and then have a ton of lawyers, as he's promised, to put an end to counting any more ballots after that.

So, it may be, once again, days to weeks before we know for sure who the next president is going to be.

Looks like Lindsey Graham is keeping his seat, too.
This is disappointing.
I guess there's an advantage to being from the 4th least educated state.
Kentucky is the 5th, thus giving us McConnell over and over as well.

Oregon, Washington, and California results should be coming in by now, but I haven't seen any. I want to know about the ballot measures as well as wanting to be sure DeFazio retained his seat and that the out of state (and out of country) moneyed interests pouring millions in to the new discount Art Robinson campaign didn't work this time.

The big swing states, Texas, Florida, and, I guess North Carolina, are still all neck and neck. Well, not Florida - it looks like trump is taking it by a couple of percent.

It's driving me crazy how close this race is. Not just because there's no sane reason for it to be. One candidate is openly using his office to enrich himself, who's openly committed multiple crimes, and has continued to do so, has lied almost constantly, and often in easily disproven ways. He's admitted responding to a pandemic in a way that he hoped would help his reelection numbers rather than the American people and has therefore cost the lives of a quarter of a million Americans. It goes on and on, and yet he has this cult around him where none of that matters. He keeps saying "Law and Order" after we find out he lied on financial disclosure forms and has a secret Chinese bank account that he never revealed. It's nuts.

I'm on a discord with a bunch of friends. Right now, most people are posting pictures of their pets who are with them while watching. In a few more minutes, a lot of the western states will close polling and start reporting results.

Still more about red mirage. Michigan shows trump way ahead right now, but they haven't started counting the early voting ballots, which is about half of them, and are expected to heavily favor democrats.

Ugh. Nothing I say here means anything. It's just a way to pass the time while biting my nails waiting for election results. Already lost a few people I know to this asshole. Don't wanna lose any more.

Looks like Trump is taking Florida (91% reporting). Damn.

But Biden is doing better in North Carolina, strangely enough. According to various people talking on my TV, those are two of the states Biden has to win to win the election. Also, Texas, which is still close with Biden up 1.7% with 47% of the vote reporting in.

ABC has also mentioned a few times a "red mirage". The idea is that smaller rural counties are going to get counted quicker, and they tend to vote republican, so early results are going to seem more red than they really are. I don't know how accurate that is, but it seems reasonable. I don't remember if we saw that in previous elections. (Probably won't affect Florida, though, because it's almot complete)

The fact that it's even close is disgusting.

I am horrified that warning that your opponent will listen to scientists is a winning strategy for millions of people.

The very concept that there are people who consider trump some kind of political outsider if ridiculous.

The fact that so many of my fellow Americans consider him a savior is terrifying. There is very much a religious cult around him, with many evangelical self-called "Christians" abandoning their old Jewish messiah for this new antisemitic one.

Texas is still close. Biden was up by 4 points half an hour ago, and now it's even again: 49.4 to 49.3. Wow!

Looks like Florida flipped back to trump. Not surprising, but too bad.
Google has called Virginia with 13 EC votes for Biden, despite at 34% of the results in Trump leads 59 to 39. What? I don't know why. We'll see I guess. Maybe all the counties that haven't reported yet are all democratic-leaning? I don't know.

Still sucks that there's even a question. Given trump's spectacular failures, it's insane how many people love him so much.

Well, if you're like me and you feel like your real problem is that you just aren't experiencing *enough* anxiety, I'll be updating here from time to time throughout tonight. I won't be watching full time, but I'll be updating here with my thoughts, fears, and what I see so far of the election results. If you have favorite links, anything you wanna share, or whatever, feel free to chime in.

Also, if you just wanna troll, or be an asshole gloating about how you're gonna "own the libs" or whatever, do it somewhere else. I'll just delete your comment and block you, so whatever.

Also, most likely, this is what I'm going to be doing tonight instead of working on NaNoWriMo. I can't concentrate on that right now. Come back tomorrow for those updates.

I'll probably be watching various news stations' coverage from time to time and reacting to that. For a summary, Google has some early results (in some cases, only 1% reporting in, so it's not anything definite yet.

You can go to it by just googling "Election results" or going to https://www.google.com/search?q=election+results

Some early thoughts:
- Florida has 77% reporting, and Biden is up 2.4%. That's way too little of a margin. Could go either way, and they have 29 electoral votes.
- Google is apparently already calling West Virginia and Kentucky for trump with 4% and 13% of the vote counted. I'm not sure why, with so little, but I'm sure they have their reasons. That's 13 electoral votes for trump.
- They're also calling Vermont and Virginia for Biden, with 10% and 12% of votes in, respectively, for a total of 16 electoral votes for trump.
- And, finally, with 35% of the votes in in Kentucky (How can they have 13% of the votes in for president and 35% in for senate?). At any rate, they're calling the senate race for McConnell, so fuck you, Kentucky voters.