About 20 million votes less than the 2020 election, with about 15 million less for the democrats, and a measely 4 million less for the republicans. Thought that was interesting.
I see this being pushed on Twitter as a proof of election fraud in 2020 but aren't the votes still being counted?
Reporting appears to be %87 at this moment, expect the numbers to add up when it's %100.
Don't you register to vote anyway? You can't be counting unaccounted for ballots, are you? You probably have a paperwork for for every vote, it's not like counting the cash after busking.
Eventually You will have Total Number of Registered to Vote = Total Ballots + Total Absentees.
This will also give you the turnout. You can't have the turnout first unless you keep track of number of votes casted and in that case you will be able to tell if there were fake votes by comparing the final ballots counted and the number of votes you counted when casting.
This is all very basic, can someone explain what I'm missing here? Why people are pushing for this thing that doesn't make sense whatsoever?
> This is all very basic, can someone explain what I'm missing here? Why people are pushing for this thing that doesn't make sense whatsoever?
You're assuming that the election fraud narrative is pushed by people who care about whether it's true or not. The goal isn't truth-seeking, it's disenfranchisement; any data point is either used in service of the narrative, or it's discarded as irrelevant.
It doesn’t seem like very good evidence that there was fraud in 2020, in the sense they even if (and it is an if) we end up with a decrease in turnout this year, there’s no particular reason to believe that people didn’t just… vote more when the pandemic was happening, they had more time to sit around, and mail in voting was easier. Is it possible that the people pushing this idea are just engaging in motivated reasoning?
It's not fraud. It's people for whatever reason not voting. The US population grew by 4m IIRC in 4 years, and even the projections of the remaining ballots seems to suggest that 6-8m less people voted.
>Eventually You will have Total Number of Registered to Vote = Total Ballots + Total Absentees.
Yes, all people are saying is that absentees increased and ballots decreased.
Not everyone who is registered to vote actually votes (as in they do not mail in their ballot nor do they go in to physically vote). Which is I think the more likely case here.
I believe most of the accusations about 2020 were centered in places where the Democrats were in power like Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Control of the WH is immaterial because all voting is controlled by the states or local municipalities.
Another part is that the Republicans were much more prepared this time to stop the alleged fraud before it happened. They had lawyers ready to protest immediately when election judges were locked out of counting rooms or when counting stopped. They made sure they had enough election judges for all precincts and sometimes they set up cameras to count the number of voters entering the site.
Perhaps your point about polling is still the best answer
Sure, but the FBI and DOJ still have the authority (and mandate) to detect and prevent election fraud, and certainly to the scale that was alleged.
Deciding between the effort required for a political opponent to run a massive multi-state voter fraud conspiracy under your nose and the effort required for an over-the-top personality to make a wild accusation that was never proven in court, I think we can consult Occam’s Razor.
I believe that many of the court battles revolved around issues like "standing", not whether there was any substance to the matter. So it's not really fair to put any value in whether the accusations were "proven in court" because the courts never focused on the accusations themselves.
I have no real desire to work through all of this again. It was 4 years ago. Alas, all of your numbers aren't so convincing to me. As we saw with this last go around, you could find numbers from pollsters that predicted either outcome. So I don't know where you got them and I'm not interested in parsing whatever you have to say.
I do know that many of the "merits" you cite were never litigated. Were there any cases where the court granted discovery? So how can anyone guess at what a court would decide about the matter? Many of the news articles I read at the time suggested that the courts were just not interested in opening up cans of worms.
Similar story for Wisconsin, (Harris polls 49 and 48; result: 48.9% and Trump polls 50 and 49; result: 49.7%) and Michigan (Harris polls 48 and 48; result: 48.3% and Trump polls 50 and 50; result: 49.8%)
Despite the end result, it was really was a minor polling error away from a Harris victory.
Also, FWIW, the total 3rd party vote in WI and MI was greater than the margin of victory for Trump in those states.
That's in of itself, sad. The lack of efficiency is mind-bottling [1]. There were states with large populations that had 90-100% of results in a matter of hours.
It's not the simple national popular vote that determines the winner, there's this thing called an electoral college where the states get a certain number of votes. You end up with "swing states" which decide the election, and some states are dyed blue or red. So once enough votes have been counted in the swing states to determine their color, it's effectively over.
The vote isn't even close to done. California will likely take weeks to count another 5 million, maybe more. In 2020 it took 2 months to get the final count from all states (not including recounts)
The counting isn't finished yet. But turnout's clearly higher than in 2020, looking at the states that have already finished their counts (or near to it).
Here are the (incomplete) vote counts from the three swing states that WSJ currently indicates at 99% counted:
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to express this sentiment via election participation. Abstention ends up supporting one candidate more than the other. What seems to be an affirmation of neutrality is not that in practice.
The national election is an exercise in partisanship. Your opportunity to feel represented is what the primary is for. And for once I'm not sneering at the sentiment because basically neither side ran a primary (the Ds managed to not run one twice!)
> Your opportunity to feel represented is what the primary is for
This is why it was a major issue for me that the Democrats did not hold a primary and just decided Kamala would be the candidate. If a major part of your campaign is "vote for us or democracy dies!" it's pretty hard to swallow if you increasingly feel that your voice doesn't matter in your own party.
Given that Biden dropped out of the race fairly late, what was the option? I agree with you in principal, but there doesn't seem like there was any way to actually implement it in the available time, assuming that the population take adequate time to make an informed choice.
There were three candidates and two of them were jokes. Everyone that would have been a real threat hung back, hoping to rise either under Trump or after him. He sure wasn't taking it seriously, neglecting to even register in some states, causing the Haley loss to 'none of these candidates' in Nevada
Do you think the real threats were colluding with Trump? Otherwise, I don't see how Trump being extremely popular within his party means the primary wasn't legitimate.
You misinterpreted the massive disagreement of the population (20M people) with an affirmation of neutrality. One can hope the dems will not misinterpret it (as they often do, unfortunately, and they already started on twitter and the mainstream media). Hopefully they can recognize and acknowledge that a large portion of the left disagrees with their policies and start listening to their base, otherwise they will keep losing more votes every 4 year.
I and another registered democrat neighbor had this exact discussion and conclusion outside of the voting center we live next to on election day. Assuming we're not the only ones.
Some jurisdictions have a "none of the above" option. I think Nevada has one. An early report there show 1+% voted "none of the above", or something similar to that.
It was just a glance on one of the shows during the returns last night, I maybe be completely wrong.
> Unfortunately, it’s not possible to express this sentiment via election participation.
Not just election participation, no.
You do have to use the generally-free-to-use, generally-globally-accessible publishing systems that are available to nearly anyone with a computer to explain why you refused to vote. (This is my big issue with the "Refusing to vote is meaningless, because noone will know why you didn't vote." counterargument.)
Whether your assertions that you didn't vote because -for instance- none of the available candidates were people you wished to see in the positions they were running for get deleted because they are "Election misinformation" or similar is an open question.
I hope nothing makes it necessary, but I do hope it becomes commonplace. It's such a better experience to complete a ballot leisurely in one's own home, being able to discuss it with my own family and referencing a plethora of materials, than having to go out of my way to wait in line and have prepared everything ahead of time (and, hopefully, remembered it).
I don't equate easy with better. I miss the sense of community inspired by going to the local polling place and seeing your neighbors. It's a ritual that has value. Yeah it takes some effort, and if people want to make it a federal holiday, that's cool too.
Mail-in ballots have so many more issues with them - lack of privacy (so more room for coercion and harvesting), they make auditability more difficult.
Regardless of whether you think the relaxed voting requirements of 2020 led to widespread fraud, it inspired enough distrust that both parties should be advocating to bolster the reliability, auditability, and trustworthiness of the voting process, not decrease it further. The only thing that sucks more than losing an election is losing it under suspicious circumstances. Subject people to that enough times, and it doesn't lead anywhere good, regardless of your political team. Instead, create and enforce policies that improve trust rather than erode it.
Are you certain your vote was counted and not lost? I vote in person because I know when I mail things they don't always get where I intended them to be (and especially when there is a deadline in place)
In my country, I can just bring the letter and put it in a special mailbox in the city hall in the weeks before the vote. I would trust the mail system, too, but that's beside the point.
In my case I complete my ballot ahead of time and drop it in a ballot box, which are distributed around my city. Then I get an email from my county clerk when my ballot has been counted.
I think the concern about things getting lost in the mail is reasonable, but is a separate issue; the mail system is supposed to be a highly trustworthy distribution system for sensitive documents. Hell, it's how you get your passport. That's why it's a state department (in the US, anyway) in the first place: it's an essential government function to have a communications channel with a given citizen.
I've been concerned about cuts made to the USPS leading up to the previous election, both because of the obvious impact on the USPS's ability to handle election materials, but also because of the potential impact on the arrival of other essential, time-sensitive documents. (Not essential, but my mother's anniversary card to myself and my partner fully bounced this year, after three weeks in transit. We only live 130 miles apart.)
My point is: threat models that center on the mail system somehow being unreliable are a valid concern, but missing the point.
This problem was solved at least as far back as ancient Rome. The solution was and is the secret ballot. If nobody gets to see your ballot before it goes into the box, and if it can't be tied back to you, nobody can hold you to a vote. Thus, even if someone threatens your life, bribes you, etc, the secret ballot preserves your ability to vote your conscience.
Usually bribers will want some proof, like a photo of your vote, when you go inside and there are election observers and you're not allowed to use your phone it's more difficult to provide that proof.
a) you get bribed by some external sweepstakes or ad or any which way to vote for a candidate you genuinely don't support.
b) you in your home get hit by a vandal with a specific mission to make you vote for their candidate. Remember, this felon does not know when you get your ballot nor when you voted.
Hell, which is more likely to be tracked down? The Musk trials will take months. that felon will be arrested before the week ends.
a) bribing is more probable, happened by foreign country here this Sunday
b) it's a lot more dangerous for the entire society, it's not a vandal in your home, if anonymity is not implemented by voting process, then the local gang leader will force you (and all your neighbors) to vote for him, at the date he will tell you and you won't be able to do anything as he will be in power after these elections and will make possible to fake future elections.
I find this threat model unreasonable and it reeks of conspiracy-style thinking; there are so many points of failure in it that I have trouble believing this argument is being offered in good faith. I'll continue to engage in good faith, but I want to state that skepticism.
(a) I don't think it'd be possible to extort votes in this manner in on a significant enough scale to influence an election without it being obvious that it was happening. All it would take is a few people to go "Oh yeah, someone broke into my house and held a gun to my head" to spark an investigation. Moreover, to a degree, this level of coercion is already occurring: a party platform of cutting taxes on your income bracket is effectively a bribe. A party platform that they'll cut healthcare funding if their candidate doesn't take a particular office is a gun to your head.
See also: the publicly known instances of 'vote bribing', e.g. Ben and Jerry's offering free ice cream, or Musk or Cards Against Humanity offering money/tickets/etc to people who have voted/make a plan to vote.
(b) for a vote-extorter, how would you verify that I voted as demanded? what if I don't mail that ballot? what if I deliberately screw up my signature? what if I submit my ballot before you extorted me? what if I vote in person later, invalidating my mail-in ballot? It's possible someone with access to the inner workings of the voting judgement process could detect some of these, but at that point, again, it's already compromised.
(c) If you have the resources to possibly (1) identify vote extortion targets (2) successfully threaten them in such a way that it would influence their vote (3) validate that they did indeed vote as you've demanded, you surely have the resources to attempt a more directed attack on, say, the mail system or the vote system itself. Trying to extort individual citizens en masse would radically increase the odds of detection of your operation.
(d) how do you know your election judges aren't under gunpoint? how do you know they haven't been bribed? Or your county clerk?
Yes, in most cases coercion isn't as obvious as someone literally pointing a gun to your head (though in some cases it could be, there's nothing to prevent it). Typically it'll be something more subtle, like the "vote bribing" scenarios you outlined, but with the added pressure of the person providing the incentive literally being able to stand over your shoulder and watch you fill out the ballot, then take the envelope from you and deposit it themselves into a drop box.
As I've said before, coercion doesn't need to be overt to be effective. Just a small amount of social pressure applied over a large number of people is enough to make a significant difference. That's why typically there are laws banning campaigning right outside polling places. Now what if the "polling place" is the entire country, over a period of multiple weeks? How are you going to enforce that?
Consider also that the electorate being able to trust that elections are free and fair is nearly as important as them actually being so. Its not enough to just say "that's probably not happening at sufficient scale to make a difference"; you need to be able to convincingly demonstrate to voters it actually isn't. Having a system that's robust to these types of cheating schemes (as in-person, secret paper ballot elections have been for centuries past) is the best way I know to do that.
> Jimmy Carter spoke about this, literally in some town the sheriff watches you vote and chucks it into the trash if you didn't pick their candidate.
That is a flaw of the American model of allowing local governments to run state and national elections.
In many other countries, local government has no role to play in non-local elections. All elections are 100% run by either a state or national elections agency.
I believe locally run elections are a good thing. As fraud would have to be perpetrated against multiple election systems. However, I also think there should be standards such as electronically tallied, hand-marked paper ballots saved for potential future audit.
Several other countries have independent electoral commissions running elections, as opposed to elected politicians. It is much easier for voters to trust the people running elections when they are required by law to be apolitical.
Look for example at the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC)
Simple diversity doesn’t speak to a level of security. All the attacker needs is time to canvas these locations, identify the weakest and then exploit those.
Given an adversary with basically X$s, they can target Y election types.
Having a common system reduces the variety, but ensures that there is an equivalent amount of resources to deal with adversaries.
For what it’s worth, India which has the most complex election requirements by a mile, uses a single system. Entered as an example of how election services are better delivered using a single system.
Lets start with, what "system"? There are a ton of governments that issue their own ID cards. Are you magically going to integrate with all of them or does everybody now also need a voter ID card issued from a singular source?
Next lets go onto "verified"? Historically there have been a lot of instances where the wrong black person was arrested because a white cop thought they were the guy in the photo. People cannot verify that a picture matches a face. This is going to lead to a bunch of discrimination complaints. There's also the big issue of people's appearances changing in less than 4 years. Or the simple case of a lot of people look the same and could just use each other's IDs (or get a fake one of that person).
Next lets go onto "just like they do at the airport". You can fly without ID [1] and you also might not be able to scan your ID [2]. They also don't check the photo against the system; just attempt to verify that the ID isn't fake and that the picture on the ID you gave them matches you.
Finally, the overarching idea that "voting by mail introduces fraud". It doesn't. Make a calendar event for ~1.6 months into the future to volunteer at your local election board and you can get first hand experience of the systems that keep 1 vote to 1 person in place even when using different voting methods.
> There are a ton of governments that issue their own ID cards. Are you magically going to integrate with all of them or does everybody now also need a voter ID card issued from a singular source?
The entire US is now Real ID compliant.
> Next lets go onto "verified"? Historically there have been a lot of instances where the wrong black person was arrested because a white cop thought they were the guy in the photo. People cannot verify that a picture matches a face. This is going to lead to a bunch of discrimination complaints. There's also the big issue of people's appearances changing in less than 4 years. Or the simple case of a lot of people look the same and could just use each other's IDs (or get a fake one of that person).
That's a lot for a HN thread which we aren't going to be able to solve. For purposes of voting, I don't have any real concerns here.
> Next lets go onto "just like they do at the airport". You can fly without ID [1] and you also might not be able to scan your ID [2]. They also don't check the photo against the system; just attempt to verify that the ID isn't fake and that the picture on the ID you gave them matches you.
If we're verifying that the ID isn't fake by scanning it and you want to forge a vote badly enough to get a real, verifiable ID that has been swapped with a photo matching you...we have significantly raised the bar from simply providing any name that hasn't yet been used on a list.
This also makes it a lot harder to infringe of somebody else's right to vote by impersonating them, thus preventing them from being able to vote at all.
> Finally, the overarching idea that "voting by mail introduces fraud". It doesn't.
There have been numerous instances just in the last month of people showing up to vote and being told they've already voted by mail.
I wish we focused on voting for more issues like this instead of just the old punching bags of immigration, gun control, and abortion.
We should be discussing more issues! Why isn't there a candidate saying they'll increase the number of holidays, or making public transportation free, or giving people free dogs. Where is the candidate saying they'll make a 4 day work week a reality?
A few-party system is just what happens with majority-rules voting, ordinary human preferences (a few hot issues much more important than free dogs, free public transportation, or a 4-day work week), and a large enough populace for the law of large numbers to matter. Candidates and voters both align around the hot issues, because candidates who do otherwise lose to voters rejecting them for the one thing they care the most about, and voters who do otherwise have zero influence on the topics they care most about (as opposed to the approximately zero influence a single vote has).
That's a problem in all voting systems (that the optimal strategy for candidates and for voters depends on your perceived knowledge of other voters -- you aren't incentivized to vote for the person who you think is actually best, and as a candidate you aren't incentivized to do what you think is best), ignoring some simplifications that sometimes arise in something simpler than a presidential election.
However, majority-rules voting is particularly bad at it, especially in a lot of real-world preference distributions. If you came out with a new party, magicked up a billion dollars in advertising, and thoroughly convinced the populace that you'd not screw much up and also make a 4-day work week a reality, you'd still likely lose. I might personally vote for you, but I'd bet a lot of money that you wouldn't stand a chance.
It's a little interesting that we have to vote for a single "president". An interesting byproduct is that _most_ people disagree about _most_ of the decisions (even in the same party), despite perhaps favoring them for one or two important reasons. If there were a neat way to divide up the power over education, abortion, ..., you could achieve a majority of people being happy about all of the major issues and maybe have a little more time to talk about some other (comparatively) minor ones.
The American political and information ecosystem has a PH value inimical to such candidates.
Between the two party system, swing states, electoral colleges, and Media warfare - policy is irrelevant, and tribalism / vibes are what matter.
Essentially, your candidate could promise to import dissidents, be a tyrant, or contravene the values enshrined in the constitution - and it doesn’t matter.
So a candidate could promise a 4 day work week, but be part of the team with a more constrained media system, and they will lose.
You get that in a multiparty system. When it’s just two, doing something relatively out of the box like proposing a 4 day work week is essentially rocking the boat.
You're missing the underlying point. When turnout is high, democrats win.
Conservatives went after the UPS and lobbied to make it harder in some states to vote by mail. They don't want high turnout. It is sadly a partisan point to "go out and vote" even if they want to appear bi-partisan.
> Why isn't there a candidate saying they'll increase the number of holidays, or making public transportation free, or giving people free dogs.
Because business owners lobby and don't want that? Follow the money. We see eve in tech with proof of productivity that companies want people to RTO. How do you think industries outside of tech will feel about making workers work less?
I believe there is still more vote to count, so the absolute numbers may still increase dramatically, but your point on party affiliation is definitely on point
When all is said and done I bet Gaza had very little effect on overall D turnout. If it did, those that either sat out or voted R specifically because of Gaza did so to spite their face. An R administration will turn their backs on a lot of geopolitical happenings and let those involved run wild, of which the Palestinians will have little to no voice at all.
Also people vastly underestimate the political calculus in full throated support of Palestinians and by association, Hamas. There is a whole other side of this conflict and that is with Jews who also care about the resolution, but also care about Israel and the fact they've had rockets constantly fired into their territory. They also vote overwhelmingly D. You alienate one group for another and you've made no ground in terms of voter share.
Wayne County was never going to be the lynch pin of the election and even so, exit polling is notoriously fickle. If we're taking exit polling at face value, across the country the economy was #1 followed by preserving democracy and immigration. Geopolitics is probably at the bottom of the top 10 nationally.
Dearborn alone voted 50% for Trump, 22% for Jill and 28% for Harris. Thats 50-100k votes right there. A clear message and an axe to the foot of Palestine.
No, but you have to consider that the voted-for-jill-stein signal is considerably dampened from the didn't-vote-for-harris-because-of-Palestine signal; most of those people just wouldn't vote at all
Sounds more than plausible, and indeed likely. It's also quite possible that Biden's gaffe in calling Trump supporters "garbage", on its own, dinged Harris's campaign more than all the fallout from the Israel-Gaza conflict. Just to give a sense of what really moves the needle in American politics.
For context: there are 4,453,908 Muslim Americans and 1,698,570 Arab Americans as of the 2010 census. The DSA, by far the largest leftist organization, has about 80,000 members. Even if all three of those groups don't overlap at all, it still doesn't explain much.
That said, sentiments have power -- the idea that Harris is "more of the same" likely affected a lot of people, even if they don't align exactly with the people behind that message. Sadly, they're about to find out how wrong they are.
> That said, sentiments have power -- the idea that Harris is "more of the same" likely affected a lot of people, even if they don't align exactly with the people behind that message. Sadly, they're about to find out how wrong they are.
> “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” co-host of ABC’s “The View” Sunny Hostin asked Harris, looking to give her a set for her to spike over the net. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.
That was her golden moment to distance herself from Biden's admin and show some personal incentive and she deliberately chose not to.
The oft-repeated question "What could be worse than a genocide?" was ill-thought-out, first-order thinking, IMO. Regardless, we are going to find out the higher order results soon.
Yeah. They have no idea Trump is the biggest pro-Israel anti-Muslim fan out there. He'll literally give Israel anything they want, and those people will gasp and act surprised.
We run our nation on oil. Our nation is built on good a relationship with Israel. Nothing about that will change until our priorities as a country change, dem or repb.
The devil doesn't exist, and real life is complicated. Have fun telling the living Palestinians "whelp, a lot of you already died, so we're gonna let the rest of you die/be deported to a country you've never been to."
