With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Notes -
This just seems like an odd argument for why it takes so long. Hire a few more people.
Why? Nothing changes if you don't know the outcome the same night. The switchover doesn't happen for months. Why spend more budget on counting faster when it doesn't actually change anything. It is ok if it takes a few days before the outcome is decided.
And if Republicans want the answers faster they could allow PA to start counting votes earlier exactly as Republicans in Florida decided. It was Republicans in PA that keep voting against that change. So clearly they aren't that invested in a swift outcome. So why should the city or state spend more to get it faster?
But you're also defending accepting new ballots days after the election anyway, so that's not a real argument for getting it done faster. It's so transparent.
I think it is ok to either have the cut off being received by election day or being mailed by election day, depending what the state or municipality prefers. I was defending that one of those is patently wrong. I think both are defensible. The second would have the trade off of taking more time in close elections, that is true. But as I point out elsewhere that isn't necessarily a problem. It's just a problem if you choose a course of action that will make it slower, THEN claim the very slowness is evidence of possible fraud.
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The maximally-cynical view here is that all three ways of resolving a election that is fucked beyond the ability of state courts to adjudicate (state legislatures nominating electors, a contingent election in the House, and SCOTUS deciding the election Bush v Gore-style) favour Republicans, so anything that fucks elections is good for Republicans and anything that unfucks them is good for Democrats. This view predicts the views of national MAGA leadership reasonably well, but not the behaviour of the locally elected Republicans who actually administer elections.
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Because in the world in which we live, for whatever reasons the late-counted votes seem to lean pretty heavily to the left -- the impact of a narrow win from the right on election day with 98% of polls reporting or whatever shifting to a narrow Kamala victory a week later on election confidence would be quite profound I think, especially in PA.
Do you want
civil warnational strife? This is how you get national strife.(Not sure why you are so supportive of PA Republicans -- maybe they have undesirable goals here?)
Well my point is that they obviously don't think counting the votes faster is necessarily better. They also didn't think that mail in ballots were less secure, when they thought that increase would help them.
So if Republicans claim to be worried about the length and security of the process, but do things that make it longer and less secure when they believe it is of benefit to them, then it points to a certain direction about their motivations.
So given that, it is up to the Republican party to manage those expectations about how long it will take and that yes, later counted votes will skew Democrat, and that this is entirely normal given the situation they themselves set up. If they don't want to make it easier/more secure, but won't tell their supporters what that outcome will entail, then they are part of causing the problem themselves.
Otherwise what you are saying is that the actions of Republicans in PA will lead to an increase in civil strife therefore the state governments must spend more money and time, in order for Republican supporters not to think the election is rigged. You can see how that is potentially an issue? It leaves no incentives for the party to actually do things better.
No, what I'm saying is that this is not a partisan issue -- there's a bipartisan tradition of dangerous morons trying to tweak the system in ways that they think that will benefit them, and this should be looked down on by anyone who's not an ideological hack. (or just thinks that said morons are too incompetent to rig things effectively, if one is a PA republican I guess)
The important issue on the skewed late vote is not that it exists, it's why does it exist -- there's no particular reason it should be to the left, indeed AIR it used to be considered more likely to be to the right due to age distributions and old people not liking to leave the house.
The BC (Canada) election just had ridings flip due to ~65% left drops a week late, in ridings that were within 100 votes of 50/50 otherwise -- I'm lukewarm on both the 'people are still afraid of COVID' and the 'Joe Kennedy's ghost is pulling strings' explanations -- but the fact is, if you are rigging elections you want there to be late drops you can manipulate -- I see no particular reason for this suspicion-vector not to be stamped out.
Well in 2020 probably because Trump was saying mail in ballots couldn't be trusted. He created a partisan difference. And if you create it it, you don't get to complain when it comes home to roost is my point. Notably Trump has taken a different tack this time, and the gap is now smaller than it was last time. It isn't as you point out some immutable trend, it is a result of actions and beliefs. But it also isn't necessarily a problem. If you are counting all the votes which ones you count first or last is irrelevant. Which is why in many places they only announce the final results, not the play by play.
Unlikely that a significant number of BC residents were taking Trump's advice on this matter -- we are even letting people vote by phone starting this year Because Democracy.
It is either a weird shift in voter behaviour (for which I'd lukewarmly accept 'permanent covid brainfuck') or somebody is stuffing ballot boxes in a plausibly deniable way. (which I have no way of ruling out, other than 'just trust me bro', which is approximately what's on offer)
Election Day (tuesday): conservative-guy leads by 100 (out of like 15k) votes, we have 500 not-in-person ballots left to count which we will get around to next Sunday
Friday: oops, actually now we have 650 ballots to count, TTFN :)
Sunday afternoon: wow, left-guy pulled 66% of these totally-secure ballots that people literally phoned-in and we filled out ourselves -- left-guy wins by 20 votes, left-party now has a single-seat majority
This is absolutely a problem man -- if this happens today it's treading awfully close to a "Jan 6 but for-reals this time" problem.
It's a problem if the ballots are fake yes, it should not be a problem if they are real. If voting habits are different across different groups, then that is something that both sides must price in. If postal ballots are allowed and take longer to process and skew left (or indeed right in some counter-factual world), then that is something that must be dealt with. You can deal with it by counting the ballots first, so you can put them all in on day 1, that is a good idea, just like Florida does. But that is being prevented by Republicans in some places.
Given that restriction, what else would you suggest? Postal ballots are legal in PA, due to a law passed by Republicans prior to Covid, they vote down changes to the law to allow postal ballots to be counted early. So Postal ballots WILL be added to the count late.
With those restrictions what is your suggestion? How should Democrats deal with that to increase legitimacy?
The problem is independent of whether the ballots are real or not -- I think that they probably are in this case! (if only because the NDP is not competent to do fraud)
It's still a problem, in that "make your election look exactly like it was stolen" is probably not a good move for anyone who isn't actively in favour of armed rebellion? (I am not -- not yet at least -- but I seriously doubt this is something the people at Elections BC are after?)
I suggest that you not do that, for starters -- all ballots are DUE by election day, postmark or not -- so there are no ballots not in your possession whenever you begin counting.
Then you report the number of ballots you have in your possession, before you start counting. (I don't think the law says you can't, like count the ballots ahead of time? It's just that you can't open & tally them? If not, determine how many there are before you start opening any -- report this number)
Then you, like -- count the ballots. All at the same time, not saving the postal ones up for the middle of the night after
you kick all the poll-watchers out on some pretexteveryone has gotten tired and gone home totally of their own accord -- just mix the postal boxes in with the in person ones at the counting location at which they were received.This seems easy?
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