site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26869 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

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.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Can we have an election day without Drama?

  • In Cambria County, PA, all precincts are reporting issues scanning completed ballots. Lines are getting longer as some choose to leave unscanned ballots in a secure box and others choose to wait for the scanner to work. Local judge has permitted voting hours to extend to 10 PM due to the issues.

  • In Georgia, a couple of polling stations have received bomb threats. Georgia Secretary of State claims they are coming from Russia.

  • In Harris County, TX, someone running for the State Senate is claiming that voter totals have been shifted from Red precincts to blue precincts. This one is weird but the main gist is (1) First published record of early voting had numbers in 1-2 Thousands for HCC West Loop South and only 800 for Kashmere. The second record of early voting decreased votes in HCC West Loop South and increased for Kashmere. (2) The Senator candidate says he was at HCC in person on one of those days and personally handed out 1000 buttons that day, now it is showing fewer people voted than he handed out buttons for. (3) Someone who participated in Early Voting at another precinct that had the vote counts lowered is reporting that she is not showing as someone who voted yet. (4) Ann Harris Bennett, the Tax Assessor for Harris County, TX, apparently has not gone to work since 2020. She is "in charge of voter registration and tax collection."

Harris county had some minor shenanigans in the midterm, too, IIRC.

(4) Ann Harris Bennett, the Tax Assessor for Harris County, TX, apparently has not gone to work since 2020. She is "in charge of voter registration and tax collection."

A woman with the middle name Harris, in Harris County, in an election year with a major candidate named Harris...

What.

Sometimes unsophisticated random number generators can get stuck on a number. Usually you try to detect those cases and jump out of them.

But yes, the simulation is showing.

unsophisticated random number generators

Do linear congruential generators count as unsophisticated? RANDU was particularly infamous for being able to see the periodicity. Apparently one of the hyperplanes is along the Harris dimension. You would think they would use some sort of elliptic curves over Galois fields for simulating the election. Seems more apt.

I hate this. I hate these fucking machines.

The exact same garbage happened in Maricopa county in 2022, which resulted in Katie Hobbs being elected as their governor.

Was the mysterious day of scanner problem a factor in her win? Hard to know, but it looks suspicious as hell.

In Cambria County, PA, all precincts are reporting issues scanning completed ballots.

Does anyone know how Coheed County is doing?

And what about Ordovicia County?

Do you mean the favored house rep, Mid-Atlantic?

Is he running again? I thought he had stormed off to scar the armada.

I was wondering about Calibri and Candara Counties

Time to pull out an old playlist with some AFI and Hawthorne Heights, too.

Also curious about Trump County, CA

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats