harr wrote: » These fraud allegations are dangerous not only in US but for most countries. You now have the usual conspiracy nuts on social media here and U.K. spouting nonsense but it has a lot of people put into the mind frame “ why should I even bother voting if it can be rigged “ Fox News not helping matters by giving a voice to some of the outlandish claims. It’s really time for senior republicans to stand up and refute the claims because if they don’t people will be shouting fix forever more . Trump was shouting fix even before the election. Not one claim has yet been backed up by any credible proof.
Gbear wrote: » The notion that the Presidential election was rigged is so intellectually shallow that it only further exposes that the people who have been trying to argue it are simply authoritarians who want single party rule. Alleging widespread voter fraud is a remarkable thing to do, and any sane person would immediately begin to game it out and try to pick holes in it. Why did it happen in states with Republican control of the AG, the Governorship, the state legislature? Why was there no fraud committed on the same ballots for the House and Senate? Why did deeply unpopular Senators like Graham and McConnell still win in a landslide? As with most things over the last 4 years, authoritarians make very little effort to excuse their bull****, safe in the knowledge that they can shriek about freedom of speech when they're called on it.
OhHiMark wrote: » It's because they won't argue in good faith. If you pick apart an argument they'll find another one. It doesn't matter what it is because the people who believe it was fixed will believe anything they put forward. So you keep refuting every ludicrous thing they come out with until you can't be bothered anymore, and then they say, "ha, you have no argument against that, do you?".
briany wrote: » And the most worrying thing is that the Trumpist movement in the United States has gone beyond the critical mass point of being gently persuaded back off the ledge. It's now mainstream and self-sustaining. So the only way, that I can see, it backs down is either that some other external crisis comes along which forces people to forget about their political differences, or else a physical showdown.
transylman wrote: » Do you think covid deaths spiking above peak levels back in March/April will qualify as external crisis? Nah, me neither.
O'Neill wrote: » I mean that should have been Covid tbh
Gbear wrote: » . Why did it happen in states with Republican control of the AG, the Governorship, the state legislature? Why was there no fraud committed on the same ballots for the House and Senate?
terryduff12 wrote: » 4 years later and people couldn't accept the fact trump won, tried everything to get him out. So if trump goes down the same route it will go to show both sides are as bad as each other.
briany wrote: » The problem with Covid was that Trump quickly drew battle lines on it at a time when it still seemed like an abstraction and not a very real problem that could kill hundreds of thousands of people.
murpho999 wrote: » I really think CNN did a great job on this and really said that you have to wait for votes to be counted. Going in at country level and showing what votes are still to come on and how they compared to 2016 really showed to me that Biden always had a chance. People calling this as a done deal for Trump and relying on betting exchanges for results were wide of the mark.
Jack1985 wrote: » Really telling, Pfizer know who they will be working with for vaccine roll-out.https://twitter.com/mikememoli/status/1325788528412921857?s=20
everlast75 wrote: » Donny Jnr smells a rathttps://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1325791542490050561?s=19 For those who metaphorically spat in the face of science, they sure are salty when they can't claim credit for it...
moon2 wrote: » As with all things, population growth and time have strained things. The US allocation could do with a review.
To use the language of economics every vote that a candidate gets in excess of a 1-vote win is wasted. This is because any extra votes beyond that in a particular state are not helping the candidate obtain any additional electoral college votes.
~Rebel~ wrote: » You're right that it takes away one aspect of a states power - but ultimately it feels like the Presidency has evolved to become a position that is the will of the people rather than the will of the distinct states. The President used to regulate the states, which in turn had the autonomy to regulate their people - but things have changed, and the President has a far more direct relationship with the public now. And he is also their direct representative within a global market, which in the modern world of people working for multi-national businesses, and even small companies trading on a global scale, means much more than it used to. So I think the vote should change to reflect those realities.
breezy1985 wrote: » What happens if he physically refuses to leave the White House. At what stage in the tantrum do the security just pick him up and drag him out by the arms and legs
BonnieSituation wrote: » While I am having some withdrawals, I have to say the CNN coverage including John King and his Magic Wall was imperious. Myself and it seems most of Ireland was glued to it. How they handled the klaxons to call the race was great. I love elections and draws and the like so I was in heaven this week. Well, heaven after the hell of Wednesday morning. --- The cathartic release from Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper was a sight to behold.
Manic Moran wrote: » It's getting one. The Congressional respresentation (and thus electoral college votes) get redone after every census, which is every ten years. It's been theorised for a while that with the emigration from California that it will lost one Congressional seat and thus one EC vote, from 55 to 54. It seems now that this is, indeed, likely.https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/03/california-lose-congressional-seat-reapportionment-2020-census/California is likely to lose a congressional seat for the first time in history after this year’s Census, with the state’s slowing growth rate trimming its political clout, according to an analysis of new population data released this week. The projected drop from 53 to 52 seats in the House of Representatives will lead to a reshuffling of the state’s political map, and potentially divisive congressional races between incumbents in 2022. It will also shape presidential politics, as California loses one of its votes in the electoral college and other states like Texas are expected to gain as many as three new seats. The State has already been won. Since the States are voting for their President, it doesn't matter how much excess there was or was not. There is an argument for a splitting of a state's vote like Maine and Nebraska, but the chances of the big States doing this are negligible. It's just not in the interest of the dominant party of the State. This is all true, but the President has always been tasked with foreign relations, it's not a new concept. It's about the only tasking specifically called out in the Constitution, and until under a century ago, the only significant Federal expenditure was defence (Which at the time was heavily oriented around protecting foreign commerce). I'm not sure he has much more of a direct relationship with the public, though: Most of my daily issues are still regulated by the State, not Congress, and there are still plenty of folks in 'conservative' states who don't want the President to get involved with the domestic public, the folks who know off the top of their head what the Tenth Amendment says. If Californians want mandatory healthcare, to ban guns, or whatever, a Wyomingite will tell them to go do whatever they want, they don't care. They will not like, however, Californians telling Wyomingites what's good for them and how to live their lives, which is a significant reason why they will be adamant about not reducing their leverage in Presidential elections.
spacecoyote wrote: » I still reckon a proportionally represented electoral college would be the best compromise in the US. It would force both parties to look at pick ups of votes in all states as they could take a chunk of electoral college votes and removes the issue of winner takes all over a single vote margin
Gbear wrote: » It's far too early to be trying to peddle one narrative or another about who voted and why. Not only are there likely to be a broad set of reasons why people voted the way they did, it won't necessarily be consistent from state to state. The obvious example is Miami Dade, which has nominally Democrat-favouring demographics, but lost the state for Biden. As well as the Cuban American problem, it's also not clear how Latin Americans feel about things like Black Lives Matter. They are, I think, more Christian (usually Catholic, I assume), and more generally conservative than the population as a whole. With many, mostly male minorities voting for Trump, while Biden appears to have improved his vote share with white people, it could be that the traditional understanding of demographic splits has to shift. Until that analysis is done, it would be a mistake to hold to strongly onto opinions about the electorate. There's lots of ways you could lay out a flexibile, rationally determined electoral college vote system. If it was just something like 1 vote per 500k population + 2, you'd end up with: California 55 -> 81 Texas 38 -> 60 Illinois 20 -> 27 Massachusetts -- 11 -> 15 Nevada 6 -> 8 Wyoming 3 -> 3 That'd mean that California would go from having only about 18 times the electoral votes with about 80 times the population, to 27 times the electoral votes as Wyoming. You could skew it further towards the smaller states if you made it +3 (California would still have 20 times the electoral votes). It would still heavily favour the smaller states, but at least if they established a system like that, it would maintain an appropriate weighting as populations continue to change.
BonnieSituation wrote: » That's just adding a needless extra ;layer. The small state already have their over-weighted representation in the senate and as such they have an over-weighted sector of the EC. Just go to a popular vote and be damned. They always talk about treh flyover states being ignored but as it stands, it's only right that Wyoming and Iowa and the Dakotas get less attentions to Cali and NY and Texas. As someone on Twitter said on Wednesday, "Yet again the 55million people on the West coast don't matter in the Presidential election." That is insane! It reminds me of the GAA listening to peoples' complaints about the provincial championships, only to go ahead and adjust the provinces. Completely ignoring that the fact that there are provincial competitions at all is the problem. The EC is the problem. Just get rid, and be done with it. tinkering around the edges is pointless.
pixelburp wrote: » https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/09/donald-trump-refusal-to-concede-transition-sabotage-fears-joe-biden Trump's admin refusing to sign off on the budget and access usually given to the transition team. What a thundering child masquerading as an apparent adult. So while I doubt Trump will be escorted from the White House, he looks likely to resist every procedural norm going.
hirondelle wrote: » I fear this is just the start of it. I don't think there is an earthly chance of Trump appearing at Inauguration Day, but I do see him turning up at rallies to allow him to pretend he is still the God King- and who knows where things will go if that starts happening?
robinph wrote: » The only thing that might get trump to turn up to the inauguration is that it's likely to be just a handful of people wearing masks in the lobby of the Capitol building with no public access. Trump can then claim to have had a bigger crowd that Biden to turn up. Don't think he could handle being stood in a room next to Obama, Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Bush Jr who is being respectful and ex-presidential though.Very unlikely to actually be massed crowds turning up on The Mall for the day, even the normal drive between the White House to the inauguration and back again will have to be done some other way to avoid crowds forming along the street, my guess would be helicopters each way.
Carfacemandog wrote: » I agree the EC is just fundamentally broken, but inthe situation spacecoyote was talking about the election would likely have been long over before the close called ones we got a few days later, as Biden's popular vote win would (almost!) make that mean winning the EC as a whole.
