2020 Presidential Election

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yeah....but...shouldn't all ballots be counted?

The whole "well we have to weigh up speed and accuracy" thing...
NO! Shouldn't all ballots be counted?

And that has never been true, it hasn't even been conceived in regards to POTUS elections.

The issues in 2000 were around recounts, not initial counts.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is a deadline, isn't there? It's December 8, when states must make their electors official or some such.

That is a full month after the election. No one is suggesting the counts need more than one month.

 

[Stacyhs]

Mmm. I suppose that it's true that I was addressing something slightly different, so I should answer this, as well.

Broadly speaking, I don't have too much problem with a cut-off like that, with a caveat. The mail has to be swift and trustworthy, which is problematic at a time like this when Trump and the Republican leader have worked hard to sabotage the mail system. Even in somewhat better times, I very much didn't like the stories that I hear of a bunch of mail-in votes that were sent in decent time that just... weren't delivered to the appropriate place on time, which means that I also include the somewhat nebulous concept of reasonable delivery time into any calculations there.

But this is a highly unusual time. We have a corrupt president and a pandemic. We also have a Postmaster General who was taking steps to slow down mail processing and delivery.. We've had all mail-in voting for 30 years in OR with virtually no problems. No matter now hard Trump and his sycophants have tried to establish mail-in voter fraud since 2016, they've failed. Time and again. There is no reason what I suggested should not and cannot be done.

 

[Aridas]

Yeah....but...shouldn't all ballots be counted?

The whole "well we have to weigh up speed and accuracy" thing...

NO! Shouldn't all ballots be counted?

All legitimately cast ballots should be counted quickly and accurately, yes, ideally (with the understanding that "legitimately cast" can open its own can of worms). The real world is not such an ideal world, unfortunately, especially when numerous other concerns get mixed in, rightly or wrongly (and with plenty of both in the US, at last check). With that said, though, I do quite support acting to make things much better than they are, of course, so that legitimately cast ballots will all be able to be counted swiftly and accurately (and, to add something more to that... verifiably!) in all but the most nonsensical situations.

With that said, your line of argument reminds me of a rule of thumb. The moment that one declares some specific thing sacrosanct in morality (for example, innocents should not be harmed, ever), is the moment that they are admitting that they're simply refusing to deal with the complexity of real life and the reality of conflicting priorities.

 

[angrysoba]

All legitimately cast ballots should be counted quickly and accurately, yes, ideally (with the understanding that "legitimately cast" can open its own can of worms). The real world is not such an ideal world, unfortunately, especially when numerous other concerns get mixed in, rightly or wrongly (and with plenty of both in the US, at last check). With that said, though, I do quite support acting to make things much better than they are, of course, so that legitimately cast ballots will all be able to be counted swiftly and accurately (and, to add something more to that... verifiably!) in all but the most nonsensical situations.

With that said, your line of argument reminds me of a rule of thumb. The moment that one declares some specific thing sacrosanct in morality (for example, innocents should not be harmed, ever), is the moment that they are admitting that they're simply refusing to deal with the complexity of real life and the reality of conflicting priorities.

Sorry, maybe I am misunderstanding something.

But here is my question:

1.) Are all ballots counted or not?

I guess if the answer is "NO", then my next question is...

2.) Why would they not be counted?

Please give me a specific answer rather than pointing out that ideal worlds don't exist or that if it were a choice between counting one last ballot and saving a baby from a burning building, we should obviously choose the latter.

 

[angrysoba]

And that has never been true, it hasn't even been conceived in regards to POTUS elections.

The issues in 2000 were around recounts, not initial counts.

I'm not talking about 2000. I'm talking about 2020!


Look:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by the Trump campaign and other Republicans to shorten North Carolina's deadline for mail-in ballots from nine to three days.

The big picture: This is the latest of a series of decisions over mail-in ballot deadlines in various states.

It comes two days after the court rejected an effort by Wisconsin Democrats and civil rights groups to extend that state's deadline for counting absentee ballots to six days post-Election Day.

That's counting! NOT recounting!

 

[Aridas]

And that has never been true, it hasn't even been conceived in regards to POTUS elections.

The issues in 2000 were around recounts, not initial counts.

FFIW, I, at least, am very much including infrastructure and regulations surrounding initial counts as well.

To poke at a couple articles that deal with counting time lengths, though... California, in particular, has had some rather extended counting times. For example, to poke at this article from 2016 -

Analysis: It only took a month to count California’s votes. Here’s why, and why it may get better

That was for primaries, but still... ugh.

To poke at a WaPo article that includes a number of relevant graphs on the subject -

Election Night 2020 could go on for
weeks — just look at the primaries

To poke at some numbers from that -

Through March 17, 24 states had held primaries.

Five of those states heavily used vote-by-mail, as they had in previous elections. They reported their results in an average of 6.4 days.

But the other 19 had mostly in-person voting, and reported their results in an average of just 15 hours.

The real problems began after March 17, when the coronavirus became widespread. There were primaries in 23 more states, which took an average of 4 days to report nearly complete results. Nearly all of these states had traditionally relied on in-person voting.

New York processed 94 percent of its votes within a few hours of polls closing. But counting the final six percent of votes took more than 10 days. Multiple races were so close that the winners remained unknown a month after the election.

In Wisconsin, a federal judge ordered that no results could be released until nearly six days after polls closed. A similar request for November is before the same judge.

These three battleground states (PA, WI, GA, my insertion)— crucial for figuring out who wins the presidency — were among the slowest to release nearly complete results. The others will face their first big pandemic voting test in November.

 

[Meadmaker]

There is a deadline, isn't there? It's December 8, when states must make their electors official or some such.

Let's hope we don't find out what happens if they aren't done.


The closest we have come so far was Florida in 2000, but things were slightly different. There, Florida certified the results for Bush, but then lawsuits and recounts were continued. In the landmark case Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court said that the December 8 count stands, and the certified set of electors was indeed the certified set of electors.

And that case was a "landmark" in a couple of way, but not good.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's kind of hard for them to allow State rules that allow voter suppression because the philosophy that States decide their own voting rules and then somehow overturn the rules in other states on flimsy reasons.

Doing exactly that is the entire point of the "originalist" legal philosophy, of which Justice Handmaiden is the latest inheritor. If a particular bit of phrasing says what you want you follow it literally. If not, you divine the intent of the Founding Fathers (praise be unto them), or what the words might have literally meant when they were written at some point in the past, or what the common people living at the time might have interpreted them to mean even if it isn't what the phrase means and wasn't what the people who wrote it intended it to mean.

 

[Meadmaker]

I understand she recused because she has not read up on the arguments sufficiently. This doesn't mean she will recuse from election matters later.

No doubt. What I don't know is if she voluntarily recused herself, or if it was simply the case that she was not present for the arguments and therefore could not, by court rules, take part in the decision.

And "Supreme Court Rules" are kind of interesting creatures. How would a justice challenge them? Suing the Supreme Court? Who would hear the case? Suing the Chief Justice?

Ah, well. We'll see what happens.

For more than one reason, I sincerely hope that Barrett votes against the President, soon. Maybe I'm optimistic to think such a thing will happen, but I can't wait for the tweetstorm or rant on the Tucker Carlson show if that happens.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not talking about 2000. I'm talking about 2020!

Look:

That's counting! NOT recounting!

Slow down, take a deep breath. Those were examples that did not apply to the current situation.

I was describing why they did not apply to the current situation.

It's OK, we're all under a lot of stress.

 

[acbytesla]

Doing exactly that is the entire point of the "originalist" legal philosophy, of which Justice Handmaiden is the latest inheritor. If a particular bit of phrasing says what you want you follow it literally. If not, you divine the intent of the Founding Fathers (praise be unto them), or what the words might have literally meant when they were written at some point in the past, or what the common people living at the time might have interpreted them to mean even if it isn't what the phrase means and wasn't what the people who wrote it intended it to mean.

Yep. But 4 of those justices were ready to ignore that precedent for the GOP. If it wasn't for Roberts clinging to some consistency and Barrett recusing they would have made a bizarre hypocritical legal decision.

It truly is ridiculous that we have the kind of hodgepodge of rules that allow Texas to have a single ballot box per county. Never mind that 3 counties have more people than the rest of the State.

 

[Bob001]

Sorry, maybe I am misunderstanding something.

But here is my question:

1.) Are all ballots counted or not?

I guess if the answer is "NO", then my next question is...

2.) Why would they not be counted?
.....

You must not have been following the numerous news reports about voting by mail. Depending on state laws, ballots can be thrown out if the outer envelope wasn't signed, or if officials decide that the signature doesn't match the one on file, or if it's not postmarked, or for other administrative reasons. In some states ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and may be received later; in others, they must be delivered to authorities by Election Day. If the ballot is damaged or not marked properly, it might be thrown out. And that's before you get into voter suppression issues.
https://www.newsweek.com/absentee-mail-vote-rejected-errors-election-2020-1525808

The Supreme Court just confirmed a lower court decision to block Wisconsin authorities from counting ballots that arrive late. As it now stands, ballots that arrive after Election Day won't be counted. That's why Post Office delays could be critical.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/928046044/supreme-court-blocks-wisconsins-ballot-extension-plan

There's a good chance that millions of legitimate ballots won't be counted this year.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/n...jected-major-factor-2020-election/3576714001/

 

[Aridas]

Sorry, maybe I am misunderstanding something.

But here is my question:

1.) Are all ballots counted or not?

I guess if the answer is "NO", then my next question is...

2.) Why would they not be counted?

Please give me a specific answer rather than pointing out that ideal worlds don't exist or that if it were a choice between counting one last ballot and saving a baby from a burning building, we should obviously choose the latter.

1) The really short answer here is that no, not all ballots are counted in the US, for a variety of potential reasons, which do vary from place to place. I will add to this, though. "Counted" is not the only thing of concern. "Counted accurately" is also a matter of concern. If a person votes for candidate A and their ballot is counted as voting for no candidate or candidate B, their ballot was counted, just not accurately. At last check, re-counts are supposed to put notably more emphasis on the accuracy part than the initial counts. Also, really, there's the related problem of voters who really should be legitimate voters not being legitimate voters because of GOP voter suppression shenanigans. The voter purges on the pretext of not having voted for a time or two (even if a significant portion of those who would have been purged actually had voted, to poke at evidence from Ohio) are extremely inaccurate and generally have significant partisan skew, after all. To poke further at that, it might interest you to look up "Crosscheck," which Republicans had heavily pushed despite being it being wrong over 99% of the time and quite partisan in its errors.

2) Why would they not? Equipment problems and user error happen. Hard to avoid those, much as it sure seems like certain Republican led states try to make them happen more in Democratic areas. Software problems happen - and there's reason for concern there, given some rather fishy happenings with the voting machine companies that tend to not get too much attention. Delivery problems happen.

Of some special note, some of the more vague security measures very much deserve scrutiny, like signature matching, which has led to large numbers of ballots being rejected in many states. That such is increasingly being recognized as a notable weakness is a good thing and has led to, for example - Lawsuit settled, giving Georgia voters time to fix rejected ballots

Under the settlement in federal court, Georgia election officials agreed to contact voters whose ballots were rejected by email, phone and mail within three business days. Voters must be contacted the next business day if absentee ballots are invalidated during the 11 days before Election Day.

The agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in November over 8,157 absentee ballots that were thrown out in the 2018 general election, about 3% of all absentee ballots returned by mail.

More could be said, but I think that's enough for now.

 

[Craig4]

That guys only 35 years old, believe it or not.

That's pretty young to become radioactive to your own party.

 

[angrysoba]

Slow down, take a deep breath. Those were examples that did not apply to the current situation.

I was describing why they did not apply to the current situation.

It's OK, we're all under a lot of stress.

Nope. Looks like multiple people have contradicted the idea that all ballots are counted.

I wasn't talking about 2000, so I don't know why you assumed I was.

 

[angrysoba]

You must not have been following the numerous news reports about voting by mail. Depending on state laws, ballots can be thrown out if the outer envelope wasn't signed, or if officials decide that the signature doesn't match the one on file, or if it's not postmarked, or for other administrative reasons. In some states ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and may be received later; in others, they must be delivered to authorities by Election Day. If the ballot is damaged or not marked properly, it might be thrown out. And that's before you get into voter suppression issues.
https://www.newsweek.com/absentee-mail-vote-rejected-errors-election-2020-1525808

The Supreme Court just confirmed a lower court decision to block Wisconsin authorities from counting ballots that arrive late. As it now stands, ballots that arrive after Election Day won't be counted. That's why Post Office delays could be critical.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/928046044/supreme-court-blocks-wisconsins-ballot-extension-plan

There's a good chance that millions of legitimate ballots won't be counted this year.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/n...jected-major-factor-2020-election/3576714001/

Yes, you are right that I have not been following everything about this. For a start I am not in the US so I am not saturated with election news.

(And for Skeptic Ginger, I am not stressed! )

I'm certainly glad of that...

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nope. Looks like multiple people have contradicted the idea that all ballots are counted.

I wasn't talking about 2000, so I don't know why you assumed I was.

I DIDN'T!!!

Sheesh.

 

[angrysoba]

I DIDN'T!!!

Sheesh.

Then what does this mean?

And that has never been true, it hasn't even been conceived in regards to POTUS elections.

The issues in 2000 were around recounts, not initial counts.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

If you can't count all the voters received in time, that's a flaw in the counting system, not of the voters.