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2020 Presidential Election

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It also gives fewer chances to exploit "Red Mirages" where Trump could just wait until he's ahead in a state and demand the voting stop there and declare him the winner.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It also gives fewer chances to exploit "Red Mirages" where Trump could just wait until he's ahead in a state and demand the voting stop there and declare him the winner.
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He'll demand that they stop counting instead. :mad:

AIUI the voting machines can tally automatically AND because there are proportionally fewer votes, the counts from these will be available more or less immediately. OTOH, postal votes will need to be counted manually, in many states counting cannot start until election day (and is expected to continue past it), and the orders of magnitude larger number of votes mean that these processes will be overwhelmed.

Look for the tally for a state to be the in person votes, 25% of the mail in votes and as few of the early votes as they can get away with.
 
phiwum said:
Far as I can tell, the ruling isn't that a state may not count late arriving ballots. It's that an executive official can't change the law singlehandedly. From a local CBS report:



A brief (very brief) search brings up the following law:



That's the law in Minnesota. If I understand correctly, the fella in charge of elections wanted to make an exception this year, but he hasn't the authority. I don't think the court's opinion is unreasonable. Save the late ballots and if necessary, the problem will be revisited.
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There's a couple of problems with that.

Firstly, the section you quote is the instructions that the officials are required to provide to the voters. That suggests the deadline is Election Day, but it's not clear that this is correct. If you look further down that page, you'll see this:

Subp. 8. Returning ballots.

Mail ballots may be returned to the official conducting the election by mail, in person, or by designated agent. The official conducting the election must accept ballots returned in person, or by designated agent, until 8:00 p.m. on the day of the election. Ballots received after 8:00 p.m. on election day shall be marked as received late by the official conducting the election. An individual shall not be the designated agent of more than three absentee or mail voters in one election.
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The quoted parts are significant. The use of "must" imposes a duty on the official - they can't refuse ballots that were received on time. It doesn't say they "must not" accept ballots that arrive late. Indeed, the second highlighted portion seems to imply that the late ballots will be accepted, but marked as being late. That doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't be counted.

Then there's a discrepancy. The first line refers to ballots being returned "by mail, in person, or by designated agent", but the later line only refers to "ballots returned in person, or by designated agent". So it's not clear that ballots returned "by mail" are subject to the same deadline. That's probably how it was intended, but it's just vague enough to raise a legitimate question.

Secondly, this isn't a "law", it's a "rule". Rules are adopted by the agencies involved in enforcing laws, and usually deal with the nitty-gritty details of how to enforce the law. As such, these rules usually don't require specific approval by the legislature - there's usually a boilerplate authorization to adopt rules included in each law. As such, these rules can, and often are, amended when necessary to adapt how a law is applied. As such, the officials in charge are normally permitted to adopt rule changes as they see fit.

Now, there are procedures that are used to make such changes, and we could ask if those procedures were followed, and we could legitimately ask if the time- and pandemic-sensitive nature of these changes justify not following those usual procedures. But it doesn't appear that anyone has had that discussion here.

So, we have a poorly-worded rule that hints at the possibility of late mail-in ballots being accepted, and the officials were clarifying that they were interpreting the rule in that manner, due to the unprecedented situation this year. That doesn't seem like an outrageous over-reach of their authority to me. So it's not quite as cut and dried as some might think.
 
And that's why we need more voter standardization. We can whine and handwring and have pointless meta-political discussions about state rights all we want, but at the end of the day there's no advantage to have voting be this functionally different in so many ways. Half the states could decide to drive on the opposite side of the road as the other half as well, but there's no reason to do it.

When votes are counted, early voting options, there's absolutely no non-ulterior reason to not standardize those things.
 
theprestige said:
I'm pretty sure more people are divided over whether sports reporters should be offering political commentary, than are divided over Nicklaus' endorsement of Trump.
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Whatever happened to "Shut up and dribble?"

Yeah, yeah, I know he's a golfer, but he's also old as the hills, so the phrase might just apply.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I’m sure at least Susan Collins would be “very concerned”.
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There's a qualitative difference between voting for a Supreme Court Justice choice you fundamentally agree with, and voting to suppress the results of multiple state elections.

If the US really is at the point that so many elected officials are willing to vote to support such actions, democracy is already dead.
 
pgwenthold said:
My take: this is good news.

The new voters coming out this time are not Trumpets who sat out 2016. Trump's key to winning in that election was based on a surge of voters coming out of the shadows in unexpectedly high numbers. There aren't a bunch of new Trump voters this time.
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One thing I have noticed on social media is that there is little nihlism or writing off of this election. In 2016 there was an almost constant stream of 'Giant Meteor 2016' memes and pictures that showed to me that people were rolling their eyes at the whole situation. If you want to see how decades of GOP propaganda aimed at Hilary Clinton you could see it right there.

This time not so much. I found one such comment buried deep in someone's comments, but the slew of posts are mostly "VOTE!VOTE!VOTE!".
 
JoeMorgue said:
And that's why we need more voter standardization. We can whine and handwring and have pointless meta-political discussions about state rights all we want, but at the end of the day there's no advantage to have voting be this functionally different in so many ways. Half the states could decide to drive on the opposite side of the road as the other half as well, but there's no reason to do it.
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I was thinking about this the other day, and your driving example is sort of what I had in mind. Specifically, the adoption of the national 55mph speed limit in the 70s and 80s.

The Federal government didn't have the authority to impose such a limit nationally, but they did have the power to say, "Hey, you can set whatever speed limits you want, but if it's not 55, we'll cut off all Federal funding for highways in your state."

Why couldn't they do the same with voting? "Sure, you can have whatever backward-assed system you want, but if it's not the Model System we just published, we'll cut off all Federal funding for your state."

Any GOP run states that complain will be met with the "We aren't bailing out failing states" line they always like to use.
 
theprestige said:
To be fair, the vast majority of the problems in the world were caused by other people and were already going on before he took office.
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That is true of every candidate. But Trump doesn't shoulder any responsibility? It's damn obvious that Trump does nothing other than blame others.
 
Horatius said:
There's a couple of problems with that.

Firstly, the section you quote is the instructions that the officials are required to provide to the voters. That suggests the deadline is Election Day, but it's not clear that this is correct. If you look further down that page, you'll see this:




The quoted parts are significant. The use of "must" imposes a duty on the official - they can't refuse ballots that were received on time. It doesn't say they "must not" accept ballots that arrive late. Indeed, the second highlighted portion seems to imply that the late ballots will be accepted, but marked as being late. That doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't be counted.

Then there's a discrepancy. The first line refers to ballots being returned "by mail, in person, or by designated agent", but the later line only refers to "ballots returned in person, or by designated agent". So it's not clear that ballots returned "by mail" are subject to the same deadline. That's probably how it was intended, but it's just vague enough to raise a legitimate question.
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That's a pretty good point and thanks for pointing out I quoted the wrong section. I browsed much too quickly.

Secondly, this isn't a "law", it's a "rule". Rules are adopted by the agencies involved in enforcing laws, and usually deal with the nitty-gritty details of how to enforce the law. As such, these rules usually don't require specific approval by the legislature - there's usually a boilerplate authorization to adopt rules included in each law. As such, these rules can, and often are, amended when necessary to adapt how a law is applied. As such, the officials in charge are normally permitted to adopt rule changes as they see fit.

Now, there are procedures that are used to make such changes, and we could ask if those procedures were followed, and we could legitimately ask if the time- and pandemic-sensitive nature of these changes justify not following those usual procedures. But it doesn't appear that anyone has had that discussion here.
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I suppose, but don't know, that this was the issue raised before the court.

So, we have a poorly-worded rule that hints at the possibility of late mail-in ballots being accepted, and the officials were clarifying that they were interpreting the rule in that manner, due to the unprecedented situation this year. That doesn't seem like an outrageous over-reach of their authority to me. So it's not quite as cut and dried as some might think.
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Fair points.
 
Horatius said:
I was thinking about this the other day, and your driving example is sort of what I had in mind. Specifically, the adoption of the national 55mph speed limit in the 70s and 80s.

The Federal government didn't have the authority to impose such a limit nationally, but they did have the power to say, "Hey, you can set whatever speed limits you want, but if it's not 55, we'll cut off all Federal funding for highways in your state."

Why couldn't they do the same with voting? "Sure, you can have whatever backward-assed system you want, but if it's not the Model System we just published, we'll cut off all Federal funding for your state."

Any GOP run states that complain will be met with the "We aren't bailing out failing states" line they always like to use.
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I'm not sure today's Supreme Court would have allowed that.

However, voter standardization would be a very good idea, it's just that no matter what change in the law you come up with, it would give a slight advantage to one side or the other, compared with the status quo, and the people who would have to vote to change it are the people who got elected under the status quo.

Unfortunately, the only way it will happen will be if there's a truly major disaster, so bad that the people demand change. The people almost never do that in order to prevent a coming disaster, just to react to the last one.
 
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Meadmaker said:
However, voter standardization would be a very good idea, it's just that no matter what change in the law you come up with, it would give a slight advantage to one side or the other, compared with the status quo, and the people who would have to vote to change it are the people who got elected under the status quo.
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A system designed to actually count every legal vote only gives an "advantage" to one side if you assume that appealing to more voters is cheating. Opposing such a change would be pretty good evidence that the people doing the opposing know they're unpopular.


Unfortunately, the only way it will happen will be if there's a truly major disaster, so bad that the people demand change.
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So, like, next Wednesday, then? :D
 
theprestige said:
Why on earth would Trump shoulder responsibility for Flint?
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Because he's President.

Please tell me where Trump says the buck stops with him? Please tell me what Trump has done about keeping water pure anywhere. What I see over and over and over again is Trump not getting that he is the President of the entire US.
 
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