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Cont: 2020 Presidential Election part 3

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timhau said:
Again, no. Pennsylvania difference was .72%, some 44,000 votes.

Sheesh.
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Take it up with Politico. Sheesh.

Does it make any difference at all to the logic that I was outlining? To the game theory approach that I'm employing? With that margin, I would say that it would have been reasonable for Clinton to challenge the counts, because the net borderline electoral votes were sufficient to change the total outcome of the election.
 
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Emily's Cat said:
I think you're looking at this differently than I am. I'm looking at states that were close in 2016 versus states that are close at present, and the effect that the electoral votes of those states would have on the overall outcome of the election.

To that end, the margins in Washington, Oregon, and California are irrelevant. They all went to Clinton & Biden by insurmountable margins in both elections. They aren't even in the pool of consideration for this round of game theory :)

In 2016, there were 2 states with a margin of less than 1% difference: Michigan (0.3%) and Wisconsin (1%). Clinton had 227 Electoral votes. Michigan is worth 16, and Wisconsin is worth 10. If Clinton had sought a recount of those two states (one in a close race that would have benefited her if they flipped), she would have gained a total of 26 electoral votes, putting her at 253. That's still below the 270 threshold needed to clinch the presidency. The next closest race was Pennsylvania, which has 20 EC votes, and was at a 1.2% margin, and 68,000 votes.

In 2020 (to date) there are four states with a current margin of less than 1%: Arizona (0.1%), Wisconsin (0.7%), Georgia (0.3%), and Pennsylvania (0.7%). In total, they are worth 57 Electoral votes, which would be enough to win the presidency. I don't think there's any reasonable chance of that happening, but I'm treating both elections with the same logic.

So, in 2016, the borderline states didn't have enough votes to gain Clinton the win. It wouldn't have been worth her while to challenge, as it had no chance of changing the outcome. In 2020, the borderline states DO have enough votes to gain Trump the win. Thus, it's worth his while to challenge them.

The complication here is that there are still a fair number of absentee ballots not counted, due to COVID and the USPS. Like I said, I don't see the final outcome shifting sufficiently to give Trump a win, but I can see the rationale of challenging those counts.

I've lost track of where he's challenging though. I'm pretty sure he's challenging in states that make no sense to challenge at all.

ETA: Forgot to include the references.
2016 election results
2020 election results (to date)
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Yes they did. And 1 percent is HUGE. And the states are still counting. Each State has laws that cover recounts. Just like each State has different laws about voter IDs and how some have laws on the number of drop boxes per county. The laws are specific. What you seem to be suggesting a different set of rules.

I also can't get over that you're whining over a few hundred or thousand votes here and there when 5 million more citizens chose Joe Biden. Are you really in a rush to disenfranchise 5 nillion people? I could give a **** about 5 thousand people in Georgia.

The election is over. Time to move on.
 
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thaiboxerken said:
It's hard to imagine any other reason for Trump to appoint loyalists to top military positions at this point. It's not just military positions either, he's moving loyalists into place in several agencies.
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I don't think he's planning a military coup. I think he's planning to pull out of Afghanistan, as he's always wanted to do.

As for the other agencies, he's probably just acting out on grudges and being a dick.
 
Minoosh said:
I can't tell if the Ga. secretary of state is contradicting himself for not. He talks about a full hand-count, but he also talks about a risk-limiting audit.

It sounds to me a lot like fiddling with the data until they get it "right."
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Was he trying to say that they'll do a risk limiting audit, but that because the margins are so close, they will do a full hand count as well? I'm totally basing this on the completely in my head assumption that if the risk limiting audit also comes out very close, they'd have to do it again anyway. Which may not be the case.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Clinton conceded, yes. As an individual. Because even though I dislike her as a person, she's a lot smarter than Trump and a hell of a lot less of a blowhard. But also because the margins in key states were larger than they are in this election.

But there were multiple protests and marches from democrats opposed to Trump taking office.
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Another difference is she's not a sociopath who has contempt for legitimate democratic institutions.

She probably should have offered a 1million USD reward for sworn affidavits asserting Trump loyalists disposed of Clinton ballots. Because that would have been no big deal.
 
acbytesla said:
I also can't get over that you're whining over a few hundred or thousand votes here and there when 5 million more citizens chose Joe Biden. Are you really in a rush to disenfranchise 5 nillion people? I could give a **** about 5 thousand people in Georgia.
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The election isn't decided by a pure popular vote. Those thousands of votes in a few states could make a difference, where the other 4,950,000 votes cannot.


acbytesla said:
The election is over. Time to move on.
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You are mistaking me looking at dynamics and evaluating the reasonability of challenging a state's counts for me not moving on. I've been satisfied with the results since Monday morning. I probably would have been satisfied sooner, but I didn't look at any election stuff over the weekend, so it wasn't until Monday that I saw PA had flipped.
 
Trebuchet said:
And a hand recount will make it vastly easier for officials in Republican counties to cook the books.
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You are sounding just like a Trump supporter there.
It would be hard to cook eneough votes to change the outcome in Pennslyvania.
You seem to be a bit paranoid.
 
Margin stll climbing.

JOE BIDEN: 77,436,780

D TRUMP: 72,290,424

MARGIN OF VICTORY 5,162,193
 
Emily's Cat said:
I think you're looking at this differently than I am. I'm looking at states that were close in 2016 versus states that are close at present, and the effect that the electoral votes of those states would have on the overall outcome of the election.

To that end, the margins in Washington, Oregon, and California are irrelevant. They all went to Clinton & Biden by insurmountable margins in both elections. They aren't even in the pool of consideration for this round of game theory :)

In 2016, there were 2 states with a margin of less than 1% difference: Michigan (0.3%) and Wisconsin (1%). Clinton had 227 Electoral votes. Michigan is worth 16, and Wisconsin is worth 10. If Clinton had sought a recount of those two states (one in a close race that would have benefited her if they flipped), she would have gained a total of 26 electoral votes, putting her at 253. That's still below the 270 threshold needed to clinch the presidency. The next closest race was Pennsylvania, which has 20 EC votes, and was at a 1.2% margin, and 68,000 votes.

In 2020 (to date) there are four states with a current margin of less than 1%: Arizona (0.1%), Wisconsin (0.7%), Georgia (0.3%), and Pennsylvania (0.7%). In total, they are worth 57 Electoral votes, which would be enough to win the presidency. I don't think there's any reasonable chance of that happening, but I'm treating both elections with the same logic.

So, in 2016, the borderline states didn't have enough votes to gain Clinton the win. It wouldn't have been worth her while to challenge, as it had no chance of changing the outcome. In 2020, the borderline states DO have enough votes to gain Trump the win. Thus, it's worth his while to challenge them.

The complication here is that there are still a fair number of absentee ballots not counted, due to COVID and the USPS. Like I said, I don't see the final outcome shifting sufficiently to give Trump a win, but I can see the rationale of challenging those counts.

I've lost track of where he's challenging though. I'm pretty sure he's challenging in states that make no sense to challenge at all.

ETA: Forgot to include the references.
2016 election results
2020 election results (to date)
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I believe the politico 2016 numbers were never updated once the final numbers were published, you can see on some states the "reported" is not 100%. That is where you are getting incorrect info from. The final numbers are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#Results_by_state

Clinton needed states where the margin was, .23%, .72%, and .77%.

Trump needs states where the margins are currently, .7%, .6%, .3%, and .4%. PA is almost certain to widen for Biden before they are done counting.

To complicate matters from Trump he needs to flip four states. Lets just say there is a 10% chance that a recount will flip a state (HIGHLY unlikely its that high). That means his odds of flipping all four are .10^4 or 1 in 10,000.

ETA: also not sure where you are getting your 2020 numbers from. I show AZ at .4% for example on CNN. While your own link has it at .3%.
 
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What is the point of replacing the political leadership at the Pentagon? Does Trump actually imagine that if he issued the order to put tanks on the street or seize all the postal ballots and burn them that the military would actually obey such orders? I mean we are talking about the US Army, not the *********g SS.
 
Minoosh said:
I can't tell if the Ga. secretary of state is contradicting himself for not. He talks about a full hand-count, but he also talks about a risk-limiting audit.

It sounds to me a lot like fiddling with the data until they get it "right."
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You think there are not safeguards in place to prevent that from happening?
More paranoia, frankly.
 
Garrison said:
What is the point of replacing the political leadership at the Pentagon? Does Trump actually imagine that if he issued the order to put tanks on the street or seize all the postal ballots and burn them that the military would actually obey such orders? I mean we are talking about the US Army, not the *********g SS.
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You know, I was thinking on this. The USA is no different than any other democracy (except those with no military). We depend on them to say no if the head of state orders them to in essence make him a dictator. Only difference that I can tell is the Senate will rubber stamp anyone Trump nominates for a position in the Pentagon. So... we are depending on guys further down in rank that are not political appointees?
 
trustbutverify said:
But you prefer the absurd Electoral College system without rank choice in place? Why?
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If we're using FPTP (the worst of all possible voting systems), I prefer having some semblance of balance between the people and the states. The US is very large geographically, and each state has a fair bit of independence with respect to laws, taxes, and priorities. Irrespective of political parties, the interests and priorities of densely populated urban centers tends to be very different than those of more sparsely populated areas. And beyond that, the needs of Alaska, as a state, are different from those of Florida. It's certainly not perfect, but offsetting the population vote with the state vote helps to prevent that urban/rural (and the suburbs in the middle) divide from become even greater than it already is. The EU uses a similar approach, recognizing that each member country is an entity in and of itself, not just a collection of belly buttons.

EC does have problems though. For one thing, the House-based counts aren't well scaled to the population, so you get quite a bit of skew in there. For another, I'm not fond of the winner-takes-all within each state. I'd much prefer to have all of the EC votes allocated in the way that Maine and Nebraska do them, with the House votes going to the winner of each district, and the Senate votes going to the population winner.

I'd much, much, much more strongly prefer ranked choice though.
 
Emily's Cat said:
If we're using FPTP (the worst of all possible voting systems), I prefer having some semblance of balance between the people and the states. The US is very large geographically, and each state has a fair bit of independence with respect to laws, taxes, and priorities. Irrespective of political parties, the interests and priorities of densely populated urban centers tends to be very different than those of more sparsely populated areas. And beyond that, the needs of Alaska, as a state, are different from those of Florida. It's certainly not perfect, but offsetting the population vote with the state vote helps to prevent that urban/rural (and the suburbs in the middle) divide from become even greater than it already is. The EU uses a similar approach, recognizing that each member country is an entity in and of itself, not just a collection of belly buttons.

EC does have problems though. For one thing, the House-based counts aren't well scaled to the population, so you get quite a bit of skew in there. For another, I'm not fond of the winner-takes-all within each state. I'd much prefer to have all of the EC votes allocated in the way that Maine and Nebraska do them, with the House votes going to the winner of each district, and the Senate votes going to the population winner.

I'd much, much, much more strongly prefer ranked choice though.
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Didn't we have a thread for EC debate somewhere? Probably best to take that argument elsewhere.... but I'll say one thing. How on earth has the EC helped with the seemingly widening urban/rural divide?
 
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