2020 Election

[easyrider16]

Looks like Biden is ahead in PA and GA now.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/93202848 ... ollege-win

[XtremeJibber2001]

This is the kind of stuff we worried would happen ...

Fox News is instructing its talent not to call Joe Biden the "President-elect" when the network calls the race, according to two memos obtained by @brianstelter and me. The memos say Fox should "stay away" from using the description.

Edit: Oliver Darcy is a senior media reporter w/ CNN.

[Dickc]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

[spanky]

I guess DHS and I were too premature in calling it for Trump.

Proud that my first time voting Democrat had such an impact in this election. Especially proud of my County (Bucks) and state (Pennsylvania).

Yes

I will proudly eat that delicious crow.

One thing that needs to change in future elections is that mail in ballots in every state need to be counted early like Colorado and Oregon do. There is no reason states should wait until election day and cause such a delay in the decision

Agreed on the counting in advance. There are several other states that are nowhere near done counting their mail-in ballots. They just don’t have any impact on the electoral vote count. NJ is only 70% done counting. Alaska is only at 56% and won’t count the absentee and mail-in ballots until next week?!?!?!

[TheLurker]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

Democrats didn’t want to stand in line in a pandemic.

Republicans drank the Kool Aid that mail wasn’t secure.

[Dickc]

My city in Massachusetts took all the early in person votes and put them in bins by ward and precinct. They then took the mail in ballots and prior to Election Day, opened the outer envelopes, checked that’s the voters properly signed them, and then put those inner envelopes into the bins by ward and precinct. The poll workers were VERY busy on Election Day opening those envelopes, unfolding and flattening the ballots so they could feed them into the ballot counting machine in between in person voters. I am pretty sure our cities ballots were all counted by very late election night or just after. It really is not that hard a process if you organize it right. I am guessing that many of the states and so on left ALL of it to Election Day or later, and now are overwhelmed by the process.

[Dickc]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

Democrats didn’t want to stand in line in a pandemic.

Republicans drank the Kool Aid that mail wasn’t secure.

It could also be that many Democrats would have not bothered to go vote except it was made so easy and convenient for them that they DID vote.

[easyrider16]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

I think it's quite simple. Trump told his supporters not to trust mail in ballots, so they didn't.

BTW, this wasn't the case everywhere. In Maricopa County, AZ the mail in ballots have tended to favor Trump and Biden's lead is narrowing as they are being counted. There might be similar happenings in other places that just aren't being reported.

Edit: after a bit of searching, Indiana is another example. 547,303 mail-in ballots requested, and of those 50% were Republican, 37% were Democrat. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-e ... na-results

[deadheadskier]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

Democrats didn’t want to stand in line in a pandemic.

Republicans drank the Kool Aid that mail wasn’t secure.

It could also be that many Democrats would have not bothered to go vote except it was made so easy and convenient for them that they DID vote.

Convenient and easy options for voting were the same for both Republicans and Democrats. It should be easy to vote; especially during a pandemic. The greater the voter participation the country can achieve, the better it is for democracy.

[skidogg]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

Democrats didn’t want to stand in line in a pandemic.

Republicans drank the Kool Aid that mail wasn’t secure.

It could also be that many Democrats would have not bothered to go vote except it was made so easy and convenient for them that they DID vote.

i voted by mail for the 1st time doto the covid. i vote every year, this was much easier

[boston_e]

My city in Massachusetts took all the early in person votes and put them in bins by ward and precinct. They then took the mail in ballots and prior to Election Day, opened the outer envelopes, checked that’s the voters properly signed them, and then put those inner envelopes into the bins by ward and precinct. The poll workers were VERY busy on Election Day opening those envelopes, unfolding and flattening the ballots so they could feed them into the ballot counting machine in between in person voters. I am pretty sure our cities ballots were all counted by very late election night or just after. It really is not that hard a process if you organize it right. I am guessing that many of the states and so on left ALL of it to Election Day or later, and now are overwhelmed by the process.

What city though? Depending on the size a small city in MA could be VERY different in sheer volume compared to Philadelphia.

[TheLurker]

My city in Massachusetts took all the early in person votes and put them in bins by ward and precinct. They then took the mail in ballots and prior to Election Day, opened the outer envelopes, checked that’s the voters properly signed them, and then put those inner envelopes into the bins by ward and precinct. The poll workers were VERY busy on Election Day opening those envelopes, unfolding and flattening the ballots so they could feed them into the ballot counting machine in between in person voters. I am pretty sure our cities ballots were all counted by very late election night or just after. It really is not that hard a process if you organize it right. I am guessing that many of the states and so on left ALL of it to Election Day or later, and now are overwhelmed by the process.

In Pennsylvania they couldn't do that.

"Due to state law, election officials in the state were legally unable to even begin processing—let alone count—ballots until Election Day. Democrats in the state, including Gov. Tom Wolf tried to pass legislation that would allow counties to begin pre-canvassing ballots to verify their validity before Election Day, but were obstructed by the Republican-led legislature. "

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/11/04/pa-ballot-delay/

[XtremeJibber2001]

OK, My biggest question from this election is why so many Democrats “mailed it in” (used mail in balloting), and why so many Republicans took the time and effort to go to the polls and vote in person. I think psychologists and psychiatrists, could make a life study of the reasons. What does KZone think?

Mail in voting avoids possibly contracting COVID so that's what we did.

I am guessing that many of the states and so on left ALL of it to Election Day or later, and now are overwhelmed by the process.

PA law prevents counting before election day.

[deadheadskier]

Due to the nature of my work travel, I always vote absentee. The process for my town (and perhaps all of NH) is

Ballots needed to be in by Thursday before the election. Friday town officials checked for errors. If you had an error, you were instructed to go to the polls. Only 5 out of 2088 had an issue.

But they couldn't physically count the votes until election day. I just assume they start the actual counts on Friday.

[Bubba]

Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election law attorney, said Friday that in his experience in contesting elections, “you have to have the evidence on Election Day.”

“Trying to get affidavits and sworn statements about fraud and irregularities after the fact just doesn’t work,” he said during an appearance on CNN. “So there may be a lot of noise, and a lot of statements about how there are illegalities. But so far the really difficult job of amassing proof that will stand up in court, they have not made public or evident, and so far does not exist.”

Kendall Coffey, an attorney with Coffey Burlington who worked for Vice President Al Gore’s legal team during the 2000 recount fight, said in an interview that Trump’s litigation strategy may not hinge on actually challenging the results themselves, but in trying to publicly undermine them.

“I think the Trump campaign is prepared to file some losing lawsuits, but hoping that they strike gold in some places,” Coffey said, “and that in all of this, create a narrative that there are just too many questionable vote countings with these mail-in ballots to trust them and to award the presidency based on the counting of mail-in ballots.”

Separately...

The Trump campaign has just sent a letter to AG Bill Barr outlining specific voter fraud they’ve uncovered in the state of Nevada: In the letter, Trump’s attorney writes:

We write to bring to your attention criminal voter fraud in the State of Nevada in the 2020 general election. Specifically, we have initially identified 3,062 individuals who appear to have improperly cast mail ballots in the election. We verified this by cross-referencing the names and addresses of voters with the National Change of Address database. …We also anticipate that the final list of fraudulent ballots will grow substantially and we will update you as we learn more.

That’s the main portion of their letter, saying they also sent their findings to the Clark County Registrar, to which the city of Las Vegas belongs.