Absentee Ballots, Calling the election...

[purplefaithful]

Lots of discussion on this already...I think the American public might need to brace ourselves for a wait on outcome, like waiting for days...

Unless it's a landslide for team blue or red.  

Could be a "cluster"

[Guest]

No presidential winner on election night? Mail-in ballots could put outcome in doubt for weeksWASHINGTON — Kentucky won't have final results of last week's state primaryuntil Tuesday. New York could take twice as long. In Pennsylvania, the state's largest city, Philadelphia, was still tallying mail-in ballots nearly two weeks after its June 2 primary.
The unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic has produced hiccups in some state primaries and operated smoothly in others.
But one thing is constant: States have shattered turnout records for primaries because of the deluge of mail-in ballots, forcing election officials to need days, even weeks, to count all the votes.
Fast-forward to the Nov. 3 presidential election, when all 50 states and the District of Columbia will vote the same day. Many states are expected to turn to mass mail-in voting again but this time for a presidential race that will draw significantly greater turnout than primaries.
In the race between President Donald Trump and Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden, down to races for Congress and even local contests, voting experts have a warning: Unless there's a clear and decisive winner, brace for an election week or weeks, not an election night.

"I think 'weeks' is potentially being generous," said Joe Burns, a Republican election attorney for the Lawyers Democracy Fund.
Burns, a former election official with the New York State Board of Elections, said it can already takes weeks to count mail-in ballots in states where just 5% vote absentee. "Well, if you go and increase the absentee ballots by a factor of 10, you would think it would take that much longer."
He added: "If you're a candidate, if you're an election lawyer, don't make too many plans post election."
Worries about a 'post-election crisis'The media likes to crown presidential winners as soon as a candidate clears the 270-delegate threshold. Television networks projected Donald Trump the winner of the 2016 election around 2:45 a.m. ET. Barack Obama was declared the winner on election nights in both his victories, around 11 p.m. ET in 2008 and 11:20 p.m. ET in 2012.
The most drawn-out – and controversial – election in U.S. history was in 2000, when television networks declared George W. Bush the winner on election night, only to revert back to "too close to call" as votes trickled in from Florida. The contest effectively ended five weeks later on Dec. 12 when the U.S. Supreme Court halted a vote recount in Florida.
Election experts worry a prolonged outcome this year could set the stage for greater controversial – potentially attempts by candidates to invalidate the results – because of the raging fight over vote-by-mail.

President Trump has accused Democrats of seeking to "rig" and "steal" the election by supporting expanded vote-by-mail during the pandemic, which he's slammed without evidence as fraudulent. A campaign fundraising email last week called Democrats "thieves." Biden said he's wondered whether Trump would willingly leave the White House if he loses and that his "single greatest concern" is that Trump will "steal the election" by limiting voter access.
"It is extremely unlikely we're going to have final results on election night," said Lawrence Norden, director of the Election Reform Program for the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York School of Law. He called it a "different kind of election this year" that could mean at least several days to count all the votes.
"This is a real concern because there's so much disinformation around the election that people will use that to delegitimize the count. It's why I think it's so important (for) people to know ahead of time that's going to be the reality. It doesn't mean that there's anything in wrong. It means that we're doing our jobs to make sure the votes are counted accurately."

Larry Diamond, a political science professor at Stanford University and fellow at the Hoover Institution, said a close election – and the public not understanding that it might take days or more to count mail-in ballots – could lead to an election fight like the U.S. has never seen.  
“We’ve really got significant scope for an unprecedented post-election crisis in the United States,” Diamond said
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli...256643001/

[Guest]

@purplefaithful said:
Lots of discussion on this already...I think the American public might need to brace ourselves for a wait on outcome, like waiting for days...

Unless it's a landslide for team blue or red.  

Could be a "cluster"

Not just a cluster but a constitutional crisis. Trump's base of victims, conspiracy believers, white supremacists, militia and tea party types are not going to go quietly into that good night. 

And if there's a delay in the decision, the more that will feed into whatever narrative of wrongdoing they decide to craft. Assuming Trump loses (and, no, I'm not assuming that), we're going to need real patriots on the Republican side of things to step up and be Americans. 

Otherwise, we're going to get the race war that smart people like the Boogaloos and Charlie Manson wanted. 

Meanwhile, Putin sits back and smiles at the work he's done. 

[Guest]

Putin played(plays) him like a cheap violin. 

[Guest]

@MaroonBells said:

@purplefaithful said:
Lots of discussion on this already...I think the American public might need to brace ourselves for a wait on outcome, like waiting for days...

Unless it's a landslide for team blue or red.  

Could be a "cluster"

Not just a cluster but a constitutional crisis. Trump's base of victims, conspiracy believers, white supremacists, militia and tea party types are not going to go quietly into that good night. 

And if there's a delay in the decision, the more that will feed into whatever narrative of wrongdoing they decide to craft. Assuming Trump loses (and, no, I'm not assuming that), we're going to need real patriots on the Republican side of things to step up and be Americans. 

Otherwise, we're going to get the race war that smart people like the Boogaloos and Charlie Manson wanted. 

Meanwhile, Putin sits back and smiles at the work he's done. 

I started out looking for the story about the postal worker who threw out the campaign fliers for a political candidate (don't know what party they are or what political affiliation of the worker was.  My initial search turned this up: story after story about postal workers being caught (on video) throwing mail away.  This doesn't even include all the times when they weren't caught (because... they weren't caught).  
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=postal+worker+throws+mail+in+trash&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Now that I found an article of this story (only read the headline before), it turns out that it was a Republican candidate.  https://www.brproud.com/news/camera-catc...he%20trash.

Of course, I'm not saying that only liberals would do this.  I think that the temptation is there- for both parties- to "rig" the election by throwing away the ballots from areas that are known to have a high concentration of voters for one party or the other.  That's why I think it is reasonable to- at the very least- have a discussion about it, without resorting- automatically- to cries of "voter suppression", "racism" or whatever other silly accusations people want to make.

[Guest]

Not using the mail, doesn't seem to work well for conservatives, at least this one time, who know how many time they realy got away with it.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/2...ts-1197404

[Guest]

@MaroonBells said:

@purplefaithful said:
Lots of discussion on this already...I think the American public might need to brace ourselves for a wait on outcome, like waiting for days...

Unless it's a landslide for team blue or red.  

Could be a "cluster"

Not just a cluster but a constitutional crisis. Trump's base of victims, conspiracy believers, white supremacists, militia and tea party types are not going to go quietly into that good night. 

And if there's a delay in the decision, the more that will feed into whatever narrative of wrongdoing they decide to craft. Assuming Trump loses (and, no, I'm not assuming that), we're going to need real patriots on the Republican side of things to step up and be Americans. 

Otherwise, we're going to get the race war that smart people like the Boogaloos and Charlie Manson wanted. 

Meanwhile, Putin sits back and smiles at the work he's done. 

Says the guy who's "team" made up Russia.  I mean you guys had millions of people wearing pussy hats screaming impeach before he even was inaugurated and you want to scream about going quite into the night? 

If you think Biden is going to be some sort of improvement you're only kidding yourself. 

[Guest]

If we're going to not vote at the ballot booth after being properly identified the only other way I see fit is to do a system like we do for opening a banking account where you are verified by a 3rd party system that asks you the questions like cars you've owned or addresses you've lived at. 

[Guest]

@AGRforever said:

@MaroonBells said:

@purplefaithful said:
Lots of discussion on this already...I think the American public might need to brace ourselves for a wait on outcome, like waiting for days...

Unless it's a landslide for team blue or red.  

Could be a "cluster"

Not just a cluster but a constitutional crisis. Trump's base of victims, conspiracy believers, white supremacists, militia and tea party types are not going to go quietly into that good night. 

And if there's a delay in the decision, the more that will feed into whatever narrative of wrongdoing they decide to craft. Assuming Trump loses (and, no, I'm not assuming that), we're going to need real patriots on the Republican side of things to step up and be Americans. 

Otherwise, we're going to get the race war that smart people like the Boogaloos and Charlie Manson wanted. 

Meanwhile, Putin sits back and smiles at the work he's done. 

If you think Biden is going to be some sort of improvement you're only kidding yourself. 

100% unequivocally he has to be. Nobody could be worse. Its the lowest bar to reach ever.

[Guest]

@StickyBun said:

@AGRforever said:

@MaroonBells said:

@purplefaithful said:
Lots of discussion on this already...I think the American public might need to brace ourselves for a wait on outcome, like waiting for days...

Unless it's a landslide for team blue or red.  

Could be a "cluster"

Not just a cluster but a constitutional crisis. Trump's base of victims, conspiracy believers, white supremacists, militia and tea party types are not going to go quietly into that good night. 

And if there's a delay in the decision, the more that will feed into whatever narrative of wrongdoing they decide to craft. Assuming Trump loses (and, no, I'm not assuming that), we're going to need real patriots on the Republican side of things to step up and be Americans. 

Otherwise, we're going to get the race war that smart people like the Boogaloos and Charlie Manson wanted. 

Meanwhile, Putin sits back and smiles at the work he's done. 

If you think Biden is going to be some sort of improvement you're only kidding yourself. 

100% unequivocally he has to be. Nobody could be worse. Its the lowest bar to reach ever.

And yet the bar you've gone with is right there with him.  To me its honestly a coin flip.  I guess the one thing you might have going for you is when yall vote Biden in he's just going to be the figure head like when Bush 2.0 was in.  He'll say the stuff at the press conferences but it'll be the cronies behind closed doors making all the decisions.