Regarding today's election, for my friends not in the USA

[thewayne]

Here's the thing. It is not possible to declare X or Y won RIGHT NOW, because of the huge voter turnout. It looks like this is the largest voter turnout of any election, possibly in history. The early voting by itself pretty much exceeded all votes cast in the 2016 election.

And pretty much none of those votes have been tallied.

Regardless of what President Whiny Butt wants, they're not going to stop counting ballots tonight. State law doesn't permit it. Every vote has to be counted. And that includes mailed ballots.

What we're seeing right now is the people who voted TODAY, and I'm thinking that those were probably mostly his partizans. The numbers are going to change as the mailed votes and early votes are processed, and it is still possible for a Democratic tsunami to sweep him out of office.

Or not.

We don't know.

The states have a couple of weeks, IIRC, to certify their election counts. And I'm sure both sides will have all sorts of lawyers fighting for their candidates.

And that's not the end of it.

Our Presidential election consists of three stages. This is the first stage. The people vote, the States certify the votes.

That's Stage 1.

But we're not actually voting for the President. We're voting for a slate of electors who go to the Electoral College, who meet in December.

THAT is where the actual decision is made.

You keep hearing about 269? I think that's the number, at least. That's the number of electoral college votes required to win the Presidency.
[EDIT: 269 is the number a candidate must EXCEED to win the Presidency.]

That's Stage 2.

THEN the results go to the United States Congress who review and certify the results. Only at that point is it official. It's pretty much pro forma as once the Electoral College is final, the new President starts picking out wallpaper and finding out if moving vans are available around January 20th or thereabouts.


It's a complicated process. A lot of people want to eliminate the Electoral College: George W. Bush, like Donald Trump, lost the popular vote but managed to win the EC. They want a straight-up popular vote to decide the Presidency. Myself, I'm not sure where I fall on that decision. We have a huge disproportionate amount of electoral power wielded some of the huge states: California, Texas, Florida, New York. It makes some of the small states, such as my own New Mexico, feel kinda slighted. And likewise, there are Conservatives in California and Liberals in Texas who feel equally without voice.

Personally, I think ranked choice voting in every state and proportionate distribution of electors - and bound electors that MUST vote according to how they are apportioned (unless something drastic happens, like the candidate they're apportioned to dies or resigns) would make the race much more interesting.

So yes, things look bleak right now. But the counting is going to take another week or so, and the picture WILL change. We don't know how.

But I do know one thing.

The screaming is going to get a lot louder. It's going to be a long month. And even if it is a Biden win, Trump is going to fight tooth and claw to try and keep the job, because there's a good chance that he'll be spending the rest of his life in state courts, if not prison, as soon as he's out of office.

[EDIT2: Check the Wikipedia page on the Electoral College. Heck of a lot of stuff there!]

Comments

[moxie_man]

Last I read, it's 270 Electoral votes to win.
The Electoral College (EC) in it's present form is broken in 48 out of 50 states, in my opinion. In those states, it's winner take all. That's how people like Bush & Trump have won the White House without winning the popular vote. NPR Crunched the numbers prior to the 2016 election using 2012 voting figures. Based on the 2012 turn-out, if you target the right states (the smaller ones), and win each one with 50% plus one vote, you could win the presidency with 23% of the total vote.

That's why there are those screaming to throw-out the EC. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon. What could be done to "fix" this issue is for those 48 states to adopt the Maine/Nebraska method. Currently, each state is assigned one EC for each rep they have in Congress plus one for each of its two senators. In ME & NE, you have to win the vote a congressional district to win one EC. Currently, the overall winner in the state receives the other two EC votes. Not perfect, but better then winner take all. If FL followed this in 2000, would we have dealt with weeks of swinging chads and the US Supreme Court basically siding with Bush?

Personally, I want to see it taken a step further: truly split up a state's EC votes based on the percentage of the popular vote. So, a state like Montana with 3 ECs: if Candidate A wins 65% and Candidate B wins 35%, A gets 2EC and B gets 1EC.

But that will never happen as long as there are Rs around as the current winner-takes-all system favors them.

[thewayne]

Yeah, 270.  I should have remembered that, seeing mentions for 270towin.com. Bill Maher wants to make the Senate a population proportionate representation.  I guess he doesn't realize that that's what the House is based upon.  So he wants California to have double representation and to completely smother small states like NM.  I think there's lots of things that need reform, and for me, the first is to eliminate the two-party system.  I'd kind of like to see a parliamentary system tried for 3 or 4 decades, just to see how things go.  Since the two parties seem hell-bent on never working together again, make them work with four or five or completely lose it. Something needs to be done.  I'd love to have ranked scoring, because I would have liked to be able to vote for Elizabeth Warren #1, then Biden #2, just to show that there was a lot about her that I really liked. But I'm sure it would be labeled a socialist system. :-)

[kathmandu]

It's not "the two parties seem hell-bent on never working together again". The Democrats still keep trying to be collegial and cooperative with the Republicans. It's the Republicans, only, going scorched-earth, voter suppression, no Democratically-sponsored bill may pass, no Democratically-nominated candidate may be approved, and ignoring court orders in pursuit of their goals. They're an outlaw group at this point.

Game theorists have been looking at elections, factionalism, and parties for a while now. It turns out a two-party system is a self-organizing emergent property of a first-past-the-post election system. The only thing I've ever seen not produce two parties is instant-runoff voting, like for the Hugo Awards. We have that in my town now, for town-level positions, and candidates often don't even bother mentioning their party on their flyers because you don't have to clump around a group banner the same way.

[warriorsavant]

Like you, I was not 100% against the Electoral College, as it gives some smaller states a voice they otherwise wouldn't have. Looking at it more closely, it really gives a disproportionate voice to a handful of swing states. Tiny Wyoming, and huge California aren't in play, because they will go to one of the two parties, so no one puts much effort into either. Like you say, conservatives in California and liberals in Texas are equally without voice.

[thewayne]

Another thing is ridiculous garbage like The Iowa Caucus.  They are not remotely representative of the USA.  It's a ridiculous system that isn't representative of anything and isn't replicated anywhere.  No one else does primaries like that.  Get rid of it, get into the 21st century. Personally, I'd like to see something like what the UK has, in that their election season is around 4 months long!  Our Idiot In Chief has been campaigning for reelection since his first month in office!  But we've been powerless to stop it.  On top of that, he hasn't been paying the cities he's been holding rallies in for what they've had to pay for overtime police and EMS services: the City of El Paso still has a half million dollars owed it that they're never going to collect, and they could really use the money right now.

[silveradept]

The Electoral College was founded with the idea of giving more power to certain states with a lot of people in them that couldn't vote benefits they weren't free. If we want a method of making sure that all people have a stake in their government, we'll need to get rid of the Electoral College as it exists and the first-past-the-post system that enables all of this battleground state and focused campaigning.

And also to disband and disqualify the party of fascists and autocrats who have already repeatedly shown their complete contempt for the idea of the republic and the democracy. But all the votes and results are showing that there's still a whole lot of people who are willing to sacrifice everything to hold onto their racism and white supremacy.

[thewayne]

It is the first part the post, two-party system is the biggest problem. Ranked choice voting and proportional delegate distribution would make this a lot more of a fight.

I just don't know that eliminating the EC is the answer. There are reforms, certainly. But eliminating it? Dunno.

When the last election cycle was underway, I told my wife that regardless of the outcome, the one beneficial result of Trump was that at least he will have ripped off the bandage covering up the amount of racism in this country. Who had any idea it ran so deep.

At least Germany is trying to address their past.

[silveradept]

A more proportional representation system that makes all votes count is a good idea. It seems like it would be a good idea to, instead of the Electoral College, use the House of Representatives as the voting body that elects the President, assuming that all Congressional districts are immediately redrawn by a nonpartisan entity after an accurate Census count. If you want the Democrat to be President, elect Democratic representatives. The House, in theory, is the body most representative of how the people feel and where they are, so they should reflect the popular vote.

The racist past and how deep it runs is one of those topics that basically every person and scholar of color has been telling us about with their with and loved experience, and it's been institutional white supremacy and the privilege of being able to ignore it that's made it look like it's suddenly a problem now. Trump certainly allowed it to come into the light and be seen more clearly, but as soon as he's gone, there will be a concerted effort to usher those things back into the darkness and put on a polite face again, to give it plausible deniability and go back to gaslighting people about its existence.

We're not going to be like Germany and own up to it until there are enough people actually willing to do the work of understanding and reparations. Which seems like that will only happen after enough white people have been taken out of positions of power and their structures dismantled. Which, unfortunately, plays into the narrative that's being sold to white people about how everyone else hates them and wants to enslave them as "reparations" for all the things that white people did to them over the generations.