[GT] US election - It's 2020, what could possibly go wrong?

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by blender

Sorry, didn't quite get that. Still, I have a hard time believing Trump is going to steal this without needing to resort to force. If he gets sworn in in January all bets are off, but despite the levels of concern being expressed and some of explanations of America's arcane constitutional processes there is a tremendous amount of momentum against him.

Agreed. I don't see any path to him actually pulling it off. Thank God.

[Harry Lime]

Replace gerrymandering with grid by population. There ya go.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Replace gerrymandering with grid by population. There ya go.

That causes as many problems as it solves. Why even bother with districts? Just give a proportion of the state seats that match the proportion of the state's votes.

It would also remove the whole concept of giving communities a voice. That could be Black communities, urban communities, rural communities, Hispanic communities, suburban....

There's no easy answer to this.

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

That causes as many problems as it solves. Why even bother with districts? Just give a proportion of the state seats that match the proportion of the state's votes.

It would also remove the whole concept of giving communities a voice. That could be Black communities, urban communities, rural communities, Hispanic communities, suburban....

There's no easy answer to this.

Gerrymandering seems to derive from the fear that minority voices will tilt voting in a direction that is unwanted by those that create the map. By making any kind of a system where the solution is from mathematics alone, that seems to be superior. Take it directly out of the hands of the humans.

[afc wimbledon]

All you have to do is have the districts drawn up by an independent non political third party body

[Lanny_McDonald]

Drawing up district maps is supposed to be done representative of population, not representative of specific populations or ethnic groups. I agree with Harry and afc, just allow a third party to do it without preconceptions about demographic biases. Give it to a computer that can do these things on population counts and move on. Some districts will be more conservative and some will be more liberal, just on the affluence of the areas. But because populations shift, these too will workout in the long run.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

This is an interesting point. What percentage of the Democrat voters think that Trump is a racist, then, would you say?

BoLevi,

Yes or No question:

Do you believe Donald Trump is racist?

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by flylock shox

Trump really is going to push every lever to retain power isn't he?

I was thinking today about the concept of faithless electors, and particularly the possibility of some breaking their pledges. Then I thought that "faithless" is such an apt descriptor for Republicans generally, and that despite Biden's massive electoral advantage, these are rare times in which I could see a large number of electors breaking their pledges.

Then I watched that Van Jones video and thought that Stephen Miller and his ilk probably watched it too, and that this is probably the Republican playbook going forward.

The potential remains that this all goes haywire over the next few months. If it was just Trump it would be bad enough, but there are enough snakes and weasels in the Republican party to ensure any underhanded tactic gets pushed forward.

On a positive note Trump is getting little traction in the courts with his fraud claims so it might be difficult to run out the clock on certification.

[PsYcNeT]

Wow, who could have speculated that Trump and his sycophants have the attention span of a sugar-addled 2 year old?

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/...n-ban-deadline

TikTok says the Trump administration has forgotten about trying to ban it, would like to know what’s up

[Lanny_McDonald]

^^^ That is such an insult to sugar-addled two year olds.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

I guess it depends on your definition of a problem. Sure, maps are drawn in a very partisan way, but if Dems keep winning the house, is it affecting anything?

Nm

[Senator Clay Davis]

I mean there's a lot to unpack here ("I stand here" while he sits, his inability as an actor to remember more than 3 words at a time before going to the cue cards etc...), but Angelina's Dad comes off mostly sad and almost hostage like in this one.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1326323889417322497

[Kidder]

Trump begins Veterans Day in America with a heartfelt tweet thanking the veterans and the servicemen and women who serve their nation.

Or you know, more ‘election was rigged’ bloviating.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I mean there's a lot to unpack here ("I stand here" while he sits, his inability as an actor to remember more than 3 words at a time before going to the cue cards etc...), but Angelina's Dad comes off mostly sad and almost hostage like in this one.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1326323889417322497

The balls to invoke Muhammed Ali's quote in that ####show of a message is unconscionable. They should be ashamed of themselves.

BTW, does Voight know that when he calls leftists "satanic and evil", he's talking about his own daughter. His own flesh and blood. You know, that one that has been a UN ambassador for the welfare of children around the globe and has adopted many children from different backgrounds to give them a better life. He knows this, yes?

[Codes]

Yay, another public figure to lose any semblance of respect. What garbage.

[Wastedyouth]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I mean there's a lot to unpack here ("I stand here" while he sits, his inability as an actor to remember more than 3 words at a time before going to the cue cards etc...), but Angelina's Dad comes off mostly sad and almost hostage like in this one.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1326323889417322497

Wow.... just wow.

I honestly didn't think that much would come of Trump's post election stupidity. But clearly there is a concerted effort by a group of people to ACTUALLY start a war in the States.

That is some messed up #### going on down there.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

It seemed like a massive debacle was a given pre-election, then it seemed like Trump might leave office with a whimper and now I can’t help but feel momentum is building again for a large scale coup of some kind. Whether it is via legal means or by force.

[flylock shox]

Originally Posted by edslunch

On a positive note Trump is getting little traction in the courts with his fraud claims so it might be difficult to run out the clock on certification.

It is getting traction in the media and among a sizeable number of Americans however.



From Andrew Coyne in the Globe this morning (but cited elsewhere too):

The party base, moreover, is buying it. An extraordinary Morning Consult poll shows plummeting faith among Republican voters not just in the fairness of this election but of elections generally, from roughly two-thirds in late October to barely a third this week. Almost half (47 per cent) of Trump voters told another poll, days after most of the votes had been counted and the results were known, that their candidate was winning the election.


The party establishment has obediently fallen into line. Just four Republican senators have to date acknowledged Mr. Biden as the president-elect. And the longer Mr. Trump’s claims go unchallenged, the more opportunity he and his team have to cement their control of the party – and steel it for what is to come.

Trump and the Republicans play only to their base - they have no interest in governing for the nation as a whole and - with perhaps a small handful of exceptions - no interest in being restrained by constitutional norms or ethics of any kind.



Trump, in particular, will exploit every avenue available to him, and there are many (see the Van Jones video posted earlier in this thread). Even if the transition to Biden is completed, it will likely be sabotaged, and Trump will continue to pound the message that the Biden administration - and the election system itself - is illegitimate, and his base will continue to lap it up.



This is very much an attack on the institutions of American democracy which - as we've seen over the last 4 years - aren't as strong as one might have imagined. If a significant portion of the population loses faith in those institutions, and considers the stakes high enough, a real fracturing of the republic - and violence - is very possible.


As Coyne points out in his opinion piece, the election is only a week old, and there remain 10 weeks for Trump to do damage even if he ultimately steps down in January.

[Leeman4Gilmour]

I believe Arizona flipping to Republican based on mail in votes would be a very good thing. Might take some wind out of Trump's sails.

[flylock shox]

Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour

I believe Arizona flipping to Republican based on mail in votes would be a very good thing. Might take some wind out of Trump's sails.

To the contrary: I think it would legitimize his claims of fraud in the minds of his supporters. It could even push some hard core Trump supporters to abandon Fox News in favour of even more partisan sources of information.