Tag Archives: election security

Fade To Biden

16 Nov 2020 By in Politics Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

It’s been over a week since the presidential race was called for Biden, yet the loser in the White House refuses to concede.  The victor’s camp has had to watch endless analyses of the loser’s situation, which with time grows more pathetic and bizarre.  The media continues to cover Trump, take his words to heart, and repeat them when they don’t deserve repeating.  A few sycophants continue to treat him as if his wishes and grudges matter.  Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s scatter-shot press conference in defense of the President, held mistakenly at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, sandwiched between a dildo shop and a crematorium in a banal corner of suburban Philadelphia, offers a visual metaphor for how dodgy and disreputable Trump’s protestations are.

Meanwhile, the victor and the victorious electorate have been cheated of the whoop and holler of all-out jubilation.  Yes, Biden backers partied in the streets the day the election was called and rallied to cheer Biden’s sweet victory later that night.  Yet a cloud hangs over Biden’s lawful assumption of the presidency, because the current president refuses to acknowledge what Biden has accomplished—refuses to acknowledge the people’s choice.  Until someone chops down Trump’s tree of refusal, Biden’s win remains in the loser’s shade.

It’s incontrovertible that Biden defeated Trump.  As of this morning, Biden has 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.  Biden won by flipping five states that Trump won in 2016: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia.  His margins could have been fatter in Arizona and Michigan, but only in Georgia are the results close enough to justify a recount, which is occurring now.  Even if Georgia were to go to Trump instead of Biden, it wouldn’t be enough to touch Biden’s win.

An astonishing number of Americans (about 73 millions) turned out for Trump.  He received the highest number of votes ever cast for a Republican candidate, but, in this year of astronomical turnout, Biden far eclipsed him, winning roughly 78.8 million votes out of some 152 million cast.  Biden received over 5.6 million more votes than Trump.

Trump’s childish inability to accept the results is unfortunate, but far more dastardly is the behavior of others in the Republican party, who indulge Trump instead of pressuring him to concede.  Of particular moment is the formal beginning of the transition process.  Once the formal transfer of power begins, we can all breathe a sigh of relief.  The incoming administration will then be privy to what is going on in the Trump White House, greatly reducing the risk of any dangerous lame-duck shenanigans.  So far, though, a single Trump appointee, GSA administrator Emily Murphy, has held up this process, by declining to ascertain that Biden won.  She is siding with the defeated incumbent instead of with the American people.

Yet the moment is coming: Power is drifting away from Trump and incrementally consolidating around president-elect Biden.  The news outlets are debunking Trump’s claims of fraud.  Secretaries of state and other officials all across the US are explicitly defending the integrity of the elections they conducted.  The New York Times reported on a group of election officials who say this was the most secure election in US history.  Makes sense, given the fears raised over interference in 2016.  Since then. states have made substantial progress in improving election security and defending against any type of interference or fraud.

Meanwhile, Trump voters are shrugging off the loss.  As of November 10, 79 percent of Americans had come to accept that Biden had won the presidency, and 13 percent thought it hadn’t yet been decided, whereas only 3 percent believed Trump had won.  By now, the number who believe Trump’s claim to a second term is meager indeed.  The Newshour’s William Brangham, talking to Trump voters in Michigan after the election, found that many were weary of politics and ready to move away from the chaos and heal the social wounds they’d sustained.  Over the weekend, pro-Trump demonstrators planned a MillionMAGA march in Washington, DC, but the crowd numbered in the tens of thousands at best.  Hey, most of us have lived beyond voting for a candidate who lost.

It’s time for the Trump era to fade to Biden.  Catcalls, boos, and rotten tomatoes will rain down on Trump, if he can’t improvise a graceful exit tout suite.  Only a buffoon enjoys being humiliated: whether Trump is one will become evident now.

Day 41: Ignore The Polls

23 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Remember all those presidential polls in 2016 showing Hillary winning or enjoying a slight but reassuring lead?  Remember the sickening shock of Election Night when, instead, Trump won?  Remember how afterward pollsters and news organizations declared “Mea culpa,” because their polls had failed to register crucial facts about what the candidates and the electorate were thinking and doing?  Hillary trusted the polls.  As a consequence, she became complacent and ran a poor ground game in states that she took for granted and lost.

Since then, the best polling sites have supposedly upped their game (and hedged their bets) by using more sophisticated and nuanced models.  Nonetheless, relying on polls remains dangerous because they are based on information that is always a little bit old.  It’s a little bit thin.  It’s always a bit scattered. It tends to be crude.   Meanwhile, the 2020 race will hinge on up-to-the-minute efforts by the nominees and their parties in specific localities.  This is how Trump won last time: by building on microlevel advantages in several key states, and leveraging those advantages into state-level wins.

Now Trump and his backers are at it again.  In Wisconsin, Republicans are mounting a concerted door-t0-door campaign to get out the vote, where, later this month, the state supreme court will hear arguments on whether to purge some 180,ooo voters from registration rolls.  Trump backers have pleaded with judges to limit ballot collection boxes and disqualify mail-in ballots lacking a secrecy envelope in Pennsylvania.  Finally, in the crucial matter of voter registration, the New York Times is reporting that in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, “overall registration is up by 6 points through August compared to the 2016 cycle, but net Democratic registrations are down by 38 percent. That’s about 150,000 fewer additional Democrats than were added in 2016.”  Surprising numbers of whites without college degrees are registering, a demographic that went heavily for Mr Trump in 2016.  Such are the unobtrusive developments that will make all the difference in this election–developments that even the best polling, which focuses mainly on opinion, cannot capture.  The fate of the US will hinge on last-minute, local actions occurring in real time.

So, if you care about the future of the United States, please ignore the polls.  Act on your fears and redouble your efforts to get out the vote for Joe.

RELATED:
Thomas B. Edsall, “Five Things Biden and His Allies Should Be Worried About” (NYT)
Barton Gellman, “The Election That Could Break America,” (The Atlantic)

Image: from this source.

Day 57: 3,000 Little Elections

7 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , 4 Comments

The November election is actually some three-thousand little elections. That’s roughly how many counties the United States has. Elections are organized and run at the county level, under the supervision of state and local election officials, using procedures that rival Democrats and Republicans have worked out over hundreds of years.

It’s the very decentralized yet sophisticated character of American voting that’s got the unpopular incumbent president, Donald Trump, running scared. Last time around, spoilers and a shrewd assessment of the electoral map propelled Trump to a legitimate victory over the more popular but complacent Hillary Clinton. Now, having alienated Americans with his crassness and criminality, Trump wants desperately to discourage and cow all of us individual voters, whose sentiments are destined to flow through our ballots and aggregate into those carefully counted county-level returns.

The county totals determine which candidate will be awarded the electoral votes of the state. Electoral votes are proportionate to a state’s population, but only active voters determine which candidate walks off with them.

You must be registered to vote if you want to make Biden president in 2020! Take the first step by visiting CanIVote.org. This is a non-partisan, bilingual website sponsored by the National Association of Secretaries of State (i.e., the pertinent officials in all fifty states). No matter where you live, this website can direct you toward state-specific voting information that you need. Use it to check whether you are registered, to find your polling place, or obtain the forms needed for early / absentee voting. One can even use it to sign up to become an election worker. It’s super-convenient.

As a resident of Chicago, I’ll be voting in Cook County, Illinois. Clicking through the CanIVote website takes me right to the Illinois State Board of Elections page, where I can find all the deadlines for registration and early voting, review my options for voting in-person, and read the directions for voting by mail. Voting is more complicated than usual this year because of the pandemic, so it’s essential to learn everything one can about the location specific parameters, before this momentous election season begins.

Image: “Map of the USA with county outlines”
adapted by Wapcaplet from a US Census Bureau map,
from this source.