Mail in voting and the election day train wreck

[Timsup2nothin]

I will add more explicitly that if Trump is really unpopular enough to lose Texas (or Florida FTM), then that means Ohio is gone too as is North and South Carolina, Arizona, Missouri... it wouldn't just be Texas.

But my sense is that Trump is nowhere near that unpopular. Biden and/or Trump are more likely to be nail-biting for a week or two after the election, just hoping and praying for one last state to break their way and limp across the finish line. Then the refusals to concede and allegations of voter fraud and other shenanigans, then the Court battles... basically just like 2000... maybe worse

State campaigns are more individualized than you are giving them credit for. Trump could lose Florida first because the social security crisis resonates there far more than it does anywhere else and can be made a focal point of the campaign there. Texas could be lost before some other states just because the Democratic party could possibly go absolutely all in on Texas and force the issue even if the Biden campaign itself doesn't. It is very likely that if Trump loses Texas he has already lost everywhere else, but it isn't a certainty.

Wisconsin could very well go to the GOP even in a widespread routing of Trump just because it is positioned for maximum GOP shenanigans.

As to how this will compare with 2000...revisit the chaos of the 2000 election, then add in the day after the election Bill Clinton declares that Gore is the winner and throws himself and his administration fully into enforcing that declaration. Instead of party v party, the lawsuits have to be fought against the US government as represented by the attorney general. The word 'traitor' is thrown around in reference to anyone pointing out that there is no official results supporting Gore as the winner. Public gatherings in support of Gore are still considered the same political protests they were called at the time, but the protests favoring Bush are called "insurrections" and treated as such by federal law enforcement. That's basically where we are headed.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Or taxed!

The folks in the sparsely populated states already get a disproportionate say in the government because of the Senate and the Electoral College... then on top of that they get an extra-extra say, because of the "supermajority" and 2/3 rules.

 

[Farm Boy]

To keep slavery from getting banned?

EDIT: @Lexicus already got it.

That was the application. The design purpose is you can change the rules of the game with 2/3rds. 2/3rds of a legislature is a full check on branch power, the hardest one to get and the strongest. It's a helluva mandate, and a much bigger one to weasel. But yes, let's direct back from 2016 application in the realm of deviations from vote % to % representation between CA and WI to erm, slavery is an argument that works on CFC, rite?

 

[Sommerswerd]

State campaigns are more individualized than you are giving them credit for. Trump could lose Florida first because the social security crisis resonates there far more than it does anywhere else and can be made a focal point of the campaign there. Texas could be lost before some other states just because the Democratic party could possibly go absolutely all in on Texas and force the issue even if the Biden campaign itself doesn't. It is very likely that if Trump loses Texas he has already lost everywhere else, but it isn't a certainty.

Wisconsin could very well go to the GOP even in a widespread routing of Trump just because it is positioned for maximum GOP shenanigans.

All good points. I will add that as you and other folks have already pointed out, we don't know for sure how those national polling percentages are going to shake out statewise. If Trump fails to get the same 46.1% he got last cycle, but that decrease is spread out relatively evenly across all the states, then we could see a repeat of 2016, where he gets an EC win despite failing to get more votes. OTOH, if he gets a few substantial declines in say Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida, despite maintaining close to the same percentage of the vote overall, then he would get rocked, regardless. I just am not optimistic that Biden is going to fare a strong as many are hoping.

 

[Lexicus]

Polling shows Biden has actually allowed Trump to gain ground with Hispanic voters compared to his 2016 performance, and is actually losing among Hispanics in Florida by 4% - an impressive achievement even given the number of Cuban fascists there.

 

[Sommerswerd]

That was the application. The design purpose is you can change the rules of the game with 2/3rds. 2/3rds of a legislature is a full check on branch power, the hardest one to get and the strongest. It's a helluva mandate, and a much bigger one to weasel. But yes, let's direct back from 2016 application in the realm of deviations from vote % to % representation between CA and WI to erm, slavery is an argument that works on CFC, rite?

Its not "an argument", its the truth. You brought it up not me.

 

[Farm Boy]

No, its not. That was the application. The application may have informed the design, but the design puts changing the rules and ceasing to negotiate at 2/3 for whatever reason. The 2/3 line does not deal with enforcing the will of the majority, it is the line for respecting the rights of the minority. It's a bigger line.

One I'm supposed to overlook after a misleading but pithy infografic about republicans in WI deviating from doing democracy good while CA misses farther, on the bigger line, on 5x the scale.

No, my gerrymandering crack is on target.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

All good points. I will add that as you and other folks have already pointed out, we don't know for sure how those national polling percentages are going to shake out statewise. If Trump fails to get the same 46.1% he got last cycle, but that decrease is spread out relatively evenly across all the states, then we could see a repeat of 2016, where he gets an EC win despite failing to get more votes. OTOH, if he gets a few substantial declines in say Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida, despite maintaining close to the same percentage of the vote overall, then he would get rocked, regardless. I just am not optimistic that Biden is going to fare a strong as many are hoping.

You would possibly feel better if you studied how state by state polling, which is being done and reported on far more extensively this year, tracks against the national polls. For example, North Carolina consistently tracks about six points better for Trump than the national polling...so Biden's current seven point advantage in national polling has NC on edge. Pennsylvania though tracks only about two pints better for Trump than the national polling so it is still considered pretty safe. Florida doesn't track as well as Pennsylvania, but considerably better than North Carolina.

 

[Sommerswerd]

No, its not. That was the application. The application may have informed the design, but the design puts changing the rules and ceasing to negotiate at 2/3 for whatever reason. The 2/3 line does not deal with enforcing the will of the majority, it is the line for respecting the rights of the minority. It's a bigger line.

One I'm supposed to overlook after a misleading but pithy infografic about republicans in WI deviating from doing democracy good while CA misses farther, on the bigger line, on 5x the scale.

No, my gerrymandering crack is on target.

Yes it is. There were no political parties when they put those rules into the Constitution so you (the royal you) can't retcon some kind of genius, prophetic anti-partisan defensive measures into the intentions behind the rules. I know we were all raised in grammar school on the "genius" of the Constitution and the Founding fathers, but we're all getting a little too old to be believing in fairy tales.

They were protecting slavery. The fact that it frustrates the parties is just a dumb luck coincidence.​

 

[Lexicus]

Yes it is. There were no political parties when they put those rules into the Constitution so you (the royal you) can't retcon some kind of genius, prophetic anti-partisan defensive measures into the intentions behind the rules. I know we were all raised in grammar school on the "genius" of the Constitution and the Founding fathers, but we're all getting a little too old to be believing in fairy tales.

They were protecting slavery. The fact that it frustrates the parties is just a dumb luck coincidence.​

By the time of the Constitution's framing, I believe almost all the states had laws severely limiting the extent to which even free black people could participate in politics. So who are we trying to kid by claiming the 2/3rds thing is about a principled defense of minority rights? We're expected to believe the same people who hailed from states where teaching black people to read was punishable by death were concerned with minority rights in the abstract?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

No, its not. That was the application. The application may have informed the design, but the design puts changing the rules and ceasing to negotiate at 2/3 for whatever reason. The 2/3 line does not deal with enforcing the will of the majority, it is the line for respecting the rights of the minority. It's a bigger line.

One I'm supposed to overlook after a misleading but pithy infografic about republicans in WI deviating from doing democracy good while CA misses farther, on the bigger line, on 5x the scale.

No, my gerrymandering crack is on target.

No, it's still not. As previously stated, the California outcome that you continue to cite is a short term result caused by disgust with the GOP and Trump. The last time districting was done in California the GOP was about 35% of the vote and in the then current elections they got 15 out of 53 seats in the congressional delegation and held them for eight years. The GOP and Trump then losing half of them can't be blamed on gerrymandering because no redistricting occurred. It is true they will never get all those seats back without a massive restructuring of the parties, because the next redistricting is going to reflect that their support in California is now down to probably 30%, if not less.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yes it is. There were no political parties when they put those rules into the Constitution so you (the royal you) can't retcon some kind of genius, prophetic anti-partisan defensive measures into the intentions behind the rules. I know we were all raised in grammar school on the "genius" of the Constitution and the Founding fathers, but we're all getting a little too old to be believing in fairy tales.

They were protecting slavery. The fact that it frustrates the parties is just a dumb luck coincidence.​

It doesn't take a genius to design a board game, and sometimes durable games are durable because of happy accidents. That slavery informed the purpose of design and parties have taken over the power it vacated does not alter the fact that will of the majority applications begin with a 50% majority and rights of the minority applications, along with amending the rules of the game itself, is 2/3rds. It doesn't matter why the parts were crafted, but within their game, the rules have purpose.

 

[Lexicus]

It doesn't take a genius to design a board game, and sometimes durable games are durable because of happy accidents. That slavery informed the purpose of design and parties have taken over the power it vacated does not alter the fact that will of the majority applications begin with a 50% majority and rights of the minority applications, along with amending the rules of the game itself, is 2/3rds. It doesn't matter why the parts were crafted, but within their game, the rules have purpose.

So, can I summarize your position as "they may have designed this system to defend and preserve slavery, but it's still awesome"?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So, can I summarize your position as "they may have designed this system to defend and preserve slavery, but it's still awesome"?

That actually is not a bad take. The game IS designed with protection of the minority's rights in mind. The fact that the FIRST minority that was protected was in fact slave states is not in itself justification for condemning the concept. Democracy is hard. The fact that they got it to work at all and that it has held together this long is a pretty good accomplishment.

 

[Farm Boy]

This is law. The purpose of a law is that which it does and no more. If you don't have a law doing something that you want done, then you have no law to that purpose. The 2/3rds majority rule line is the line at which you can check the power of other branches and change the rules of the game. That is its purpose regardless of if it was written to apply to slavery. It works to that purpose. And well, too, as you'll note an effect of it is that parties stop contesting elections when they expect under 1/3 the vote. Those voters at 20% don't go away, but they do start becoming invisible underrepresentations in clever graphs, because they system has sort of stopped caring that they're there. That's a lingering effect of the design application, probably. A bit of instability built in.

 

[Lexicus]

That actually is not a bad take. The game IS designed with protection of the minority's rights in mind. The fact that the FIRST minority that was protected was in fact slave states is not in itself justification for condemning the concept. Democracy is hard. The fact that they got it to work at all and that it has held together this long is a pretty good accomplishment.

Yes, it's just rather hard to take the whole "minority rights" thing seriously when minorities like "black people" and "people living below the poverty line" don't seem to have many privileges or protections, while the minorities getting all the protections seem to be groups like "members of the Trump family" and "Republican voters in Wyoming"

 

[Farm Boy]

They don't hit 1/3, and they aren't rich enough de facto to buy friends up to 1/3 de jure. The minority rights, de jure, kind of hardstop at under 1/3. Everything stays at 1/3, it just gets clunkier of application to stress the test of 2/3 over time. Hence the biggest rules needing to go through so many stages of 2/3rds.

 

[Sommerswerd]

That actually is not a bad take. The game IS designed with protection of the minority's rights in mind. The fact that the FIRST minority that was protected was in fact slave states is not in itself justification for condemning the concept. Democracy is hard. The fact that they got it to work at all and that it has held together this long is a pretty good accomplishment.

That's a separate issue. The point I am making is very specific and not mutually exclusive with yours. @Farm Boy said that, quote "Seriously. All the stuff that needs 2/3rds needs 2/3rds for a reason" in my estimation, ignoring that the actual reason they put that stuff in the Constitution was to protect slavery, and instead, retroactively assigning some higher moral purpose to it. So I reminded him of the reality. The fact that the 2/3 rule sometimes does some good work, even putting aside the fact that it also sometimes prevents/frustrates some good work... does not change that the original reason "All the stuff that needs 2/3rds needs 2/3rds" was to protect slavery.

I'm resisting the noble, retroactive, rewriting of history that we got in grade school, because I think the 2/3 thing needs to be looked at, precisely on the merits, for what it actually accomplishes now, rather than some rose colored theoretical, hypothetical outlook that is heavily coloured by the "OMG the Founders were such geniuses, look how awesome and forward thinking our Constitution was!!" crap that I know you all learned as kids, cause I learned it too. Remember, the Constitution and the 2/3rds stuff didn't get rid of slavery. The War did.

So I'll put the question to you. What has 2/3rds done for me (us) lately?

 

[Lexicus]

That's a separate issue. The point I am making is very specific and not mutually exclusive with yours. @Farm Boy said that, quote "Seriously. All the stuff that needs 2/3rds needs 2/3rds for a reason" in my estimation, ignoring that the actual reason they put that stuff in the Constitution was to protect slavery, and instead, retroactively assigning some higher moral purpose to it. So I reminded him of the reality. The fact that the 2/3 rule sometimes does some good work, even putting aside the fact that it also sometimes prevents/frustrates some good work... does not change that the original reason "All the stuff that needs 2/3rds needs 2/3rds" was to protect slavery.

I'm resisting the noble, retroactive, rewriting of history that we got in grade school, because I think the 2/3 thing needs to be looked at, precisely on the merits, for what it actually accomplishes now, rather than some rose colored theoretical, hypothetical outlook that is heavily coloured by the "OMG the Founders were such geniuses, look how awesome and forward thinking our Constitution was!!" crap that I know you all learned as kids, cause I learned it too. Remember, the Constitution and the 2/3rds stuff didn't get rid of slavery. The War did.

So I'll put the question to you. What has 2/3rds done for me (us) lately?

The most recent thing I can think of is it enabled Joe Lieberman to save us from the oppression of a public health insurance option?

 

[Farm Boy]

What do you think it does? Frustrates a higher purpose, inhibit progress? Hold back our destiny? The purpose of a tool is what it does, not what marketers or even the blacksmith intended. That point we've already agreed on, you're taking bends downriver.