Recount?

[Kyriakos]

Well it could be reincarnation, but Mussolini was shot by Italians

There was a YT meme (not sure at all if based on anything remotely real), according to which Musso's final words to his executioners was that if they killed him then he would return as head of a much more powerful country in the future.

Got to admit, Trump both looks like and has the body language of old Duce. Infamously also used his quotes, eg the one with the lambs and lions.

 

[Silurian]

So war with Ethiopia soon.

Spoiler :

Trying to capture the stragically important human hair wig manufacturing business

 

[tetley]

I don't recall him ever using the word "challenge." I do recall him calling on the "2nd Amendment people" to fix things.

Or saying we should just cancel the election and declare him the winner.

I'll give him this much, though: why not? If the wishes of the people don't matter, and it's only about the one who can manipulate the ballot counting the best, why not just cut to the chase? $100 million on an election, people's time, wasted. All in the name of giving them a warm, fuzzy feeling that they get to vote. No, thank you. Just call it the Russian election that it is (in more ways than one).

 

[Akka]

We mostly know how to count. The problem is if there's a tied election. By tie I don't mean an exact tie, but that the totals are so close that the election hinges on ballots where a voter used a pink gel pen instead of the approved black one, or they impregnated a chad instead of punching it, or they circled people's names rather than filling in the bubble, or they scribbled a giant mark over their candidate's bubble and the scribble got down into the Natural Law party's candidate's bubble for some reason but entirely fills in the Democrat's one so the intent is pretty clear. And then there are the ones where there's some question about the form of ID used/whether they still live in the precinct and whether their provisional ballot should really be counted, and then there are occasional actual miscounts, and so on, and so forth.

Luckily recounts rarely change anything unless the margin is tiny, within at most 0.03% or so. This effort is frivolous for a few reasons, and that is one of them. But if the gods of probability feel like pulling a fast one on us like they did in 2000, or in this election, or this one, then the recount efforts can go on and on and on...

How comes this problem seems to mostly happens in USA ? How come other countries manage to count their ballot faster ?

 

[warpus]

They are not allowed to have federal standards for their elections and so every state does whatever they want, leading to very poorly thought out voting ballots and so on

 

[Bootstoots]

^ this, basically.

 

[Sommerswerd]

No you are not wrong. Looks like the Green Party found an easy way to exploit the current political climate in the US for a nice $2.5 million payday.

And yet....

And I was worried I might have to abstain from this election after Sanders called it quits. Looks like the Green Party is getting my vote this election.

Oh, I forgot that I have to break everything I say down Barney-style for you since you love portraying everything I say in the worst possible light. I don't look for a candidate that represents all my interests, but neither Trump or Clinton sufficiently represent me. That's why I'm voting for Stein (which I have said before). She certainly doesn't match all of my interests, but she meets enough of them to earn my vote.

Just sayin

 

[Bootstoots]

I doubt Commodore has a problem with the Green Party exploiting this to hold a more effective fundraiser than anything they had during the election season. I was a reluctant Stein voter too, and while I think the whole idea of recounting a state with an 0.8% victory margin is ridiculous and clearly won't change anything, I applaud her shrewd fundraising effort.

Third-party politicians that barely get 1% of the vote are still politicians, after all, and we can expect them to behave in political ways. That's why she always evaded any question about vaccines or homeopathy, instead redirecting the conversation to the loss of trust in the medical system. Crazy people like antivaxxers and homeopathists have votes too, and she wanted them.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I doubt Commodore has a problem with the Green Party exploiting this to hold a more effective fundraiser than anything they had during the election season. I was a reluctant Stein voter too, and while I think the whole idea of recounting a state with an 0.8% victory margin is ridiculous and clearly won't change anything, I applaud her shrewd fundraising effort.

Third-party politicians that barely get 1% of the vote are still politicians, after all, and we can expect them to behave in political ways. That's why she always evaded any question about vaccines or homeopathy, instead redirecting the conversation to the loss of trust in the medical system. Crazy people like antivaxxers and homeopathists have votes too, and she wanted them.

Eh... It seems like he does have a problem with it, as he is, for lack of a better word lambasting them for it... using words like "exploit" and so on... EDIT: He also said this:

Yes. And it's not a guess. There is a fixed cost to a recount, which the Green Party has already met, yet they keep raising their funding goal well past the projected recount cost. Why would they do that if all they wanted was a recount? I'll tell you why: They are using anti-Trump paranoia and fear to raise money for their failing party. And I say this as someone who voted for Stein. Although I'm starting to regret that vote in the wake of the sheer disrespect she is showing for our democracy right now.

At Thanksgiving, a cousin told me that Stein getting a recount could actually result in her getting to 5% somewhere, and that would impact the Green Party's ballot access for next cycle. I didn't care enough to verify this claim though, as it (the whole recount business) seems to be an obvious front for Hillary to get a recount. Does anyone else know if this fig leaf is actually "green" (pun intended) or if it is as brown and shriveled as the stray leaves on my lawn?

 

[Bootstoots]

Oh, never mind then. But I would encourage him to adopt an amoral view about this, because it's an example of how politics actually works even for third parties. Hopefully they can use the money and do something productive, like run for city council and state legislature elections in safely blue states.

There is no chance that the Green Party will break 5% in any state. Their best result was 2.97% in Hawaii, followed by 2.49% in Oregon. The only counties where Stein cracked 5% were Sioux County, North Dakota (home of the Standing Rock protest, which Stein is involved in) and Humboldt County, California (home of redwoods and very fine marijuana). Their nationwide tally was 1.04%. There could be places where there's a lower threshold (like 2%) to get ballot access without large numbers of signatures next cycle, though. Even if so, it's very unlikely a recount will do anything for them.

 

[Esperr]

This country could certainly use a 3rd party.

 

[warpus]

Get rid of First-past-the-post and you might get one

 

[Bootstoots]

This country could certainly use a 3rd party.

Get rid of First-past-the-post and you might get one

Yeah, we really need an instant-runoff or two-round system for all of our elections, and then, at the very least, there would be no disincentive to vote for third parties. They typically lose more than half of their intended voters when the election comes around, probably because of the perception that third-party votes are wasted votes. But, of course, this is Murica, where lots of things that made sense in 1787 still reign supreme!

The other thing to keep in mind is that it appears having a presidential system pushes us toward a two-party system. The UK and Canada both have three national parties (well, more like 2.5 for the UK) that actually win seats in Parliament, plus regional parties, despite having FPTP systems.

In good news, Maine voters passed an IRV referendum for all of its statewide election except president. One sort of down, 49 to go. We might even get PR by 2150 or so.

 

[Esperr]

Yeah, we really need an instant-runoff or two-round system for all of our elections, and then, at the very least, there would be no disincentive to vote for third parties. They typically lose more than half of their intended voters when the election comes around, probably because of the perception that third-party votes are wasted votes. But, of course, this is Murica, where lots of things that made sense in 1787 still reign supreme!

The other thing to keep in mind is that it appears having a presidential system pushes us toward a two-party system. The UK and Canada both have three national parties (well, more like 2.5 for the UK) that actually win seats in Parliament, plus regional parties, despite having FPTP systems.

In good news, Maine voters passed an IRV referendum for all of its statewide election except president. One sort of down, 49 to go. We might even get PR by 2150 or so.

Realistically I think our issue is that we don't even really have two party's. We have 1.5 party's, the only major differences seem to be social issues. I think having another major party could do more to disseminate the other two party's and actually present a challenge to the establishment that everybody loaths but doesn't seem to keen on actually changing. Its just bizarre to me that most stable democracy's AFAIK end up being 2ish partys that actually have a reasonable shot at winning.

edit:for funny wording.

 

[tetley]

Jill Stein already said exactly what she wants to fundraise for: not a recount, but an audit. And probably for more than just three states. This so-called "recount" is just going through the motions; she already got denied a hand recount by Wisconsin, in the name of "speed". Even though the very issue she wants investigated is the discrepancy in voting in counties with electronic voting vs. hand ballots. And then Wisconsin assures us that "no votes cast illegally have been counted.". Hello Wisconsin, you did not answer her question: what about were all the LEGALLY cast ballots COUNTED?

She is being made to pay $600,000 for a pretend recount which does NOT investigate what she called for.

 

[Silurian]

The UK counts all the votes by hand, including recounts where the vote is close, for the whole country with few exceptions within twenty four hours.

 

[uppi]

How comes this problem seems to mostly happens in USA ? How come other countries manage to count their ballot faster ?

In addition to the incomprehensible lack of federal standards and an entrenched two party system that roughly splits voters into two equal sized blocks, there is also the Electoral College, which amplifies small differences in votes into huge swings in the race. That setup makes it much more likely that a few votes are actually crucial to the outcome of the election. If elections in other countries would boil down to such small number of votes, they would also be in trouble (see the recent Austrian failure). It is just much more of a freak occurrence if the voting system is less insane.

 

[Truthy]

I agree, it is absurd. I'm just interested in hearing the logic of those who condemned Trump for threatening to challenge the results, yet are now hoping Hillary does that very same thing.

He threatened to challenge the results because he claimed widespread voter fraud might decide the election. He's again claimed that millions of illegal votes won Clinton the popular vote. These are both lies. If I hope for a recount, I could base that on not trusting electronic voting machines or on thinking the margin is really close and we should recount just to be sure. If I claim Russia rigged the election, then that's closer to a Trump style conspiracy and the "logic" doesn't work as well. If Clinton's people support or participate in a recount someone else initialized, there's no implicit claim that our democracy is dysfunctional. As others have explained, recounts are a mechanism of an electoral system and exercising that mechanism (even if initiated by a major party candidate--which didn't happen in this case) isn't the same as claiming the election is destined to be fraudulent. Nor is it based on things a major party candidate made up. So I don't think it's that inconsistent to want a recount because I'm a poor sport and despise Trump while condemning Trump for claiming non-existent widespread voter fraud. Plus, I'm a voter not a major party candidate.

 

[Flying Pig]

The UK counts all the votes by hand, including recounts where the vote is close, for the whole country with few exceptions within twenty four hours.

Our whole country, of course, being slightly smaller than Texas in area, and having approximately as many votes to count as the US has diabetics.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In addition to the incomprehensible lack of federal standards and an entrenched two party system that roughly splits voters into two equal sized blocks, there is also the Electoral College, which amplifies small differences in votes into huge swings in the race. That setup makes it much more likely that a few votes are actually crucial to the outcome of the election. If elections in other countries would boil down to such small number of votes, they would also be in trouble (see the recent Austrian failure). It is just much more of a freak occurrence if the voting system is less insane.

All ballots are counted by hand in federal elections in Canada. In all the elections I worked, we were done counting and partway through the final paperwork by 10 pm, two hours after the poll closed. Every scrap of paper in the polling station has to be accounted for, and every ballot, whether used, unused, rejected, or spoiled, has its proper place.

There are larger ridings, of course, with busier polling stations that take longer. As for recounts, there are rules for those. I don't recall what the specific number is, but if a riding falls within a certain number of close votes for two or more candidates, a recount is automatically triggered. There are other fairly close votes where a candidate can ask for a recount.

I remember one year when the recounts weren't about who was going to form the government, but who was going to form the Official Opposition. For awhile we had the absurdity of the Bloc Quebecois - the federal separatist party - being known as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.