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Forums - Politics - Official 2020 US Presidential Election Thread

KLXVER said:
Hiku said:

This reminds me of the people concerned about getting haircuts during the pandemic.

I was wondering if video games would be delayed. Sorry for not worrying about war and death all the time.

We wouldn't have to worry about war and death all the time if people stopped voting guys like Trump into office.



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RolStoppable said:
IvorEvilen said:

The problem is that as long as the Democrats don't have the majority in Congress, there is nothing they can do.  Any proposals to address problems with election law is dead in the water because Republicans scream bloody murder about Democrats trying to cheat and destroy the integrity of elections.

One of the first things passed by the House when Democrats took control of the House in 2019 was election reform:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_People_Act_of_2019

They also wanted to reinstate the voting rights act of 1965:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

Both met unanimous opposition by Republicans, and Mitch McConnell refused to bring them to the floor for a vote.

And because Republicans gerrymander in state and local elections, Democrats are at a huge disadvantage at reforming state laws as well, especially if they require super majorities.  Democrats have to win elections by insane margins to even take a simple majority in some states.  The best hope Democrats had was to win a simple majority in this election to address gerrymandering when districts are redrawn next year.  Results are still being tabulated, but it doesn't seem like there are any major wins in notoriously corrupt (in regard to purely the districting process) state legislatures.

I can understand why a partisan Republican would reward this corrupt behavior, but I cant fathom how Republicans continue to court the votes of Independents.  It's very clear who the bad actors are.

Thankfully recent reforms in the DNC primary process have been pro-democratic, so they are at least starting to reform things in their own camp.  But I also think a political party should be allowed to use whatever system they think is appropriate for their own internal nomination process.  The motivation for change came from the members though, so it seems that everything is working as intended on that front.

Anyway, I guess my point is that it's not fair to say that Democrats aren't even trying.  People often accuse Democrats as being the same as Republicans because they vote for them, see them win a majority of votes, and seemingly nothing gets done.  The last time Democrats actually had control of Congress, they tried to be bipartisan, and got burned for it.  They at least passed the Affordable Care Act, but ever since Republicans have been on a war path to destroy it.  I'm hoping the next time Democrats control Congress they'll take a page out of the Republican playbook and pretend the other party does not exist.

Your point is very similar to mine, but more elaborate. No surprise that your conclusion is the same as mine. The moral high ground has no tangible value.

Sorry, haha.  My point wasn't to be redundant, I just wanted to elaborate on why I think it's unfair to say Democrats aren't prioritizing election reform.  Short answer is that they are, but they don't have the majority so it doesn't matter.



vivster said:
KLXVER said:

I was wondering if video games would be delayed. Sorry for not worrying about war and death all the time.

We wouldn't have to worry about war and death all the time if people stopped voting guys like Trump into office.

The guy who didnt start a war or add to any? Hmmm...



KLXVER said:
vivster said:

We wouldn't have to worry about war and death all the time if people stopped voting guys like Trump into office.

The guy who didnt start a war or add to any? Hmmm...

He killed 200k people in a pandemic, started a race war, started multiple trade wars, destabilized the middle east by walking out on the Iran nuclear deal, fucked  world health by leaving WHO, fucked the climate by quitting the Paris Climate agreement and just recently tried to kill democracy.

So yeah, he kinda is an agent of war and death.

Now it's your turn again to cherry pick 1 thing out of the 1000 terrible things he did that you don't agree with.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

Philadelphia official says it could take several days to count remaining 40,000 ballots

The ballots fall in three categories, "those that require review, provisionals, US military overseas ballots," Deeley said.

And that's just Philly.



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I'm sure it's already been said, but I've seen a number of posts criticizing the amount of time it is taking to tabulate all the results, so I figured it was still worth reiterating:

States have no responsibility to count the votes on election day or immediately after. The reason states do this is because 1) we are impatient and want to know the result as soon as possible and 2) provide extra time to account for recounts or legal contests that can slow down the certification process. But every state has its own laws for counting votes and each state has its own certification deadline (anywhere from late November to early December).

The only REAL deadline is that the states must send the elector's votes to Congress by December 14, but technically those elector votes don't get "counted" (legally) by Congress until January. Even if we already know how the electors voted weeks prior.

States operate at different speeds because they have laws and procedures to follow depending on the state. For example, Pennsylvania could not start counting early and mail-in ballots until election day. North Carolina won't resume counting until after the mail-in ballot deadline of November 12th. Most states allow mail in ballots to come in after the election day as long as they were postmarked on or before election day, so states are still receiving ballots. Military and people overseas are generally even given looser deadlines for sending ballots. Provisional ballots are almost always counted last and require triple checking to confirm the person was eligible to vote and had not double voted.

This is a very lengthy process and should be conducted carefully. Rushing the result is just gonna lead to more mistakes, which causes credible doubt in the outcome. Personally I would prefer if there were stricter federal guidelines on how voting and tabulation should occur, but many view this as one of the most important aspects of state autonomy.

Anyway, this has been ya'lls civics lesson.



IvorEvilen said:
I'm sure it's already been said, but I've seen a number of posts criticizing the amount of time it is taking to tabulate all the results, so I figured it was still worth reiterating:

States have no responsibility to count the votes on election day or immediately after. The reason states do this is because 1) we are impatient and want to know the result as soon as possible and 2) provide extra time to account for recounts or legal contests that can slow down the certification process. But every state has its own laws for counting votes and each state has its own certification deadline (anywhere from late November to early December).

The only REAL deadline is that the states must send the elector's votes to Congress by December 14, but technically those elector votes don't get "counted" (legally) by Congress until January. Even if we already know how the electors voted weeks prior.

States operate at different speeds because they have laws and procedures to follow depending on the state. For example, Pennsylvania could not start counting early and mail-in ballots until election day. North Carolina won't resume counting until after the mail-in ballot deadline of November 12th. Most states allow mail in ballots to come in after the election day as long as they were postmarked on or before election day, so states are still receiving ballots. Military and people overseas are generally even given looser deadlines for sending ballots. Provisional ballots are almost always counted last and require triple checking to confirm the person was eligible to vote and had not double voted.

This is a very lengthy process and should be conducted carefully. Rushing the result is just gonna lead to more mistakes, which causes credible doubt in the outcome. Personally I would prefer if there were stricter federal guidelines on how voting and tabulation should occur, but many view this as one of the most important aspects of state autonomy.

Anyway, this has been ya'lls civics lesson.



vivster said:
KLXVER said:

The guy who didnt start a war or add to any? Hmmm...

He killed 200k people in a pandemic, started a race war, started multiple trade wars, destabilized the middle east by walking out on the Iran nuclear deal, fucked  world health by leaving WHO, fucked the climate by quitting the Paris Climate agreement and just recently tried to kill democracy.

So yeah, he kinda is an agent of war and death.

Now it's your turn again to cherry pick 1 thing out of the 1000 terrible things he did that you don't agree with.

I cant outcrazy that rant. You win.



Hiku said:
KLXVER said:

I was wondering if video games would be delayed. Sorry for not worrying about war and death all the time.

Jokes aside, wondering is different than demanding barbers reopen and risk their health just to trim someone's hair.

But it's been my observation that some people are focused with selfish or unimportant things to the same extent as others are focused much more important things. There was a viral video of a woman breaking down in tears because she can't hug other people's babies anymore. You'd think if she was more concerned with not infecting those babies, her rant would have been different.

The concern of late show hosts reminds me of the people who seemed to place high value on owning the libs.
While if Bernie had won back then, I'd just be happy if people get healthcare. Including the rude and clueless ones, that wanted Obamacare gone because they have the ACA, not realizing they're one and the same. Etc.

Isnt that pretty much how the western world works these days? People are dying all over the world and we are focused on yelling at celebrities who said something mean on Twitter 10 years ago. 



Hiku said:
KLXVER said:

The guy who didnt start a war or add to any? Hmmm...

I guess it also depends on what 'guys like Trump' means. But I'm not particularly less worried about the usual war stuff from USA with Biden in office.
Though I would be less worried about avoidable scenarios due to incompetence. Trump inexplicably betrayed USA's Kurdish allies, leaving them to get murdered and raped by Erdogan's mercenaries without notice. Why would anyone want to help USA in a scenario like that again?
Trump has also alienated many of USA's natural allies, and instead courted authoritarian leaders like Kim Jong Un and Putin.

Remains to be seen how rebuilding those relationships with Europe etc will pan out from here, but USA's standing in the world as the one to look to or rely on is completely different now. Even the way USA handled the pandemic was like that of a struggling third world country, while some significantly poorer countries managed to essentially get rid of the problem. Though USA isn't the only rich developed nation that bungled Corona. But they are the ones that did it in the most spectacular way. Gotta be #1 I guess.

Europe will keep mocking the US and take their money. No rebuilding needed. We welcome you with open arms as we have done since forever. Who else are we gonna turn to? Russia...lol