Mega-Thread: 2020 United States General Election

[beanman12345]

I did not know that dang. So much to check up on before election.

Yeah, signature is one of the top reasons they do reject ballots, but it's not the top. And they reject so few ballots as is, and voter fraud is near non existent, so as long as it's not drastically different or you sign with an X or something you're probably fine.

[TigTone]

I feel it should be said we not get too excited towards trumps massive self sabotage.

It’s still possible they have a way to cheat this election.

But I also think trumps COVID self sabotage may cause his allies to abandon trumps sinking ship. Hence the loss of money for his campaign.

[Rasulis]

It would not surprise me if there was a significant amount of embezzlement of campaign funds, combined with declining revenue due to the shitty economy and Trump's unpopularity leading to an actual cash shortage.

That, and as mentioned previously, Trump is now on the defensive in states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas - so those now require funding to prop up.

Biden Is Outspending Trump On TV, And Just 6 States Are The Focus Of The Campaign

What all of this spending shows is Trump is having to defend a lot of territory, while the Biden campaign has remained focused on the core states they set out to compete heavily in to begin with.

To put that in context, in states Trump won in 2016, the president and groups supporting him have spent $356 million, while Biden has spent just $21 million in states Clinton won.

State-by-state breakdown
Here's a state-by-state breakdown in order of where the campaigns are spending the most. The list is in order of the most spent, and the totals include the outside groups supporting each candidate and/or opposing his opponent:

Florida
Biden and allies: $83.5 million
Trump and allies: $82.3 million
Biden +4.6

Pennsylvania
Biden and allies: $74.1 million
Trump and allies: $50 million
Biden +6.3

North Carolina
Trump and allies: $49 million
Biden and allies: $37.1 million
Biden +2.3

Michigan
Biden and allies: $55.6 million
Trump and allies: $21.7 million
Biden +7.7

Wisconsin
Biden and allies: $44.4 million
Trump and allies: $31.8 million
Biden +6.9

Arizona
Biden and allies: $43.7 million
Trump and allies: $26.3 million
Biden +4.4

Ohio
Trump and allies: $22.3 million
Biden and allies: $6.8 million
The campaigns are dead even in Ohio.

Minnesota
Trump and allies: $16.9 million
Biden and allies: $8.9 million
Biden +9.5

Georgia
Trump and allies: $12.8 million
Biden and allies: $3.9 million
Dead even also.

Nevada
Trump and allies: $7.8 million
Biden and allies: $7.2 million
Biden +6.6

Iowa
Trump and allies: $9.7 million
Biden and allies: $2.3 million
Dead even.

New Hampshire
Trump and allies: $6.1 million
Biden and allies: $3.4 million
Biden +9.8

Texas
Biden and allies: $6.7 million
Trump and America First: $156,000
Trump +1.5

Colorado
Biden and allies: $1.5 million
Trump and America First: $38,000
Looks like Trump has given up in CO.
Biden +12.7
I can see why.

[beanman12345]

Here we have a Poll that puts Biden 2 points behind... in Missouri.

https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...Memo_FINAL.pdf

for context, Hillary lost that state by 18 points.

I feel like that one might be an outlier, Missouri loves Trump, and based on 2018 elections he's got that state in the bag.

[Edge-]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ampaign-update

Trump's feeling good enough to spread the virus in the West Wing, Biden's feeling good enough to start running negative ads again.

[Thelxi]

I don't think the VP debate will really move the needle, but my expectations for Kamala are sky high.

I expect her to to rip Pence a new one and charm the shit out of anyone watching. This should be a joy to watch.

[Antiganon]

There's a VERY wide allowance. I agree that matching signatures isn't the best of methods but it's really more lax than the procedure sounds. They look for things like what angle you're writing at (slanting left or right), whether you use cursive or block letters, whether you usually dot your "i"s and stuff like that.

My signature on my original voter registration has changed from my full name, including middle name, with my last name at birth, to exclude the middle name, to a shortened first name, then my last name changed, and now I usually (but not always) just initial with a stylized swoop around the letters. I had to sign a TON of documents for register overrides as a retail front end supervisor, and I got SUPER lazy about it, and it has stuck since then.

I will be voting in person.

[Edge-]

The White house is going to have to be bleached on every level after Trump leaves. Make it a very white house.

And the UV light robots. Inject some bleach and sunshine into that bitch.

[Felya]

I don't think the VP debate will really move the needle, but my expectations for Kamala are sky high.

I expect her to to rip Pence a new one and charm the shit out of anyone watching. This should be a joy to watch.

I want her to be so dominant, that it makes Pence scream pineapple...

[Edge-]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-g...d-off-covid-19

Giuliani is on the Hydroxy! Let's see if it protects him from the virus if he tests positive.

[PhaelixWW]

538 has added a new poll with Biden +14... taken before Trump's COVID diagnosis and his dexamethasone-fuelled shitstorm.

538 is now at Biden +9.5 and RCP is now at Biden +9.7.

[Felya]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-g...d-off-covid-19

Giuliani is on the Hydroxy! Let's see if it protects him from the virus if he tests positive.

Some more info on Vladimir Zelenko:

Touting Virus Cure, 'Simple Country Doctor' Becomes a Right-Wing Star.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/t...rus-drugs.html

[TigTone]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-g...d-off-covid-19

Giuliani is on the Hydroxy! Let's see if it protects him from the virus if he tests positive.

It’s for the demon semen not COVID.

[Felya]

It’s for the demon semen not COVID.

Wasn’t it alien? What roll do aliens play, compared to demons? Is this like Cybermen and Dalek in episode 161 or like Cyberman and Dalek in episode 177b?

[TigTone]

Wasn’t it alien? What roll do aliens play, compared to demons? Is this like Cybermen and Dalek in episode 161 or like Cyberman and Dalek in episode 177b?

Off topic but I don’t want to live in a reality where cybermen and dalek exist. Scary stuff!

Especially if there is no Doctor around to save the day.

[Edge-]

In which a Texas Republican candidate for the House refuses to say if he thinks the KKK is a terrorist organization, like he says he thinks MS-13 is, for roughly two minutes.

[Draco-Onis]

I feel it should be said we not get too excited towards trumps massive self sabotage.

It’s still possible they have a way to cheat this election.

But I also think trumps COVID self sabotage may cause his allies to abandon trumps sinking ship. Hence the loss of money for his campaign.

It's too late for Trump's allies to abandon ship now but I agree polling does not take into account the massive amount of cheating the republican party is already undertaking. It doesn't matter how many people vote if they can get the courts to throw all those ballots away, look at South Carolina the supreme court has basically handed Lindsey Graham the win.

[PhaelixWW]

A new editorial is out today in the New England Journal of Medicine condemning Trump (well, the "leadership of the US") for his handling of the pandemic and calling for his ouster on election day.

"Who wrote this editorial?" you ask.

The editors of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Yes, but which ones?"

All of them.

"..."

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have. Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.

Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust.

The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.

The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized, appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.

Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

[Benggaul]

My signature on my original voter registration has changed from my full name, including middle name, with my last name at birth, to exclude the middle name, to a shortened first name, then my last name changed, and now I usually (but not always) just initial with a stylized swoop around the letters. I had to sign a TON of documents for register overrides as a retail front end supervisor, and I got SUPER lazy about it, and it has stuck since then.

I will be voting in person.

Yep, this is the case with many people. However if you can provide more recent documents showing your signature they get added to the file for them to check future signatures against. In-person voting is the best way to avoid this altogether, of course, but the signature thing shouldn't be a deterrent for absentee voting.

[Antiganon]

Yep, this is the case with many people. However if you can provide more recent documents showing your signature they get added to the file for them to check future signatures against. In-person voting is the best way to avoid this altogether, of course, but the signature thing shouldn't be a deterrent for absentee voting.

Yeah I'll do that at the town clerk sometime when we aren't in the middle of a pandemic on the precipice of an historically important election the outcome of which may well determine whether the United States exists as a functioning democracy moving forward.