Yikes. I was out canvassing when I saw that. Will be canvassing tomorrow.

There was a giant caravan of honking vehicles with flags surrounded by motorcycles patrolling the front and blocking traffic. I thought it was a Trump thing, but it was just "Go Vote" thing.

Nate Silver offers 100 scenarios, and a Trump victory is contemplated in 10, all of which require him to take Pennsylvania. Of Biden's 90 winning scenarios, five have him losing Pennsylvania.

Because my stress level isn't high enough.

Were any VIPs were on that bus, or was it just campaign staffers? I can't imagine the secret service would put up with that shit if Kamala was on there.

-were

Early voting in Texas (which has ended) surpassed the total vote from 2016, by .8 million votes. For what that's worth, maybe not a hill of beans. In 2016, 25% of votes were cast on election day itself. (There are 1.5 million more registered voters in 2020 than in 2016.)

In my county, 63.6% of registered voters have voted. In 2016, total turnout was 59.3%

5: Harris wasn't on it. I don't know who else might have been on it, besides the Castros.

Can someone talk me through the video? Freaky and terrifying as surrounding the bus is, the actual contact between the two vehicles is confusing. That is, the camera isn't watching the beginning of the contact, but when you see it, it looks as though the white car had left the center lane and tried to move into the right lane, and the truck hit it because it was that or be run off the road.

Wasn't this encouraged by one of the trump spawn?

10: Hm, possible. The truck definitely leaned into the contact and pushed back, but that does look contextually different if the white car was merging into the truck.

Alternatively, not impossible the white car was forced right by another truck, since there were trucks to its left we also didn't see in the immediate runup to the contact.

11: Probably - a lot of state legislators have tried to legalize vehicular manslaughter against protestors in the past few years.

And while it's helpful to have this one video, there are lots of eyewitness accounts to generally vehicular bullying around the bus. These are the Trump Trains that have been driving around all over the region for the past month or two. They do all sorts of creepy highway tactics, like boxing people in and slowing down, and generally drive all over, honking.

Yes, even if they had followed rules of the road perfectly, this vehicular surrounding tactic was already clearly threatening (you know they have guns).

And it worked - the campaign canceled an event based on this.

I've got a new question. Is the path for police reform receivership?

Pols can't do it because of cop unions and cop donations, but if the feds took the sheriff's dept into receivership, they could ignore public pressue, do all the firing and then hand back a different department? Is that the workable option?

I mean, we sort of have that model in enforcement of federal settlements - there's been a judicially imposed monitor over OPD for 17 years now, who has a lot of unelected power, maybe extending to firing, I'm not sure. I don't know if the DOJ could do it without a court's intervention.

Maybe you should focus on getting rid of the administration that put me in charge of the DOJ and not just assume it has already happened?

Bobby Orr is dead to me.

A group holding a get-out-the vote rally and marching to the polls in Alamance County, North Carolina, was repeatedly pepper-sprayed by local police and sheriff's deputies on Saturday afternoon, The News & Observer reported.

Uh, that was me.

Apo!

We haven't seen much of that kind of election violence here, probably because Trump wants the Supreme Court to do the violence.

Fuck off, 18.

At this point, bullshit election sanctimony isn't any more worthwhile than speculation about possible routes forward.

That was me. It's a very different election when you aren't in California.

Then thank you for all the canvassing you are doing and the work you are putting in.

Mostly I'm just losing sleep.

You can do things from California. I'll be doing ballot cure calls into Pennsylvania.

(Directed at Moby, tbc.)

That sounds good. There's a hotline too, which is what my wife does.

29: What is a ballot cure call? And how can I volunteer?

I don't know about all the various calling people things. There are so many of them, which is why I was happen when they wanted to me to knock on doors.

I liked canvassing in person, because you always had a buddy.t

I'm not able to be not nervous because of the bigger things that can't be handled by ordinary GOTV.

Like armed convoys of Trump voters.

Ballot curing signup:
https://www.mobilize.us/backtobluepa/event/360722/?fbclid=IwAR1RP28pHsbt7zlOZrrQ86ADEo4d0LpJILAWvBkkWgQE8jPnhU32MTkcSxA

Volunteers call and text voters whose ballots weren't accepted to try to get them to cast a provisional ballot in person.

OMFG they abandoned thousands of rallygoers again. In Butler, PA.

Yep, 37 is what I'm doing. I don't know how many numbers we'll get, but it seems much more rewarding because with the exception of various wrong numbers, you're calling people who've already decided to vote for Biden and letting them know how they can make their vote count.

I have co-workers who commute from there.

38.1: They'll still vote for him, though.

There's a hotline too, which is what my wife does.

The internal temperature of a voter should be between 170 and 180 degrees before you serve them to your guests.

Maybe it was the Butterball hotline.

OMFG they abandoned thousands of rallygoers again. In Butler, PA.

It's like Trump saw how well he was doing at infecting his supporters with COVID and decided to branch out into hypothermia and heat exhaustion as well.

I'm reading that they're getting a reputation for not paying their bus drivers and that's why they're not coming. I guess they embezzled too much of the campaign funds.

Nah, that's been Trump's MO forever.

I mean, I'm sure they also embezzled all the campaign funds.

I'm making calls for the Biden campaign. Today we were calling a not so up-to-date list of people in Michigan. I got a guy who claimed to want me to convince him to vote for Biden. We spoke for a while about healthcare. He hates the ACA and wants to deregulate health insurance completely, without understanding the consequences of doing that. By the time he got around to telling me that "the coronavirus is not a pandemic", I was pretty pissed off. (I asked him if he's an epidemiologist. He isn't.) He was clearly getting all his information, such as it was, from Fox. There was no talking to him, I mean, NO COMMON FACTS. What the hell are we going to do, as a nation?

We're not discussing things with people who aren't voting Biden. Check the "asshole" field and move on.

You need to out-vote them.

There's no possibility of discussion with people who are impervious to reason, and who are indifferent-to-hostile to the claims of basic human decency. You need to out-vote them, it's your only possible chance.

Pokey turns 10 and Rascal turns 6 this November. I just realized that means that both of them will turn 18 a couple weeks after a presidential election. Ouch.

I'm not saying that's the BIGGEST concern of the moment, of course.

According to Hays County Sheriff Gary Cutler, the Biden campaign did not notify his office that it would be passing through the county to allow law enforcement to prepare for any possible confrontations. "The planning of this was questionable," said Cutler, a Republican running for reelection on Tuesday.

Hays went narrowly for Trump in '16 but fairly blue in '18 midterms.

This guy seems like a gem./

Also the HArris County curbside judge is apparently about the most openly partisan judge in the Federal judiciary.

52: As you may remember me ranting, Alameda County goes for Democrats by 30 points but still has a Republican sheriff (although he at least obscures this affiliation).

47; With Sierra Club's GOTV program, I think the volunteers hated the Michigan Voter ID the most. It wasn't convincing or arguing with voters, just asking whether people supported Biden (Trumpers were removed from the list, and Biden supporters were contacted in a second round close to the election to encourage them to vote. Undecideds would receive calls). A few volunteers stopped until the state was completed. A lot complained it was the most hostile group we'd worked with (North Carolina was maybe the nicest). Something is very unsettling about large swaths of this state.

50: I had turned 17 the month before a presidential election, so I had to wait until I was 21 to vote for president. I did vote for my House rep and in a gubernatorial election when I was 19.

Same, although three months before and not the same presidential election. I missed the chance to vote for Dukakis by nine months.

Also, I saw a different version of the clip somewhere, and it makes it look like my initial perception of the contact between the two vehicles was wrong -- that the white car was initially in the lane immediately behind the bus, and the truck hit it from the right and forced it one lane to the left.

I think I confused myself by assuming that all the vehicles were driving within legal traffic lanes at the beginning, when in fact the truck seems to have come up on the shoulder on the right for the purpose of hitting the white car.

On our way to our backyard movie night last night, we passed a large Biden/Harris sign that had been spray painted "PEDOPHILE CHINA". That was a complicated conversation. Not because of "pedophilia" per se, but the kids were really convinced that China was the object of the abuse and that you wouldn't write it that way if you were trying to communicate two separate ideas.

And also because Jammies and I aren't entirely clear on the "China" QAnon conspiracy, so the kids thought they'd be able to figure it out. A lot of the conversation was convincing them that all rules of rationality are suspended when you're talking about things like this that people believe.

Also I learned a new quirk to disenfranchise Texas voters. It's old news that you must be registered 30 days before an election in order to vote in it. But it's actually got an extra wrinkle: you can't vote for 30 days after you register. So if you registered at the end of September, you can't vote early. You have to wait until the actual election day.

Also someone was killed by a train in our neighborhood last night, down the street. Lots of cop cars and FB chatter. That was a bummer.

37/38 minivet, ydnew, did you do the training yet? Does it actually take 2 hours?

63: I forget, but at least an hour. There's some significant stuff to instruct you on, and they had some organizational hitches (besides the usual zoom stuff, hordes of people coming in 30-45 minutes late and filling up the chatbox with basic questions answered earlier).

Car Wars was more prophetic than I realized when I was playing it as a teenager.

Ok, thanks.

65: designed by a Texan.

I had election nightmares all night last night. No more social media for me.

Uggh: https://mobile.twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1322703211959099397

61: Our last day to register was 10 days before the election, but if you are a newly naturalized citizen who was not a citizen in Oct 30, you have until 4pm on the day before the election to register. Not as good as same day registration, to be sure, but better than Texas.

Man, I hope the Democrats find a way to take over the legislature in Texas.

This, however, is slightly reassuring: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1322912061018525698

I wonder if in 2024 the pollsters will have to start factoring voter suppression into their models.

I turned 18 less than 4 weeks before the 1976 election. Carter lost California by under 2% for my vote didn't help him. I don't remember, but probably voted in Contra Costa, which Carter lost, rather than from my dorm in Alameda, which Carter won.

71: They do now, but only implicitly on before-the-vote factors (e.g. registration barriers get baked into the estimate when you report only registered voters and 'likely voters' would exclude more of those who are likely to be deterred from voting) and only imperfectly in cast-the-vote factors (e.g. weighting is done by state and should control for an existing baseline of suppression). Both of those will miss the changes from increased suppression for this election, but I don't know how you are supposed to model it with no possible source of data beyond anxiety.

If anyone is feeling like a bizarro-world rabbit hole to try, take a look at the wikipedia entry for the 1976 Democratic nomination race. George Wallace did better than Jimmy Carter in the Massachusetts primary! Mo Udall beat both of them, but Scoop Jackson won it! Jerry Brown, newly in the field, beat Jimmy Carter by 10 points in Maryland. In New York, people voted for the delegates themselves -- Jackson's people won, Udall trailing by a bit, with Carter in 4th well behind Uncommitted.

Turned 18 eight months before 1972 election. Voting came on fast. Amazing that it happened. Can't find if anyone ever tried to ascertain the voting percentages of 18-21s that stupid election. Trying to recall what the 3 As were: Amnesty, Abortion , and ? (looked it up, it was Acid!)

Fucking Steph* doing the devil's work on ABC's This Week. Jason Miller lays out the Trump plan, pick an opportune moment to declare the election over and any counting after that is stealing. Steph does not react with scorn or derision or really anything of that sort. And idiot ABC "political director" Rick Klein tweets the following a point Jason Miller made this morning: "President Trump will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electoral somewhere in that range, and then they're going to try to steal it back after the election." A *POINT!!!?!!. Jeeezus, save us. He "clarifies" in his next tweet that who is ahead does not matter, but wow. I'm sure in the moment they will handle it adroitly...

*As he has so frequently done. To me peak Steph was the 2008 primary debate in Philly where he both asked Obama why he didn't wear a flag pin, and if he thought Reverend Wright "loved his country" as much as Obama himself did. (And the atrocious debate and coverage of it is what led to Journolist for an obscure media aside.)

Sorry for another media rant from JP. I actually thought iin retirement I would coherently catalog the growing loop of rants that bedevil me in that space, but little progress has been made. A few notes and outlines of the chapters and topics, but no meat. I am apparently Stepan Trofimovich from The Demons. Like him I do have the occasional burst of self awareness: l have discovered something new that is dreadful for me: je suis simply a sponger, et rien de plus! Mais rien de plus!'

Sporadic self-awareness makes everything forgivable, right?

Anyway, here's hoping for a resounding victory for the short-term reprieve for Democracy in the USA side of things.

Looks like Republicans failed to toss out 127k ballots in Houston, at least.

So apparently a bunch of Trump-flagged vehicle blocked the Garden State Parkway for a while today. Since it's a Sunday outside of beach season, this affected relatively few people. The logic eludes me. "I wasn't sure about who to vote for, but if Trump's fans care enough to make me two hours late getting home, he has my vote"? Or, "Oh shit. These guys will block the highways unless their guys win. I better vote for Trump or I won't get to work Wednesday morning"? Also we're not a swing state. And most people have already voted here. And blocking highways is definitely illegal, and the culprits have clearly visible license plates.

So apparently a bunch of Trump-flagged vehicle blocked the Garden State Parkway for a while today. Since it's a Sunday outside of beach season, this affected relatively few people. The logic eludes me. "I wasn't sure about who to vote for, but if Trump's fans care enough to make me two hours late getting home, he has my vote"? Or, "Oh shit. These guys will block the highways unless their guys win. I better vote for Trump or I won't get to work Wednesday morning"? Also we're not a swing state. And most people have already voted here. And blocking highways is definitely illegal, and the culprits have clearly visible license plates.

81- That's the state Supreme Court, but doesn't the federal hack judge have a hearing scheduled for tomorrow, where he didn't even ask for a brief from the county defending the drive-through voting?

81 is cheering.

84 is not.

84: That latter bit is more cheering than the reverse. I'm not confident, because the judge is a maniac, but under normal circumstances not requiring briefing from one party would plausibly be a signal that they were going to win without needing it.

85 to 87.

82 It's only illegal is the law is enforced.

OK, not really, a tree falling on a desert island still makes a noise. But law enforcement in halfway (at least) in the tank for authoritarian strongman rule, so these bozos can act with impunity.

I agree with 87, but the heart of the 8th Cir MN decision is that when we're talking about the sacred right of Republicans to suppress votes cast in accordance with the explicit guidance of election officials, pronouncements of the state judiciary are meaningless.

The following is a symptom of stress, but I am about to start phone banking Pennsylvania as something productive.

In the latest 538 post, it shows what the outcome would be if every state's polls were off by the same magnitude as in 2016. That resulted in electoral votes 335-203 - but it included Biden winning Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania all by less than one percentage point, and each of those seem within the margin of theft.

However - if you flip all three of those, but keep the the map the same otherwise, winning the other states where that adjusted margin is firmer that are within a firmer margin (WI, MN, AZ, NE-2), you get 270-268 Biden, so that's some small consolation.

"The following" = the analysis, not the phone banking.

Winning MI, that should have included.

I took off Tuesday for more door knocking.

Thank you.

Wow, I just picked a random phonebanking timeslot and Billy Eichner is on the zoom to warm us up.

I should have taken Tuesday off to call. I don't sign up for anything that requires me to give out my cell phone number, so I did not sign up for that. Good for everyone else who does that.

Thank you. I don't know who that is though.

Phone banking almost never means voters seeing your cell number because you use a dialer - is that what you mean? Or do you mean events where the organizers ask for your cell number?

98: The latter. I'll give you my landline, but I don't want to give out my cell phone number, because I only want to get texts from friends and family. My doctor's office keeps trying to get it out of me, but I know they started texting so I don't give it out.

I even get mad when work colleagues send bulk texts on my personal cell phone.

The early phone banking, they wanted me to use my own phone because it was supposed to be neighbors talking e each other and I have a local number. Like one guy called me back the next day. I worried a bit, but it still was nicer to use than the autodialer (which I find stressful because of the fact that you don't control the pace).

But, yes, I expect to get texts from the Democratic Party for the rest of my life. It's about I've a day, plus more when you sign up for a shift.

101: I went to a local Mass phone bank for a ballot thing a couple of years ago. It wasn't well organized, because I didn't realize that I was supposed to bring a cell phone and laptop - which you needed to get the name and script. The last time I had done it, you went to a campaign office with a bunch of phones. I enjoyed the camaraderie of that.

When I get texts from political campaigns, I write back STOP. I'll respond to e-mail, but I tell them that this is intrusive spam. And I just ignore it - no matter the issue.

I try to stay engaged and am happy to connect but I do not want to be texted.

My doctor's office keeps trying to get it out of me, but I know they started texting so I don't give it out.

Boy, I super love having my doctors and dentists and such text me. I think it's fantastic.

I gave up. Everybody texts me. Even more people email me. I get those from Biden, the local party, some activists groups, and Trump (which goes to spam).

There's a Slack thing, but I can't figure out how to use it.

They aren't doing any more ballot cure training, are they? I realize it's last minute, and I've beem reluctant to do phone stuff because of time zone/quality/delay issues, but what the hell, if I can give it a try I will.

Just had a very angry call with my Trumpist, Pennsylvania-residing father, who made clear that he won't vote for the corrupt Democratic party, Trump doesn't engage in influence peddling, Covid deaths are overstated, and he thinks Biden will be immediately removed from office by the 25th Amendment because he's completely senile and needed drugs to participate in the debates. Oh, and he is apparently an intense believer in states rights ("tell me the name of our country") and that the United States is "uhh...some kind of republic," not a democracy (not that he's clear on what either of those mean), and that Californians deserve to have votes count for less than others. He's totally into the Hunter Biden thing--in fact, he thinks Joe directed Hunter to do everything--because Hunter's old business parter was interviewed by Tucker Carlson and spilled the beans, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Fox News has only heightened his pre-existing racists views. I'm cutting him out of my life for a while, there's nothing I can do anymore.

I'm sorry. That's rough.

I'm sorry, dalriata. That sounds very distressing.

Fox News has a lot to answer for, but probably never will.

Well, a lot of hangups, as usual, and many supporters sound deluged by calls, but I gave the election day hotline number to someone who wanted to vote but wasn't sure about their voter registration.

BG: yeah, unfortunately I more or less expect campaign text flotsam as a matter of course, as with email. They do usually stop when you say to, but each campaigning entity will start up again when they get your number. It's usually just been online forms, so I think there wouldn't be much or any consequences if you provided a fake number.

2020 being what it is, I bet 90 is correct except for NE-2 so it's a tie.

Some tool is spray painting "Elections No, Revolution Yes" around Pittsburgh, complete with hammer and sickle. I'm guessing it's a Republican drama queen.

104: My dentist does text when they close for weather, but they also call. I find it super intrusive. I know I'm an outlier, but I want to protect my privacy.

112: I love that TribLive called it "a red, unidentified symbol."

I think that I must have been in some call lists, and that Comcast interrupts them, because the number of calls I've been getting which were either stopped or no message was left have dropped considerably since I voted. I don't know why they can't leave a voicemail.

112: I've been them around other places. I think it's a false flag because I kind of doubt that the Pittsburgh anti-capitalist left decided to pick-up a symbol that hasn't been current since the 80s at exactly the same time Trump starts running a campaign drawn from 80s stereotypes.

I'm hedging a bit because the pro-Shining Path people, apparently, did some graffiti with a hammer and sickle here.

The "drugs" thing is so weird. If there were drugs that fixed dementia, wouldn't you expect everyone who needed them to be taking them? How would that be cheating in a debate?

People in our industry made that point around the first debate when Trump started talking about Biden and dementia drugs. If Biden had a cure for dementia he wouldn't run for President, he'd sell the drug for $30B/year and buy whatever politicians he wanted.

I think the drug my mom took for Alzheimer's worked for a while. Obviously, I don't know the counterfactual in her case, but it seemed to freeze the disease for a couple of years.

Well, they have to say something other than 'I want a racist strongman authoritarian, and don't give a single shit about our democratic tradition.' The socialist thing is falling flat because we picked the guy who won the nomination because he isn't a socialist, so now all they've got is his age. Oh, and his son's dozen abandoned laptops which turn up where you least expect them.

It was so much easier for them last time, when he was a successful businessman with plans and the ability to execute them, and there were all sorts of guardrail, but they didn't even matter, because he was going to pivot away from saying all that shocking shit to entertain the rubes.

They say drugs because Trump accuses people of what he's doing.

Good VF article about far-right Catholics and Q---n. Explains so much about my mother these days. Also makes me feel like a conspiracy believer (it makes so much sense! It's all connected!!1!!!11).

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/how-qanon-and-trumpism-have-infected-the-catholic-church

A guy who was in my brother's high school class puts up stuff on Facebook about the Vatican homosexual network conspiracy. I was going to rebut, but then nobody at all responded even with a "like" so I figured letting it die unremarked upon was best.

Part of this are new, but parts of it are just reflective of trends that have been happening since the end of the Latin mass.

Because sometimes things are too apt, the Gospel today was the Sermon on the Mount.

I remember hearing now and then about Pope Benedict being part of a Vatican homosexual conspiracy network but haven't heard anything about the new guy.

It's worse. Part of it is obviously displacement and projection because of all the sexual abuse scandals and that's been in the background for a while.

Maybe "redirection" and "projection."

Pope Francis is not the real Pope, he's an impostor. And he was elevated to power by a Marxist-Leninist (so: Jewish, of course) cabal...

That one I've not heard.

I mean, it might have been in the article in 123, but I kind of skimmed it.

||
NMM to Betty Dodson.

Except she, of all people, would totally encourage you to go ahead anyway.
|>

116: DSA types will sometimes use it ha-ha-only-jokingly because it's triggering to normies.

129: I was going to say that the real pope is Pope Michael of Delia, Kansas, but upon investigation it seems that Pope Peter III of El Palmar de Troya, Spain has a much better papal tiara.

I mean, ha-ha-only-serious. Anyway, the point is, it's fun to be talking about commies and Catholics instead of the recent ideological flourishings of nonsense.

dalriata, that does sound awful about your father. As for the gay mafia in the Vatican, of course it exists, and the joke is that its members are the spine of the anti-Francis traddies. There is an amusing book "In the Closet of the Vatican" by a French journalist whose name I forget about all that stuff.

AIMHMHB I once had a multi-page single-spaced supposedly anonymous denunciation of the networks around Georg Gaenswein sent me by a former member of them who had been exiled to a cathedral in Bavaria after an indiscretion. The detail I remember is the link between Angela Merkel's hairdresser and Gloria, princess of Thurn und Taxis.

See also Abps Vigano's latest letter to the world, which explains that Bill Gates is in favour of universal income for everyone and the abolition of interest.

But, but, I thought that usury was a sin ..

133: The Coptic Pope has some pretty nice headgear.

126: One of the funny things is that if your cue for a voice actor was "Bavarian man of a certain age who is, as people used to say, a little light on his feet" you'd get a very good imitation of how Benedict spoke early in his reign. (I haven't heard him on more recent recordings, so I couldn't say.)

That's awful dalriata, my folks are very nearly the same though I don't think they buy into the conspiracy theories as much though I don't really talk with them very much about politics anymore. I hope Rupert Murdoch burns in hell.

Yeah, I think I could memory hole it if he didn't live in Pennsylvania, and explicitly and repeatedly made arguments that he deserved to have more votes than other people. It's not hypothetical then, it's real and it affects the world. (I thought at one point I briefly got through to him by pointing out that my conservative in-laws' votes in Upstate NY don't count for shit, but even that empathy pump wasn't enough.) Oh well. He made his choice, I'll make mine. As he repeatedly said, elections have consequences.

136: A conspiracy theory where Bill Gates doesn't understand the time value of money. Now I've heard everything.

139.1: Obviously you may be much better off fully disengaging, but what about the argument that if the Dems start winning Florida and Texas, the Electoral College will suddenly be screwing over the Republicans, and you'd still want it abolished in that case? Since the notion that it gives him extra power is so circumstantial.

140: If the electoral college turns toward honesty and decency, he'll abandon the electoral college. The conversation isn't actually about the electoral college. It's also not about whether some folks' votes should count more than others. It's about whether his vote - and the votes of people like him - should count more.

To be fair, even if the Democrats start reliably winning Florida and Texas, his vote is worth extra for being in Pennsylvania.

The Supreme Court sided with McKesson (of BLM fame) which I find cheering enough for this morning.

140: I don't think that argument will stick until he sees it in practice, and anyway, it kinda doesn't matter if it's "unfair" to the Republicans if we're going in a direction which the Democrats start winning at least a plurality of the popular vote every time (so far, six of the last seven elections). I dunno if he really genuinely believes in states' rights or he's been taught that he should believe it--he couldn't even name Pennsylvania's state song, and has never expressed any love for the Commonwealth or Harrisburg--but if he wants to make that argument, I'll take him at his word. He's a smart guy, and he should know that if he's taking a shortcut through lazy arguments he doesn't actually believe in, there will be consequences. (Anyway, my entire life he's been an asshole troll who doesn't argue in good faith, which surprise surprise has given me trust and confidence issues.)

141: He explicitly said that he doesn't trust Californians and doesn't want them to be able to affect them; we need an electoral college because if Californians have 11% of the vote or whatever their population proportion is, that'd be horrific because it'd give everybody else who thinks like them the power to effect things in proportion to their numbers. (Never mind that it was extremely plausible, at various points, that I'd move to California.) Whether that's "they should count for less" or "I should count for more" is a distinction without a difference mathematically. And yes, he's been totally racist against black people, Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics, and on rarer occasion Asians, so there's a racist tinge to this.

Oh, on that note, he tried to argue that "look how much he's done for the Jews!" because of his awful Israel policy, and I just fucking let him have it. As if I didn't live blocks from a fucking antisemitic terrorist attack done by somebody on the Trump train, which dear leader only superficially acknowledged.

Anyway, my way of working through this last night was to take a high energy walk at 1am, and I kinda just kept going. Ended up walking to The City, which is apparently nine miles round trip. Guh, sorry for the naval gazing, just very frustrated over all this. I suspect it'll be better for me in the long run to be past this.

sorry for the naval gazing

AS YOU WERE, ENSIGN DALRIATA

139: He's kind of right, in that he does get extra influence (not literally votes) because he's in a more or less 50-50 state. Democrats in CA get fractional votes once they have more votes than the Republicans (true also of any deeply Blue or deeply Red state), and worse, overwhelmingly Blue states have Red minorities whose votes are meaningless. (Same in the other direction, of course.) The way it's done in ME and NE would potentially be more "fair."

Trump will just say/do whatever he thinks will benefit him, of course, past statements dropped down the memory hole.

1f you live somewhere super rural, your vote does count more, because each state gets a minimum of 3 electoral votes. So somebody's vote in Wyoming for 3 electors in a population of 578,579 goes farther than if you live in California and have 55 electoral votes spread out over 39 million people.

147: If you live in a state that's more small and rural. (Which themselves are partially or wholly cancelled out by smaller urban states, like RI and HI.) I think a majority of rural Americans live in larger states.

Confirmed: in the 2010 census, the 15 most populous states were also home to 51% of the rural population.

Or looking at it based on the swing state dynamic (Wyoming might have more EVs per voter, but nobody campaigns there), 64% of rural Americans live in states that went for Trump or Biden by a margin of 6% or more in 2016.

What percent of urban or suburban voters live in non-swing states?

I just got surveyed again. If Mercury is off, it might be because they oversampled me.

Over time, you should answer proportionately to your likelihood of voting for each candidate. It's like a psych personality quiz.

148: Right, as BG noted the Electoral College does slightly overrepresent small (not necessarily rural) states, as does the House, but the EC primarily overrepresents states that are closely divided politically, which is a shifting group of mostly medium-to-large states. It's the Senate that massively overrepresents small states, by design.

150: By my same metric, 68%.

So rural voters are slightly overrepresented in swing states. But not by much.

But as much as at swing dances.

Right. Mostly, the EC just screws over (checks math) everyone.

156 probably doesn't make sense.

Don't be too hard on yourself. A lot of things don't make sense nowadays.

I looked in my spam folder. 21 emails from Trump and related in the past 24 hours.