Democracy · 10:40pm Nov 7th, 2020
Congratulations to the USA on electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and more importantly, on getting rid of Donald Trump. I know many American friends have been stressing out about the election, and it feels like we are now all breathing a collective sigh of relief across the world.
This has big implications far beyond America. Trump’s attempts to stop action fighting climate change affects the whole world. He has also emboldened other far-right leaders from Hungary to Brazil, and created an atmosphere where lying, rule breaking, and bullying has become acceptable.
One minor detail which pleases me is Joe Biden’s statement that he will hold the UK government to the Good Friday Agreement that led to peace in Northern Ireland. I hope his election will set a new tone for international relations and make the British government see that breaking international law is not a good idea.
There are still a lot of things to be nervous about, but this is the bright light we need in a time of darkness.
Thank you.
Hear hear.
I'm not celebrating until January 20. Trump will be president for another seventy-five days. He's not done doing damage yet.
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I would not be surprised in the least to learn that he tried to literally burn the White House down. (It'd be, what, the third time someone did so?)
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That is true. There is also the matter of the Senate. But it is good to see that his allies are abandoning him and he will have much less influence now
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General Ross didn't do a thorough enough job.
Unfortunately, without the Senate, it will be a huge struggle to undo all the damage done during the last four years. But at least the spiral down into outright third-world fascism has been stopped... for now.
The Senate is still in the cards, but it's going to require two more outside shots in Georgia to make it. Here's hoping.
The Supreme Court ruled, in law, that it doesnt matter what The Facts are, its what you Believee, thats the truth.
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I argue that most damage from Trump and his administration has been caused by dysfunctional bureaucracy, especially the CDC, and interaction with the public, not legislation. Although, a republican controlled senate will definitely slow down his legislative agenda.
I do wonder if Twitter will eventually ban Trump considering he has made Tweets that arguably would of gotten others banned.
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There are a lot of changes he made to regulations, particularly environmental ones, that need to be reversed as soon as possible. Getting back into important treaties that he just walked away from, is another thing, and some of those need more than just an Executive Order.
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After do a bit of research, it appears that the US entered the Paris agreement via executive order without senate. That would made it seem Biden could just reenter the Paris agreement the same way. Although, I have no idea that would work out it went to court.
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Oh sweet, beautiful mercy !
Twitter banning dishonest Don's account.
Certainly, he has said enough crap and inflammatory comments to get any other banned several times over.
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Yep, Biden has already said he would rejoin the Paris Accords, but there's so much more...
Don't forget that Biden can now also stop the US' exit from the WHO, so there's a considerably lower chance that the next global pandemic will come from America.
Yeah, I think that sigh of relief is actually from the fact that we finally know who won. You know, maybe.
5394190 Without confirmation by the Senate, it's just ink, not a legal treaty with any kind of enforcement power. That's why Trump was able to withdraw from it so easily. Biden can sign back onto it, but once again, that's just ink without 2/3 of the Senate voting to approve, and that isn't going to happen. The Paris Accords are a multi-trillion dollar expense for the US that do absolutely nothing to stop global pollution since China won't be affected for several decades in theory and ever in practice.
With plenty of republican judges in the court system it is far from over. Biden's support appears to be overestimated, so I expect the next few months to be quite entertaining.
Yes, that's a relief, though, Trump can still and will cause a ton of problems before he is unceremoniously kicked out of the White House. While his temper tantrums are funny to watch (he even said he will barricade himself in the Oval Office on Inauguration Day and I really hope he does that, seeing him kicked out by security would be the most hilarious sight and very satisfying, bonus points if they call the police and he is being brought out in handcuffs), he is also making some moves with the USA's atomic weapons repository. No one knows exactly if that's just a cheap threat in the hopes they'll let him stay president (which is my guess, but one can never know with this mentally challenged guy), if he wants to sell nukes to Russia to get rid of his debts he apparently has amassed or if he is crazy enough to attempt shooting nukes onto some US state as an act of revenge.
The latter is not exactly possible, as I found out when doing research yesterday, US generals have a say in that matter and there's no way they will agree with their own country being decked out in nukes by a mentally unstable president. But he could succeed with convincing them to attack some other country with nukes if that country is already a threat to some extent, like North Korea or Iran, by arguing for a first strike "before they do it" and that would already bring America, and the entire world, into enough trouble. Starting World War III is something Trump is definitely capable of.
His niece also said in an interview with an american news channel that her uncle can't accept defeat and that he will take America down with him after he didn't get elected again. Trump is capable of everything and he might do a damage to the USA that can't be repaired anymore in the next 2+ months. It's too early to celebrate.
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We can just hope this safeguard will suffice.
This highlights the greatest risk of nuclear weapons - you can never be entirely sure the person in control is sane. Trump would not be the first Head of State to go completely bonkers as he comes to the end.
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It's hard to see the legal challenges changing anything. They would have to overturn the results in three states and the margins were not that small. It's not like Florida in 2000. Republican judges won't be too keen to be seen to be undermining democracy just to support a deluded loser.
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The Paris agreement is far from perfect. All countries need to work together to build on it and deliver something better. If the US doesn't join in then in the long term it will harm the American economy as China and Europe will become leaders in green technology. It looks like China could make faster progress than pledged - they are now talking about reaching carbon neutrality by 2060. Xi Jinping and many other leaders in the CCP are engineers who understand the danger, the risk to them, and the need for action.
Sorry that I am late, but it is crazy in the USA, as you know.
I recommend that you study Electoral Mathematics. Lewis Carroll worked on Electoral Mathematics.
We have something crazy called the Electoral College, which came about because SlaveStates refused to join the Union unless they get extra say. The Free States agreed because they feared that foreign countries would take advantage of our disunity to conquer the country. Every state gets a minimum of 3 Electoral Votes. States can do what they like with their Electoral Votes, but all except Nebraska and Maine have winner-take-all. Each State has a minimum of 3 Electoral Votes. California has 55Electoral Votes and 68 times the population of Wyoming, but Wyoming has 3 Electoral Votes. The vote of someone in Wyoming is worth 4 votes of a voter in California.
Assuming that we have only 2 Candidates, if a candidate gets either 51% of the vote of a state or 0% the vote of a state,, a candidate can win with only a quarter ¼ of the popular vote. Routinely, the Electoral College fails a third ⅓ of the time. The last Republican to win the popular vote was Bush # 1 in 1988 32 years ago. Trump won last time with 47% of the popular vote. This time Biden got 51% of the popular vote, Trump got 48%, and others got 1%, but Biden only barely won the Electoral College.
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There are calls to nullify votes-by-mail. At least in one state it would be enough to change the result. The accusations on mass false votes in favor of Democrats do have supporting evidence, though the quality is debatable. Also, look back at results. US is split roughly 50/50 despite what media tells you. If this half decides they were robbed of their victory by false votes... Things might get interesting.
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Yes, disenfranchising voters by striking legitimate votes delivered on time, despite DeJoy, would flip some states.
¡Put up or shut up! ¡Show us your evidence!
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Cases are fired, I await the rulings with mild interest (thankfully, I'm not a US citizen)
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I suspect that autocorrect changed a misspelling of "filed" to fired". If you refer to the TrumpLawsuits, he basically throws everything at the wall and hopes that something sticks. He tried to do things like getting Arizona to stop counting when Biden was ahead, thus ensuring that Biden carries the state (if one stops counting while one's opponent is ahead, one ensures that the opponent wins, but if one keeps counting, maybe the uncounted ballot will break for one, causing a come-from-behind victory). If you have a LawyerFriend, ask whether any of these lawsuits have a chance of succeeding. He only had 1 partial success:
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy slowed the mail for making Democratic Ballots arrive late. Pennsylvania decided to extend its deadline ——¡the voters did nothing wrong so their votes should count! A judge ordered them segregated until it can be determined whether they would have arrived on-time if not for the meddling of DeJoy. As it turned out, Biden carried the state without those late votes anyway.
Trump had only 1 partial success which changed nothing. The rest of his lawsuits are baseless (ask any lawyer) are have been or will soon be thrown out of court.
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Of course he does, in his current situation it is just common sense.
Voting by mail is extremely vulnerable to frauds, I don't see why it is allowed at all.
It doesn't matter, really. What matters is that pro-trumpers do not trust current voting system anymore. There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence of frauds and some personal accounts. How does Biden's (and US) future looks with half the voters believing their votes were stolen ?
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Citation Needed.
It is true that corrupt staff at a nursing home can intercept all of the ballots, but this is usually caught because the resident complain about their ballots not arriving. In England, they call this GrannyFarming. In 2018, GrannyFarming occurred but the nursing-home residents complained about their ballots never arriving, while all of their received ballots voted for the same candidates. That was easy to detect. The Republicans tried to steal that election for the District 9:
of North Carolina for the USHouse of Representatives.
As for counterfeiting, that requires special paper, special printing presses, and special ink. Each ballot has a unique 1-time pseudorandom number for each voter (a counterfeiter would have to print the correct 1-time pseudorandom number for each voter or the ballot will be rejected).
I myself voted absentee via mail. My ballot arrived Wednesday October 7th. I filled it out and put back in the mail Thursday October 8th —— ¡JeJoy could not slow down the mail enough to keep my ballot from counting! As someone voting absentee by mail, I can attest that it is much easier on the voter. It also costs less and is less likely to lead to death from contracting ARSCoV2 and developing CoViD19. Some states like Oregon do not even bother with in-person voting any more. I certainly would not object if California, where I live, would discontinue in-person voting.
Once again, show me the evidence of fraud. As for the insane QAnonCultist, nothing will change their insane minds.
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oh come on ！
China won't be affected for several decades in theory and ever in practice？
We use&development green technology for years!
When I took the train travel across the prairie north of Ulanqab to saw my grandpa in 2007,the forest of wind driven generator has been built，what are your country did 13 years ago?
last year ，some northen-west province such as my home inner Mongolia can use wind&solar electric to replace the origin 。
The new National Sixth Stage vehicle pollutant emission Standard are stricter than those in Europe，so i need to buy a new car to replace my 14-year-old car,how may 30-year-old car still on the road in US？
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>Citation Needed.
Vote-by-mail does not check if the ballots arrived to the person. The ballots are fired into the fog in the hope that only the intended persons will take them. What happens if the person isn't there? Some other person will get them. That's a vulnerability that can be exploited, and thus will be exploited.
>Once again, show me the evidence of fraud.
https://github.com/cjph8914/2020_benfords
These plots would be enough to cause a very, very detailed recheck in the money accounting world. But, apparently, not in the vote counting world. It doesn't matter if it can't fly in the court, it does fly with fairly rational people.
>I certainly would not object if California, where I live, would discontinue in-person voting.
May I quote this verse?
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Not so optimistic，although environment problem is very important in China，but its not the most important problem，the most import thing in my country always Poverty alleviation，After all, they call us commie, even for this, we need pay more attention to social equality isnt it?
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¿How would one manage to steal large amounts of ballots? One would have to go hous-to-house pulling ballots from the mailboxes. This sort of thing is only practical for nursing homes. Also, the voters would report that the ballots never arrived.
Benford's Law only holds for data spanning orders of magnitude:
Yes.
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Thanks for demonstration of average democrat's though process. I will keep it in mind.
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Debunking false news and teaching maths at the same time. I approve.
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Watch out. Walabio is rather knowledgeable about election mathematics. Also the Benford's law story has been rated as false by fact checkers. There are a lot of conspiracy theories about this election. I would be cautious of anything circulating on social media which is not backed up by a reliable source. You can get a quick assessment of the reliability and bias (left or right) of news media here: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
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¡Thanks!
I am more into electoral methods than detecting electoral fraud.
Post Scriptum:
I was almost run over today. I need to let my nerves settle, but I shall write a blogpost about it this weekend.
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You are welcome.
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I found a video by a lawyer analyzing the lawsuits of the election:
Basically, they have almost 0 chance to succeed, and even if they would succeed, they have almost 0 chance of changing the outcome.
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>Also the Benford's law story has been rated as false by fact checkers.
Regrettably, there was no fact check by the link provided, only a collection of statements by various people. Benford's law arises when some (fairly broad) conditions are met, so to 'factcheck' the 'factcheckers' would need to analyze those conditions and check if those conditions are met in vote count data. This was briefly mentioned as a side note, but neither discussed, nor applied to the case. If this level of 'fact checking' is commonly accepted, It is a grim omen for the future of Western democracy.
>There are a lot of conspiracy theories about this election. I would be cautious of anything circulating on social media which is not backed up by a reliable source.
You believe, there is a reliable source regarding this particular clusterfuck? Well, suite yourself, I guess, but I'm a bit too cynical for such beliefs.