US Election

[El Pollo Diablo]

Yes, there are different machines they get processed through, one to remove envelopes, another to count the votes.

[lpm]

Is different in each state but it basically means getting the mail votes ready and verified but not counting.

The counting is then done by running them through a counting machine that scans the filled in oval shapes.

Process and count immediately on receipt:

Florida

Process and count a few days before election day, i.e. now:

Texas, Arizona, Nevada

Process early, but don't start counting till 7 a.m. Tuesday morning:

North Carolina*, Georgia, Ohio

No early processing at all but start processing and counting on Tuesday morning

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin

Process early but no counting till polls close Tues evening:

Minnesota

Process and count on Monday:

Iowa

[* conflicting info online about North Carolina, another site says they can count now.]

I think if they process beforehand and count during Tuesday then we get good early data on the night. It's the ones that disallow early processing that are going to cause problems.

[dyqik]

Is that 2am British winter time?

The US switches to winter time tonight.

[Bird on a Fire]

I'm normally up till 2 or 3 at least anyway, so I'll probably check the news. I'm not sure I'm excited enough to follow it compulsively, though, as the polling seems very clear.

The subsequent days/weeks of failure to concede, allegations of fraud, outbreaks of violence etc. will be more compulsive viewing, but not in a good way.

[lpm]

How can you not be excited about the big dramatic scene after 4 years of the greatest thriller ever written?

It's like watching dinosaurs escape from a theme park and eating people, but skipping over the bit where they are defeated and jumping straight to the post climax wrap up.

[dyqik]

Still, Trump's making his case that he's bought CoVID under control with the US having 100k new cases yesterday.

[Bird on a Fire]

How can you not be excited about the big dramatic scene after 4 years of the greatest thriller ever written?

It's like watching dinosaurs escape from a theme park and eating people, but skipping over the bit where they are defeated and jumping straight to the post climax wrap up.

If the denouement of Jurassic Park had just been hours and hours of people counting votes about whether or not they want to continue being eaten by dinosaurs it would have been a very different film.

[lpm]

I'd watch that. It's amazing - a country of hundreds of millions and it's possible they'll vote to continue being eaten by dinosaurs.

[Bird on a Fire]

It's a cool premise, I just don't think I'd watch it in real time. It would make a good 90 minute action film, but I wouldn't watch a 10-part Netflix series.

Hopefully there'll be a shorter version with a cool vote-counting montage set to some inspiring music, before the triumphant hero emerges, cuts off the lead dinosaur's head and says "Shut up, man!" Roll credits.

[Little waster]

How can you not be excited about the big dramatic scene after 4 years of the greatest thriller ever written?

It's like watching dinosaurs escape from a theme park and eating people, but skipping over the bit where they are defeated and jumping straight to the post climax wrap up.

If the denouement of Jurassic Park had just been hours and hours of people counting votes about whether or not they want to continue being eaten by dinosaurs it would have been a very different film.

Presumably Herman Cain would play the lawyer who got etted by the T-Rex on the toilet 30 minutes in but who would somehow continue to tweet about the non-existence of dinosaurs from within a giant pile of Dino poo (played by Tucker Carlson).

[EACLucifer]

A peaceful, dignified march to the polls in Alamance County, North Carolina got attacked by police, who, among other things, pepper sprayed wheelchair users and children as young as five.

[EACLucifer]

After a Biden campaign bus was attacked in Texas, I fear he may need to start equipping his vehicles with defensive measures.

[tenchboy]

How can you not be excited about the big dramatic scene after 4 years of the greatest thriller ever written?

It's like watching dinosaurs escape from a theme park and eating people, but skipping over the bit where they are defeated and jumping straight to the post climax wrap up.

Like The Big Sleep?
When Marlowe escapes from the body repair shop out on Realto Drive and kills Cannino in the process and then suddenly he and Vivian are driving along in the car calmly discussing what to with Carmen?
The bit where the entire penultimate act where Carmen has asked Marlowe to teach her how to shoot a gun and takes him out to the old oil field where she tries to shoot him but he had a hunch she would do that and had put blanks in the gun and realises that this is what happened to Rusty Reagan who had disappeared and everyone was pretending had run off with Eddie Mars' wife but no-one seemed to question that Eddie Mars was cool with that which wasn't the reason for General Sternwood contacting Marlowe in the first place but that Vivian thought it was and was the hold that Eddie Mars had on the Sternwoods and not because Joe Brody had got hold of Geiger's blackmail racket and was trying a squeeze -the entire explanation for the whole film - In fact Everything - is missing.

[lpm]

You can skip scenes. But not big turning point scenes.

[lpm]

The NYT Siena polls look fine. Would like to see Florida more secure but still.

[dyqik]

The NYT Siena polls look fine. Would like to see Florida more secure but still.

It's Florida. Florida being secure, stable or vaguely sane would be a sign of the end times.

[El Pollo Diablo]

The NYT Siena polls look fine. Would like to see Florida more secure but still.

ABC/WaPo does not look fine though. Not fine at all.

f.cking Florida.

[dyqik]

The NYT Siena polls look fine. Would like to see Florida more secure but still.

ABC/WaPo does not look fine though. Not fine at all.

f.cking Florida.

They're all small to medium size polls that you just throw into the average. ABC/WaPo is the smallest of four polls of Florida so far today, with the largest MoE. The others are Biden +1, +3 and +4

If you do want to keep looking at the ABC/WaPo poll, this one is two points better for Biden than the last ABC/WaPo poll of Florida.

[Martin Y]

Aside:

Like The Big Sleep? {snip spoilers for eighty year old book ] Everything - is missing.

Being familiar with the Bogart movie, the book was a considerable surprise.
I'm sure I must have seen the Mitchum version too but don't remember it.

[tenchboy]

Aside:

Like The Big Sleep? {snip spoilers for eighty year old book ] Everything - is missing.

Being familiar with the Bogart movie, the book was a considerable surprise.
I'm sure I must have seen the Mitchum version too but don't remember it.

I do; it's horrendous: I envy your not remembering it.

[Grumble]

Aside:

Like The Big Sleep? {snip spoilers for eighty year old book ] Everything - is missing.

Being familiar with the Bogart movie, the book was a considerable surprise.
I'm sure I must have seen the Mitchum version too but don't remember it.

The Big Lebowski is surely the best version?

[EACLucifer]

John Ralston is forecasting Biden holding Nevada. Trump's chances halve in the 538 model if he doesn't take Nevada.

[lpm]

I'm not convinced by the 538 odds model, where you shove in "Biden wins state X and the odds become..."

For starters, if Biden wins Nevada and Minnesota by 1 point he's doomed, yet the little scenario player give his odds jumping up the same amount as if he wins by 10 points.

And the correlations don't work because they assume natural voting rather than rigged voting. If Trump rigs Pennsylvania to a win, the model reduces Biden's chances in less rigged states like Michigan.

Nevada is an odd state, always tricky for Democrats even in a good year, a bit like Florida. But we shouldn't need to care about a 6 EV state.

[dyqik]

538 has some funny stuff going on at the extremes as well. For example, Biden gaining even more of an advantage in Washington results in his odds of winning Mississippi going down.

While that might be true if it was early in the campaign and Biden was changing policy, as a policy that was popular in Washington might be unpopular in Mississippi, I can't imagine a mechanism for that to happen late in the campaign, with state based advertising campaigns and fixed policies.

I wonder how much of the 538 correlations are measuring long term policy preferences, and how much they are measuring states with related media markets.

The Economist model, btw, fixes the correlations to be greater than zero.

[lpm]

Republicans like to block traffic, don't they. What's that all about? Particularly in New Jersey, New York bridges...