Best possible Biden result is 412-126. Best possible Trump result is 279-259. Likely result in my opinion is 335-203. Biden carries PA, MI, WI, ME 2, NE 2, FL, NC, and AZ. He narrowly loses TX and GA. 53-47 Dem Senate. Dems gain 10-15 house seats. I’m far more worried about Trump winning PA and FL outright or after court intervention than I am about fanciful coup scenarios. Yes on 1 passes 70-30. Yea on 2 passes 54-46.
Take a deep breath and don’t forget to vote if you haven’t already!
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Donald Trump has already told us that he will declare victory Tuesday night, whatever the returns say. He’s also already told us that he’ll launch an avalanche of legal challenges Tuesday night, whatever the returns say.
I think Mr. Biden may win the vote outright tomorrow night. I think he will almost certainly win the vote by the time the ballots are all counted. I think it will almost surely be months before we know who will be inaugurated next January.
I’m also gravely concerned what William Barr and his DoJ will do between tomorrow night and the next inauguration.
I hope that the Democrats have court orders ready to go stopping (or perhaps slowing) the DoJ shredders. I expect DoJ and the GOP to work FEVERISHLY to try and destroy the mountains of evidence of criminal corruption, perjury, and a long list of similar crimes committed by Trump administration officials in the last four years.
I don’t know if any of this qualifies as a “fanciful coup scenario”. I think everything I’ve said is a near certainty.
Oh, and I certainly HOPE that a significant majority of Americans will absolutely demand that the many crimes of this administration be invested, prosecuted, and punished. We do NOT need another “time of healing” — that should come after any right-wing insurrection is put down and the criminal aspects of this long conspiracy to betray America are proven.
When Trump was asked about the story that he would declare victory he called it fake news, which may make it the only time I’ve felt reassured by something he said.
Everything he says is a lie. I guess the reports that he encouraged the Texas mob (the one that surrounded the Biden campaign bus) are fake as well. Or the Trump caravans blocking traffic elsewhere.
Eh he can refuse to concede all he wants, his term ends January 20th 2021 whether he wins or loses. Concedes or doesn’t.
He did, in fact, declare victory at 2a.
I’ll reiterate what I said in the initial post that I am much more worried about right wing court intervention in the vote count than I am about the military taking over or state legislatures invalidating the will of their own voters to keep Trump in office. If Republicans failed to do this for presidents they actually liked (Ford, Bush I) I do not see them doing this for Trump whom they’d be quietly happy to move on from. Barr is a concern, but the DOJ has limited authority over elections.
While I wish we had more centralized elections to ensure consistency across states (national popular vote, a federal right to vote, automatic voter registration, nationwide vote by mail, nationwide standards of when to county and how late to accept a ballot, etc.), the decentralization has been as much a hindrance to Trump as it has been a help.
Kavanaugh’s signal on stopping an initial vote count and his invoking Bush v. Gore as precedence (which it’s author Scalia always insisted it wasn’t) is of far graver concern to me than militias, the military, or rogue state legislatures fielding competing elector slates. I wish the Gellman piece has focused on the real bad stuff these actors are doing and not his far fetched scenario which grabbed all the buzz.
All the credible coup scenarios involve the Court, upholding voter suppression, throwing out ballots, seating alternative electors to the EC.
A common element in modern examples of successfully resisting coup attempts is strong political leadership, eg deGaulle in France 1960.
The Court decapitates that, unless Biden is willing to lead a noncooperation and resistance campaign in the face of a SCOTUS ruling. Which I doubt.
I don’t see seating alternative electors happening since some of the swing states have Democratic governors and there is a Democratic house which ultimately certifies the vote.
I’m more worried about losing a contingent election or as you said having Kavanaugh throw out ballots before they are counted. The fact that Dems were on top of the Texas case and two Republican judges ruled in their favor gives me some hope the initial count won’t be interrupted. You gotta have hope.
Two things seem as clear as the bright blue sky outside my window this Wednesday morning:
I don’t know if the latter falls into the basket of “fanciful coup” scenarios, but the moment of truth is upon us.
I’d love for the question 1 margin to be as wide as you predict just to stick it to the opponents who ran IMO the most dishonest, self-serving campaigns I have ever seen. I’m concerned that such an opposition campaign will work like it did with the nurse ratio question which was similarly self-serving and dishonest as I recall.
I voted against Question 1 and for Question 2.
I agree with you about the dishonest and just plain stupid opposition to Q1.
I voted against it because I think it makes it even more likely that truly personal data will be exposed. Although the manufacturers apparently won’t confirm it, there are very strong indications that new vehicles send frequently-updated real-time reports of vehicle location to the manufacturer. That alone is OUTRAGEOUS!
If Question 1 is passed, it will require those location histories to be put onto servers that are accessible to the public. No matter how many layers of security are on those servers, the location data is MUCH more at risk than if it stayed in the vehicle or even on the manufacturer’s private systems.
It is a near certainty that we will learn of breaches that disclose the location history of hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
Our focus should be on making it impossible for ANYBODY to harvest personal data without the express written consent of the target person.
I think Q1 is ripe for unintended consequences. It’s a bad idea, resulting from manufacturer behavior that itself ought to be illegal.
I think there’s a good argument to be made that the manufacturers should not have had that data to begin with, but if they are allowed to have it, so should my local mechanic under the context of the original right to repair law. That’s my take anyway, although I respect yours as well. More importantly, glad to see you vote yes on 2!
Our own stomv persuaded me on Q2. To paraphrase him (I think!) — even if there are short-term issues as we work out the kinks, the long-term gain is worth it.
On Q1, once the vehicles collect and transmit the data the cat is out of the bag. There is NO useful purpose for collecting, never mind transmitting, that data. The manufacturers won’t even disclose the data that they receive, never mind what they do with it or what it’s for.
The idea that a vehicle that I own is now part of the surveillance network that our culture is surrounding us with is just abhorrent — as is the total and deafening silence of our elected government.
What do you think happens to Americans when the new right-wing Supreme Court wipes out our right to privacy? It’s already bad and will get worse.
I hope we remove this administration.
After we accomplish that, we MUST undo their transformation of the Supreme Court into the Kangaroo Court.
The preponderance of the evidence suggests it is only mechanical and not personal data. Maybe because it’s old, but I can assure you my car doesn’t know where I live.
I don’t think my car (a 2015 Chrysler) collects it either.
Still, it appears that new cars ARE collecting and transmitting this data. It’s called “telematics” and industry sources report that it’s becoming more and more widespread.
The travesty is that there is NO federal regulation or consumer protection about any of this.
I dunno, it kind of seems like a good way to stop certain information from being collected in secret would be to have it not be secret. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the entire “if an independent mechanic can work on your car, then rapists will come to your house” thing is a scare tactic designed to protect the secret nature of data collection.
I’m a thousand percent in agreement with you about the absurd scare tactics.
We solved this problem reasonably well in a different domain — credit bureaus. There was a time when consumers had ZERO ability to see what credit bureaus were saying about them, never mind correct errors. The “Fair Credit Reporting Act” changed all that in 1970, and has been followed by revisions that provide at least some measure of transparency.
In my view, an abstract principle that we should adopt is that if I am the source of data, I own that data. Whether it’s where I go in my car, what sites I visit in my browser, where I take my phone, who I call, how long my eyeballs linger on certain things — all of that — I own it all.
With that as a starting point, then I think the next step is to use federal law to provide something like FCRA mixed with HIPAA — any third party that wants to market or use data collected from me must obtain my informed written consent. My car must still be drivable even if I decline to allow Chrysler to receive a live stream of my vehicle location.
I suspect that the most viable mechanism is to provide a convenient mechanism that lets me SELL or RENT access to the data that I own to third parties that wish to use it.
It seems to me that I have a right to keep data about me secret. Period. I have a right to not disclose where I go. I have a right to not disclose when I go to sleep and when I wake up. I have a right to not disclose when I take a shower and for how long. And so on.
I can think of no reason AT ALL why the location history of my vehicle is in any way relevant to its operation.
HIPAA is another reasonable starting point — although it is only a starting point. My “PHI” (Personal Health Information”) belongs to ME. It does NOT belong to my doctor, the facility where my MRI was taken, the manufacturer of the CPAP machine I use every night, and so on.
In a more perfect world, I should be able to collect, encrypt, and save my PHI on my own private storage. When an insurer or care provider wants to access my PHI, they should ask me. If I’m ok with it, I should be able to give them the ability to view that PHI — but not copy it. If the third-party is a marketing organization that wants to sell access to my data, they can pay me for it at a price that I, not they, set.
Q1 is nibbling at the edges of a MUCH larger issue.
You do understand that Q1 forces the manufacturers to put vehicle location data on a public-facing website, right?
There’s just no way to prevent breaches of data like that. There is no way to stop law enforcement agencies from harvesting data like that.
We already see widespread breaches and abuses of cellphone location data, this compounds that problem.
I categorically oppose the premise that Chrysler should be required to publish my vehicle’s location history just in case I might want to take to an independent repair provider some day.
A few years ago, there were hard-fought exchanges here about whether an odometer tax should replace the gas tax. A key objection to the odometer tax was that it is an invasion of privacy.
I have to believe that any black box capable of recording and transmitting my location history is also fully capable of doing the same with the rest of my vehicle behavior — acceleration, speed, braking, etc.
We are threatening to open Pandora’s box here.
75-25, almost on the money with my 70-30. It’s the rare issue that brought together conservatives who like small business and liberals who like regulatory fair play. The real way to close the box is to pass European style regulations on data and privacy, and I hope the next administration can really hammer Big Tech on that. My friend who’s a CEO in SV was ecstatic Pelosi will remain Speaker, so not sure it’s going to be a priority for her.
Which Senators on the way to 53? I’ll take … Gideon, Cunningham (lol, in spite of everything), Kelly, Hickenlooper … I guess Greenfield (I hope) with Bullock as a stretch. We won’t know about Georgia for a while, I don’t think, but both Ossoff and Warnock are very viable. Would love to see Bollier pull it out.
Other than that … it would have to be a real rout. Not expecting that.
Those are the folks I expect to win. Bullock or one of the Georgia races give you 53. I was very bullish on Harrison a few weeks ago and would be delighted to see him win, but I am bearish on him now. Worried about N.C., FL, and PA tbh, I think they are coin flips. Polls say one thing, friends and family on the ground say another.
Well, for what it’s worth (not much) I’ve been calling N.C. this past week. We were *really* scraping the bottom of the voter list … down to all the wrong numbers and folks who moved, the folks who will never, ever pick up the phone, etc. So, efforts have been made! We are treating every voter like the Parable of the lost sheep.
Well thank you! The Senate and possibly the presidency could come down to a few of those phone calls.
Whereas I think with voter suppression we’ll probably make it to an even 50.
Anyone notice that Charlie Baker lacked the same patriotism & decency as Cindy McCain and was unable top place country before party and vote for Biden?
He’s a spineless weasel who’s afraid of the Trump Train…..
He’s a Republican. He does what Republicans do.
Which means that your characterization is exactly correct.
From his angle it makes sense. Endorsing Biden would jeopardize his renomination while endorsing Trump would jeopardize his re-election. Voters didn’t care in 2018 about his 2016 vote and they won’t care about his 2020 vote in 2022. He could have at least wrote in his former boss Bill Weld, who ran an honorable campaign against Trump in the primary.
A coup here might look a lot like the coup in Bolivia last year. After all a lot of the people involved in that coup are still in the Trump administration.
So Bob, as an ex-USPS employee, how many undelivered mail-in ballots do you think are hanging around the various post offices at the moment?
I hear numbers ranging from 0 to 300,000 — especially in the swing states that everyone is looking at.
I wish I knew. As I commented before, the amount should have been very low if the post office is running normally. The problem is that is doesn’t seem to be running like it used to.
I heard one report that the 300,000 figure might be high since some carriers may have delivered the mail directly without sending in to be processed. That is possible.
I looked on a face book page for former General Mail Facility employees and DeJoy is very unpopular. If the workers don’t like DeJoy, they have some leeway to defy him and try to get more ballots delivered. Especially if the on site supervisors are sympathetic, which may be the case.
I’m hoping that any attempt by the upper management to slow down ballots will leave a paper trail.
The other thing is that the ballots will be delivered at some point, so we will have a pretty good idea how many were delayed where.
There’s this from Vice ( by way of the On the Media newsletter) which is reassuring. ” …according to Vice senior writer Aaron Gordon, “the USPS has been intentionally making its performance look worse than it is by removing ballots from the normal sorting and delivery process to deliver ballots faster. Just to be safe, that same judge ordered sweeps of mail facilities to locate forgotten, lost, or otherwise undelivered ballots. So far, they’ve found 13 of them. Check it out. “
Sorry not to have supplied the link, I tried and failed. But Googling Vice should bring it up