Prediction the Winner - Trump vs. Biden - and any other predictions

[Zhaoman]

No and neither are we holding up India, or any country for that matter, as a shining example of democracy; to focus on that would be to miss the point. The world are less informed and less opinionated about Indian democracy because (not considering other more obvious reasons): Trump didn't bring it up! He literally brought up the issue of American democracy himself and attempted to use it as a convenient distraction in a ham-fisted election campaign strategy. He is effectively saying the American electoral system, one of the most accountable and tightly observed processes in the world with multiple checks and balances, is so fraudulent that his opponents' mafias can inject millions of votes without being detected (which has never come up as an issue before this election). Or if it was detected that America (and by extension the world) is colluding to keep it hush.

Of course if someone can believe that then they might as well lose faith in democracy in general and believe observers from the rest of the world are in on it too because what hope does that leave for people in lesser democracies including us, this forum and every other news outlet that doesn't agree with them. Time to sit in the basement with the pitchfork and tinfoil hat and refresh the alt-right news - the only beacon of truth left as the rest of the dark world close in on their guns and fossil fuels; oh wait... that is what hardcore Trump supporters are doing... <facepalm>

[TeePee]

The US isn't the perfect example of Democracy. When it comes to mail in voting, my State of Washington is held as a shining example. We've been using mail-in voting exclusively for years and in that time only a hundred or so people have been convicted of fraud. Sounds great, right? Except WA makes it very easy to register to vote (as they should) and has no mechanism to detect fraudulent registrations or votes. It's basically the honour system. If you have a WA address, you can vote here, and unless you brag about it on social media, no one will ever know. The DMV registered me to vote without me even asking. So a hundred convictions is meaningless when no one is looking. With hundreds of thousands of legal resident immigrants and hundreds of thousands more illegals in the State, it's pretty much guaranteed there are thousands of fraudulent votes here every year. But it simply can't be proven. It also doesn't matter, as Seattle is totalitarian Democratic the State was never in question.

The real question is, was there enough fraud in swing States to 'steal' the election? And how much damage will it do if it's ever proven?

[MrJim]

Lawyers

Called it!

[Saracen999]

....

The real question is, was there enough fraud in swing States to 'steal' the election? And how much damage will it do if it's ever proven?

Well, that's the question, I guess.

According to some law professor on the radio a few days ago, the largest proven case to date was some 1100 votes and IF Trump's assertions of voter fraud in the key states is justified, is has to be orders of magnitude larger than than, like in several tens of thousands.

I guess we have to give him a chance to prove his claims, or courts to throw out the rest of the challenges, but if it were to turn out he's right, then voter fraud on that scale, big enough to invalidate the result, would be an unmitigated disaster for US democracy, and be enough to ridicule it world-wide, not to mention entirely undermine what little trust much of the public have in Washington power elites already.

And given how split the country is already, who knows where that ends up? Civil War Round 2? Okay, probably not, but very, very damaging indeed.


Oh, my estimate of the chances Trump is right? Between zero and none. There'd already be clear evidence, IMHO, and lots of people that aren't Trump fanatics talking about it but there seems to be zero actual evidence of anything remotely big enough.

[Zhaoman]

With hundreds of thousands of legal resident immigrants and hundreds of thousands more illegals in the State, it's pretty much guaranteed there are thousands of fraudulent votes here every year. But it simply can't be proven. It also doesn't matter, as Seattle is totalitarian Democratic the State was never in question.

The real question is, was there enough fraud in swing States to 'steal' the election? And how much damage will it do if it's ever proven?

When it comes to unsubstantiated claims, I find an easy way to sort wheat from chaff is to think about scale and logistics.

Could one illegal immigrant submit a fraudulent vote from their address?
Yes; but I assume they would have to be a special kind of stupid to want to risk exposing themselves or any potential questions about irregularities at their address to the authorities in this way.

Could a sophisticated operation be co-ordinated to overwhelm a polling station with fraudulent votes from thousands of different addresses, possibly requiring significant infiltration or bribery of the polling station staff and independent observers?
It's possible if highly improbable.

Could this operation be a closely co-ordinated national network, large enough to infiltrate a majority of the 100,000+ polling stations to be able to impact county-wide and state-wide outcomes without being detected?
This is getting into tin hat territory and would have taken years to set up and co-ordinate effectively. If proven, it would be a big enough revelation akin to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in that it would usher in a paradigm shift to what was previously thought possible.

A pointed difference with the Cambridge Analytica scandal however is: one was a conclusion formed slowly from a vast swathe of mounting evidence and the other is someone trying to find evidence to fit an existing narrative... I find that's another good way to tell if it's something worth polishing or not.

[Saracen999]

....

Could this operation be a closely co-ordinated national network, large enough to infiltrate a majority of the 100,000+ polling stations to be able to impact county-wide and state-wide outcomes without being detected?
This is getting into tin hat territory and would have taken years to set up and co-ordinate effectively. If proven, it would be a big enough revelation akin to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in that it would usher in a paradigm shift to what was previously thought possible.

....

Don't forget you wouldn't necessarily have to target anything like as many polling stations as that.

If you have targeting data accurate enough (and right) to target swing states, and in this election that came down to a critical handful, then you can swing some of them with relatively modest numbers.

In the UK, for instance, FPTP means that in theory, one single vote could swing a constituency if the majority was one. While that is extremely unlikely, a majority of a few hundred could be overturned with either a few hundred extra votes, or even half of a few hundred if you can get at and change existing votes.

So BoJo's 80-odd majority would be hard to overturn, but where a majority is much lower (such as ofter May called her snap election) a handful of seats could have taken away her overall majority, and even knocking a small majority down by a few seats can make a massive difference .... such as handing the Kingmaker role to the LibDems, or the DUP support being necessary to keep a government in power.

Obviously, the US system is different and actually implementing enough change to keep Trump in number 1600 is a different proposition. But .... changing a couple or three senators from red to blue could dramatically affect Biden's ability to get stuff through. And two critical senatorial seats are still up for grabs in recounts.

Note - I'm not suggesting this did happen. I still see no evidence of it. My point is that relatively small numbers of votes could change the result in marginal constituencies here or swing states on the US providing you pick the right places to try to nobble, and if the result is close enough.

An example is the 1960 Nixon - Kennedy race. The popular vote was only a majority of about 112,000 which resulted in an electoral college majority of 80-ish. Some claims have certainly been made about voter fraud in several states and Nixon's staff wasn't him to contest these for voter fraud but Nixon declined, and conceded.

There's quite a good account of the detail of this and the wrinkles of claim and counter-claim on Wikipedia, and it's far too complex for me to even try to summarise it here. It's a good read, though, and illustrates that, at least according to claims, an organised attempt in a relatively few places could make a big difference, especially given the electoral college system, and especially if you can swing a big state like Texas, Illinois, etc.

[Zhaoman]

Good point but thinking about it this way would be overlooking the reality of the logistics. You have no way of knowing for sure beforehand how many votes could 'swing' a count or even which counties/states will be as close as you say. Even if final margins are thin, the implied logistics beforehand would have to be huge to be able to account for all likely eventualities. Either way, it's not easy and that's the point.

Most rigged elections have crazy results like 80-20 because the victor didn't want to take any chances and it's pretty blatant what has happened. To be able to fine tune exactly the margin of votes would imply something even more sophisticated and insidious. Again, the current situation sounds more skin to a witch hunt looking for evidence rather than evidence driving an investigation

[Saracen999]

Good point but thinking about it this way would be overlooking the reality of the logistics. You have no way of knowing for sure beforehand how many votes could 'swing' a count or even which counties/states will be as close as you say. Even if final margins are thin, the implied logistics beforehand would have to be huge to be able to account for all likely eventualities. Either way, it's not easy and that's the point.

Most rigged elections have crazy results like 80-20 because the victor didn't want to take any chances and it's pretty blatant what has happened. To be able to fine tune exactly the margin of votes would imply something even more sophisticated and insidious. Again, the current situation sounds more skin to a witch hunt looking for evidence rather than evidence driving an investigation

There's no way to be sure of the margins in advance. That's true. But in both the US and UK there are areas that are consistently close. They're the ones that get targeted.

Anybody attempting to massively rig one specific area is asking to be caught, but a more subtle method would be to 'nudge' a result in the desired direction. If you have, for argument's sake, 20 polling stations contributing to one result, you'd nudge a number of them, looking for enough to do the job but not so much as to make it stand out. Do that on a broad basis and you only need some to work, not all.

Entirely agree on your last point, though. My read of the "current situation" is based on comments Trump himself has made over the years. He despises "losers". He's said so in numerous situations, probably reinforced by years of dishing out ego-massaging "you're fired" on the Apprentice. Now, he is one and has been fired himself and, I suspect, his ego just can't cope with that.

I think the odds of there being any grounds to his claims are minimal, at best, but it's a big enough issue to warrant taking the claims seriously, if only to debunk them. Not that they'll ever be entirely debunked. No doubt diehard fans will dismiss any unfavourable investigation as a cover-up. You can't please all of the people, all of the time.

Roll on Jan 20, or whatever the date is, and him being duly booted out.

[MrJim]

A guy on Twitter just made an interesting point: the votes for the Senate and the Presidential election were on the same ballot papers. So you can't accept one, without accepting the other. Unless you're Trump, I guess

[TeePee]

A guy on Twitter just made an interesting point: the votes for the Senate and the Presidential election were on the same ballot papers. So you can't accept one, without accepting the other. Unless you're Trump, I guess

Maybe. But you don't have to vote in every election on the ballot paper. Usually there are about 3% of ballots returned with only the Presidential Election filled out. One claim this year is that some areas are seeing more this year, up to 18% of ballots. If true, that's pretty damning, but not proof of anything.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So will the Democrats also demand a recount in areas where Trump won,because you never know it could have been voter fraud there too??

[j1979]

While it's still (barely) technically possible that Trump wins, I'd entirely agree that, short of some radical revelation, it's vanishingly unlikely. By "radical revelation" I mean that, for example, the Trump campaign can actually come up with some hard evidence of "electoral fraud" and that, so far, has been spectacularly absent. All I see so far is large volumes of bluster, hot-air and seemingly baseless accusations.

Frankly, at this point, I'd be stunned if Biden lost. And I'm not convinced that that's what all the hot air and bluster is about. Call me cynical, but it wouldn't surprise me one tiny little bit if all this .... water-muddying - is more about setting up a situation for a deal that gives Trump benefits, like a no-prosecution deal - if he stops all the cobblers and goes quietly.

As for the Brexit stuff, I'm so bored rigid with that that I'm just waiting to see what actually happens, rather than speculating. Suffice it to say I don't see it your way. I think there is zero chance of an extension. Why? Two reasons. First, Boris is heavily dependent of Brexiteer support and both in the Parliamentary party and the wider country, that would be incendiary. Second, the single biggest effect of any extension will simply be to change when "5 to midnight" is, and therefore, when any deal happens, if it is going to.

As for an EU deal .... dunno. Jury is out. But not for much longer. And without an extension, it'll be done or not done long before Biden gets into power.

And I'm not convinced that Biden's stance will be as suggested. There's not much difference between Democrat and Republican views towards international trade. Both are similar on China, and both have objected to the EU's stance for decades. Remember the difference between pre-election rhetoric and post-winning pragmatics. A deal is likely, eventually, if it both suits both sides, and can be sold domestically by each. What might be dangerous is if there's an NI hard border, but even then, an independent UK stance isn't determined by the dictat of either the EU or the US president. If a UK PM has a choice of crossing the US president (who, in any event, is not the only arbiter of whether s deal occurs) or crossing those in the UK by whose support he remains in office, he's not going to commit domestic political suicide.

The same applies to UK interests on a US deal as it does with an EU deal - advantageous, beneficial and preferable, but not at any price.

And given that we'll know about the EU deal (if sny) pretty shortly anyway, because 5 minutes to midnight is getting pretty close, that's about as much as I can be bothered to say. Wait and see, because whatever happens will happen before much longer, whatever we all think about it.

Looks like that U turn is on the way
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dominic-cu...144054016.html

[Saracen999]

Looks like that U turn is on the way
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dominic-cu...144054016.html

Or, it's wishful thinking by those against Brexit in the first place. If that article is the basis for that assertion, then I'd point out that using as sources a Belgian Green MEP and a close associate of Merkel, also an MEP, is just as likely to be "they would say that, wouldn't they".

On the other hand, official Downing Street comments include (from that article) ....

Absolutely not. That is simply false. The government’s position in relation to the future trade agreement negotiations is unchanged

and

I guess the reason the EU feel the need to say these sorts of things is that they are starting to realise that we meant it when we said there were fundamental principles from which we couldn’t move.

If BoJo sells out Brexit now, he is toast at the next election, and so are the Tories. There will be mass defections, or at a minimum, mass abstentions from voting at all, among those he relied on to get into power. If, indeed, he doesn't get knifed from within the party first.

So all I see from these manouverings is a power play among No. 10 insiders and any significant u-turn is wishful thinking.

That's not to say a deal won't happen. After all, if it was ever going to happen it was always going to be right at the last moment. It always is. The big issue is and always was if both sides can find a degree of compromise that doesn't sacrifice fundamental principles. Neither side wants one, to quote a regular EU pronouncement, "at any price".

Which brings me right back to my point in the last paragraph you quoted. We'll find out shortly. So why waste time and effort speculating now? We'll know for sure in a matter of days, or at most, a few weeks.

[Spreadie]

I read an op-ed this morning suggesting Trump might resign at the last minute, so that the interim President Pence can issue a pardon for Trump vis-a-vis his shady dealings/shenanigans.

[TeePee]

I read an op-ed this morning suggesting Trump might resign at the last minute, so that the interim President Pence can issue a pardon for Trump vis-a-vis his shady dealings/shenanigans.

The President can only pardon Federal crimes. The biggest accusations right now are coming from the NY State AG. Honestly, he's probably just going to fade in to obscurity. They don't need to attack him if he isn't President any more.

Remember in 2016 the claims about Hillary, and prosecuting her? None of that went anywhere. It's political posturing.

[MrJim]

The President can only pardon Federal crimes. The biggest accusations right now are coming from the NY State AG. Honestly, he's probably just going to fade in to obscurity. They don't need to attack him if he isn't President any more.

Remember in 2016 the claims about Hillary, and prosecuting her? None of that went anywhere. It's political posturing.

I've always thought the whole 'Presidential pardon' thing was a bit of a strange aspect of the US system. I mean, I know the president is the head of state as well as government, but issuing pardons at will...it just doesn't seem very democratic (or indeed, moral). More like the workings of an autocracy, imho...