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54 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

But that's just Florida.  Election officials in Arizona and Pennsylvania have already come out and said that there's no way we'll have a winner on election night.

Your premise still makes no sense.  Many absentee/mail in ballots will be delivered before election day, I know mine will.  And many states can begin processing and even counting those ballots before election day as well, which means their results will precede the in-person election day vote.  Looking over the list and focusing only on competitive states, the following states can begin counting (not just processing) absentee ballots before elections day:  Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio.  The following states begin counting such ballots upon the start of election day - in other words they'll be counted concurrently with the in-person election day vote:  Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin.  The following states begin counting such votes after the polls close, so you do have a point there:  Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire.

Further, you're also not taking into account early voting, which is substantial in pretty much every state these days and definitely should be heightened in our current situation.

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We as a nation need to get out of the habit of expecting election day results. If you do mail in balloting the right way it SHOULD take longer to process, because you're spending time verifying signatures and addresses and making sure each vote is counted correctly. This takes time. 

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2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Your premise still makes no sense.  Many absentee/mail in ballots will be delivered before election day, I know mine will.  And many states can begin processing and even counting those ballots before election day as well, which means their results will precede the in-person election day vote.  Looking over the list and focusing only on competitive states, the following states can begin counting (not just processing) absentee ballots before elections day:  Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio.  The following states begin counting such ballots upon the start of election day - in other words they'll be counted concurrently with the in-person election day vote:  Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin.  The following states begin counting such votes after the polls close, so you do have a point there:  Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire.

As you well know, processing and counting absentee ballots takes longer than in-person ballots.  Across the country we've seen huge delays in getting a final count in primary elections, and those elections have lower turnout and less political stakes than the general election will.  Whether a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania start counting the morning of, or the evening of makes little difference, they won't be close to finished counting by midnight.  In all likelihood, it will take days for some states, weeks for others.  

In 2018, Arizona didn't know the winner of the Senate contest for a week, and that race wasn't super close - Sinema won by 2% in spite of trailing on election night.  It is virtually impossible to imagine that we'll know the winner of AZ, GA, MI, PA, WI on election night.  Maybe if things are running very smoothly we'll have a call for TX, FL, NC, CO and OH.  

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5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Whether a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania start counting the morning of, or the evening of makes little difference, they won't be close to finished counting by midnight.  In all likelihood, it will take days for some states, weeks for others.

Yes, it takes more time, but it's wrong to say it makes no difference when your argument is the results that would be reported on election night would solely be based on the in-person election day vote.  That's simply not how it works.  Moreover, responsible election analysts are not going to cover the results in such a way, and there's still plenty of responsible election analysts.  Hell, there's more than there ever has been as it's become a cottage industry.  Arizona may not have officially announced Sinema as the winner for awhile, but most were pretty confident she'd eventually win by election night.

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19 minutes ago, DMC said:

Arizona may not have officially announced Sinema as the winner for awhile, but most were pretty confident she'd eventually win by election night.

I feel like this is revisionist history.  Go back to the election thread in 2018, even the morning after there was a lot of confusion about how many votes remained uncounted in AZ, and whether those votes changing the outcome was likely.

I have no doubt that responsible election counters like Dave Wasserman will be able to accurately describe whether we know/don't know who won, and to carefully manage expectations that we won't know the results right away.  But the vast, vast majority of Americans have never heard of Dave Wasserman and don't care what he thinks.  If Trump says the election is being stolen, there is a huge portion of the country that is going to give him every benefit of the doubt.  Trump doesn't need to clearly win, he only needs to make it unclear whether was defeated and he'll win by default.  

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1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

I feel like this is revisionist history. 

I distinctly remember being confident Sinema would win on election night.  

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

But the vast, vast majority of Americans have never heard of Dave Wasserman and don't care what he thinks.

No, but they base their perception of election results on what the media says, and most of the media bases their coverage of election results on people like Dave Wasserman.  Trump will of course say the election is stolen - he started saying it before the election in 2016 and then he won.  And of course his base will believe him.  That's still only 40% of the electorate.  Is it a concern that that will lead to violence and other nonsensical conflict?  Certainly, always has been.  But the numbers on who will vote in-person on election day do not move the needle on that in any significant way.

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1 minute ago, DMC said:

But the numbers on who will vote in-person on election day do not move the needle on that in any significant way.

You seriously don't think that Trump being ahead by double digits in FL, PA, MI and AZ at midnight on election night wouldn't strengthen Trump's hand for his "election is being stolen from us!!!" narrative?  That strikes me as willfully naive.  Particularly when I'm sure that OANN (possibly FoxNews as well) won't have guys like Dave Wasserman talking, but will instead be interviewing Ron DeSantis about what a big win Trump is seeing.  

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2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

You seriously don't think that Trump being ahead by double digits in FL, PA, MI and AZ at midnight on election night wouldn't strengthen Trump's hand for his "election is being stolen from us!!!" narrative?  That strikes me as willfully naive.  Particularly when I'm sure that OANN (possibly FoxNews as well) won't have guys like Dave Wasserman talking, but will instead be interviewing Ron DeSantis about what a big win Trump is seeing.  

First, I seriously don't think Trump will be ahead [ETA: by double digits - he may well be slightly ahead] in any swing states by midnight on election night for the reasons mentioned above.  Second, I don't think it's naive to think 60% of voters (and a large percentage of adults) are going to take their cues from what the media is saying rather than the least trusted president since...well, since there's been polling on that.

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1 minute ago, DMC said:

First, I seriously don't think Trump will be ahead [ETA: by double digits - he may well be slightly ahead] in any swing states by midnight on election night for the reasons mentioned above.  Second, I don't think it's naive to think 60% of voters (and a large percentage of adults) are going to take their cues from what the media is saying rather than the least trusted president since...well, since there's been polling on that.

I hope you're right, but it's hard to share your optimism.  

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Just now, Maithanet said:

I hope you're right, but it's hard to share your optimism.  

I dunno, everyone seems to be freaking out because Trump made a rather predictable tweet.  I did not expect you to freak out because of some esoteric result in a poll from a rather random firm.

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4 minutes ago, DMC said:

I dunno, everyone seems to be freaking out because Trump made a rather predictable tweet.  I did not expect you to freak out because of some esoteric result in a poll from a rather random firm.

I was definitely worried about this long before Trump's tweet.  The poll just made clear where I see the easiest place for Trump to attack the election.  

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