Senate It's Joever: The 2024 US Presidential Election Thread

Well. 15 days.

 

LONG LIVE BARACK OBAMA

 

Yeah, but it's Odd Job's hat...

 

Went today to vote with my daughter. Her 1st Presidential ballot. I've heard many states are breaking records with the early voting.

 

For Rhode Island, you can vote by mail for any reason. They decided to make that a permanent change with the pandemic. Our early voting also started either with this week or last week.

Is it New York State that has the worst primary or party registration system in the country? I know they’re really bad at something election-related that’s a real head scratcher.

 

Calm down Wocky

 

She's punching him! She's nailing it in! She's punishing him! She's tellin' the truth!

 

It's nice to see other states catch up on some elements of democracy. Since the early 1980s, California's allowed anyone to vote absentee.

(Also, one of like four states that has an independent commission doing redistricting)

 

Isn’t Ohio voting on doing that?

 

And really riling the people that'd like to gerrymander.

https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/?planId=recF5lGr0XQoZCeXn

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest change we can make to improve our democracy, at the federal level, with a simple majority vote (if we get around the filibuster, which would be its own victory for democracy) would be to VASTLY increase the size of the House.

It was the only proposed amendment, when they were discussing the Bill of Rights, that George Washington seemed to comment on (in favor) - setting it so each Representative would represent around 30-40k people, growing in size with the country. There was a random error in copying that made it have to restart from scratch when the rest of the Bill of Rights was going through. And then it lost steam. But many Framers saw it as one of the most important amendments to make.

The House did gradually increase in size, until the 1910s when the current cap was put on it.

It was the original first amendment, called “Article the First” when the bill of rights was being drafted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment

If we make the size of the House much larger, then that would also weaken the effects of gerrymandering.

There was no time limit, so technically it’s still pending. It was only one state short of adoption in 1792, but had a clear majority.

But we don’t even need an amendment to increase the size of the House. We just need to do it, like we did so many times.

This is the simple statute that would just need to be repealed/amended to increase the size of the House:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911

This is one thing that doesn’t require an amendment, like most acts to rein in the Senate or Electoral College or Supreme Court (or even campaign finance reform). Some states have tried to do more nonpartisan redistricting aka gerrymandering by state law. But this, plus ending the filibuster, are what we can do by simple majority. (There’s also that interstate compact for the Electoral College but no idea if the Supreme Court would uphold it. There’s the idea of the rotating Supreme Court but that’s also pretty out there. But this is a tried and true action.)

 

Yes, although the Republicans in control have horribly butchered the ballot language to be outrageously biased with scary language like:

• "repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors"
• "eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair [...] districts"
• "establish a new taxpayer-funded commission of appointees required to gerrymander [...] districts to favor either of the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio, according to a formula based on partisan outcomes as the dominant factor"

...and that's just in the first two line items of the ballot language that is three pages long. Oh, and this gem: "require the commission to immediately create new [...] districts in 2025 to replace the most recent districts adopted by the citizens of Ohio through their elected representatives."

Here's the full ballot language (PDF)

 

Yes I think the houses size should be doubled in my opinion. A representative representing 350k people instead of 700k sounds much better doesn’t it?

also people will be like oh but what about the size of congress! Just make it bigger or I don’t know don’t require all of congress to be in person to vote. Have half of congress in DC and half in their home districts. They can vote via teleconference or whatever.

 

guess who has 2 thumbs and has officially signed up to do 8 hours of canvassing in Pennsylvania October 31st-November 3rd

I may be able to do a half day on the 30th and 4th but still I want to do all I can this election

I think in total when all is said and done I’ll have put in 50-60 hours. You can’t say I didn’t do anything

 

Really thinking that someone needs to do something to sway people undecided on voting for Harris, but the time is running out on that. It's really impressive how they sucked all the wind out of the sails and removed the sense of change that it seemed a lot of people had for thinking that there was a more responsive political party.

 

Actually from the polls I have looked at more undecided voters are going to Harris it’s why the other polls don’t make sense to me they and AARP saying Kamala and trump are basically tied in their polls.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...nnon-kamala-harris-donald-trump-b2631923.html

Harris could win easily.

 

There is something weird going on with the polls, such as Democratic Senate candidates vastly outperforming Harris in some swing states. Part of it is that there are more outright junk polls than ever by Republican "firms" looking to make Trump more viable, but there's something else-- whether it's sampling errors or incorrect models or changing behavior in the electorate. This election is pretty much a coin flip right now. It could be end up like 2012 as some people are saying, where the polls showed a closer race than it ended up being; or it could be like 2016.

 

Of course. But she could also lose easily.

It is easy to humor ourselves with the belief that she would be doing better if only she catered to our specific beliefs, or especially to those more common among in these forums overall. But the sick and unfortunate reality is that among people who actually vote, our country is pretty closely divided politically. While we can hope that she will speak up for and defend in practice those things that are right, we must know that we will probably be disappointed. Appealing to everyone when everyone is not right probably means saying things that it would be better not to.

 

Reading that across Connecticut today, lines averaged 45-60 minutes because they were surprised so many would turn out. Apparently the governor left his polling place because of the wait and will vote at a later time. Also hearing that approximately 38,000 votes were cast within the first 5 hours of opening. It started at 10am and went to 6pm today. From the people I saw in line, a lot of white women over the age of 50 are making sure they get out and vote against Trump. Some were even saying things quietly in line. I really think he's going to be shocked by how off the polls are for him. My area was solid Trump in 2016/2020. But this year, barely any Trump Vance and a ton of "Harris/Walz" and "We're not going back". Something else to note, many of these women were with their husbands and they too seemed less inclined to vote Trump. I'm sure some did as I was watching for any stiffened body language as people talked and I saw a few. But the main group that turned out today does not appear interested in going back to 2017.

 

Yeah, there are really weird shifts going on in the electorate. Trump had always done well with elderly voters, but now many polls have Harris and Trump tied or her ahead by a little in this group. Women of all ages are shifting more democratic, while men are shifting almost as much towards Trump. There's something like a 35 point gender gap among young women and young men. Republicans have been gaining with Hispanics since 2016, especially with Hispanic men, and even somewhat with Black men. Plus, there's been a large influx of registrations among young women, especially young minority women, 1st after the Dobbs decision and then after Harris replaced Biden.

Pollsters typically just use the turnout for the prior presidential election with a few tweaks to model the next one, so a poll with a 50/50 tie has each demographic group at pretty much what it was 4 years ago, but what if turnout increases by a third among Black women? All of a sudden, GA and NC would start looking pretty likely for Harris, and the polls wouldn't show it. With the many shifts in the electorate that I list above, it makes very difficult to predict final turnout.

Then, there's early voting vs election day voting. The USA Today poll that I just read a poll that had Harris winning early voting 63% to 34%, but the same poll had her ahead by only 1 point for the final presidential results because so many Trumpers plan to vote on election day.