Ursula’s optimization problem
Ursula Kwong-Brown, a composer and multimedia artist, had an optimization problem. She’s spent over 10 years in higher education and often had ...
Geek’s Guide 2020, version 2.2 (Monday 10:30pm)
Morning, everyone. One day to go. I’m holding at Fauci 2. You?
Here’s version 2.2 of the PEC Geek’s Guide To The Election. (doc, PDF) State legislative races have been added.
Other useful guides: the PEC 50-State Guide, Taniel’s What’s On The Ballot, and what David Leonhardt is watching.
In comments, please post your favorite places to get information tomorrow. And stay off the Garden State Parkway!
Topics:
Vermont started counting absentee ballots 30 days before the election. Change for 2020 due to COVID. Last week Secretary of State Jim Condos sent the letter disputing that Vermont had made no changes due to COVID re Kavanaugh using invalid information to make his decision., Vermont 1) sent absentee ballots to every registered voter and is allowing early counting of those ballots.
It isn’t about only the top of the ticket. It’s also about down ballot and control of redistricting. So, for me, I’d say 7. Hair on fire. 😉
Hi Sam about 3 on that scale,I feel somewhat confident but with a grain of caution..Tomorrow pm will be watching MSNBC and this site,Kos,and a few others. COVID-19 is getting really bad in the Midwest,I Hope people listen to what Dr Fauci has said,,He should maybe resign before he gets fired. So hoping for a Big night tomorrow.We are almost at the finish line!
I am hoping you are correct this year, I can’t handle another disappointment like 2016.
To be frank, that’s not the point in 2020. Get over 2016. Do more than sit around hoping for some website to be correct.
Although it’s not my state, I have been following the exemplary analysis of Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent. His blog brings clarity to the early-vote numbers.
Today Ralson posted his Nevada election prediction – not just for the Presidential race but for the state’s downticket races.
I really do wish there was a “Jon Ralston” in every state doing such “deep into the weeds” election analysis!
That said, Stephen Fowler has good stuff on Georgia, as has UMichVoter on Florida and Michigan.
Been looking for similar for Pennsylvania and Texas… (Yes, I know Taniel has a good Google Doc spreadsheet.) Any suggestions?
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In addition to PEC and Sam Wang, I have been following Rick Hasen (election law), and Marc E. Elias on his team’s lawsuits and counter-lawsuits to protect voting rights.
Michael McDonald’s Election Project’s state-by-state tabulation of the early vote, augmented by John Couvillon’s own tally.
And of course Nate Cohn of NYT Upshot, Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report, Nate Silver of you-know-where.
Especially noteworthy is Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent blog Letters From an American, and the many relevant essays by Rebecca Solnit.
I hope I don’t sound like a junkie. /s
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PS. I really do wonder what it would take to inspire a respectable American voter turnout? And by that I mean Scandinavian level: 80 percent! If not in 2020, then when??
I’ve read this will be the highest turnout since only land owning white men were allowed to vote. I’ve seen compelling arguments that the electoral college is still about Jim Crow. There is a difference between SAYING we want everyone to vote and be counted and MEANING it.
Q. What is the difference between democracy and feudalism?
A. In a democratic country, every vote counts.
Whereas in a feudal state, every count votes.
Thank you Sam, I really appreciate you making one of these again this year.
I’d say I’m a 3 on the Fauci scale. I feel hopeful, but am a little concerned about shenanigans. I think (hope) the concern is overblown, but I’m a worrier.
4-4.5 on Dr Fauci scale
reasons briefly:
Fear due to legal shenanigans if Ds “win” is close. Frightened of possibility of reaction of some (to many?) Rs if Ds “win”, esp. if R leadership does nothing to support election validity. Fear of ramifications and Ds loss of faith in our system if Rs win either WH or Senate. Even more, either way, difficulty of restoring effectiveness of govt. after election
Will continue to scan some of sites noted above, but might not be able to bring myself to do so for a day or two, depending…
thanks to all who comment!
I will be looking at https://advancedsymbolics.com/us-election-2/ before the election tomorrow. A machine learning based system that samples 250k social media feeds and creates signals. They got it right in 2016, for Brexit and for the last canadian election. They are prediciting 367 biden. A company named quantcube is also doing this (but not publicly available). Dr. Wang i would be interested in your thoughts on this.
I’m sure many readers have heard that federal authorities are erecting an non-scalable fence around the White House for the election. Hmm… Do they know something we don’t know? As in the “fix” is in.
On a related but more serious note – worst case scenario – hackers corrupt the voting or counting machines and trump wins by a narrow margin. How would anyone know? I know at least some of the servers are NOT connected to the internet but as we know anything is possible.
Judge rules a pet likely pooped in Johnny Depp’s bed, not Amber Heard
https://pagesix.com/2020/11/02/judge-rules-a-pet-likely-pooped-in-johnny-depps-bed-not-heard/
The trial was in England. Too bad. I think this would be a good case for our current Supreme Court. We could have gleaned a lot of nuance about the future direction of the court with a ruling in this case. It may have swayed undecided voters if court choice was an issue for them.
Just a reminder – it’s not too late to do phone banking tomorrow, to help get every voter to the polls.
I’ve done about 6 hours of phone banking in the past week. It’s sometimes frustrating, but — if not this year, when?!? I’m with Sam – do Everything you possibly can to make a difference this year.
CAUTION to Houston & Harris County voters: The drive-through voting centers will Not be open on Election Day, except one – at the Toyota Center.
The federal judge upheld the validity of the drive-through centers under the Texas Election Code for Early Voting. But he indicated that the result should be different for Election Day voting.
Wisely, the director of elections for Harris County has taken this indication of vulnerability to heart, and will not open the drive-through centers except the Toyota Center on Election Day.
The Republicans already took their appeal on an emergency basis to the Fifth Circuit, which has already denied it. The next step could be the Supreme Court. I don’t think that they would step in to invalidate 127,000 already-cast votes at the drive-through centers. They will feel better about this decision because of the closure of the drive-through centers on Election Day: no continuing violation that needs to be policed.
A good site for PA
http://www.politicalsalad.com/2020/11/state-analysis-pennsylvania.html
I live in PA and plan to vote in person tomorrow. An early clue to which way the winds are blowing would come from counties like mine (Berks) NW of metro Philadelphia. The city of Reading is heavily Hispanic while the rural expanse is mainly white and conservative
The registration breakdown is D (114765) R (101768) Ind (40330). In 2016 the breakdown was somewhat similar and Trump beat Clinton 52 to 42 (96626 to 78437). Generally it is a closer 50/50 split. Turnout was about 70% and huge numbers of Dems/Ind swung Trump
We have about 60000 mail in ballots to be counted and I expect this can be done overnight on Tuesday. If Biden fights to a tie or wins narrowly in our county then it is game over for Trump. There are multiple counties in the eastern part of our state with similar demographics
Allentown (Lehigh) Hazleton/Wilkes-Barre (Luzerne) will also break similarly. If that happens there is not enough votes in the Appalachian red counties to make up the deficit.However if BucksMontChesCo breaks heavily to Biden all of this is academic