34 thoughts on “Election update!”

      1. Yeah, they’d be better leaders. Then they’d have done a skit with a freak and a wet blanket.

    1. So did The Donald color that map? It’s covered with undisciplined and unrelated random squiggles and he seems incapable of coloring within the lines. For any reason. Ever.

    1. There is something called the “Red Mirage”, which is a situation in which the early results seem to favor Republicans, but Democrats tend to catch up and surpass them. This is because Republican-leaning counties and voting districts tend to be rural and have far lower populations and population densities. It takes a lot less time to total the results for a county with a population of 25,000 than one with a population of 250,000 or more. This means that the larger population centers, which tend Democratic, are slower to report their final results, and this gives the impression that Republicans are ahead in early reporting. Republicans often use this as the basis for making accusations of voter fraud and election fraud.

  11. I got home at 9:30 PM from my polling site after being there for fifteen hours (starting at 6:00 AM). To explain: I am a Chief Inspector of Elections in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which means that I am in charge of a voting ward¹ here supervising a staff of Inspectors of Elections. In other states, we’d be called a poll chief and poll workers but there is a reason for our somewhat hifalutin’ titles: we are agents and officers of the state, and by Wisconsin law, we are empowered to enforce the rules of order in our sites and have the authority to order voters, poll watchers and others to cease any disruptive behavior and, if necessary, can call on law enforcement to remove or arrest anyone violating those rules. This can be as simple as asking voters to remove their MAGA or Harris/Walz hats and buttons to detaining people making a disturbance until the cops respond to our call.

    My ward is located in a neighborhood – Riverwest – that is quiet but full of people with deep political sensibilities. I call it “the place where aging hippies come to die”. Many of our older residents were hippies and activists once upon a time and have never quite given up those ways.

    Despite the large numbers of absentee and early voting, our turnout rate was at about 50%, and we had a list of hundreds of early voters who would not be showing up on election day. Add to that almost a hundred election day registrations. and we came pretty close to 90%. Despite rumors of ill-trained “poll watchers” and others intending to show up and disrupt voting sites, we had a quiet day, with the biggest problem being people overvoting their ballots (overvoting is marking votes for multiple candidates for the same office – we spoil the ballot and give the voter a chance to do it over). Our observers were well-behaved, and since most of my staff live in the neighborhood, the voters included many of our friends and neighbors. We had two members of the media visit and ask a few questions. I also directed my staff to periodicall check outside the building for any suspicious going on.

    At the end of the day, Kamala Harris got 488 votes to Trump’s 31 with the rest going to minor-party candidates, write-ins or undervoting (undervoting is skipping a vote for an office on the ballot with no vote; unlike overvoting, it is not considered a voter error). Although there were reports of bomb threats made against some Wisconsin polling sites, none were received by mine. After sorting and checking out the ballots, the only thing that was left was to go home, have a drink, and turn on the news to find out how atypical the results in our ward were.

    ¹ In Wisconsin, voting districts are called wards, not precincts. Police and aldermanic districts, which in other places are called precincts and wards in Milwaukee are called police districts and aldermanic districts.

    1. Thank you for this excellent and interesting full report at the end of a very long day, E.A. And thank you very much for your service!

      1. I’ve been an Inspector of Elections for eighteen years now (which means there are people voting today who weren’t born when I worked my first election) and Chief for four. I have an excellent crew and couln’t do my work without them and their support.

  12. That’s a lot of yellow. Jeb! is doing better than I expected, but not as well as I’d hoped.

  14. Well, I am so depressed by Trump’s victory. It’s totally surreal for me that America would choose a man devoid of any recognizable virtue (except for being too stupid to act consistently on a given agenda, but that’s what his VP is for I guess).
    I am not even American, but I believe that the (free) world needs a healthy leadership from the USA in these challenging times, not someone so besotted to the various autocracies and so venal.
    I fear Ukraine is doomed and so is the liberal Western order…
    Best wishes to all.

  15. What a disaster. I feel so sorry ( and dare I say, embarrassed ) for you and all right thinking Americans.
    I think a quotation from our greatest Statesman of the 20th century, Churchill, is apposite:- ” ” Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it. “.
    Trump and those who he is likely to appoint to his Administration know no history. The US and the World will suffer the consequences.

  17. Waiting to see how long it will take someone on the Progressive left to blame this on the “Jewish vote” or the “Jewish lobby”.

    1. There are sections on the left that will cry and stomp their feet at how fascist this all is, but spent the last 4 years spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda and encouraging people to vote for Jill Stein…

  20. https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/2024/10/31/study-finds-use-of-gender-neutral-latinx-by-democratic-pols-is-costing-them-votes/
    By this autumn, Democratic pols were at last avoiding the worst DEIspeak, such as the laughable “Latinx”. But, as this survey implies, the damage had already been done during the past 5 years or so. Many Latino voters, especially malesx, responded by voting Trumpx. This was apparently most evident in Pennsylvania.

    Another Democratic Party own goal was the party’s determined effort to hide Joe
    Biden’s natural, age-related mental decline until it became glaringly obvious. This produced an impression of stealth that Harris, with all her skillful evasions, could not dispel. The Repubs, in contrast, do not hide the fact that their Maximum Leader is an aggressive, narcissistic windbag—thus they projected a kind of “authenticity”.

    1. While I agree, I think this is a delicate issue. A president’s inner circle cannot openly advertise that the commander-in-chief is incompetent. That could potentially embolden the enemies of the US on the international stage.

      But he could have/should have gracefully stepped aside during the Democratic primary.

  21. I find myself wondering, … does Trump now believe that the Vice President has the constitutional authority to toss out electors on Jan. 6?

    1. Great question!

      I also wonder if Harris will decide to invoke the 25th amendment and take the claim as the first female president.

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