Election Day, Le Troisième Jour: UPDATED Recap, Open Thread, and Latest News

by · November 5, 2020

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Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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153 Responses

  1. Pinky says:
    November 5, 2020 at 9:24 am

    I’m content so far. This has been kind of a rebuke to both parties. Trump can’t feel like it’s an endorsement even if he ekes out a win, and the Dems expected a wave and didn’t get it. I don’t have that same Iran-Iraq War feeling I did during the 2016 election, but I know that once the administrations start getting assembled it’s downhill from here.

    Remember that recounts are mandatory in some states if the results are close, and that Democrats are probably more likely to have same-day registered, or voted by mail, or some other irregularity. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of Biden votes get challenged for legitimate reasons, but it would lead to a greater feeling that the Republicans were trying to steal it. And there are going to be double votes, people who sent in a ballot but wanted to make sure they got counted so they went to the polling location too. There are going to be miscounts that were caused by the chaos. A lot of things that people who trust each other could deal with, but will freak out people who are at each other’s throats.

    I think Biden won it, and if he did, I expect Trump to fight it until it’s clear he lost, then acquiesce. There will be no contentious transfer of power like a certain crowd of idiots are expecting, and the idiots won’t apologize. That said, if Trump does lose then spends the next four years claiming it didn’t happen, my strongest Iran-Iraq feelings will have been confirmed, that he and Clinton are equally monsters.Report

    • North in reply to Pinky says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:19 pm

      It is what it is. Recounts do happen but Biden’s margins are big enough that he’ll probably be fine. Recounts usually move vote totals around by hundreds of votes, not thousands or tens of thousands.Report

      • George Turner in reply to North says:
        November 5, 2020 at 12:51 pm

        Probably not this time. It looks like Trump won Wisconsin and Michigan if not for massive 100K vote dumps that went 100% Biden, 0% Trump, which election officials refuse to explain. Trump got 200,000+ more votes in Wisconsin this time than last time, and was leading by 4%. Then wee-AM ballots arrived, in one case from a plain white van with out-of-state plates, which is on video, while ballot counters had been temporarily cleared from the building.

        So far the oldest Michigan voter was born in 1828, but we’ve already found plenty who were over 110 years old, and who died back in the 1980’s. Thousands of those are turning up. The right is all over this, including the weaponized autism of 4/chan, which has written and distributed scripts to root out dead voters at a rate of four searches per second. Each dead person seems to result in a Tweet about finding another one. A lot of the dead people will no doubt have been voting in elections for decades, with their names in some file drawer of go-to fraud.

        We’re also seeing large counties where the number of votes exceeded the number of eligible voters by wide margins. Not registered voters, eligible voters, and with turnouts exceeding 125%.

        We’ve also got postal service investigation into video confessions that postal workers have been told to segregate all ballots (which are still arriving) to postmark them Nov 3rd. That will probably go to the Supreme Court, because that is a case of government workers rigging ballots, and whether all such possibly tainted ballots must be discarded, or whether it requires a total revote.

        Other problems is that election officials denied Trump’s people access to the vote counting process, which is illegal. Governor Whitmer banned GOP people from observing anything, literally had them barred from the buildings. That is blatantly illegal, and was done to cover up the massive fraud that was occurring inside.

        Trump isn’t going to conceded, he’s going to uncover massive, massive election fraud, because that’s what multiple data sets indicate. For example, Trump was outperforming his polling by 5.9% in Florida, 6.2% in Ohio, 3.8% in Texas, and by nearly double digits in some states. And yet the pollsters happened to be spot on in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where ballots keep showing up out of nowhere exactly when needed? That is wildly unlikely.

        Trump isn’t going to back down, and hundreds of thousands of Biden votes will have to be pulled back during the audits which election officials won’t be able to avoid.

        Those vast arenas of Trump voters that looked like an Army? They’re not going to be intimidated by corrupt election officials. They are going to show up armed and in force, and they’re never going to go away.

        Even if Biden somehow makes it all the way to an electoral college victory, the investigations will continue, and those will show that Trump won easily, and that Biden, who already is looking at multiple felonies for bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion, was elected purely through massive voter fraud. He still won’t control the Senate, and the Supreme Court is 6-3.

        The illegitimate President route will make 2021, 2022, and 2023 far worse than 2020 every thought about becoming. It might make the 1860’s seem like good years in America.Report

        • Pinky in reply to George Turner says:
          November 5, 2020 at 1:08 pm

          As I’ve said, the press gets every emerging story wrong for the first 48 hours. So a lot of the specific details you’re relaying are probably wrong. We all should want to find out what happened, get the most accurate results we can, then accept them.

          I heard an otherwise-rational person yesterday say that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. No. That’s the kind of nonsense that may help a party but hurt a country. We’ve all got to call that stuff out.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to Pinky says:
            November 5, 2020 at 1:32 pm

            I don’t know how each state does it, but after 2000, IIRC most states started implementing much tighter ballot controls. Elections officials have strong incentives to keep everything transparent and above board, and ballots are no longer simply pieces of printed paper, but have tracking and control numbers so they can’t be copied or merely printed with new numbers. The whole thing can be rigorously audited. I suspect that in these close races, the delay is less about the counting and more about knowing that they will be under scrutiny and they are making sure the coming audit will be as clean as possible.

            Of course, those who are sure of fraud will simply assume the delay is about hiding evidence of the fraud, but a lack of evidence of a crime is not evidence of a conspiracy to commit a crime.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
              November 5, 2020 at 3:41 pm

              CNN had one of their people on site interviewing a local election official (I think it was in Fulton County, GA but don’t quote me on that). He asked the official what stopped someone involved in the counting from just stuffing a stack of ballots in their jacket and walking off with them. The official explained all the chain of custody and how different people do different jobs (e.g., opening the envelopes, flattening the ballots, running them through the machine) so unless all those folks were involved in the effort, it’d be quickly identified not only that it happened, but who did it. So, yea, these places have their shit together.

              I will say that CNN’s fawning over the ballot counters is getting a little silly. I understand they’re doing everything to legitimize the counting effort (because the counting effort IS legitimate) but they’re talking about these folks like they’re a potty training toddler.

              “These are good people. You may be upset it’s slow. But they’re working hard. We’re proud of them. Look at them? Little busy bees. Hey… you… good job buddy!” It’s kinda funny except it’s not.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 4:03 pm

                Also too, in even the tightest of races, we’re talking about thousands of votes.

                Which is why “vote fraud” is so absurd. When you walk through the process of how one would go about planning and executing it, the logistics immediately become impossible.

                You have to know in advance which states will become critical, then which counties and precincts, then manage to have dozens or even hundreds of people coordinated and acting together.
                And then you have to switch ballots by the tens of thousands to have any impact.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:
                November 5, 2020 at 4:12 pm

                I *DO* think that stuff like “10,000 registered voters, 10,824 votes cast” is fishy, though.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 5, 2020 at 4:48 pm

                Right, and that is one of those red flags.

                Do we have a case of “10,000 registered voters, 10,824 votes cast” in this election?Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 5, 2020 at 4:51 pm

                What’s the date on the registered voter count? Same day registration? Provisional ballots? Cross-jurisdiction voting centers?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:
                November 5, 2020 at 4:47 pm

                Yep, and that smacks right into the whole, “2 people can keep a secret if one of them is dead”.

                I mean, if Hillary is stealing the election for Kamala, I’d expect to see the bodies start dropping by now.Report

          • George Turner in reply to Pinky says:
            November 5, 2020 at 1:45 pm

            The “press” isn’t really covering it all. The left probably has no idea about the amount of fraud that’s being uncovered continuously. Philly just lost a lawsuit where they had been keeping Republicans from observing the vote count. The election officials had sued to keep from being watched. Now why on Earth would they do that, if not to hide all the fraud.

            A poll watcher in Michigan explained how they’re seeing the counters fill out ballots that don’t even have voter information on them, not even a name. They pull up voter registration data and write it in. In Antrim county, Michigan, where Trump beat Hillary by 65-35 points, Trump lost to Biden 65-35. The county officials were going to let that stand until people pointed out the glaring problem with it. So county election officials said they’d talk to the company that provided the voting software and “get back to you.”

            And such glaring errors can’t be reported on Twitter. A Wisconsin county turned in a vote dump that was 138,339 ballots for Biden, 0 for Trump. Twitter banned everything related to that number. It turns out that a county can just type in any absurd number they want (they’d multiplied Biden votes by 10 in that one), and as long as it’s for Biden, and it gets added to the vote totals.

            Fortunately, if a member of both Houses of Congress agree, a state’s results can be challenged when the electoral college meets. There’s a 100% chance of that happening.Report

        • North in reply to George Turner says:
          November 5, 2020 at 1:25 pm

          Heh, yeah and when Hillary reveals she’s wearing Biden like a leisure suit and it was he all along running for the Presidency again then things will really become clear.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to George Turner says:
          November 5, 2020 at 1:26 pm

          Do you have evidence of ANY of this?

          The number of people who are saying we’re witnessing the biggest, most brazen election theft through fraud but who can’t offer any evidence is astounding.

          One guy on FB even went so far as to cite the “absence of evidence fallacy” as if it actually supported his position.Report

          • George Turner in reply to Kazzy says:
            November 5, 2020 at 1:49 pm

            Yes, there’s tons of evidence, on video. There is testimony, on video. You just can’t mention any of it on Facebook or Twitter, because they have teams hard at work to prevent “election misinformation”.

            But in the real world outside Big Tech’s reach, it’s a torrent of evidence of unbelievable election fraud. Instapundit and many other sites have good roundups of all the links, and the commenters keep dropping more in.

            I’ve got one BitChute dump of over cases so far, and I haven’t even had time to look at those.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to George Turner says:
              November 5, 2020 at 3:37 pm

              Well, this isn’t FaceBook or Twitter so… share away!Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to George Turner says:
              November 5, 2020 at 4:49 pm

              Let’s see those links!Report

              • George Turner in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:15 pm

                I think I’m limited in links per post without hitting the spam filters, so here’s one from Powerline. That post focuses on highly improbably turn-out numbers. Trump rallied like heck in Wisconsin and drew huge crowds, huge. He got 200,000 more votes there than during the highly contested 2016 election. He was winning it handily, with a lead of 4%, and then 100K to 0 ballot drops started showing up. Always enough to give Biden the lead.

                These are mail-in ballots that can be tracked back to the voter. That is going to happen whether Biden is inaugurated or not.

                Also, as I said, periodically check Instpundit and any other conservative sites for round ups, plus lots of new cases popping up in comments.

                I think perhaps too many Democrats didn’t play sports, where you’re taught that winning is good, losing is okay, but cheating will see you condemned for all eternity. Democrats are selecting their worst possible option – winning through cheating, when the fraud can be easily uncovered later.

                They’ll get no upside, because McConnell won’t let them, and they’ll get a huge, huge downside, like losing the House and facing a supermajority in the Senate after 2022, assuming that Biden even stays in. The last President who won through vote fraud didn’t finish his term, though not because of the election shenanigans.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to George Turner says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:47 pm

                “…highly improbable…”

                Maybe the Falcons should sue for the Super Bowl trophy.Report

              • George Turner in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 6:25 pm

                Here’s a very interesting use of Benford’s law, which makes the Biden fraud stand out all over the place.

                Tweet

                In natural numeric sequences, of almost any type, there’s a descending frequency distribution of the first digit. 1’s are much more common than 9’s. Trump’s vote reports follow the law accurately, as do votes for other candidates. But Biden’s don’t. When his precinct or county vote totals get reported, they usually start with a 5 or a 6. In Chicago Biden’s numbers start with a 2, 3, or 4.

                Only humans making up numbers produce that pattern, which is widely used to detect fraud in scientific papers.

                The Democrats problem is that the fraudsters in these cities really aren’t very bright, and they’re a combination of methods honed decades ago, plus a few new kinds made possible by the massive mail-in scheme this year. They’ve also never faced serious investigations because it was all just local politics and nobody wanted to make waves.

                But now we have DHS and other people looking at it, we have Project Veritas recording the fraudsters confessing on video, we have camera video of the fraud as it’s being carried out, and we have all kinds of data analysis that makes the fraud stick out glaringly.

                Democrats have about as much chance of pulling it off as Shia LeBouf had against the weaponized autism of 4/chan.

                All those mail-in ballots will be looked at. Signatures will be compared. People will go to prison.

                And the machines that have been running in those states will be put under a microscope, just like Florida was in 2000, but now focused on rampant fraud instead of screwed up voting procedures. How would you like to be a prominent Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania politicians when the light of the whole country shines down upon your attempts to utterly disenfranchise half your state, as your voters wonder how long you’ve been doing it?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to George Turner says:
                November 5, 2020 at 6:46 pm

                Slow your roll there, Serpico. Benford is handy, but with election data, first digits get tricky.

                https://datatodisplay.com/blog/politics/benfords-law-elections-1/Report

              • George Turner in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
                November 5, 2020 at 8:31 pm

                On down in that Tweet they show six candidates in Chicago, and only Joe Biden’s nubmers are grossly deviating from Benford’s law.

                This kind of thing will go on over the coming months, and perhaps the coming years if Biden is ruled the winner, and we’ll all get to play Columbo (played by Peter Falk). Crime always leaves clues, and these low-level state voter frauds are generally very sloppy because nobody really goes back and checks them, and most of the people committing the fraud on the ground are not-very-bright people who are in it because it’s easy money for beer and smokes. But Biden needed an enormous number of votes, and quickly, and that means sloppy, and sloppy criminals leave abundant clues.

                For example, dropping off a tranche of ballots that are 25,000 Biden and 0 Trump is something a judge would take as reason to proceed. If there was a ballot measure between getting a million dollars or face cancer, face cancer would get at least 500 votes in any real vote in this country. The only way you get zero Trump votes is if nobody filling out the ballots was getting paid to mark Trump, because that would be a counterproductive use of fraud funds. “Isn’t this going to be too freakin’ obvious?!” isn’t a question that popped into their heads.Report

        • Mike Schilling in reply to George Turner says:
          November 5, 2020 at 2:50 pm

          Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:
            November 5, 2020 at 3:11 pm

            I hope he got paid up front.Report

          • George Turner in reply to Mike Schilling says:
            November 5, 2020 at 3:27 pm

            And the judge is legally correct. A lot of people are filing cases who don’t know how courts operate. They need standing and an actual case, with evidence that passes muster, aimed at an achievable ruling. So judges will filter through cases that are the equivalent of Code Pink suing to stop the Iraq war because it’s illegal.

            However, much better cases will be arriving. Unbeknownst to almost anyone, apparently, is that DHS had huge teams ready for this kind of thing, and they’d planted undercover officers who are documenting it all. Their interest is prosecuting the officials who are interfering in a free and fair election.

            It’s also been said that ballots were watermarked by DHS so they can sort through them to find the fake ones, and that they didn’t tell people about it. The state-level people who’ve been getting away with voter fraud for years probably weren’t expecting federal law enforcement to be embedded in their operations.

            So the counting may be over, the but the retractions and prosecutions aren’t by any means over. This is bigger than Florida 2000. There will be obsessive law enforcement people and media investigators pouring over everything for a year or more, just as they did in Florida, staring at each ballot and making notes. Calling people at home. Interviewing people involved. Heck, we’ve already been getting such interviews, with people talking about how much they get paid for each ballot, how their operation works, which politicians are involved, and how much they make in a typical election cycle.

            If Biden is put in office through massive voter fraud, everybody will be made keenly aware of it, non-stop. Everyone in the Senate will be aware of it, everyone at work will be aware of it, kids will accost each other on the playgrounds over it. They’ll come home saying “Biden isn’t the REAL president. He’s a crook.” It would be too big to ignore, and of course Trump will not ever shut up about it. He’ll be tweeting ever day to the 68 million people who voted for him, and they’ll retweet it to Democrats. There will be polls asking “Do you think Biden was elected through voter fraud?” That number is north of 50%, Democrats will be doomed, and will likely get crushed in 2022 over it, losing the House and perhaps seeing a Republican super-majority in the Senate. At that point Biden, if he’s still even coherent, will just be the butt of jokes.

            But until then, Biden will be able to accomplish – well, pretty much nothing because McConnell still holds the Senate and the Supreme Court is 6-3, and Biden will have zero remaining political capital, and Harris even less, while Democrats will have no focus for their outrage, except perhaps Nancy.

            They’d be better off with Trump in office so they could continue their “resistance”, and distance themselves from both Biden’s scandals and the election fraud, make huge gains in 2022, expanding in the House and taking the Senate, while they jockey to come up with a highly electable candidate for 2024.

            This is where wise people would realize it’s better not to get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, just because they couldn’t exercise enough self-control to try and get away with something, when their parents were by no means stupid.Report

            • Mike Schilling in reply to George Turner says:
              November 5, 2020 at 4:22 pm

              You buried the lede. DHS is working for the Trump campaign?Report

              • George Turner in reply to Mike Schilling says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:01 pm

                DHS is working for the Federal Government to prevent election fraud. If your side is committing massive election fraud, as evidenced by the tons of reports coming out about it, including videos and simple data analysis (Wisconsin somehow utterly smashed the all-time voter turnout record for any state in the Union).

                Based on vote totals, Biden was so vastly more popular than Obama or Hillary that Obama should’ve resigned and let him take over. Except in states that counted votes accurately and promptly, where nobody cared to show up for Biden. He was apparently only super-popular in states that are still having mail-in ballots arrive in unmarked vans.

                You’re not going to able to sell the idea that Biden won the election, probably not even to lots of people who voted for Biden. The attempt is going to badly damage the Democrat party among moderates, the young, and likely some other key demographics.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to George Turner says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:23 pm

                That’s not DHS’s job, or anything close to their jurisdiction. If Trump actually ordered that, it’s banana republic stuff, and a good example of why he has to go.Report

              • George Turner in reply to Mike Schilling says:
                November 5, 2020 at 6:14 pm

                Actually it is. If you recall, there was a political party after 2016 that kept screaming “Russians! Russians! Russians!” As a result, that party insisted that we take strong steps to make sure Russians! don’t interfere in our elections, and one of those steps was to give DHS a huge rule in ensuring election security.

                Looks like that will bite them this time.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:
    November 5, 2020 at 10:59 am

    Trump can’t feel like it’s an endorsement even if he ekes out a win…

    Really? His stock in trade is declaring a grandiose win even when he has a shite sandwich.Report

    • Aaron David in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:01 pm

      You are right, he will bluff and bluster his way to whatever happens. And he should go to court for any perceived irregularities, we are a nation of laws and they need to be followed. No matter if people dislike him, it really isn’t any different than Black people being outraged if they are treated unfairly under color of the law.

      I have no idea if the claims of vote fraud are real or not (partisans, yo) but he does owe it to his voters to follow through on his election. And if he loses, I am sure he will bitch and moan, but will still leave when it is time. And if that happens he will go full Algore and continue to claim he was robbed at every opportunity.

      And so any close election goes.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Aaron David says:
        November 5, 2020 at 12:05 pm

        This might be a great opportunity to start investigating politicians once they leave office…

        I’m just saying…Report

        • Aaron David in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 5, 2020 at 12:26 pm

          What would we investigate Trump for? We (FCVOW) already know(!) he is a badorangeman who is bad.

          All joking aside if there are legitimate reasons to investigate him, do it. But, partisans will be partisans and no one will see that an investigation of their Jesus, no matter the color, is anything but illegitimate. And that their satan, no matter the color, is the font of all evil.Report

  3. Jaybird says:
    November 5, 2020 at 11:06 am

    Are we still talking about this? Boring!

    We should be talking about…

    And then I went to twitter and then I went to Reddit and then I thought about movies and jeez louise there’s nothing else to talk about aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaReport

  4. Jaybird says:
    November 5, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    Let’s talk about drugs real quick: Here’s a map of the various marijuana laws around the country.

    There are 7 states where Marijuana remains fully illegal (Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina).
    Two states have it decriminalized (North Carolina and Nebraska).

    Leaving 41 states and Warshington DC to have different laws.

    How in the heck is it still Schedule 1?Report

    • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:32 pm

      Why does the comment say “12:23 p.m.” when it is only 11:30 a.m. EST?Report

    • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:37 pm

      Some of that is really misleading. Marijuana is, in fact, _fully_ illegal and criminalized here in Georgia.

      It’s CBD oil that is legal.

      Indiania is the same way. Probably others.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:56 pm

      It’s schedule 1 because the House and Senate don’t always actually listen to the people they are supposed to represent.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:57 pm

      NJ excitedly celebrated legalizing recreational use here.

      Then we saw that Oregon did and suddenly the “Well that escalated quickly” meme from Anchorman was flying around.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
        November 5, 2020 at 2:46 pm

        When Colorado legalized it, only kinda legalized it. Like, if you worked or contracted for CDOT (snowplows, hauling stuff for highway construction or whatever), you got tested. Additionally, if you got a red card (for medicinal), you would no longer be eligible for employment or contracts with CDOT.

        So I’m wondering if NJ has similar carve-outs. (Did you get tested before you got employed as a teacher? Do the bus drivers in your district have to get tested? Will they still have to get tested next year?)Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 5, 2020 at 3:15 pm

          I didn’t follow the issue or the specifics of the law closely. But I did vote yes.

          I work in NYC (but not for NYC). I don’t see my school testing. But could imagine NY-based employers responding since so many folks commute in.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
            November 5, 2020 at 4:03 pm

            As someone who got tested before I got hired to do Y2K remediation at MCI back in the heady days of 1999, I boggle when I hear that there are entire fields that don’t drug test.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
              November 5, 2020 at 4:45 pm

              I’ve never been drug tested across 15 years, 5 schools, 2 states, and 1 district (of Columbia). Never union. I’m surprised to hear how much testing exists out there!Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 4:46 pm

                BUT YOU WORK WITH KIDS!

                BLOCKBUSTER MADE ME TAKE A *HAIR* TEST!!!!Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:05 pm

                Did Blockbuster require a Masters?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:08 pm

                This probably belongs in the “Minimum Wage” job thread but the Blockbuster interview (I didn’t get the job) took an hour. Like, an *HOUR*.

                We discussed everything from retail theory to film discussion to security.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 5, 2020 at 7:08 pm

                I ask because I’d venture to guess that Blockbuster has few filters prior to the interview to identify reasonable candidates they can trust with a job that involves handling money, interacting with the public, and other things that can be much harder than folks imagine.

                So, fair or not, they probably saw drug testing as a good way to eliminate the untrustworthy.

                By the time I get to an in person interview, I’ve usually been vetted a handful of times (head hunter, resume, certification/licensure, phone interview, word of mouth). If I get through the interview, demo teach well, and my references check out, they don’t really care how I spend my free time.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 9:19 pm

                Okay, I thought you were arguing that having a Master’s Degree was going to be a hedge against someone using drugs regularly and, lemme tell ya, that didn’t used to be the case.

                Though Millennials might have had a different college experience and postdoc experience than the Xers I hung with.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 5, 2020 at 10:52 pm

                Maribou explained to me that teachers have a hell of a lot more background checks than the average drug test recipient in Colorado and any drug bust that happens to be in the past for a teacher is there in SHINY NEON LETTERS and so it makes sense that they don’t make them pee in a cup.

                And I never looked at it like that.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 6, 2020 at 10:50 am

                Oh no, I’d never assume education correlates with drug use… not of weed at least. I ran with more of a drinking crowd than a smoking crowd but there was plenty of weed at school.

                I imagine Blockbuster corporate draws a Venn diagram with “weed smokers” in one circle and “wants to work at Blockbuster” in another circle and assumes the overlap is a bad place to look for good employees. I’m not saying they are RIGHT but I’m imagining that is (was) the logic.

                For schools that require advanced degrees, I imagine they’re thinking, “Even if this guy smokes pot, he got through 5+ years of higher education so we can probably trust him to not be a total trainwreck.”

                We do get background checked a lot. I’m curious if any mark on the record is an immediate disqualification or what. It may vary by employer. I’m in a weird boat where I work for a private school BUT because we are licensed as a daycare, the city and state still have some jurisdiction over our hiring practices. So I had to “pass” a fingerprinted background check and they run all the addresses I’ve lived at for the past 27 years (or something) through a database every 2 years. I think that is specifically looking to see if any of my addresses during the time periods I lived in them were a sex offender registry. But I don’t know if the state/city determines what is considered passing or if they just require the check be run and let the schools make decisions. Good point by her.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 6, 2020 at 11:03 am

                Yeah, a drug test (well, a pee test, anyway) mostly just tests to see if you have enough self-restraint to abstain for a couple of weeks and drink nothing but cranberry juice.

                Get through the two weeks, pee in the cup, and you’re done.

                And as invasive as that is, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to fingerprinting, background checks, and address databases.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 6, 2020 at 12:06 pm

                Dude, trying to arrange a fingerprinting appointment is impossible. And that’s after you figured out WHO you are supposed to arrange it with (DOI? DOE?). I’d much rather be responsible for two weeks and pee in a cup than run around the damn city trying to figure out who can fingerprint me.

                At one point, I had to call Albany. Not a person in Albany. Not an office in Albany. Just… Albany. Like, the whole city. It… did not go well.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:36 pm

                I’ve never been tested either. I’ve never heard of a software company that did, but I expect it could be required by government contacts.

                I worked in SLC for a few months, and one of my boss’s expressions was “Can we do this, or are we just smoking weed?” He had no idea how often the answer was “both”.Report

              • Reformed Republican in reply to Mike Schilling says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:57 pm

                I suspect testing in software would eliminate a lot of qualified candidates.Report

              • Reformed Republican in reply to Kazzy says:
                November 5, 2020 at 5:55 pm

                I don’t think I ever worked a job that did not require testing before starting since I started working back in the mid 90s. I think they have all had random testing as well.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Reformed Republican says:
                November 5, 2020 at 6:25 pm

                I have never been randomly tested, but the only time I haven’t been pre-employment tested in the last 20 years was when I left my Managed Services job at HP, went up to Denver to consult for two months, then the contract ended and I got a different Managed Service job at HP with my old Managed Services company (which, believe me, tested the crap out of me the first time).

                They waived the drug test for my triumphant return.Report

  5. DavidTC says:
    November 5, 2020 at 12:45 pm

    The current Georgia results have just updated again, and managed to narrow Trump’s lead to 14,765, with 98.1% of the vote in.

    That sounds like not enough for Biden to come out ahead, but here is how the totals have gone, from my own posts:

    97.2% : 38,143
    97.7% : 23,000
    97.9% : 18,146
    98.1% : 14,765

    The actual question is not will Biden end up ahead eventually, it’s now ‘How many votes left are there _actually_?’, which seems a little unclear.

    Addition: And _both_ our Senate races are indeed going to runoff.Report

    • Philip H in reply to DavidTC says:
      November 5, 2020 at 12:46 pm

      The vote lead in PA has been trending the same way.Report

      • North in reply to Philip H says:
        November 5, 2020 at 1:26 pm

        This is pretty understandable. In GA the votes were from dense urban areas and in PA the votes are early voting and votes from dense urban areas. Both very blue leaning demographics.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to North says:
          November 5, 2020 at 2:46 pm

          Pennsylvania is one of the states used as an example of the “blue shift”. Ballot types that are counted late in the process (eg, mail-in or just from large urban areas) are skewed pretty heavily Democratic there. The shift is so pronounced in California that in 2018 a Republican candidate for a US House seat conceded while they were leading by 5,000 votes.

          Back-of-the-envelope seems to me to suggest Biden wins PA by 75,000 votes and that GA is going to be a dead heat.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Philip H says:
        November 5, 2020 at 3:28 pm

        Biden is slowly and surely inching up in all four states including those he lead in. He has a 11.5K lead in Nevada with remainder ballots in Democratic Clark County of around 50K. John Ralston who is good and local sees limited hope for Trump in Nevada. He has a 69K edge in Arizona with remainder ballots in Democratic friendly areas. In PA, there are 500K votes, most of witch are mail in ballots from Democratic strongholds in Philadelphia. Georgia has about 50K votes left and those can swing towards Biden too.

        Some analysts predict Biden can end up winning PA by around 100K.Report

    • DavidTC in reply to DavidTC says:
      November 5, 2020 at 1:34 pm

      For reference, 1% of the vote is about 50,000 total votes.

      So over the 0.9% that I was paying attention, that’s ~45,000 votes. And in those, Biden managed to gain an extra 24,000 votes.

      Aka, ~34,000 cast for him, vs ~11,000 for Trump.

      75% in favor of Biden.

      If this continues, he’s winning by somewhere between 30,000-40,000. (Edit: Wait, that’s not right at all. Closer to 20,000-30,000. Got over excited for a second.)

      Note: Trump’s lead just dropped to 14,100…they’re still calling it 98.1% in.

      Georgia Facebook is melting down, although luckily most of the people I actually follow are Democrats, so it’s more I’m seeing their reactions to others melting down.

      And we owe a large ‘thank you’ to Stacey Abrams, who, after the governor’s election was stolen from her two years ago by the then Secretary-of-State Brian Kemp _for_ Brian Kemp, went on an absolute rampage of two-years working at one dedicated task: Registering voters. Helping the disenfranchised jump through the hoops. Joining the organizations that were already doing that.

      Seriously, for the last several years in Georgia, the people trying to stop the government from disenfranching voters just…stopped. They knew the state would keep operating the way it always had, despite court case after court case, and that they had rigged the cours.

      And instead they went went door to door in Black communities ‘Are you registered to vote? If not, how can we fix that? Oh, you need a ride? You need to track down your birth certificate? You need documentation for your married name? Do you need _literally any help at all_ to become a voter, we will provide it, 100%?’ and just…getting them registered, one by one.

      They just voted, one by one. This is amazing.Report

  6. Marchmaine says:
    November 5, 2020 at 12:55 pm

    I hate to say it, but this is the best possible loss for Trump. (assuming the estimates/margins hold).

    Even if the final totals *eventually* show that Biden won, let’s say, GA and PA and AZ… Trump will forever trumpet a ‘statistical tie’ and claim that some shady shenanigans of an unspecified but collectively half-remembered thing are the reason he didn’t win.

    For his Brand? This is a win. Might be worth more than an actual win.Report

  7. Kazzy says:
    November 5, 2020 at 1:53 pm

    Why does it matter what news agencies or media outlet members call? Who cares? Vote counts are what determine elections.Report

  8. Jaybird says:
    November 5, 2020 at 2:28 pm

    Huh. Robert Fisk died. (If you remember 9/11 reporting and its aftermath in the early days of bloggery, you know him.)Report

  9. Mike Schilling says:
    November 5, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    Trump is inciting mobs to attack vote counting sites, AKA embracing traditional GOP values.

    Roger Stone organized the demonstration, and Matt Schlapp was the on-site leader.

    Heh.Report

  10. Jaybird says:
    November 5, 2020 at 2:38 pm

    And here’s an update on the House:

    Report

  11. Saul Degraw says:
    November 5, 2020 at 3:41 pm

    Biden’s lead in AZ, GA, NC, and PA continue to go up largely. He is down a bit in AZ but as noted, there are a good number of remainder ballots that largely come from Democratic counties and those are unlikely to break for Trump. Yet alone to break for him in large numbers. Biden also slightly increased his lead in Nevada and the remainder votes are from Clark County largely.

    Trump could retain GA by a plurality but some analysts expect a good swing in PA to Biden ala the blue shift. It seems unlikely that AZ and NV are going to switch. In the end over 72.5 million people voted against Trump. It also looks like the GOP leaders and plutocrats are abandoning Trump because they got what they wanted from him and have no more need for him.Report

  12. Jaybird says:
    November 5, 2020 at 4:15 pm

    An interesting thread discussing the Democratic Caucus telephone meeting (click through, read the whole thread):

    Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 4:24 pm

      If only the Democrats would nominate a warm and friendly, moderate centrist who doesn’t scare the old folks, why then, they would sweep to a landslide victory!Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:
        November 5, 2020 at 4:31 pm

        Yeah, Abigail Spanberger sounds pretty hysterical. National Politics ain’t a game for lightweights!Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 5, 2020 at 4:48 pm

          She is probably right, for her district.

          But the bigger point is, “Get Back To Basics” is exactly Joe Biden.

          Which is probably a good national strategy for the Dems, but still…may not be enough.

          Which is to say, I don’t see any possible path for a New Deal/ Reagan Revolution level dominance for either party. Instead I see a long period of trench warfare where elections are won or lost by fractions of points.Report

          • Mike Schilling in reply to Chip Daniels says:
            November 5, 2020 at 5:53 pm

            But not calling free enterprise plus a robust safety net “socialism” is American politics 101. Not knowing that is one reason I can’t take “Bernie would have won” seriously.

            It’s like calling restraining defense spending “surrender”.Report

            • North in reply to Mike Schilling says:
              November 5, 2020 at 6:23 pm

              Yeah it’s like the further left wing elements in the coalition pretend not to know that there’s a massive media apparatus waiting to take every comment they make and magnify it a thousand fold. They know, of course, and they probably appreciate it. What is good for the right is also good for the far left- it’s the moderates that’re their true foes.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 5:01 pm

      Jared Huffman:

      Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 5:28 pm

      Defund the police as a chant probably did not help. Note that it was not to my knowledge ever said by a political candidate but it was tied to them and certainly said by activists.

      The Democratic Party has a problem of coalition politics and balancing the needs and wants (including tonal language) of many groups.Report

    • Brent F in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 5, 2020 at 5:46 pm

      Between this and the Trump’s going to war with Fox, both parties could have a nice civil war brewing.Report

  13. Saul Degraw says:
    November 5, 2020 at 5:45 pm

    There are 190K votes left to count in Nevada. Ninety percent of these are in Clark County. Nate Silver tweets that Nevada should be called for Biden based on this. Trump’s lead in PA is down to under 100K with more votes in Democratic strongholds remaining.

    “Around 14,000 Pennsylvania votes were just reported by Erie and Philadelphia counties (roughly split between them), and Biden captured more than 80 percent of those ballots. This updated count brought Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania below 100,000 votes to about 98,000 votes, or 1.5 percentage points (50.1 percent to 48.6 percent).”Report

  14. Saul Degraw says:
    November 5, 2020 at 5:50 pm

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/05/long-at-odds-with-trump-defense-secretary-esper-has-prepared-a-resignation-letter-officials-say.htmlReport

  15. Saul Degraw says:
    November 5, 2020 at 6:08 pm

    https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1324469475668873217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1324469475668873217%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D11350820https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D113508t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20202F112Fopen-plans-to-steal-elections-are-bad-even-if-they-failt_e%3DOpen20plans20to20steal20elections20are20bad20even20if20they20failt_d%3DOpen20plans20to20steal20elections20are20bad20even20if20they20failt_t%3DOpen20plans20to20steal20elections20are20bad20even20if20they20fails_o%3Ddescversion%3Df1a8a291969fa22da75b9e4d3099e7b6

    48K or so votes left to count in Georgia.Report

    • DavidTC in reply to Saul Degraw says:
      November 5, 2020 at 6:24 pm

      To continue my list from above, here is how the counting is so far in Georgia, with the percentage, and the vote difference.

      97.2% : 38,143
      97.7% : 23,000
      97.9% : 18,146
      98.1% : 14,765
      98.4% : 9,525

      There’s 1.6% of the vote left, and Biden needs less than 10,000 added. Biden gained 29,000 over the _last_ 1.6%.

      Biden has basically won this _if_ the amount of outstanding votes is accurate and stays on course. The only two possible ways he could lose are if some of those votes _don’t_ really exist and the percentage is wrong Which if your number is correct, that is…roughly correct. It might be only 1% left, not 1.6…but even that is enough.

      Or he could lose if somehow the remaining votes are vastly out of line with the current ones. Which is hypothetically possible, but even the ballots in the red areas have been going for Biden by a large amount. (Which is great, because it totally screws over the ‘elected officials are tampering with them’ narrative.)Report

    • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:
      November 5, 2020 at 6:25 pm

      Holy agnostic Jeebus, it really looks like Biden could actually win GA! Now I’m bitter, what was the hold up on the count? I could have really used that to help with the coconut rum on Tuesday evening.Report

      • Brent F in reply to North says:
        November 5, 2020 at 7:31 pm

        Georgia and Arizona are important wins for Biden’s prestige. He now has a pair of wins to demonstrate he managed more than just regaining lost territory, but took some new ground as well.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to Brent F says:
          November 5, 2020 at 8:20 pm

          I’ll leave Georgia to someone else but for Arizona, I’ll take the position that Biden benefited from a trend that had nothing to do with him. In 2018, the Arizona Dems won a Senate seat and took the House delegation to 5-4. This year, legal recreational marijuana by initiative. Still a chance that one or both chambers of the Arizona state legislature will flip. New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada… something has been happening in the Southwest and I don’t believe the NE urban corridor Democrats are driving it.Report

  16. Marchmaine says:
    November 5, 2020 at 6:14 pm

    Perdue’s senate race just dipped below 50% (still called for him), so if that holds it means a double run-off in GA.

    That’s gonna be a rumble. Control of the Senate with two (Runs-off? Run-offs?) tie-breakers…. Heck, I might even drive down and illegally vote in it.Report

    • North in reply to Marchmaine says:
      November 5, 2020 at 6:21 pm

      That is interesting but I think it’s moot. Sure the Dems should do their best but a pair of Georgia runoffs with just a Democratic Candidate and a Republican Candidate and President Biden in the WH? it’s gonna be two GOP wins. Let’s not kid ourselves.Report

      • Stillwater in reply to North says:
        November 5, 2020 at 6:25 pm

        Dems surely can’t/won’t motivate their base to vote in such an inconsequential election, but Stacey Abrams might.

        God Bless Stacey Abrams.Report

        • North in reply to Stillwater says:
          November 5, 2020 at 6:28 pm

          She’s aces in my book. But even if the Dems turn out like gangbusters you know the GOP will turnout more. Biden will be Pres, the Senate will be in the balance and It. Is. Georgia.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to North says:
            November 5, 2020 at 6:38 pm

            I dunno about that North. Apart from her corruption Loeffler will be (by then) a Trumper without a Trump. It strikes me as an achievable D pickup if Warnock can keep the DNC/DCCC/Schumer/Robbie Mook/other ex-Hillary staffers from fucking it up.Report

            • DavidTC in reply to Stillwater says:
              November 5, 2020 at 10:55 pm

              Let’s also remember that Loeffler will be in, as she already is there, the Senate. She has to deal with that while campaigning for the runoff.

              Also, she can be attacked for various votes, and if the Democrats are smart, they’ll make her do some more. If Trump goes badshit,a nd the Ds try to reel him in, and she objects to this…well. (And she’s a lunatic, off course she won’t do the smart thing.)

              The Dems can do the same with Perdue, although admittedly _he’s_ not a conspiratoral lunatic, and is maybe smart enough to back awat.

              But even there, both of them are incumbents (Even if Loeffler has only been there a year.), both of them are Trumpers, and both of them can be painted as being the causes of some of this mess.

              And as for Trump: 98.8% counted, only 1902 ahead.Report

            • North in reply to Stillwater says:
              November 6, 2020 at 10:45 am

              I want ya to be right Stillwater, I really do. But I think a little judicious pessimism is sound. Dems should, absolutely, throw everything they have at the runoffs but I wouldn’t advise anyone to get their hopes up.Report

        • greginak in reply to Stillwater says:
          November 5, 2020 at 6:30 pm

          Agreed. She has done a great job. They won’t be favored but there is chance of pulling out a senator. They have all the machinery and momentum to keep it going especially with a lot on the line. They will certainly be able to correctly claim they can win in reality not just as a possibility.Report

  17. greginak says:
    November 5, 2020 at 6:47 pm

    You’ll never survive in Biden’s Glorious New Socialist Future with an attitude like that young man.Report

  18. Saul Degraw says:
    November 6, 2020 at 12:12 am

    Trump’s lead in PA is down by 26K and there are 72K votes in Philadelphia and 27K votes in Pittsburgh to count. Plus other blue friendly sections of Pennsylvania.Report

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