I have a crazy idea
I have a crazy radical idea that I’d like to propose, but first you might want to sit down.
A couple weeks ago we had a presidential election. My idea is that we should actually count the millions of votes from all over the country that have not yet been counted.
It’s just a thought. BTW, there are still 14 House races that have not yet been decided.
Here’s a recent Nate Silver tweet:
Slow vote counts fuel conspiracy theories.
On another subject, the GOP has two interesting claims about the recent election.
1. There was massive vote fraud favoring Biden in heavily black and Hispanic cities like Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. This explains why Biden did so well in those cities.
2. Trump did better than usual (for a Republican) in black and Hispanic areas, which proves that Trump is not a racist.
Take your pick.
Off topic; this caught my eye:
Once again, it’s not health vs. the economy. It’s success vs. failure.
Tags:
15. November 2020 at 10:01
The solution is really quite simple. Every state should start tabulating or at the very least, prepare mail-in ballots for processing before election day. The fact that this turned into a partisan issue is just ridiculous. I moved to Washington two years ago and mail in balloting works great.
There is zero evidence that states with all mail in systems like Washington or Utah have significantly higher rates of fraud or irregularities. The arguments against it are all theoretical. Think about it a little bit, what exactly are the incentives for anyone other than the candidates themselves, and perhaps his/her family and close political assoicates to cheat? Anyone honestly think that a cabal of postal employee is going engage in fraud to help elect some candidate in the hopes of what exactly? That’s the problem with all these conspiracy stories. They all require execution of a vast network of henchmen with no motive to cooperative and lots of dire consequences if they get caught …..
15. November 2020 at 11:29
Scott,
Yes, counting the votes in a timely manner is crazy. Living in SoCal has fried your brain-you need to return to Massachusetts where everything is well governed and the weather builds character.
Just scrap this popular vote nonsense altogether. Electors could be appointed like in the good old days. Hopefully that will start showing as ballot initiatives in swing states.
The Swedish experiment is also being conducted in many areas of this country.
15. November 2020 at 11:36
Better idea: count legitimate votes accurately. “Conspiracy theories” about the integrity of our voting systems gain traction because our voting systems have obvious security holes, not because they are slow. Speed is a nice-to-have; publicly verifiable security is a must-have.
15. November 2020 at 13:25
i guess when you have torched your own credibility and suffer no shame after you do, you can’t help but be drawn to others who are on the same crash path, thus sumner loves to quote nate silver, the biggest grifter since Abagnale, but studiously less charming.
further deepening the credibility cavern he is in, sumner complains about slow vote counting, offering no data that it is harmful to anyone, nor any solution. His blog has become his shouting at passing strangers from his car.
then he offers it causes conspiracy theories, again with no data, and blind to the obvious that he sees a conspiracy of conspiracy theories. folie a deux, with who??
15. November 2020 at 13:38
LOL another joke post by Sumner. Ockham’s Razor says the quickest way to resolve the Trump claims is to say massive fraud in three cities: Philly, Milwaukee and Detroit, which, given that two out of three of these cities have corruption endemic in their city government –Kwame Kilpatrick, Jim Kenney, just to name two (not sure about WI, but recall the WI board of elections made some questionable calls, see the link in the other thread)–is not a stretch. But logic is not always SS’s forte. Recall he still buys the line that C-19 is a natural disease with no possibility it’s man-made.
Bonus trivia: over at Econlib.org, where I’m banned from posting, our resident genius has a post that essentially says, in words rather than symbols, that C-19 spread is modeled by: Y'(x) = a*Y(x) -b*Y(x)^2, where a,b = constants, the so-called famous S-shaped or logistics curve. Pure genius! (sarcasm)
15. November 2020 at 14:07
Correction: Apparently PH mayor Kenney is not corrupt, it was his treasurer Dunbar from Africa (9/25/20 story). Also: “Philadelphia has a long tradition of government officials being brought up on corruption or ethics charges. The “Philly shrug” is a local term referring to the grudging way in which residents have been willing to put up with malfeasance. Just in the past few years, numerous state legislators, Democratic officials and a congressman from the area have been convicted of crimes committed in their nominal line of duty. “It’s been going on for 30-plus years here,” says Neil Oxman, a political consultant in the city.”- PH Inquirer. Governing.com: “The list of corrupt public servants in Philadelphia’s recent past is a long one — from former State Sen. Vince Fumo, to former District Attorney Seth Williams, to former State Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell. Misuse of campaign funds, questionable real estate deals, tax evasion, parking ticket fixes — there seems to be no facet of municipal life that has not been undermined by a deep lack of accountability.”
In short: the three cities Trump lost huuuge votes in, and you can add Atlanta to the mix as a fourth–were corrupt cities run in part by corrupt African-Americans. Atlanta is also corrupt (internet June, 2020): “The federal investigation into corruption at Atlanta City Hall under the administration of former Mayor Kasim Reed continues despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said Tuesday.”
15. November 2020 at 14:15
Ray, as I understand, you’re actually smart and agree with Scott most of the time, but are just being contrarian for fun. How about… not doing that?
15. November 2020 at 14:23
Anjen, That’s also my view.
David, I got plenty of “character” growing up in Wisconsin, especially being a newspaper boy for 2.5 years. It’s cold!
It’s time for me to cash in some of that character.
WF, Improve the security not because vote fraud is a big problem, rather because it’s perceived as a big problem. But will more security actually make people feel better? Or is there a “demand for conspiracy theories”? I suspect the latter.
agrippa. You said:
“again with no data,”
I suspect that you don’t know what “data” is. I provided an example right in this post. There are numerous more examples throughout my recent comments sections. The plural of anecdote is . . .
Ray, Yes, those are highly Republican areas; the big Biden vote represents the effects of corruption. Those evil government officials are preventing Detroit’s 90% black population from voting for Trump in huge numbers.
15. November 2020 at 14:25
sty.silver. Ray is not smart, he just enjoys being a troll. Smart people don’t waste their lives in that way.
Donald Trump
Tyler Cowen
Which one is smart? Which one is a troll?
15. November 2020 at 15:31
“In praise of trolls – People who think they are good trolls, usually are not. I have many people who leave troll-like comments in my blog. Years ago I stopped reading Major Freeman, as he was so tiresome.” – Scott Sumner, October 3rd, 2016 [notice Sumner still reads Ray Lopez circa 11/15/20]
Sumner: “Donald Trump Tyler Cowen Which one is smart? Which one is a troll?” – Sumner praises either Trump or Cowen, and calls one or both a troll. Sumner: “sty.silver. Ray is not smart, he just enjoys being a troll. Smart people don’t waste their lives in that way” – Question for the group: whose family has a net worth in excess of $10M (growing at 5% a year), who earned $0.5M net before retiring in his 40s, who since has a personal net worth of nearly $2M (largely inherited, true, but still), has a hot girl half his age and, God willing, some kids soon? Answer: Ray Lopez. And Scott thinks I am wasting my life? What am I supposed to be doing on a drizzly DC night, except surfing the net, chatting with my girl, playing chess (I just beat a 2200 Elo master online), some reading? Maybe dancing at the disco? It’s closed anyway.
@sty.silver – you’re right, I am smart. And so are you to notice. If I annoy you, as a favor I’ll go away for a month so you can have this place as an echo chamber. Just say the word and I’ll do it as a favor to a fellow smart fellow who recognizes talent.
15. November 2020 at 16:12
Tyler Cowen raises an interesting point. We were informed there would be foreign interference in this election, and it could be decisive.
Was it foreign money and e-skullduggery that propelled Biden to the top?
15. November 2020 at 17:44
lives-in-a-sty: why would an person you think is “smart” 1. listen to you, 2. regard his duitful exposure of sumner floundering when he strays beyond his banality in economics be something a “smart” person should cease, particulary due to a comemnt from someone living in a sty? moreover, why do you exposure your own blind adoration of summer, where is your stragegy man?
sumner: your wrote:”Slow vote counts fuel conspiracy theories” followed immediately by: “on another subject….”. I noted the lack of data. You retorted: “I provided an example right in this post.” Is your sire Humpty Dumpty? Were you on the Grassy Knoll?
15. November 2020 at 18:09
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-need-full-investigation-wapo-questions-covid-origins-10-months-after-zero-hedge
File under, “Now that the election is over, and Biden has won.”
WaPo (now) wants to know how Wuhan virus started, you know the millions of deaths and wrecked economies, we should get to the bottom of this, and what about the Wuhan virus labs and the Beijing lockdown-blackout on information and investigation?
Oh! The WaPo woke up?
So Twitter was banning people who questioned the official (Beijing) narrative….
Interesting hypothesis making the rounds: Beijing wanted to inoculate a population against a coronavirus, and actually had a very interesting approach—release an innocuous coronavirus, spread through human contact, but one that would “vaccinate” the population against a more-harmful variation of the virus.
Perhaps not Beijing, but a lone lab worker hatched such a plan? Who knows?
In some ways a brilliant idea. Dispenses with all the need for billions of injections, sub-zero storage capabilities, logistical problems galore.
The Wuhan virus was very good but not good enough, and took out a small percent of the population, usually the vulnerable.
Of course, this is a “conspiracy” theory. As if officials in Beijing did not conspire to wreck any investigation into what really happened.
You know what is a “conspiracy theory”? Unofficial explanations of events.
15. November 2020 at 18:27
1. There was massive vote fraud favoring Biden in heavily black and Hispanic cities like Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. This explains why Biden did so well in those cities.
– That is not the claim anyone is making. What they are claiming is:
a. If democrats are permitted to watch ballot counting, and republicans are not, then it violates equal protection laws.
b. If mail in ballot signatures cannot be verified, than they shouldn’t count.
c. If USPS workers are back dating ballots, that is fraud.
d. If the PA supreme court is unilaterally overruling the legislature that is a violation of article 2 of the US constitution.
e. If dominion software is transferring votes, and there is evidence of this happening now on 12 occasions (in all cases its Trump to Biden), then such transfers should be investigated.
f. If there are election officials on video calling for the destruction of ballots, such election officials should be investigated.
g. That statistical anomalies should be investigated. Such anomalies include, but are not limited too: Georgians submitting 90,000+ ballots with zero down ballots votes for Biden, while only 880 people submitted down ballot votes for Trump, an 88% turnout in Wisconsin, and a mail in ballot rejection rate at historic lows in an election that had more mail in ballots than any other election in history.
2. Trump did better than usual (for a Republican) in black and Hispanic areas, which proves that Trump is not a racist.
– The communist Scott Sumner once again tries to boil everything down to race in an effort to divide good and decent Americans from every color and creed. According to Sumner: White people bad. Black people good. End of story. No context needed here.
Of course, nobody is claiming this. What they are claiming is above. Read it carefully, take your time, and try again.
You once again get an “F” for reading comprehension skills.
15. November 2020 at 18:43
This is called Trump derangement syndrome folks 😀
On a scale from 1-10, Sumner just hit 11.
Two things:
1. Sumner in case you haven’t noticed you are old and white, which means you are the #1 target for BLM Marxist lunatics. And if you think you can appease them from your suburban balcony, by telling them you are “On their side” go watch the video of the diehard white liberal suburbanite commie (just like you) in Oregon who genuflected, begging, and I do mean begging, in every submissive way for forgiveness for being born white, only to be beaten within an inch of his life. Lesson: don’t capitulate to the communist mob because you are too wimpy to stand up for ideals, or because the fight is currently in the city where your small salary makes it impossible for you to afford a home. Suburbs and middle class low salaried workers like yourself are next.
2. Stop watching CNN and reading the NYT, and actually take it upon yourself to read the lawsuit. You might learn a thing or two. None of the claims you made are correct. But when you are LAZY and unwilling to READ, and consume nothing but propaganda garbage, you end up spouting nonsense like above.
15. November 2020 at 18:58
Well, obviously the GOP made no such claims.
Have you read the lawsuit filed in PA and MI? Did you see Dershowitz analysis of that lawsuit, or Shiva Ayyadurai response to the statistical analysis.
You seem to ignore a lot of data.
Election is far from over. And when the nations most successful appeals attorney, Sidney Powell, claims she is “unleashing the kraken” over dominion fraud you better believe this is going to be one hell of a legal battle.
15. November 2020 at 20:18
Harry and Jayne,
“read the lawsuits”
Have you guys read the lawsuits because your argument is dumb as hell. Trump is now 0-20 in lawsuits. Proof that all his lawsuits are bogus. He can’t even win 1 lawsuit. His lawsuits are getting laughed at in court for being so bad. Straight up joke.
15. November 2020 at 23:33
In all seriousness, it might be better if we had less democracy in the major party nominating processes. It doesn’t seem we have an electorate serious enough to choose both candidates and office holders.
Trump would have never gotten close to being nominated for any office if Republican elites chose candidates after brokering backroom deals and having actual conventions. And Democrats would not have the lack of message discipline that has idiots who win in some very liberal districts adopting slogans like “defund the police” or pushing stupid, completely unrealistic bills like the Green New Deal.
The problem, of course, is that, presumably, the voters of the parties would punish them severely politically for making the candidate nominating process less democratic.
16. November 2020 at 02:43
Stock futures were rising Monday after advisers to President-elect Joe Biden said they opposed a nationwide lockdown but preferred targeted measures to control the surge in U.S. coronavirus cases.–The Street
Lockdowns bad! Wait…who said that?
16. November 2020 at 03:47
Claims related to racial identity of voters are based on exit polls, which would not be affected by ballot-box stuffing. I would think this is plainly evident.
There is no way to associate a ballot with a particular voter after it has been accepted for counting. If the registration or acceptance procedure is deficient, it calls into question the integrity of the tallies themselves. Was it deficient enough to make a difference in the instant case? Probably not, but after decades of attacks on voter ID laws, citizenship verification, voter roll purging, etc., a widespread distrust of election integrity should hardly come as a surprise.
16. November 2020 at 08:21
Have you ever done a poll of the readers of this site? I’m intellectually curious whether the average reader is as… odd as many of the commentators here.
Maybe I should stick to just reading the econlib comments.
16. November 2020 at 08:56
@miro:
This is Sumner’s “bad blog”. He uses it to troll and bring out troll responses. You can see how well he succeeds.
You are correct that your time is better spent at econlog.
16. November 2020 at 09:11
Ray, You said:
“What am I supposed to be doing on a drizzly DC night, except surfing the net, chatting with my girl, playing chess (I just beat a 2200 Elo master online), some reading? Maybe dancing at the disco?”
One alternative would be to leave intelligent comments, rather than troll. But you’ve chosen a different path.
Ben, No comment on news that Covid actually started in Italy, in September 2019? I’m shocked!! I thought you loved conspiracy theories.
Xu, you said:
“That is not the claim anyone is making.”
LOL, read the comment sections of this blog.
You said:
“Georgians submitting 90,000+ ballots with zero down ballots votes for Biden, while only 880 people submitted down ballot votes for Trump,”
That’s what’s generally known as a “lie”. You conspiracy nuts can’t even keep up with the news.
You said:
“According to Sumner: White people bad. Black people good. End of story. No context needed here.
Of course, nobody is claiming this.”
Actually, millions of woke people are claiming this.
Harry, Yes, as someone who somehow survived the Black Panther movement of the 1960s, I quake in my boots over BLM.
Christian, Actually the claims are based on both exit polls and actual vote totals in minority areas. But even if you were correct it would have no bearing on my post.
Miro, I’ve always assumed that the commenters are skewed toward “crazy”, but I don’t know.
16. November 2020 at 09:45
I think it is amazing we stopped counting votes in NY and some other states. Banana Republic behavior.
it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to know what one should believe what one reads. For example, it is said GA is not matching recounts with actual voters. Is that true? What does that mean? It sounds like it means you just count what was already counted—to make sure the “counting” was correct. But if illegal voting occurred how does this method catch it? It seems like it does not.
Is it really true that there were 90% of registered voters who voted in Wisconsin? Kim Strassel says it is true and it is arithmetically possible. But she says it means 900k registered on election day, an apparent huge anomaly . Can that be checked? Why does the media not care about determining this–and by media I include Scott.
Did Elon Musk really get 4 tests in one day—2 positive and 2 negative?
If he did, should there be concern? The implications are interesting. What if he really is positive? This could mean we are massively understating positives. If he does not have it—it could mean we are massively overstating positves.
It is micro data—-and one guy with 4 cases does not a problem make. But it is Musk—he told the world because he thought it was interesting. It is. but no one cares.
16. November 2020 at 10:11
Michael, You said:
“Is it really true that there were 90% of registered voters who voted in Wisconsin?”
Because I’ve been too busy responding to other conspiracy nuts who claimed that 90% of all adults voted in Wisconsin. I did respond to that claim. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. The Wisconsin turnout was not that unusual, slightly lower than Minnesota. It’s always a high turnout state and this was a high turnout election (nationally), as mail-in’s made it easy for registered voters to vote. There are plenty of non-registered voters who never voted, so the overall turnout was more like 75%.
16. November 2020 at 10:12
National Review is reporting that some Trump allies are advocating for “Republican state legislatures taking matters into their own hands and sending slates of Trump electors to Congress regardless of the vote count.” I think that wins the award for the stupidest suggestion yet.
P.S. I liked reading agrippa postumus better when he was just a random Shakespeare quote generator.
16. November 2020 at 11:45
“Donald Trump
Tyler Cowen
Which one is smart? Which one is a troll?”
Hmmm, that isn’t the question we need or want SS to be asking (and answering).
“A lot of people upset at my description of Tyler as the pro-Trump right but read his blog — he’s been by far the most eloquent and persuasive pro-Trump writer of the past five years!”
The question we need SS to ask and answer – only he can do it, to my mind (and/or satisfaction) – is “what does Yglesias mean by this?
Does it just mean that ignoring or not wanting to amplify or not agreeing with certain anti-Trump arguments makes one “the most eloquent and persuasive pro-Trump writer?” I can see the argument for that, but I suspect Yglesias means something more….
16. November 2020 at 12:03
Anon/portly. I’m pretty sure that Tyler is not “pro-Trump”. Has he sometimes agreed with Trump on a particular issue? Yes, so have I. (Corporate tax cuts, education reform, etc.)
Tyler doesn’t like to waste time stating the obvious. In this blog, I state the obvious about Trump almost every single day.
16. November 2020 at 13:07
Since Scott is a good economist, I assume it’s occurred to him that he have a better comment section by simply charging a fee to comment. He seems to only want to censor in extreme cases, so a small fee would not amount to censorship, but rather serve as a filter. He could exempt people he mentions by name in posts, or people that he wants to feel extra welcome to comment, such as fellow bloggers, and others whose input is of consistent quality.
Revealed preference suggests he likes things just as they are. He writes a lot of political posts and responds to many, many of the conspiracy theory comments.
16. November 2020 at 15:11
“I’m pretty sure that Tyler is not ‘pro-Trump’.”
As usual, I wrote my comment in the most confusing manner possible. I was pretty sure that your view. It’s also my view.
What I wanted to know was, why does *Matt Yglesias* think otherwise? Vis-a-vis this recent tweet:
“A lot of people upset at my description of Tyler as the pro-Trump right but read his blog — he’s been by far the most eloquent and persuasive pro-Trump writer of the past five years!”
That’s pretty emphatic!
16. November 2020 at 16:16
Michael, Should I go to Substack, like Yglesias?
Anon/portly, Perhaps that’s Yglesias’s way of trolling other Trump supporters. Like “Even Tyler’s a better advocate than you clowns, and he’s not even trying very hard to defend Trump”.
Tyler was filling a “Defend Trump’s policies when they are right” niche that no other intelligent person wished to fill.
16. November 2020 at 16:18
Everyone, So now we know that the only fraud in Georgia was the government of ultra-conservative Floyd County, which tried to steal 800 net votes from Trump!
16. November 2020 at 20:12
Scott,
Obviously, I’m unaware of your actual preferences and I know you don’t need the money. Substack would be the simplest way to do it, but you could also have a WordPress programmer add the functionality here. While he/she is at it, the increasingly intrusive ads could be turned off.
16. November 2020 at 23:29
Leaving aside all snide remarks, partisan stances and the x stages of grief for everyone and sundry – the election seems settled and JB has beaten DT to the WH while the anticipated blue wave (or tsunami) that left many a woke and liberally-illiberals salivating, is yet in the making
But why are #1 and #2 mutually exclusive and only one could be true? Both could be true ain’t it?
17. November 2020 at 08:24
anon, It can be true that both Biden and Trump did surprisingly well in big cities?
17. November 2020 at 22:46
That’s my question too. In those big cities voter turnout increased with both candidate’s % increase but Biden’s increase trumped (pardon for the pun) Trump’s. And there was a tiny teeny fraud on Biden votes. And to play both-sidism, Trump too.
Its all in the numbers – guess they will be out soon. Some enterprising/enthusiastic data wonk will do that will nice graphs and tables.
18. November 2020 at 12:25
anon, What matters is margins. Of course turnout rose in an election where people could easily vote by mail. But the margin can’t increase for both.
18. November 2020 at 13:30
Scott is right on all counts.
The United States’ inability to count votes in a timely manner is embarrassing; this part of the electoral system is clearly deficient. Scott is right, slow vote counts fuel conspiracy theories.
Even though the system is quite deficient, there is no evidence of fraud in 2020 and it is unlikely that evidence will ever be found. Trump has lost.
Trump realizes this as well but he is trying to craft a stab-in-the-back myth to stay politically relevant, maybe even until 2024.
Before that, however, he has to survive several trials, some of which seem to be partly politically motivated. Is this really so wise by the Democrats? They would do the dirty work for the GOP and save the GOP from its dilemma.