The reality is that it always takes time for some states to count all the votes; when these rumors started ramping up, there were over ten million uncounted ballots in California alone. But, many people don’t know that this is how things always work. So, with emotions high in the aftermath of the election, disinformation purveyors are taking advantage of the opportunity to get well-intentioned people to help amplify conspiracy theories.
If you see allegations of “millions of missing votes” or voting machine fraud, please don’t amplify them! Instead:
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If it’s somebody you know, send them a private message letting them know that they’re unintentionally amplifying a false rumor.
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If it’s not somebody you know, report it to the moderators as disinformation.
I’m only wondering about the statistically improbable break between the state where they voted all Dems downballot but then swapped to Trump just for President.
This is so statistically unlikely, having one or two states this way would be improbable as hell, but (I am not claiming this is true) there are apparently many instances where this happened.
I’m not sharing any of this stuff I see but so far this is the one that got my eyebrow raised.
I had suggested to people before that if you are not going to vote for President, at least vote down the ballot for local people and don’t discard the whole election. Voting Democrat but then for Trump does seem very odd.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Trump didn’t get significantly more votes than he got in 2020. Harris just got way less than Harris.
I fully believe that the Rs pulled some sort of shady shit with ballots. For them ‘every accusation is a confession’ is an immutable law.
It doesn’t matter, though, because the people who could do anything about it are on his team.
Completely agree. They said for months they had a better plan, Trump and Johnson had their little secret, elections have taken days in the past several yet this one ends almost immediately.
I completely believe that it could be legit, but I absolutely think that they managed to do something. And as you said, doesn’t fucking matter even if they did.
Not in the past several, in the last one where the whole country had pretty universal vote by mail abilities.
Now it takes a while to count the vote in places like California which still have universal vote by mail, and the returns are near instant in other areas that used the “voter fraud” narratives to eliminate or drastically scale back their vote by mail initiatives.
Missouri voted to legalize abortion again. Then elected the man who will get it banned nationally. Previously we voted to reduce dark money etc in local elections. And in the very next election repealed those restrictions again. People are fucking ignorant. Those in the state of misery doubly so.
Montana voted red all the way down except to protect abortion. Just last year they had kids argue to the state Supreme Court that they have rights when it comes to the environment, and they won.
I have no idea what is up or down anymore
It’s true that downballot Dems ran ahead of Harris in most states. Why do you think it’s statistically unlikely? Polls ahead of the election showed downballot Dems were more popular than Harris. Republicans focused most of their negative campaigning on Harris. Biden’s very unpopular and she didn’t try to distance herself from him (I’m not saying that she should have, I’m just observing that she didn’t). Sexists and racists were less likely to vote for Harris.
If the downballot candidate hasn’t been actively assisting genocide and hasn’t been very publicly celebrating that, it probably helps with getting votes.
Not gonna argue this point because both candidates for President were staunchly pro Israel.
So they vote for the non-genocide down-ballot, and different, even more vocal, genocide support on the top?
That’s what doesn’t compute. It 100% would make sense if they said to hell with it and switched party affiliation across the board, that would be consistent even if you argue their logic. But this is internally inconsistent.
People fundamentally view voting through different lenses. Most people view voting as simply a lesser of two evils choice. Some however view voting as more of a personal endorsement. And they will choose to simply not vote for either candidate, or any candidate at all, rather than voting for any candidate they consider to be irredeemable.
You’re not going to shame or convince people out of this. Any shaming based on the relative positions of the two candidates is pointless. Realize what you are going up against. You are going up against some of the most fundamental ethical frameworks human beings have for looking at the world. You are going up against thousands of years of human ethical reasoning.
When you start talking about how Kamala would have been objectively better for the Palestinians, you are arguing based on utilitarian ethics, the maximum good for the maximum number. You are saying, “yes, I know Kamala will abet a slow genocide, but I think Trump would abet a fast genocide. Therefore, Trump is better.” When someone chooses to vote for neither Kamala nor Trump, they are voting based on a respect for persons ethical framework.
From a certain perspective, simply getting involved and endorsing anyone with the views on Palestine that either Trump or Harris have impugns you morally. This is literally the entire reason the Trolley Problem was created. One of the core perspectives from the beginning of that was that flipping the lever at all is morally wrong. It is wrong to kill someone even to save someone else.
Again, you can shout from the rooftops about how good Kamala or Trump would be for Palestine til you are blue in the face, but ultimately not everyone thinks on utilitarian grounds. And it wouldn’t be such a classic discussion in philosophy if utilitarianism was the universally agreed on best moral framework. Utilitarianism’s Achilles heel has always been that it can be used to excuse some pretty horrible things. Hell, even genocide itself is usually justified on utilitarian grounds.
I do not find it all surprising that many would vote for Democrats downballot and then simply not vote for anyone for president. It makes perfect sense from ethical perspectives that people have been debating since before ancient Athens. Shaming people based on utilitarian arguments is counterproductive for people who view their vote as an endorsement, not as simply a choice of which candidate is better than the other.
And I can’t say they’re wrong. I voted for Kamala. If she had won, she likely wouldn’t have changed anything in terms of Biden’s Middle East policy. And you know what? I would have had to go to sleep each night knowing that I helped put her in the seat that she was currently using to abet a genocide. Yes, I would know in some part of my mind that Trump would have been worse. But that would be cold comfort. I can absolutely see why millions of people would decide, “I refuse to accept responsibility for either of you. A pox on both your houses. YOU, not me, are morally responsible for any of your sins, but I refuse to get involved. Do what you want, but I’m not voting for either of you. I hope you all burn in Hell.”
You can vote for someone against genocide for pres or just not vote for any candidate and still vote downballot.
Jesus, still with this. Trump is 100% on board with current Israel policy and would like for it to be more extreme, actually. Why would they vote for Trump?
They wouldn’t? Trump didn’t get more votes than 2020. Kamala just got far less than Biden.
So just not vote for President or vote 3rd party, I guess you mean, which in a swing state is equivalent to voting for Trump.
I guarantee you, while the effect was significant in certain places, most Americans give not one single shit about Palestinians.
And, voting for Harris at least would have had a chance at Palestine still existing.
Let’s just cut to the shocked Pikachu faces.
They didn’t care because their team was doing it.
They don’t care because it’s 20k miles away. They won’t care when it’s Trump doing it, either.
That’s assuming that all Trump supporters vote down ballot. I’ve been reading that a non-negligable percentage of Trump voters just voted for president and left down ballot races blank. Considering Trump only won the swing states by tiny percentages, a small percentage of Trump voters leaving blank the rest is easily enough to sway it
For instance, if we look at Wisconsin senate, we see that Tammy Baldwin has almost exactly the same number of votes as Harris (only a couple hundred more), but Eric Hovde shows less substantially votes than Trump got
Results with ~99% reported:
Donald Trump: 1,697,769
Kamala Harris: 1,668,082
(And about 40k for third party)
Vs senate
Tammy Baldwin: 1,668,545 [+436 from Harris]
Eric Hovde: 1,641,181 [-56,615 from Trump]