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Comment by DennisP | Hacker News Reader

That's going to be a fun toy on election night, as state results come in.

> election night, as state results come in.

Not this year. With mail-in ballots, the ballots won't necessarily be finalized until a week or more after the election.

Its necessary due to COVID19. But it will be until multiple days after the election before we know the true winner. A large number of states will certainly be called on election night (because many states, such as California, are far from competitive).

But the battleground states may take some time.

Not necessarily. There are several paths where a Biden win could be called early on election night. For example, Texas has a large fraction of early voting and a small fraction of mail ballots. So the chance that Texas can be called early is quite high. And if Texas gets called for Biden, then the networks will call the entire country for Biden.

You're right that if Texas goes blue, I think its safe to say that Biden won the election.

But I also think that Texas going for Biden is very small: Trump is still leading by 2% or so by official polls. Its important to push Texas a little bit since there's a chance for victory.

In the most likely event: Texas goes red (as it has gone for the past several decades), and we're left wondering about Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as usual.

If Florida has an insurmountable lead on election night (like 5% or something), then Biden probably wins. But if its a 2% differential (too close to call by the media, and a serious counting effort starts to take place), like is currently projected in the polls, then Florida could very well drag out this election for a week or longer. Just like back in 2000.

TX and FL going blue? Have you seen the early voting? Rs are LEADING in Miami-Dade, a Clinton county. Voter registrations are crazy for GOP in FL and the D-R voter gap is only at around 130,000 (used to be 650,000 when Bush won FL in 2000) Other than polls, I have yet to see any indication that FL will go blue despite going red in 2016 and then electing an R Governor on 2018.

The numbers disagree with your assertions.

https://data.tallahassee.com/early-voting-turnout/florida/

About 500,000 more D than R voters have voted early. This is a MUCH bigger gap than we saw in 2016.

Thanks very much for posting this link. I'm interested in how other states are doing. It's nice that all of the states that publish data is aggregated here.

Be careful. Those counts are for registered party, not vote. R membership has been slipping in the last few years and an exceptionally high number of prominent Rs have endorsed the D candidate. This year, those ballots are likely to break more toward D votes than the party registration suggests.

The people you're calling "prominent" are essentially pariahs in the Republican party. Literally almost no Republican cares what they have to say.

Also, none of them are True Scotsmen.

TX has a better chance of going blue than FL.

Beto O'Rourke has registered 1.8 million new voters in the past 4 years in the state of Texas, 300k of those were registered in the past 2 weeks. Beto lost Texas by 200k votes.

And so far, TX has been killing it in terms of early-voting. About 75%(!!) turnout so far than what they had in 2016. And we still have 11 days left to go before E-day. Biggest turnout percentage in the entire country so far.

Most modelling puts Florida as about 52/48 Biden's way but Texas 60/40 Trump's way.

It would be a mild surprise if Biden won Texas. It would be astonishing is Biden won Texas without also winning Florida.

One of the best democratic candidates ever, Barack Obama, couldn’t win Texas.

He won Florida twice. Biden doesn’t have Obama’s charisma, so he basically has to bet on Trump frustration to carry Florida.

This election is a total question of Trump exhaustion. If people are exhausted from him then we’ll see the toss ups turn blue. If people are more frustrated with lockdowns, riots, protests, race coming to the surface in America (a lot of people don’t like that it’s being exposed and talked about), immigration, then toss ups go red.

I don’t think the pollsters probing for ‘Did Trump handle coronavirus well’ is the right thing to ask, mainly because I don’t think likely right-wing voters fault him. The same way they didn’t fault him for any of his access-Hollywood tapes, etc.

They are more likely to fault social welfare, crime, wealth redistribution, immigration, globalization - the same way they did in 2016. If they aren’t overwhelmed by Trump’s aggressiveness, then why would anything have changed in 2020? Just because the age 15-30 crowd on Reddit and the media lean one way doesn’t mean things actually changed in peoples minds.

Retirees in Florida seem to prefer Biden to Obama, which is interesting.

Demographics in Texas have changed a lot since 2012 when Obama last ran. Democrats didn't really compete in Texas then.

> aggressiveness, then why would anything have changed in 2020

Take a look at the polls. Even if you don't believe the numbers themselves.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/20/texas-hous... is a decent summary. It's most likely that Republican will win Texas, but Democrats have roughly the chance of winning Texas as Trump did of winning the election in 2016.

> I don’t think the pollsters probing for ‘Did Trump handle coronavirus well’ is the right thing to ask, mainly because I don’t think likely right-wing voters fault him.

We have polls to test this, and while it shows Republicans generally thing Trump can do no wrong, lots of independents think the response has been bad. And some of these are right wing voters, because the 57% who disapprove given the question "Do Americans approve of Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis?" is much higher than his generall disapproval rate.

See https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/ and scroll down

> Have you seen the early voting? Rs are LEADING in Miami-Dade, a Clinton county.

Define "LEADING" please, because the actual numbers for voting in Miami-Dade county [1] as of today are:

Mail Voting

Rep 83,605

Dem 158,788

NPA 82,533 (NPA = No Party Affiliation)

In-Person Early Voting

Rep 61,273

Dem 61,548

NPA 35,296

Totals

Rep 144,878

Dem 220,336

In what way does that constitute Republicans "LEADING"?

[1] https://countyballotfiles.floridados.gov/VoteByMailEarlyVoti...

"Leading" is incorrect, but modeling has assumed D's need a 70-30% advantage in mail voting. This is because of polling regarding COVID where R's are less worried about early IPEV and more likely voting on election day. The current numbers are nowhere near that, so I wouldn't be surprised if Florida is red.

Uh... whose modelling? We've never had a pandemic election, I think it's fair to say no one has any idea which demographics are more/less affected by an early voting drive. All we can say is that a whole lot of people are voting early.

Most people believe more Democrats are voting via mail (Trump had been criticizing mail voting).

We do know how many registered voters from each party are voting in some circumstances.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/early-voting-number... is a decent overview

>Most people believe more Democrats are voting via mail

It's not necessary to "believe" anything when it comes to Florida. We have the actual hard number of ballots requested and returned, broken down by party registration. More Democrats are voting via mail. They're also voting in-person in equal numbers to Republicans, at least so far.

> It's not necessary to "believe" anything when it comes to Florida.

I think we are in agreement here. That's what my link shows.

My understanding is that not all states collect party affiliation when sending ballots though. It's possible I'm misinformed though.

That’s a 20 point lead for Biden, and the data above shows that Republicans are more likely to vote in person than Democrats. (1:2 margin among mail ins, and 1:1 among early in person voting).

Clinton won Miami Dade by 30 points (65-35) and still lost Florida by 1.2%.

I think it would need to be a lot closer than 2%. Obama won Florida by 0.88% in 2012[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia...

Sure, but to call it early requires a blow out.

Florida is one of the few states that are reporting mail-in ballots the night of the election. They've already started counting them and tabulating the results. After polls close, they press a button and it spits out the final results. With early voting getting nearly 60% of all registered voters in FL, I suspect we'll get 99% of precincts reporting FL numbers within 30-45 minutes after the polls close. Thus, I personally think we're going to know fairly quickly who wins the presidency.

Some other states like PA aren't even allowed to touch mail-in ballots til the morning of Nov 3rd. That's millions of envelopes that have to be opened, signatures verified, and then the ballot itself has to be unfolded and flattened and then pushed through the tabulation machines. But we don't have to fully wait til those are official--we can tell by the party registration on the ElectionsProject website who won based on in-person voting plus party mail-in.

The signature verification part was dropped by court. And to be honest I don't understand why.

Unanimously dropped by the State Supreme Court. Not one justice voted to require signatures.

My guess would be an inability on the part of those who wanted inconsistent signatures to be a valid reason for throwing out a ballot to show evidence that such a move would prevent widespread fraud, and a significant amount of data on the part of those arguing that signature verification would instead disproportionately throw out qualified ballots filled out by people whose signatures vary sometimes (my certainly does).

My hypothesis is signature verification where it’s minimally trained individuals doing the comparison seems quite open for inaccuracies. I couldn’t find any large scale studies though looking into this.

I’m 40 and trying to imagine what my signature looked like twenty years ago. Probably rather different.

It would suck to have my vote thrown away because some overworked election worker looks at it for a second and decides the letter P is bent the wrong way compared to the 1999 version.

Agree strongly, also, nobody ever told me my signature was significant. I’ve never had a “signature” and nobody has ever told me I needed to. The scrawl on the back of credit cards used to be checked in 2000-2010 but not since, and even then I just scribbled.

Learning that votes are thrown out based on this just shows how “special” the US system is. I assume historically they just decided “hard to read” names got thrown out.

It’s not hard to imagine that many of those hard to read names historically just happened to belong to minorities. American states have a sordid history of using ambiguous laws for vote suppression.

We verify signatures as part of our service (online background checks).

It's an entirely human process and imprecise might be the best word for it.

Integrity theater exists to suppress turnout for the party that wins when people turn out to vote and is primarily supported by the party that wins by suppressing the vote. It only does this. It does nothing to lower the already insignificant amount of voter fraud.

The idea of it is kind of farcical to being with. How do you verify hundreds of thousands of signatures in the first place?

It might be a science at a forensic level for investigations, but at this scale? I don't think so.

Also while I'm not going to imply I'm a typical case, I am not capable of writing a consistent signature due to a neurological condition. I think I still deserve a vote.

Is it farcical? Signature verification is the only thing they use in Maryland. You just go up and write in your address and sign. I don’t know how reliable signatures are but people assure me that not requiring ID is fine because there are signatures: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poli...

> Such signature comparison has long been deemed sufficiently reliable to legitimate absentee ballots and provisional ballots, and there is no reason to believe that it is any less reliable for confirming the identity of individuals voting in person.

This says nothing about the process itself, just a simple statement that it works. Maybe an actual description of the process would be more convincing to me, but this by itself doesn’t mean anything to me.

Washington uses signatures for our all mail in elections. When I’ve phoned in my signature (read just a line instead of something even vaguely resembling my usual mess) it has been challenged. I also forgot to sign/drop my ballot one time and had my wife sign it. That one was also challenged.

When challenged you have to reaffirm you submitted the ballot. You only “lose” your vote if you fail to respond.

YMMV but it seems to work pretty well here.

This is my first time voting in Washington!

That’s interesting to know. what method do they contact you to and how big is your window to respond?

If Biden wins Florida, Biden has very likely won the whole election, but if Trump wins Florida it becomes a toss-up. So I think we’ll only know the result early if it’s Biden.

I'm not sure what you mean by "official" polls, but in 538's polling average Trump is only leading Texas by 0.5%.

I also tend to like 538's model. 538's model gives Trump an average vote share of 2.2% more than biden (more than the polling average because the model thinks the demographics and fundamentals favor trump) but still gives Biden a 35% chance of winning. Biden winning is not very likely, but it's also not a not very small chance.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/...

> Biden winning is not very likely, but it's also not a not very small chance

Coincidentally, that's pretty close to the odds that 538 gave to Trump winning overall in 2016.

A 2% victory would absolutely be called on election night. That's actually quite solid, and most states don't even allow for requesting recounts unless the tally is within 1%.

For context, if Texas goes for Biden, then the 538 model predicts some amusing things. 1. The next most likely state that Biden could win is South Carolina at 25%. 2. The next most likely state that Trump could win is Ohio at 28%. 3. Biden would have the same chance of winning Mississippi as Trump would have of winning Iowa, 21%.

Calibrate your expectations accordingly.

Biden will not win Texas.

If Biden were to win Texas, the GOP would be finished forever. Polls notwithstanding, Biden has as much chance of winning Texas as Trump has of winning California.

“Polls notwithstanding” what data do you use to justify your statement regarding the outcome of the election in Texas and California?

Because if you look at the polls that’s ridiculous (probability of Biden winning Texas is orders of magnitude larger than Trump winning California).

I didn't say "probability". It's not going to happen. The polls are bullshit.

You said “Biden has as much chance of winning Texas as Trump has of winning California.”

What do you mean when you say “chance”, if not probability?

I mean neither event will happen.

“Finished forever” isn’t really a thing. The parties realign. Texas was a Democratic stronghold until the 1990s. Beto ran close in a 2018 election against a Republican candidate supporting a historically unpopular Republican President, during the blue wave. But Greg Abbott won his election for Texas Governor that same year by a bigger margin than George W. Bush did in 1994. He won 42% of the Hispanic vote (Texas became majority-minority in 2011).

It's more likely that Biden wins Florida and had enough margin in PA for it to be callable than Texas gets counted enough and is competitive for Biden.

It would be astonishing statistically if Biden doesn't have a good margin in PA or FL but is competitive in TX.

Florida counts quickly. Their absentees have to arrive before the polls close to count, and are counted right away with the day of votes.

If Biden has a decisive victory in Florida, it would be very reasonable to call the election the next morning (which would still be late night in the West).

If we smash Florida and have enough data in Penn it will be called quick.

Despite Florida being one of the worst most disgusting states in terms of suppressing the vote - DeSantis allowed county supervisors to start counting mail ballots basically immediately.

Over 3.3 million have already returned ballots and 1.3 have already voted in person.

Pennsylvania on the other hand... I don't think they can count ballots until after polls close.

But maybe we get lucky and there are enough in person votes, the margin is big, and polling shows no drastic changes in VBM then it will get called.

Even without Pennsylvania if Trump loses Florida and then loses the midwest, doesn't flip Nevada etc it will be called quick.

Basically I'm looking at Florida asap and very very worried about it...

I would have bet Trump was ahead 8 weeks ago. Now I think maybe Biden by a point or two max.

Curious about why so many downvotes - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All but 8 states can start processing ballots before election day. Unfortunately, 3 of those 8 are MI, WI, PA. So it may take longer for those.

Florida will likely be an early sign, since those mail ballots get processed and counted early. IF (and this is a big if) Biden carries Florida on election night, then it's actually possible we know who wins that night.

Madison Wisconsin pre-sorts mail in ballots by voting ward and has them taken to the polling places on Election Day morning and feeds them through the tabulator after someone cosplays as the voter to ensure the voter can't cast two ballots. I assume the same process is done for all the major metro areas. They'll be counted on time.

(They verify a few absentee ballot envelopes for required signatures etc and then open up the envelopes, someone verifies the ballot is complete, and then mix the ballots together so the ballot is kept anonymous. Chain of custody here is clever and works well. It would still be possible to notify the voter their ballot was rejected.)

> after someone cosplays as the voter to ensure the voter can't cast two ballots.

I'm sorry, what? This needs more explanation.

They don't just stuff it through the machine, you get in line as is you were the voter, verify you're on the rolls for your polling place, check you off in the book, etc. No steps are skipped to ensure the voter can't show up and request another ballot and vote again.

This is as described by a friend who had worked elections for years, this year will be my first. Should be interesting to see it in person.

At least in NY, I don't see how this is possible because I can send in an absentee ballot and then invalidate it by voting on election day in-person. So I don't see how they can open any of the secrecy envelopes, let alone count any ballots, until they've determined if the ballot in the envelope should be counted, and they can't do that until they get the poll book back from my election site at the end of in-person voting. (But maybe NY is one of these 8 states due to this rule?)

Yep I'd guess NY is one of the eight. In NC they process in advance, and if I vote with both methods, they arrest me for a felony. The state attorney general and BoE had to point that out to everyone after Trump suggested people try it.

Apparently Florida should be ready for pandemic adjustments to polling and still report nearly all of their results on election night. They’ve switched to mostly mail in ballots years ago and I think even count them as they come in or something - so they can be reported election night. Granted, it’s Florida. So sanity need not apply and we could get their election results from the SCOTUS.

Personally, I hope the early, in person voting decides the election on election night.

We've seen this show before though. It'll start with "Biden has 97% chance of winning" and end with Rachel Maddow and Chunk Yogurt crying on live TV. In fact, they could probably re-use this video to save money, and nobody would notice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G87UXIH8Lzo

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