Day 238…
I slept like the dead last night.
It was about 1am when I went to bed. It seemed clear by then that nothing was going to change, in terms of the election, until the morning.
While the President was leading in many of the key states, there were still so many uncounted mail-in ballots as well as uncounted ballots from dense urban areas that it was impossible to tell. Vote counts from both the bulk of early-voting and urban areas tend to trend towards the left, so there was reason for a bit of optimism.
At about 5am, I woke up briefly. I checked my phone for alerts and the only thing on it was a confirmation from other outlets that the early announcement from Fox News that Biden had won Arizona was correct.
The bulk of the uncounted votes in Arizona was from Maricopa County which is where Phoenix is. It is a dense urban area and, true to form, trends left. Fox was early but proved to be correct. The President had been demanding that they rescind the projection.
I went into the living room where Michael was still watching TV. Well, to be clear, the television was still on, but Michael was fast asleep on the couch. There really was nothing more to be done so I went back to sleep. Sometime after that, Michael came to bed as well.
This morning, as more of the count comes in, it is, by no means clear yet who is going to win. The President, however, wants to stop the count. He is already threatening lawsuits and claiming fraud so it’s easy to see what he and the GOP think is going to happen.
In terms of the popular vote, Joe Biden is on track to receive more votes than any other candidate in the entire history of the United States. It’s an interesting fact, but it isn’t going to be what decides this election. It’s going to come down to the Electoral College.
Time magazine published a very interesting piece on the College last week.
When our system was being constructed in the late eighteenth century the College was put in place because it was felt that the majority of Americans across the continent would lack sufficient information to make an informed choice.
The Founding Fathers didn’t foresee the emergence of political parties which somewhat took care of that. People could figure out what local candidates stood for by knowing which party they aligned with.
The 12th Amendment was passed after the election in 1800-1801 and it took into account the two-party system. It allowed parties to designate which candidate would be President and which one would be Vice President. In theory, at that point, the Electoral College should have been obsolete.
When it was proposed by James Wilson of Pennsylvania that voting be one man, one vote, James Madison of Virginia objected, saying that the South would never agree to that.
The reason that the College was kept was because in a direct one-on-one election, the North would outnumber the South in terms of free men who could vote. The Electoral College allowed the southern states to count their enslaved people as being part of the population. They couldn’t vote and they were each only considered 2/5ths of a human being, but their vast numbers ensured that the South would get a larger portion of Electoral College votes.
Perversely, the more slaves they brought in, the more Electoral College votes they would get. The end result was that Pennsylvania had 10% more free people than Virginia but got 20% fewer potential votes.
Thomas Jefferson would not have become our third President without the extra Electoral College votes from the south which, of course, were based on the enslaved African population.
It was also Jefferson, who recognized that different parts of Virginia would likely vote in different ways. It is he is who pushed through the idea that rather than having Electoral votes split between candidates, that the winner of the state would take all of the votes. He was sure that there were districts in Virginia who would not support him, so he rewrote the law and got around it.
People have been trying to manipulate our elections from the very beginning of our existence as a country.
Our current President started tweeting his victory this morning in the wee hours while I was fast asleep. He is calling for the count to stop while he’s ahead.
No agency has yet declared a winner one way or another. The President is creating confusion and sowing doubt on purpose.
That he is trying to steal this election should be news to nobody. He’s been saying that this is exactly what he was going to do for months.
Twitter has taken down some of these tweets as being election disinformation.
Neo-Nazi’s and White Supremacists are standing by. “I’m ready,” posted one of the President’s supporters along with a picture of three rifles and a handgun. “Get the guns and the amor ready,” posted another. The spelling mistake was theirs.
There are twice as many Electoral College paths to victory for Joe Biden than there are for the President. It is unlikely that we are going to know which path the country takes for a while. There are well in excess of a million votes still uncounted in Pennsylvania alone. Some states will probably declare their results today but there are some that we will not have the full count in by the time we all go to sleep tonight.
Here in New York City, it is a perfect fall day outside. The sky is blue, and the air is crisp and clear. I, for one, am going to go out and take a walk through the park and I am going to try and force Michael to come with me.
The President is going to continue to bluster and stir the pot all day. He and his enablers are not going to go gently into that good night. They are going to rage against the dying light until the bitter end.
Frankly, it’s long past the time for all of them to just shut the f%$# up.
A beautiful day awaits.
We will see what it brings.
me too.... went to sleep
not a party worth staying up for
yes, I agree
a beautiful day awaits outside
there’s another one
tomorrow
💙