Special Election megathread (5/21: CA-20)

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Rs think there is a red wave they lost WI by 11 and PA special and OH abortion and about to lose KY G and MS G and LA G LA is going to a runoff and MS G isn't over

It's a neutral cycle at the very least there is no red wave, there hasn't been one since Rs def Hillary 8 yrs ago Rs lost 2018 41 H seats, lost in 20/22

Why Rs keep losing because they believe in 37% tax cuts for rich not 50%, it needs to be raised now to help pay for the oil war in UKRAINE


Rich can afford 50% taxes id they buy 25M mansions ju

[JMT]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

Why is it ridiculous?

[wbrocks67]

Interesting, so now we may find a D overperformance in UT-02 after all.

[Ferguson97]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

Maloy is definitely favored, as only 45% of the remaining vote is expected from Salt Lake and Davis Counties. And conservative candidates tend to overperform in late mail ballots.

The remaining vote from these counties is probably mostly election day. Utah does do election day in person voting. Since Salt Lake City/Davis didn't update after their first drop which happened only a few minutes after polls closed, election day ballots almost certainly haven't been counted yet (as there's no way they could have been included in the first counted batch since there's no way election day ballots are counted that quickly).

[Oryxslayer]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

Maloy is definitely favored, as only 45% of the remaining vote is expected from Salt Lake and Davis Counties. And conservative candidates tend to overperform in late mail ballots.

The remaining vote from these counties is probably mostly election day. Utah does do election day in person voting. Since Salt Lake City/Davis didn't update after their first drop which happened only a few minutes after polls closed, election day ballots almost certainly haven't been counted yet (as there's no way they could have been included in the first counted batch since there's no way election day ballots are counted that quickly).

Utah is a nearly exclusively a mail ballot state, and has been for a while. If you wish to know why, drive out to the rural areas - trust me you'll pass through many on your way to the Parks. Maybe then you will realize that this is the most efficient method for having elections in the region.

To that point, what remains is not all election day. Also uncounted are the unknown number of mail ballots that will arrive late but with a postage mark from before polls closed. Most of these will show up before the end of the week. In fact, all of the remaining votes in the super-rurals are probably of this nature.

[Vosem]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

I'd say there are two arguments against mail-in voting. The first of which (which even Democrats can at least recognize is an issue) is that it creates imbalances of information; often, especially in primaries, but sometimes even in generals, there are huge shifts in voter behavior right at the end, such that casting a too-early mail vote can be equivalent to throwing your vote away. A famous general example would be people who voted for Paul Wellstone in the 2002 MN-Sen election before he died; ultimately those votes didn't play a spoiler role and Coleman would've won anyway, but had it been slightly closer the Democrats would've lost in a very un-democratic way. In primaries, lots of people vote for candidates after they drop out; in many post-Ides of March 2016 primaries -- for example Louisiana -- early votes saw Rubio beating Trump, and day-of votes saw Cruz beating Trump, with geographic patterns strongly implying that there was a clean Rubio --> Cruz transfer...but Trump won because of the disunity. On the Democratic side in 2020, too, certain states, like CO and UT, recorded very strong totals for Klobuchar and Buttigieg even after they dropped out. Voters voting with different levels of information access is undemocratic.

On a different level (and I expect there to be less agreement that this is an issue), it undermines confidence in democratic outcomes when there is no result for a long period of time; it gives the impression that election administrators are cheating, because in foreign countries, that's often what this means. The likely answer I'll get here is that both the people complaining that long counting periods undermine democracy, and the people complaining about election fraud, are conservatives, and they should stop doing it. But I think, based on foreign countries' experiences, that this would be a problem anyway.

Anyway, we should abolish all voting that is not on Election Day. Mail-in voting should be allowed only for those with very clearly-defined excuses, like military personnel or hospitalized individuals (list not necessarily exhaustive).

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

Maloy is definitely favored, as only 45% of the remaining vote is expected from Salt Lake and Davis Counties. And conservative candidates tend to overperform in late mail ballots.

The remaining vote from these counties is probably mostly election day. Utah does do election day in person voting. Since Salt Lake City/Davis didn't update after their first drop which happened only a few minutes after polls closed, election day ballots almost certainly haven't been counted yet (as there's no way they could have been included in the first counted batch since there's no way election day ballots are counted that quickly).

Utah is a nearly exclusively a mail ballot state, and has been for a while. If you wish to know why, drive out to the rural areas - trust me you'll pass through many on your way to the Parks. Maybe then you will realize that this is the most efficient method for having elections in the region.

To that point, what remains is not all election day. Also counted are the unknown number of mail ballots that will arrive late but with a postage mark from before polls closed. Most of these will show up before the end of the week. In fact, all of the remaining votes in the super-rurals are probably of this nature.

Nearly exclusively doesn't mean 100%. 80% of the votes from SLC/Davis are already reported. It's entirely possible that most of the 20% remaining is in-person.

[Skill and Chance]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

Maloy is definitely favored, as only 45% of the remaining vote is expected from Salt Lake and Davis Counties. And conservative candidates tend to overperform in late mail ballots.

The remaining vote from these counties is probably mostly election day. Utah does do election day in person voting. Since Salt Lake City/Davis didn't update after their first drop which happened only a few minutes after polls closed, election day ballots almost certainly haven't been counted yet (as there's no way they could have been included in the first counted batch since there's no way election day ballots are counted that quickly).

Utah is a nearly exclusively a mail ballot state, and has been for a while. If you wish to know why, drive out to the rural areas - trust me you'll pass through many on your way to the Parks. Maybe then you will realize that this is the most efficient method for having elections in the region.

To that point, what remains is not all election day. Also counted are the unknown number of mail ballots that will arrive late but with a postage mark from before polls closed. Most of these will show up before the end of the week. In fact, all of the remaining votes in the super-rurals are probably of this nature.

Yes, VBM was a regional Western thing before it became a partisan thing.  Similarly, widespread in-person EV was a regional Southern thing pre-Trump era.

[Skill and Chance]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

I'd say there are two arguments against mail-in voting. The first of which (which even Democrats can at least recognize is an issue) is that it creates imbalances of information; often, especially in primaries, but sometimes even in generals, there are huge shifts in voter behavior right at the end, such that casting a too-early mail vote can be equivalent to throwing your vote away. A famous general example would be people who voted for Paul Wellstone in the 2002 MN-Sen election before he died; ultimately those votes didn't play a spoiler role and Coleman would've won anyway, but had it been slightly closer the Democrats would've lost in a very un-democratic way. In primaries, lots of people vote for candidates after they drop out; in many post-Ides of March 2016 primaries -- for example Louisiana -- early votes saw Rubio beating Trump, and day-of votes saw Cruz beating Trump, with geographic patterns strongly implying that there was a clean Rubio --> Cruz transfer...but Trump won because of the disunity. On the Democratic side in 2020, too, certain states, like CO and UT, recorded very strong totals for Klobuchar and Buttigieg even after they dropped out. Voters voting with different levels of information access is undemocratic.

On a different level (and I expect there to be less agreement that this is an issue), it undermines confidence in democratic outcomes when there is no result for a long period of time; it gives the impression that election administrators are cheating, because in foreign countries, that's often what this means. The likely answer I'll get here is that both the people complaining that long counting periods undermine democracy, and the people complaining about election fraud, are conservatives, and they should stop doing it. But I think, based on foreign countries' experiences, that this would be a problem anyway.

Anyway, we should abolish all voting that is not on Election Day. Mail-in voting should be allowed only for those with very clearly-defined excuses, like military personnel or hospitalized individuals (list not necessarily exhaustive).

While these are concerns, there would seem to be a very big difference between early voting in September and early voting the Saturday before the election.  Frankly, I can't see any coherent argument against the latter other than a desire to keep turnout low among people with unstable work/caregiving schedules.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

Maloy is definitely favored, as only 45% of the remaining vote is expected from Salt Lake and Davis Counties. And conservative candidates tend to overperform in late mail ballots.

The remaining vote from these counties is probably mostly election day. Utah does do election day in person voting. Since Salt Lake City/Davis didn't update after their first drop which happened only a few minutes after polls closed, election day ballots almost certainly haven't been counted yet (as there's no way they could have been included in the first counted batch since there's no way election day ballots are counted that quickly).

Utah is a nearly exclusively a mail ballot state, and has been for a while. If you wish to know why, drive out to the rural areas - trust me you'll pass through many on your way to the Parks. Maybe then you will realize that this is the most efficient method for having elections in the region.

To that point, what remains is not all election day. Also counted are the unknown number of mail ballots that will arrive late but with a postage mark from before polls closed. Most of these will show up before the end of the week. In fact, all of the remaining votes in the super-rurals are probably of this nature.

Yes, VBM was a regional Western thing before it became a partisan thing.  Similarly, widespread in-person EV was a regional Southern thing pre-Trump era.

VBM was a thing for years but until 2020 it did not take multiple days to count all the votes. In 2008 2010 2012 2014 and 2016 Arizona counted almost all the votes on election night and we knew who the winner was. This election week stuff is completely new and wasn't always the case.

[Smash255]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

Maloy is definitely favored, as only 45% of the remaining vote is expected from Salt Lake and Davis Counties. And conservative candidates tend to overperform in late mail ballots.

The remaining vote from these counties is probably mostly election day. Utah does do election day in person voting. Since Salt Lake City/Davis didn't update after their first drop which happened only a few minutes after polls closed, election day ballots almost certainly haven't been counted yet (as there's no way they could have been included in the first counted batch since there's no way election day ballots are counted that quickly).

Utah is a nearly exclusively a mail ballot state, and has been for a while. If you wish to know why, drive out to the rural areas - trust me you'll pass through many on your way to the Parks. Maybe then you will realize that this is the most efficient method for having elections in the region.

To that point, what remains is not all election day. Also counted are the unknown number of mail ballots that will arrive late but with a postage mark from before polls closed. Most of these will show up before the end of the week. In fact, all of the remaining votes in the super-rurals are probably of this nature.

Yes, VBM was a regional Western thing before it became a partisan thing.  Similarly, widespread in-person EV was a regional Southern thing pre-Trump era.

VBM was a thing for years but until 2020 it did not take multiple days to count all the votes. In 2008 2010 2012 2014 and 2016 Arizona counted almost all the votes on election night and we knew who the winner was. This election week stuff is completely new and wasn't always the case.

False.  It did take multiple days to count all the votes.  However, it wasn't exactly noticed that the final vote count didn't match to the Election Day count, because the races were not that close to begin with.

[Benjamin Frank]

Why does deep red Utah have vote by mail? The idea of turning "election day" into election week is ridiculous and should not be the new normal. Before 2018 we never had to wait till after election night to know who won the races.

It’s funny how you guys think that “it takes a few days longer to know the results” is a legitimate argument against mail-in voting.

I'd say there are two arguments against mail-in voting. The first of which (which even Democrats can at least recognize is an issue) is that it creates imbalances of information; often, especially in primaries, but sometimes even in generals, there are huge shifts in voter behavior right at the end, such that casting a too-early mail vote can be equivalent to throwing your vote away. A famous general example would be people who voted for Paul Wellstone in the 2002 MN-Sen election before he died; ultimately those votes didn't play a spoiler role and Coleman would've won anyway, but had it been slightly closer the Democrats would've lost in a very un-democratic way. In primaries, lots of people vote for candidates after they drop out; in many post-Ides of March 2016 primaries -- for example Louisiana -- early votes saw Rubio beating Trump, and day-of votes saw Cruz beating Trump, with geographic patterns strongly implying that there was a clean Rubio --> Cruz transfer...but Trump won because of the disunity. On the Democratic side in 2020, too, certain states, like CO and UT, recorded very strong totals for Klobuchar and Buttigieg even after they dropped out. Voters voting with different levels of information access is undemocratic.

On a different level (and I expect there to be less agreement that this is an issue), it undermines confidence in democratic outcomes when there is no result for a long period of time; it gives the impression that election administrators are cheating, because in foreign countries, that's often what this means. The likely answer I'll get here is that both the people complaining that long counting periods undermine democracy, and the people complaining about election fraud, are conservatives, and they should stop doing it. But I think, based on foreign countries' experiences, that this would be a problem anyway.

Anyway, we should abolish all voting that is not on Election Day. Mail-in voting should be allowed only for those with very clearly-defined excuses, like military personnel or hospitalized individuals (list not necessarily exhaustive).

While these are concerns, there would seem to be a very big difference between early voting in September and early voting the Saturday before the election.  Frankly, I can't see any coherent argument against the latter other than a desire to keep turnout low among people with unstable work/caregiving schedules.

And for Republicans to suppress Democratic votes with 6+ hour lines in predominately Democratic poll areas or for predemonately Democratic voters to find out too late that they've been removed from the voter rolls.

Republicans hate mail in/advanced voting because it makes it harder for them to cheat by suppressing Democratic turnout.

[Benjamin Frank]

I put in the RI special election megathread, will put here too:



Here’s some potential National politics takeaways

-Obama/Biden connections were most important to Dem primary voters.

-the Biden/Obama connection was more important than demographics (RI is mostly White/Latino, less than 10% black, less than 1% Asian or Native American or other). And there was a lot of talk about electing the first Latina, who would be representative of RI’s rising demographic, but even if they didn’t split that vote (mostly between Sandra Cano and Sabina Matos) it wouldn’t have been enough. Cano and Matos combined would still be behind both Amo and Regunberg.

-the Biden/Obama connection was more important than pure progressivism, which got Regunberg far (including Sanders and AOC in endorsements) but not all the way. But this could also be due to the attacks on Regunberg’s father-in-law creating a super PAC to fund him. But Regunberg himself was clearly the closest to the national progressive model, especially on class issues and climate change, while Sandra Cano and others were more of a local issues based progressive

- the Biden/Obama connection was more important than other interest group spending and support, with Gun Control and Pro-Choice/Abortion very much favoring Sabina Matos

- the Biden/Obama connection was more important than other labor Union support, which was mostly going towards Sandra Cano

I think the main takeaway is this was another Democratic primary win for the 'liberal' over the 'progressive.' And in this case, a progressive everyone thought had it in the bag. This may represent a backlash against the 'progressive' Democrats with renewed concern that excess government spending leads to inflation (even though there isn't actually much evidence that was much of a reason for the increase in inflation, but most voters aren't exactly experts in economics.)

Mmmm… no.

Outsiders thought Matos, and then Regunberg, had it in the bag.

Locals knew otherwise.

The SuperPAC attack on Regunberg really hurt him… it hurt his progressive credentials. It was the attack that hurt him more than any of his positions on the issues.

I'm sure you know better than I do, but it seems to be the case that whenever a 'progressive' loses to a 'liberal' that the progressives always have some explanation rather than simply that Democratic primary voters didn't want a 'progressive' candidate. (I'm not saying you're a progressive.)

Certainly I recognize that progressives tend to be absolutist purists and that any perceived flaw of the leading progressive candidate can make progressive voters prefer to lose.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Mod note: do not derail this thread into a discussion of the pros and cons of mail voting.  If you want to create a separate thread for that, feel free.

[heatcharger]

Mod note: do not derail this thread into a discussion of the pros and cons of mail voting.  If you want to create a separate thread for that, feel free.

No, this is absolutely a relevant thread to discuss the pros and cons of mail in voting.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Mod note: do not derail this thread into a discussion of the pros and cons of mail voting.  If you want to create a separate thread for that, feel free.

No, this is absolutely a relevant thread to discuss the pros and cons of mail in voting.

No, it is not; this thread is dedicated to the relatively narrow topic of Congressional special elections, while a discussion of the pros and cons of mail-in voting is applicable to the much broader universe of American elections.  As I said above, if you want to create a separate thread for that discussion, feel free.  It's certainly a topic of general interest, but let's not muddy this thread with it.

[heatcharger]

Mod note: do not derail this thread into a discussion of the pros and cons of mail voting.  If you want to create a separate thread for that, feel free.

No, this is absolutely a relevant thread to discuss the pros and cons of mail in voting.

No, it is not; this thread is dedicated to the relatively narrow topic of Congressional special elections, while a discussion of the pros and cons of mail-in voting is applicable to the much broader universe of American elections.  As I said above, if you want to create a separate thread for that discussion, feel free.  It's certainly a topic of general interest, but let's not muddy this thread with it.

You are stifling discussion about a topic that’s central to how the votes are cast and how votes are reported.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Mod note: do not derail this thread into a discussion of the pros and cons of mail voting.  If you want to create a separate thread for that, feel free.

No, this is absolutely a relevant thread to discuss the pros and cons of mail in voting.

No, it is not; this thread is dedicated to the relatively narrow topic of Congressional special elections, while a discussion of the pros and cons of mail-in voting is applicable to the much broader universe of American elections.  As I said above, if you want to create a separate thread for that discussion, feel free.  It's certainly a topic of general interest, but let's not muddy this thread with it.

You are stifling discussion about a topic that’s central to how the votes are cast and how votes are reported.

On the contrary, I think it's a useful discussion, just not in this particular thread.  I've encouraged creating a separate thread for it.  This decision is final.

[heatcharger]

Enjoy the authority.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

https://twitter.com/SchottHappens/status/1699497360559333662

[Tekken_Guy]

https://twitter.com/SchottHappens/status/1699497360559333662

Salt Lake County has approximately 8,000 ballots, while Davis County has around 2,500.

It’s not clear how many of those are Republican ballots in the CD2 race #utpol”

I expect nearly all of them are for the GOP congressional primary; because Riebe was uncontested the D primary wasn’t on the ballot. But by the looks of it, Washington County has nearly 6,000 more ballots left to count than previously thought, compared to 4,000 more ballots than expected in Salt Lake and around 1,500 FEWER in Davis. By my calculations, if that verifies, Salt Lake and Davis will make up less than 40% of the remaining vote, rather than around 45% like my estimation from the NY Times % estimates.

According to my calculations, Maloy would win by nearly 4 points if all ballots break the same way they currently do in each county. And that’s not taking into account late ballots typically trending more conservative or other rural counties also having more out than previously thought.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

https://twitter.com/greggiroux/status/1699543365275038114

Even though Hough might win Toole county, this update is net good for Maloy.

[Bernie Derangement Syndrome Haver]

Yeah, Maloy probably has this. Shame.