2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[GeorgiaModerate]

First day of early voting always has really long lines.  Don't read too much into it.

Exactly.  Georgia went from 8 hour lines to 20 minutes within a week.

In addition to the initial burst of enthusiasm, a big cause of the long lines in the first few days was a bandwidth problem connecting to the system used to check in voters.  That problem has been rectified.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1318636814370893824

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/ameliatd/status/1318884693580914689

[GeorgiaModerate]

I'm assuming that voting online will probably become a thing in the next couple decades, it's kind of the only current civic engagement you can't do online. This rendering these lines moot.

As of now I believe Estonia is the only country in the world that allows it, but I can't see it failing to spread.

The cartoon reminds of a quote I once saw: "If contractors built buildings the same way that programmers write software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization."

[GeorgiaModerate]

Thought experiment: if 2016 had had the same proportion/timing of early vote as 2020, would Clinton have won?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Nevada is burying whatever hope the gop had

I think that the GOP is expecting to lose Michigan, Wisconsin, NE-2. 

They are probably trying to find one or two Clinton states that will protect them if and when they lose either Pennsylvania or Arizona. 

The problem is that Joe Biden is a better candidate than Clinton so there doesn't seem to be any state that's ripe for this endeavor.  Nevada was probably their best bet but their chances look to be fading.

If Trump loses PA along with WI/MI/NE-2, and assuming he holds onto AZ, then flipping NV alone wouldn't be enough to save him.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Missouri SOS Office
@MissouriSOS
 · 9m
As of 5 p.m. October 18:

-53,522 mail-in ballots requested
-504,086 absentee ballots requested
-367,811 absentee and mail-in ballots (combined) received by local election authorities
#TrustedInfo2020 #VoteReady
 #MOVotes #moleg

What's the difference between absentee and mail-in here?

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1319095503771045889

[GeorgiaModerate]

Obama is holding a rally in Miami this weekend. We'll see if that plus souls to the polls on Sunday is enough to close the gap, but otherwise the Biden campaign needs to start thinking about redirecting resources to winnable states.

This is dumb. They've got plenty of resources to compete in all the close states.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Am I being dense in saying that I've avoided obsessing over these numbers like we did in 2016 because the coronavirus has basically made it impossible to benchmark with previous years?

No, I think this is the right attitude about EV this year.  It's still interesting, but less indicative than it might have been in previous years.