The Red Mirage

[Res Ipsa]

The MAGA movement has a special talent for turning ordinary and expected events into evidence of sinister conspiracies. One of those was 100% normal features of counting in America that, out of the blue, were claimed to be evidence of fraud.

One of these is The Red mirage. If you follow election returns, you’ve undoubtedly noticed this pattern: total precincts tend to report first and urban precincts tend to report last. That’s due to the simple fact that it’s generally faster to count fewer votes than it is to report a crap ton of votes. It’s also due to the fact that precincts report to the county, which then reports the official total. It’s entirely expected that a rural county will report complete vote totals before a county containing a large city.

As result, it is not surprising at all to see the early vote totals in even a reliably blue state putting the red candidate ahead.

That simple fact is one of the entirely expected and normal feature that Donald Trump exploited to create a 100% false narrative about election fraud: the claim that the election was stolen from him by dumps of fraudulent ballots. Everybody paying attention knew before a single ballot was cast that the early red trend would be even stronger than usual in 2020 because of the pandemic and vote by mail. Trump campaigned against voting by mail, which meant his supporters were more likely to vote in person. Ds were focused on allowing people to vote without risking their life and health through vote by mail. That led Biden voters to rely more on vote by mail.

And, in many states, the law prohibited doing anything with mail in ballots until the polls closed. In other words, election couldn’t do things like open the envelopes until polls closed. As a result, some election departments chose to count in person ballots first before starting on mail in ballots.

Anyone paying attention at the time knew before any votes were counted that this red mirage was going to be more pronounced in 2020. It wasn’t a secret, at least outside of the right wing media silo. There, the news was driven by what Trump was saying about the election: that the only way he could lose was through fraud, that the mail in ballots, which he knew would be counted later, were riddled with fraudulent ballots, and that the only ballots that were legitimate were those counted on Election Day.

This was a deliberate, malicious effort to undermine our election system by someone who knew better.

And, e ask saw it played out. Those of who knew that red trending votes were going to be counted first and patiently waited for all the votes to be cast. MAGA voters chose to believe Trump’s lies and screamed fraud when several swing states got around to counting the votes that tended blue.

I don’t expect the red mirage to be quite as pronounced as it was in 2020. Many Ds who used vote by mail in 2020 appear to be returning to the in person voting they are used to. PA will start counting mailed ballots when polls close instead of countering them after in person votes.m

But there is one other dynamic at play that I hadn’t really thought about: the effect of the mass challenges and voter purges that form a key part of this year’s reed election strategy.

The Supreme Court just reversed a stay on its shadow docket , which permits Virginia to strike voters off the rolls days before the election. We don’t know the Court’s reasoning because, rather than considering an expected appeal, it used the shadow docket. Even though federal law appears to provide this kinds of last minute purge, the majority simply offered no explanation at all for why the law doesn’t apply.

Here’s the important thing, the purge isn’t based on anything close to conclusive evidence, and the state acknowledges that the purge will include some eligible voters. Likewise, sham outfits like True the Vote use proven unreliable methods identifying ineligible voters on voter rolls and then giving lists of hundreds or even thousands of voter names to an R voter who will spend all day challenging the right of voters to vote based simply on a list that was handed to them. The person making the challenge has no evidence whatsoever that the target is, in fact, eligible to vote. The R controlled Georgia legislature this year removed the cap on the number of voters that a single individual could challenge, meaning every likely D voter in a precinct could be challenged by a single R voter.

So, what happens if you show up to vote on Tuesday, only to find for the first time that your name has been removed from the voter roll? Or if you show up to vote and some person who knows nothing about you claims that your residence is actually in another state?

The good news is that you can still cast a ballot without jumping through additional hoops on Election Day. The bad news is that the ballot you cast won’t be a regular ballot — it will be a provisional ballot. And provisional ballots are counted last, and only if you jump through whatever hoops your legislate requires to prove that you are eligible to vote.

And they won’t ever be counted unless the total number of provisional ballots cast exceeds the difference between the regular ballots cast for the person who is ahead and the person who is behind.

Because the roll purging and vote challenging is being conducted by Relief Society against populations likely to vote blue, provisional ballots in every state are likely to trend heavily blue. That fact will increase the size of the red mirage. It will also mean that the red margins of victory will been overstated unless the provisional ballots have been counted.

Regardless, there is a 100% chance that Trump and his MAGA acolytes will scream fraud when the counting of the votes takes place in the normal and expected manner.

[Moksha]

Regardless, there is a 100% chance that Trump and his MAGA acolytes will scream fraud when the counting of the votes takes place in the normal and expected manner.

As you pointed out, the Republicans have already begun their war against Democracy and will not be satisfied until they are declared the official party of the new Reich.

[Dwight]

I saw a report that claimed 1 in 8 women were not voting the way their husbands think they are. Pennsylvania retired voters are breaking 60-40% for Harris when they should at least be more even per party affiliation. Puerto Ricans are garbage comment is apparently being taken to heart by Hispanic communities even if they aren’t from Puerto Rico.

I think Harris is going to out perform the polls and media reporting.

Of course MAGA will claim it can only be cheating and the stacked Supreme Court will do everything in their power to subvert democracy.

[Res Ipsa]

Having done some reading about the steps many states have taken to speed up the vote count, I’m not expecting a red mirage as dramatic as the one we saw in 2020. Some may have an early blue mirage because tabulating mail and early votes is already under way in some states. Also, the RNC has conducted direct mail advertising targeting likely R voters that encourages them to vote early or by mail. As a result, more Relief Society have voted before today than they did in past elections.

So, we may see all kinds of waves and wavelets. If Relief Society engage in mass challenges of voters, the result in several states could come down to the provisional ballots, which are always counted last. So, keep calm and keep a bottle of your favorite beverage handy.