Election updates day 5

The day after the USSC orders Pennsylvania to separate tens of thousands of ballots, the networks call Pennsylvania for Biden

I guess the USSC has no business following through with any of that legal nonsense, now that the media has declared a winner! 

You know polling is bad when "exit polls" are wrong?

According to the exit polling from NBC news (as calculated by their partisan breakdown results) Joe Biden apparently beat Donald Trump by over 6%. This is down from the 10% they provided just before the election, but still is looking at approximately doubling the actual Biden lead.  

NBC exist polling showed a 37% DEM, 35% GOP, 28% IND, as their breakdown... which is unusual for the smaller percentage of Independents, but not terribly surprising as a higher partisan turnout looks to be what drove the huge number of voters. 

But the exit polling (based on simple math using those partisan breakdowns) shows Joe Biden at 52.1% (his actual is 50.5% right now) and Donald Trump at 45.9% (his actual is 47.7% right now). From what I can muster, exit polling is still overstating Biden support from Independents by approximately 11%. 

While I understand clinging to a narrative running up into an election, the idea that you continue such a narrative "after" the election seems a little unnerving. You would think that NBC has someone with the math skills to realize that their own exit polling is actually wrong.

Election shenanigans - GOP election poll watchers kicked out of Michigan polling stations: 

So what many poll challengers were actually seeing was that when the ballots were scanned and it did not match a voter in the electronic poll book, and it did not match a voter in the supplemental paper poll book, which was provided due to Michigan’s law that allows for same-day registration, they were still allowing those ballots to go through and be counted.  When challenges were issued for these ballots, the ballot counters were either ignoring the poll-watchers (who are allowed to legally challenge) or kicking them out for being disruptive.  

In other news, a whistleblower has exposed a "directive" to separate ballots that had late post office dates stamped  from others that were disqualified for other reasons, so that they could later be hand stamped over the stamp with a valid date and counted. 

Now there is little reason to believe that these things are not being done. Nearly everyone accepts that not everything in elections are on the up and up. That being said, I would still doubt that all of this leads to the sort of fraud that actually turns that state. Biden is up by about 150,000 in Michigan. If it was 1500 or even 15,000... then we might have an issue. 

But either way, if this can be proven (apparently some of this is on video or in writing) then these poll workers who are breaking election laws should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  

Total Vote Count:  

• Biden: 74,549,065
• Trump: 70,347,223
• Jorgesen: 1,725,476 

Who would have thought that Trump would garner 70 million votes and still be looking at a loss? He is now over 7 million more votes, with a larger percentage of his own 

Lack of Green Party Biggest overlooked issue of the election: Many states went out of their way and successfully prevented the Green Party from having a place on their ballots this year. Approximately 20 states (many of them battleground states with Democrats in charge locally) did not include  the Green Party. In many cases these came down to legal court rulings and technicalities. So instead of Libertarian and Green Party voters sort of cancelling each other out, there were tens of thousand of Libertarian voters that may have cost Trump the wins in several states. 77K in Pennsylvania, 61K in Georgia, 47K in Arizona, and 30K in Wisconsin, all enough to flip those states to Trump.

I recall thinking at the time that it would take a very close election for this to have any particular meaning. But this is exactly the sort of close election where it matters... and quite frankly Jo Jorgensen receiving about 1.7 million votes overall was not surprising. What is surprising is that it was nearly double the amount of every other third Party Candidate combined, largely because the Green Party was shut out of many important states.  

And here we all thought Democrats were the inclusive bunch who wanted everyone to have a fair vote and to vote for who they want. Turns out that they are just as pragmatic as anyone else and blocked the Green Party from even being on the ballot... solely to help their own Party. Mover, had there been the sort of "ranked" voting method that Democrats support, then Trump probably also is now winning in these four states and would be the likely winner at this point. This is something to chew on

USSC orders Pennsylvania to separate late arriving ballots: Now keep in mind that the USSC sort of "punted" on their original decision regarding these late arriving ballots in Pennsylvania with a 4-4 tie. Pennsylvania law requires ballots to be there by day of election. The extension was not an act of legislation (as required constitutionally to change election laws) but rather an executive order from the Governor. 

Now this might mean something important or it might not. These ballots were already ordered to remain separate, but many counties (primarily blue counties) refused to comply with the order. But the fact that the USSC is offering that they should be separated means it is not a moot legal issue. Apparently there is a feeling that this might come back around and get a full nine vote decision.

Pennsylvania likely to go to recount: Why this USSC decision might look large is that Pennsylvania might be headed for what would be a long and drawn out recount. That provides a lot of time for legal maneuvering and legal challenges. 

Arizona Update: Donald Trump has closed the gap down to under 30,000 ballots with thousands of ballots left to count. On the surface, it looks like an uphill climb as Trump's margins have fallen below where they need to be to catch up. That being said,  most outlets are still suggesting that Arizona is too close to call.