4 ms·

I was studying both candidates. Watching him and her online, the numbers (live connections) were crazy high for Trump ... like 70K+ for him. His twitter account

by pcunite 10y ago

I was studying both candidates. Watching him and her online, the numbers (live connections) were crazy high for Trump ... like 70K+ for him. His twitter account had more followers, he had more Facebook likes. It looked like a total landslide to me (not a professional) based on national and public data. The news agencies were all acting like it was impossible. One was giving Trump a 10% chance of winning.

sshumaker 10y ago
The fact is, the election was actually very close. If there was 1% more turnout Hillary would have won (flipping Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania). She won the popular vote after all. So while it's easy to make broad sweeping generalizations, the story is more complicated than that.
- pcunite 10y ago
  I'm trying to determine if this really occurred, but there is a report of Terry McAuliffe pardoning 60,000 felons in Virginia for votes. There are other reports of voter fraud. Your vote, as well as mine, were counted. But it seems that the loss was perhaps overwhelming and not as close. We need to get access to the voter databases for election accountability arithmetic. My understanding is this has not been released.
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    What really happened in VA is that McAuliffe restored the voting rights of people who had already served their time and were back in society. This is a power of the governor under VA law and therefore not voter fraud. It's also worth mentioning that the idea of restoring voting rights for people once they have served their time has bipartisan support--in part because so many people have served time for nonviolent marijuana possession convictions. Take a look at the election results to see how the country feels about marijuana possession these days.
    - masonic 10y ago
      This is a power of the governor If true (I haven't read the VA constitution), it's totally unprecedented to restore voting rights for everyone in a class with no regard to the facts of individual cases. The partisan motive is obvious.
      - snowwrestler 10y ago
        The facts of the individual cases are factored into the conviction and sentencing. Once the prison term is served, the person can return to society. This is a fundamental concept of our system of justice. The truly disturbing idea is that voting rights are removed in the first place.
  - invid_regent 10y ago
    > I'm trying to determine if this really occurred, but there is a report of Terry McAuliffe pardoning 60,000 felons in Virginia for votes. It saddens me that a media source twisted McAuliffe's restoring of voting rights into "pardoned 60,000 felons in Virginia for votes". Also it was 13,000 ... not 60,000.
    - pcunite 10y ago
      I thought it was 200,000, now they say 60,000. So, do you have a source for 13k?
      - invid_regent 10y ago
        I'm going to get some minor details wrong, but bear with me: * Virginia is 1 of 4 states who's state constitution takes away the right of felons to vote. I'm going to be a bad person and just assume this was part of Jim Crow era laws to make sure less African Americans could vote, but I have not researched the subject. * Before 2013, if you committed a non violent felony in Virginia and had fulfilled all parts of your sentence, including serving time and probation and fines and restitution, two years later you could apply for a certificate giving you the right to register to vote. * In 2013, Virginia governor McDonnell issued an executive order that got rid of the two year waiting period. I've read this affected about 100,000 potential voters. * In 2016, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order that made the restoration of the ability to register to vote automatic, no certificate needed. His order covered violent and non violent felons. It didn't change the fact that the governor could just individually restore the ability to register to vote to someone who had completed their sentence. It just made it easy and automatic. * Due to some screwup somewhere his order somehow restored the voting rights for several child molestors still in prison, and a few serial killers who had serial killed in Virginia but were serving a sentence in a different state. I guess. I'm not sure how that worked. I can't imagine a child molestor in prison trying to register to vote. * The Virginia state supreme court overturned the governor's order. * In Aug 2016, McAuliffe vowed to individually restore the rights of each individual ex-felon by hand, but by using an automatic signing machine. He claimed he had signed 13,000 so far, and said he could conceivably cover 200,000 more people. There are some voter advocacy groups who think you should have the right to register to vote after you've completed your sentence, regardless of fines imposed on you by the state. I took some of the above info from the Washington Post ( NOT THE WASHINGTON TIMES ) https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcauliffe-restores-voting-rights-to-13000-felons/2016/08/22/2372bb72-6878-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcaul...
  - curun1r 10y ago
    Voting is a fundamental human right. It saddens me that someone would describe restoring someone's voting rights as voter fraud. If anything, the disenfranchisement of felons around this country is the voter fraud. Other countries have polling places in their prisons, let alone allowing ex-convicts to vote. If there's one demographic that should be allowed their say on what society feels is legal and illegal, it's those who society has chosen to punish. Otherwise, you create the possibility of a tyranny of a minority which comprises the majority of the electorate.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      > Voting is a fundamental human right. So is liberty, and so is life, and we deprive convicts of those rights too. > If there's one demographic that should be allowed their say on what society feels is legal and illegal, it's those who society has chosen to punish. That's a bit of a non-sequitur: why should those who have chosen to violate the social compact have a voice in it? > Otherwise, you create the possibility of a tyranny of a minority which comprises the majority of the electorate. That's also a non-sequitur: if they are disenfranchised, they're no longer part of the electorate.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > She won the popular vote after all. As of this moment, that's not true: Mrs. Clinton received 48% of the popular vote. That's more than Mr. Trump, but that's not a majority.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pg314 10y ago
It might have looked like a total landslide to you, but it wasn't. He won the electoral college, she won the popular vote. The polls had it as a close election and they were off by a couple of percent.
- pcunite 10y ago
  When I went to view CNN's analysis the day of the election, it was reporting (on their website) a 90% chance Hillary would win.
  - dpark 10y ago
    That's a prediction, not the polls. The polls indicated about a 3-4% preference for Hillary at the national level. She ended up with a 1-2% preference, so the polls were at least as accurate as in the past (nationally at least). The fact that CNN interpreted the data poorly doesn't mean the data was bad. FiveThirtyEight stated repeatedly that Clinton's lead was not insurmountable and the a typical polling error could easily flip it to Trump.
    - masonic 10y ago
      She ended up with a 1-2% preference You are off by an order of magnitude there. As of Wednesday afternoon, the actual popular vote difference was less than 0.17% of votes cast.
      - justinschuh 10y ago
        No, all we have right now are projections, which put Clinton at ~2% lead in the popular vote. We won't have final vote counts until probably December, because many millions of outstanding votes are still uncounted. The same thing happens every presidential cycle. Counts come in much slower for populous states with large volumes of absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots. Clinton is going to win these votes by something like a 2:1 margin.
      - dpark 10y ago
deadringerr 10y ago
Yes, the number of followers for Trump on various social media were substantial but might not be reliable figures [0] due to bots. I'm sure Trump isn't alone with the use of bots, but so far analysis shows that many bots were being utilized as part of his campaign. [0] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-bots-democracy-usa-election http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-bots-democracy-usa-el...
- pcunite 10y ago
  Good point about the bots.
sithadmin 10y ago
>The three letter news agencies were all acting like it was impossible. They were not investigating numbers like I was. Observing that social media accounts have X followers does not constitute 'investigating the numbers', even in the most casual of senses.
- pcunite 10y ago
  It is one data point that no one was talking about.
snowwrestler 10y ago
This is an example of how an online information bubble can affect one's perception of reality. > It looked like a total landslide to me based on national and public data. But it wasn't a total landslide, so your understanding of the data was not accurate. Will you accept that, or will your bubble filter just reject it since Trump won?
- pcunite 10y ago
  I'm trying to have a conversation with you. I'm presenting factual information. I was there. I saw the numbers. You can continue to believe the other narrative, or we can have a conversation.
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    It's not a narrative! The election was literally not a landslide. Vote numbers are available everywhere in all sorts of level of detail. This is a conversation. Disagreeing with you doesn't make it something else.
    - pcunite 10y ago
      I did not say it was a landslide. I said, "it looked like it to me before the election because I'm seeing crazy numbers for Trump and a handful for Hillary". The media was not talking about what was staring me in the face. I'm not a journalist. I don't know what it meant, but to me, I thought, "wow, a landslide is coming". Can I have an opinion?
      - snowwrestler 10y ago
        Of course you can have an opinion. My question to you is: will you be introspective about it? You thought it was going to be a landslide because you only exposed yourself to--or only believed--information that reinforced that opinion. Now that you know it wasn't a landslide, will you go back and look at where your opinion diverged from reality? Or will you just think "I was right after all" simply because Trump won?

by pcunite 10y ago

sshumaker 10y ago

The fact is, the election was actually very close. If there was 1% more turnout Hillary would have won (flipping Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania). She won the popular vote after all. So while it's easy to make broad sweeping generalizations, the story is more complicated than that.

pcunite 10y ago
I'm trying to determine if this really occurred, but there is a report of Terry McAuliffe pardoning 60,000 felons in Virginia for votes. There are other reports of voter fraud. Your vote, as well as mine, were counted. But it seems that the loss was perhaps overwhelming and not as close. We need to get access to the voter databases for election accountability arithmetic. My understanding is this has not been released.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  What really happened in VA is that McAuliffe restored the voting rights of people who had already served their time and were back in society. This is a power of the governor under VA law and therefore not voter fraud. It's also worth mentioning that the idea of restoring voting rights for people once they have served their time has bipartisan support--in part because so many people have served time for nonviolent marijuana possession convictions. Take a look at the election results to see how the country feels about marijuana possession these days.
  - masonic 10y ago
    This is a power of the governor If true (I haven't read the VA constitution), it's totally unprecedented to restore voting rights for everyone in a class with no regard to the facts of individual cases. The partisan motive is obvious.
    - snowwrestler 10y ago
      The facts of the individual cases are factored into the conviction and sentencing. Once the prison term is served, the person can return to society. This is a fundamental concept of our system of justice. The truly disturbing idea is that voting rights are removed in the first place.
- invid_regent 10y ago
  > I'm trying to determine if this really occurred, but there is a report of Terry McAuliffe pardoning 60,000 felons in Virginia for votes. It saddens me that a media source twisted McAuliffe's restoring of voting rights into "pardoned 60,000 felons in Virginia for votes". Also it was 13,000 ... not 60,000.
  - pcunite 10y ago
    I thought it was 200,000, now they say 60,000. So, do you have a source for 13k?
    - invid_regent 10y ago
      I'm going to get some minor details wrong, but bear with me: * Virginia is 1 of 4 states who's state constitution takes away the right of felons to vote. I'm going to be a bad person and just assume this was part of Jim Crow era laws to make sure less African Americans could vote, but I have not researched the subject. * Before 2013, if you committed a non violent felony in Virginia and had fulfilled all parts of your sentence, including serving time and probation and fines and restitution, two years later you could apply for a certificate giving you the right to register to vote. * In 2013, Virginia governor McDonnell issued an executive order that got rid of the two year waiting period. I've read this affected about 100,000 potential voters. * In 2016, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order that made the restoration of the ability to register to vote automatic, no certificate needed. His order covered violent and non violent felons. It didn't change the fact that the governor could just individually restore the ability to register to vote to someone who had completed their sentence. It just made it easy and automatic. * Due to some screwup somewhere his order somehow restored the voting rights for several child molestors still in prison, and a few serial killers who had serial killed in Virginia but were serving a sentence in a different state. I guess. I'm not sure how that worked. I can't imagine a child molestor in prison trying to register to vote. * The Virginia state supreme court overturned the governor's order. * In Aug 2016, McAuliffe vowed to individually restore the rights of each individual ex-felon by hand, but by using an automatic signing machine. He claimed he had signed 13,000 so far, and said he could conceivably cover 200,000 more people. There are some voter advocacy groups who think you should have the right to register to vote after you've completed your sentence, regardless of fines imposed on you by the state. I took some of the above info from the Washington Post ( NOT THE WASHINGTON TIMES ) https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcauliffe-restores-voting-rights-to-13000-felons/2016/08/22/2372bb72-6878-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcaul...
- curun1r 10y ago
  Voting is a fundamental human right. It saddens me that someone would describe restoring someone's voting rights as voter fraud. If anything, the disenfranchisement of felons around this country is the voter fraud. Other countries have polling places in their prisons, let alone allowing ex-convicts to vote. If there's one demographic that should be allowed their say on what society feels is legal and illegal, it's those who society has chosen to punish. Otherwise, you create the possibility of a tyranny of a minority which comprises the majority of the electorate.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > Voting is a fundamental human right. So is liberty, and so is life, and we deprive convicts of those rights too. > If there's one demographic that should be allowed their say on what society feels is legal and illegal, it's those who society has chosen to punish. That's a bit of a non-sequitur: why should those who have chosen to violate the social compact have a voice in it? > Otherwise, you create the possibility of a tyranny of a minority which comprises the majority of the electorate. That's also a non-sequitur: if they are disenfranchised, they're no longer part of the electorate.
zeveb 10y ago
> She won the popular vote after all. As of this moment, that's not true: Mrs. Clinton received 48% of the popular vote. That's more than Mr. Trump, but that's not a majority.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pg314 10y ago

It might have looked like a total landslide to you, but it wasn't. He won the electoral college, she won the popular vote. The polls had it as a close election and they were off by a couple of percent.

pcunite 10y ago
When I went to view CNN's analysis the day of the election, it was reporting (on their website) a 90% chance Hillary would win.
- dpark 10y ago
  That's a prediction, not the polls. The polls indicated about a 3-4% preference for Hillary at the national level. She ended up with a 1-2% preference, so the polls were at least as accurate as in the past (nationally at least). The fact that CNN interpreted the data poorly doesn't mean the data was bad. FiveThirtyEight stated repeatedly that Clinton's lead was not insurmountable and the a typical polling error could easily flip it to Trump.
  - masonic 10y ago
    She ended up with a 1-2% preference You are off by an order of magnitude there. As of Wednesday afternoon, the actual popular vote difference was less than 0.17% of votes cast.
    - justinschuh 10y ago
      No, all we have right now are projections, which put Clinton at ~2% lead in the popular vote. We won't have final vote counts until probably December, because many millions of outstanding votes are still uncounted. The same thing happens every presidential cycle. Counts come in much slower for populous states with large volumes of absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots. Clinton is going to win these votes by something like a 2:1 margin.
    - dpark 10y ago

deadringerr 10y ago

Yes, the number of followers for Trump on various social media were substantial but might not be reliable figures [0] due to bots. I'm sure Trump isn't alone with the use of bots, but so far analysis shows that many bots were being utilized as part of his campaign. [0] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-bots-democracy-usa-election http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-bots-democracy-usa-el...

pcunite 10y ago
Good point about the bots.

sithadmin 10y ago

>The three letter news agencies were all acting like it was impossible. They were not investigating numbers like I was. Observing that social media accounts have X followers does not constitute 'investigating the numbers', even in the most casual of senses.

pcunite 10y ago
It is one data point that no one was talking about.

snowwrestler 10y ago

This is an example of how an online information bubble can affect one's perception of reality. > It looked like a total landslide to me based on national and public data. But it wasn't a total landslide, so your understanding of the data was not accurate. Will you accept that, or will your bubble filter just reject it since Trump won?

pcunite 10y ago
I'm trying to have a conversation with you. I'm presenting factual information. I was there. I saw the numbers. You can continue to believe the other narrative, or we can have a conversation.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  It's not a narrative! The election was literally not a landslide. Vote numbers are available everywhere in all sorts of level of detail. This is a conversation. Disagreeing with you doesn't make it something else.
  - pcunite 10y ago
    I did not say it was a landslide. I said, "it looked like it to me before the election because I'm seeing crazy numbers for Trump and a handful for Hillary". The media was not talking about what was staring me in the face. I'm not a journalist. I don't know what it meant, but to me, I thought, "wow, a landslide is coming". Can I have an opinion?
    - snowwrestler 10y ago
      Of course you can have an opinion. My question to you is: will you be introspective about it? You thought it was going to be a landslide because you only exposed yourself to--or only believed--information that reinforced that opinion. Now that you know it wasn't a landslide, will you go back and look at where your opinion diverged from reality? Or will you just think "I was right after all" simply because Trump won?