The Trump Presidency

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Jan 17, 2017.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Who cares what you think about this? What matters is that at the evening of the election day Trump looked like the winner. And, as a consequence, he can plausibly claim that the elections have been stolen. In a way that the non-Western world does not even question that the election has been stolen, and the US is almost divided 50:50. This would have been impossible in a landslide victory.
    As in this election too. But, unfortunately for the US, it was easy cartoon fodder outside the US used against the US. Blame yourself for this PR disaster. It would have been easy enough to regulate voter registration in such a way that this would have been impossible in principle.
    LOL. Iceaura wants attention for ineptitude of the Dems to organize elections in an appropriate way (so that the voters don't have to wait). That may be excusable in some startup democracy where the organizers simply have not yet sufficient experience to organize the elections. But once this happens in ten consecutive elections, and much more in Dem districts than in Rep districts, it means the Dem organizers are incompetent.
    As always when you have cornered your own strawman.
    Nonsense, the meaning was unchanged.
    The "extra work" beyond the copy/paste was deleting irrelevant things, than means, things I don't reply to. This is useful, even necessary. Not doing such things is bad behavior named (in its extreme form) "fullquote".
    It was irrelevant - as my response showed. The meaning of what I wrote was in no way different, because "on that site" was anyway clear from the context.
    You, as usual (as I have experienced already hundreds of times about my own texts) invent something which has nothing to do with the original.
    But this was not part of the argument made in the link. Simply because this was not part of the available data:
    So, we see here that you make speculations, while the link did not make such speculations but restricted itself to the available data.
    No. The timing was not even used in the data analysis, and "expectations" have not been used too. The comparison was with all the other 8,954 individual updates to the vote totals in all 50 states.
    Nonsense. The whole data analysis would have been the same with the same results if the time of the updates would have been different, simply because this time has not been used in the analysis. It was only interesting as some additional indication that these updates were fraud.
    In other words, you "describe" the argument using words completely different from the argument itself.

    Usually, if an argument is honestly described, and one has to find the argument itself in a sufficiently long text, one can easily find it by searching for the keywords used in the description. Once the description is a free invention of iceaura's mind, this is, of course, impossible.
    RITFLBTC. All the votes are part of some updates. Starting from the first one, which updates the initial 0 votes for everybody.
    So, the timing was ignored in the data analysis, timing was not emphasized at all, just mentioned as an aside, the next point makes no sense at all given that all votes are parts of some update, and private expectations were not used at all in the data analysis, thus, you "only problem" disappears too.
    Except that gerrymandering is (AFAIR according to you) quite common, mail-in votes too, and the predicted effects would have been quite common. But those 4 updates were exceptional in comparison with the remaining 8,950 updates.
    No, he does not need it at all. Because his argument is quite different. But you obviously have been unable to understand that argument itself.
    The introduction is the place where one gives information about the background, about the things found by others, and similar things necessary to motivate the research. That's all. The research itself does not use any timelines. The data do not contain any information about gerrymandering and mail-in votes, so that his research does not demonstrate any such thing and does not even try to do this.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    How much does it matter though? How do the election night results matter in previous elections, compared to a final result?
    When did the US pass a law that says election results have to be decided on the same day the election is held? That, as far as I remember, has never been the case, so what's your point?
    That's a valid point actually, the US could have upgraded its 18th century voting system, but it hasn't. Why it hasn't is a whole 'nother thing. Maybe something to do with the 18th century version of who a citizen is, or something.
    But that's a false argument: the Dems don't organize elections, counties in individual states do. I'm not an American and even I know this.

    The rest of your arguments about when vote tallies were released to the press doesn't really connect with how individual states tally county votes. But, you know there is a difference between what vote counters do, and when results are announced. Suppose a state decided to not release the ongoing totals until the vote counting was complete, or at say 99%? What would that do to your arguments about sudden increases in a periodically updated count?

    Would it make your argument look facile? I think so.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. river

    Messages:
    17,307
    I'm sure that if the voting went trumps way , he wouldn't question the results , he didn't in 2016 .
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,426
    Not without a lot of wishful thinking and ignorance of the facts. None of the networks were calling the election for Trump, for instance.
     
    river likes this.
  8. river

    Messages:
    17,307

    Highlighted

    What matters is not looking like a winner , but being the Actual Winner . ( we all know the difference ) .
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2020
  9. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Not in the context I have discussed. That the declared winner will be Biden was clear from the start, given the essentially open announcements that the election will be decided only by mail-in votes coming later, which everybody has translated as the mail-in votes necessary for Biden to win have been already prepared.

    The context was the question if it is plausible for the world (or at least those parts not under 100% Western propaganda cover) that the election has been stolen by the Dems. To answer this question, we need the following:
    1.) Trump should have looked like the plausible winner. And for this purpose, the situation at the end of the day was sufficient.
    2.) It should be technically possible, with some plausibility (fulfilled, given the essentially non-existent security measures for mail-in voting).
    3.) It should be plausibly claimed, with presenting at least some plausible evidence. Done, with https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020

    Note that (1) is essential, because nobody cares much today about some faked votes, such things matter only if they decide the elections. See Belarus, where it was plausible that Lukashenko has faked the 80+% victory claim, but where the opposition really winning was not plausible too. And even a Western-paid observation group has presented evidence only for a Lukashenko victory around 80+%. Of course, once there was Western support, some color revolution has been tried, but failed. Of course, faking elections is bad, but if one would have won them even in a fair election it is only extremely stupid.
    Of course, one had to ignore the fact that the Dems will, if necessary, use the essentially uncontrollable mail-in votes to steal the elections. So I have not thought that Trump will win. My "wishful thinking" was from the start restricted to "no landslide for Biden". That the stealing was done in such an unprofessional form that it was quite easy to see and find sufficient evidence was not even on my wish list, I thought the Dems are more professional.
    This I have known even before election day. That was suspected long before, but there was IIRC some announcement of twitter that it will censor victory claims until some "networks" announce victory or so. That made it clear that these networks will not declare Trump as the winner. (That's not my idea, but the argument of some Russian blogger.)
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Usually it would not matter at all.

    But in this case the situation was quite different from the start. There have been open announcements that what is expected is that in the election night it may look like a Trump victory but later, after the mail-in vote counting, Biden may be the winner. Given that Trump has openly argued against the mail-in votes because of the danger of fraud, the votes have been automatically split into two parts - those less suspect, normal votes, and the suspect, mail-in votes. So, the results at the end of the day were the result of normal votes, and what followed the result of suspect votes.

    The US should blame itself for organizing mail-in votes in such a suspect way.
    The point is that people all over the world have made a similar subdivision into normal and suspect votes, given the disputes about mail-in votes before.
    That's their stupidity. Or not, plausibly too many "elected" politicians were interested in leaving the voting system as it is, open to fraud, so that the introduction of sufficient security had no chance.
    And the counties are ruled either by Dems or by Reps. And if the Dems or the Reps rule some district makes a difference, which was iceaura's point:
    Does it matter? See, scientists use the data they can get, and their profession is to extract as much information from these data as possible. That the data themselves are far away from the data they would be really interested in is the usual, typical situation. Wishful thinking is not an option in science. Such is life.
    I have not made some argument about sudden increases in a periodically updated count. Read https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020 to understand the argument made there. With the argument made in that research it would not make anything, except that the data would have been different.
     
  11. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,855
    You sound utterly clueless on the election process. "Uncontrollable mail-in votes to steal the election"

    Wtf are you talking about?
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    You are really so very poorly informed - but that's beyond even your norm: nobody translated that as hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots "prepared" - tens of thousands for each State at risk, with signatures and registered voter IDs and all, and postmarked en masse without anyone knowing about it somehow - except the most gullible of the ignorant.
    No, it wasn't. By the end of the day it was clear to careful observers that Trump had lost the electoral college majority as well as the national popular vote itself (by landslide). Had Trump won it would have been clear evidence that the fraud so openly pursued by the Republican Party had been successful.
    Nonsense. You have overlooked the sheer magnitude and variety of the manipulations necessary.
    Debunked above. Your incompetence in evaluating statistics for yourself need not prevent you from reading and comprehending the simple arguments of others - the "expectations" of your silly expert there are simply mistakes, cleverly worded and cast in unfamiliar language to take in the gullible (all Trump voters are gullible - how else would they remain Trump voters?).
    The mail in votes are more easily controlled than the computer systems used by Republican governed States.
    Then your argument is blown out of the water. Essentially nobody who analyzed the situation thought Trump had a plausible shot at winning an honest election (the last three Republican wins were fraudulent, and they were all more likely than this one). The only uncertainty was whether or not the Reps - who control a majority of the electoral votes by State - could steal it.
    You didn't see anything yourself - you instead fell for a ridiculous argument you lacked the knowledge to refute ( very basic knowledge, such as how to spot a clever rhetorical trick like this one:
    Note that your expert there claims to be considering an irrelevant hypothetical case - one that does not apply to this election - just "for the moment", but then uses it as the justification of his "expectations" from then on.

    I admit to laughing out loud when I read that - the assumption of gullibility in the reader was comical, and the fact that you fell for it leached all the irritation out of my having to read the damn thing.
    Yep.
    He was motivated by the timing of the pro-Biden vote. That's what he claims led him to mistake normal and long-predicted results for "anomalies", things to focus on.
    Like this:
    The guy simply ignores the obvious - that there are "compelling" (i.e. based on normal reasoning from obvious circumstances) explanations for the predicted and expected nature of those selected "updates". They are not anomalous themselves, but expected as normal consequences of the anomalous circumstances imposed by Republican attempts at fraud and manipulation during a pandemic - they were predicted by people from the prior circumstances (Republican attempts at fraud, mostly) of the election.

    In other words: To the extent they surprise anyone, or seem unusual, they would be evidence of Republican fraud - evidence that the Republican manipulations of delay and gerrymandering had had significant impact. (The delays explain the timing your source mistakes for Democratic manipulations, and the gerrymandering explains the statistical oddities your source mistakes for evidence of Democratic fraud.) That's how the results were predicted by analysts - they took into account Republican fraud and manipulation, and allowed for its effects.

    All of that is invisible to you, because you have no idea how elections are run in the US and no experience in analyzing them (and very little experience with statistical analysis of such events, or apparently any events) - you depend completely on your source, which is completely unreliable (being the media feed of a fascist political faction).
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2020
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The mail in votes were no more "suspect" than the other normal votes. (Mail in votes are normal, in the US).
    They were less suspect than the machine votes in many places - especially Republican run places, where easily hacked, non-transparent, and not auditable machine votes have been correlated with many statistical "irregularities" over the years.
    Your link based their entire argument on the suspicious nature of sudden increases in the Biden vote from updates in the count.
    The Republican Party, you mean.
    That's who controls the voting procedures in an electoral college majority of the States.
    Voting infrastructure is organized by State, not county, dumbass.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2020
  14. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    A lot of bad words against me, with the only information that it would be somehow difficult to prepare such things. You btw completely ignore the main point is how all this looks like for the people around which are able to access information independent of the Western propaganda, as well as for the deplorables in the US. Will they think about how easy it is to fake a mail-in vote?
    According to https://votepatternanalysis.substack.com/p/voting-anomalies-2020 manipulating these four extreme updates would have been sufficient. Replacing them with extreme but not that extreme data would be sufficient for Trump to win (232 + 42 = 274) against Biden (306 - 42 = 264):
    A long tirade without a single argument.
    Whatever, nobody cares. What matters to outside observers is that the system is open to manipulation.
    Is this about the Dems winning the "popular vote"? LOL. "Honest election" means, of course, an election following the law. If you think the law is unjust, given that it does not care about the "popular vote", that's your problem, it has nothing to do with stealing elections.
    Thanks for admitting that you have not read the damn thing before. This explains the nonsense you have written about it in the previous posts. What's wrong with the argument itself remains hidden. That some statistical effects have to be explained to laymen who are usually not aware of them is usual, such examples are a usual tool for this. You seem to think that such LOLs replace arguments. (Given the auditory here, it may indeed work. But I don't care about the gullible here, I care about the argument. And there is silence.)

    Looks like you have not even understood what is the anomaly of this particular update. If you have, then please explain why the unusual ration of Trump relative to
    non-two-party votes has to be expected.

    Again, the timing plays no role in the anomalies found, and gerrymandering may explain a lot about the general results, but, given that it is a quite common thing, will not help to explain why those 4 updates differ so much from all the other updates.

    Who cares if there are also a lot of other possibilities to fake US elections? What matter is that it is possible.
    No. Learn to read. This sudden character made these updates visible and suspect. That's all. This was the starting point of the analysis.
    Learn to behave in a civilized way. Who is responsible for

    I don't know, don't care, and don't have to care. All I see from your text is that the banana republic named USA is unable to organize their elections adequately for the tenth consecutive election. Long lines in some single election, say, with unpredictable surprisingly high participation, is one thing, such things happen. But if this happens all the time, then you would better learn how to organize elections.
     
  15. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,328
    I agree ... I have no idea what he is talking about...
    Perhaps he would care to explain? lol
     
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,328
    I was expected to win and I am not even a candidate, so yeah definitely the vote was rigged
     
  17. LazarusLong Registered Member

    Messages:
    21
    Trump is insane. He is a traitor. I can’t believe this is happening in the USA.

    what happens when trump tries to declare martial law? Does he get laughed at? Or is that something that we have to actually worry about now?
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2020
  18. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,479
    clearly you.
    no he didn't. you'd have to be a complete moron to think he won on election day
    no he can't
    stupid and ignorant people will believe anything
     
  19. LazarusLong Registered Member

    Messages:
    21
    Imagine if the loser of the super bowl refused to accept defeat, refused to leave the field, and claimed that they won because they were ahead at halftime... Thats what trump is doing. Only his actions aren’t funny. It’s threatening to destroy our democracy.
     
  20. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,426
    Heh. You do make me laugh at times, Schmelzer. How much are you paid for your work here?

    Sadly, for you and your employers, not as much as in 2016, it seems.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Think about what the world (except Western propaganda sheeple) believes if Trump claims that mail-in votes can be easily manipulated. It would have been easy for the Western propaganda to prove that this is a fake claim, by describing in detail all the already existing measures which would make a falsification of such votes impossible. But the only reaction I have seen in the Western press was "Trump is lying as usual", without providing evidence for this. The same level of argumentation which is typical for iceaura's 'you don't know'. (Which probably explains that iceaura's strategy may be successful for the sheeple here, given that iceaura gives all the same "arguments" they are used to get from the propaganda in their bubble too, so that he looks like "quality press" or so.) So, those with information sources outside the Western bubble will assume Trump is right, given that the straightforward reaction is missing. Instead, the Trump supporters provide at least some evidence, explaining how easy it is to throw away votes of Trump supporters, or people receiving by mail a lot of documents for mail-in voting for people not living at that address. And, of course, all the anti-American media around the world distribute this. So you have information distributed around the world about how easy it would be to fake mail-in votes in the US, and only ad hominem against Trump from the other side. So the people will believe those who claim that it is easy to fake mail-in votes in the US. Such is life. The only exception are those believing everything told by Western propaganda.
    Of course, all those not believing the Western propaganda are anyway in that basket of deplorables. As if would matter what those inside the Western propaganda bubble think about them - deplorables, Untermenschen, who cares. They know you want to rule and exploit them, and they don't want to be ruled and exploited by the US.

    My feelings are better named "fremdschämen" (external shame). The US deep state can afford nothing but such cheap personal attacks? Western propaganda was much better during the Cold War. Everything seems in decline in the West actually, even the propaganda.
     
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    [1/6]

    Well, as (Q) suggested↑, "Only the misinformed, ignorant fool would think the Dems stole the election."

    The analysis you linked to↱, Schmelzer, is a heap of misinformation. Let's start with this part:

    Indeed, if it is subsequently discovered that these did not comprise the entire count (for either mail-in votes or all votes) in these areas, then these results should be regarded with extreme suspicion. While vote counts are by no means a random sample nationally, given a small enough sub-population at which votes are counted, they eventually are. If it can be shown by those with access to time-series county-level (or precinct-level) data that, for whichever counties or precincts reported in this update, that there were other updates (or other updates with mail-in ballots), then these results become almost impossible to believe. This is to say, the believability of these updates relies on the premise that the one or two most Biden-favoring parts of the state (perhaps by ballot type) were counted entirely in these two batches. If it cannot be shown that the ballots counted during these spikes were qualitatively different from all other vote updates in Michigan, then the results are likely too extreme along multiple dimensions to be accepted at face value.

    One would also need to believe that mail-in ballots, which have generally been understood to be more pro-Biden, sometimes substantially so, were counted in their entirety in these regions. While this data set does not provide breakdowns of how many votes in each update came from different types of votes, it is extremely surprising that we do not see smaller vote updates with mail-in votes which favor Biden more heavily.

    It's a strange setup; these paragraphs from the latter portion of the discussion are the first consideration of counties. As the report "studies 8,954 individual updates to the vote totals in all 50 states", it stands out all the more that discussion of counties waited until a section on Important Considerations, immediately preceding the Conclusion.

    The important considerations involve Michigan and Wisconsin; the cited paragraphs refer to Michigan, suggesting, "to accept the results as seen in Michigan as legitimate, one would need to believe that the one or two most possible pro-Biden areas of the state were somehow each counted their ballots entirely in one or two vote updates". One way of reading the statement is according to what says, and in that manner it is false: No, not "entirely". To accept some value of what the statement means, it's anxiously interested speculation scrabbling for a pretense of legitimization:

    "That is, to accept certain results, one would need to believe significant blocs of votes in heavily pro-Biden areas were included in a particular range of statewide updates. In other words, to accept certain results, one would need to believe something that is easily believable.

    On the morning of Election Day, per local news↱ Michigan had already received over three million mail-in ballots. CNN↱ considered the implications of certain election laws in the states, such as Michigan, where the rules regarding the count of mail-in ballots allow a mere ten hours to prepare those ballots for counting on Election Day. The WXYZ report on Michigan ballots noted, "with historic levels of absentee ballots this cycle, state elections officials are preparing for a longer counting period".

    Something you need to understand about American elections is that large cities and populous counties can both turn dramatic results quickly and take a long time to finish counting their ballots. This is because these areas have more election workers and funds, and also more votes to review.

    But with ten hours to prepare and process ballots for tabulation, some votes will be already organized for counting. And when it's a large number of votes, then yes, dramatic results are possible.

    As CNN noted, the "short window to process mail-in ballots stands in sharp contrast to Florida, where officials began processing ballots weeks before Election Day, allowing them to swiftly report results", which is "part of the reason Trump was quickly projected as the winner in Florida". The CNN report also noted a "surge in Wisconsin results overnight that largely favored Biden raised conservative ire, but it reflected the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee reporting more than 169,000 absentee votes".

    USA Today addressed a particular conspiracy theory about Wisconsin, and along the way explained that the turn toward Biden occurred "after the city of Milwaukee's central count finished processing mail-in votes around 3:30 a.m." And the thing about such a dramtic turn is that "Milwaukee and 38 other municipalities tally all of their absentee ballots at one location, instead of individual polling places". Thus, the "late boost for Biden from Milwaukee was expected", at least by people who pay attention. And, really, this isn't so obscure; one need not be an election lawyer or seasoned political analyist to grasp these basics.

    And there is, actually, something that goes here about pretenses of ignorance. A lot of people in conservative establishments are pitching cynically against history they already know in hopes of fooling other people who aren't necessarily aware, or who can be confused. And reading through the Substack screed, a basic pretense of ignorance kindles an aesthetic tantrum:

    Much skepticism and uncertainty surrounds these “vote spikes.” Critics point to suspicious vote counting practices, extreme differences between the two major candidates' vote counts, and the timing of the vote updates, among other factors, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of some of these spikes. While data analysis cannot on its own demonstrate fraud or systemic issues, it can point us to statistically anomalous cases that invite further scrutiny.

    Briefly:

    "Much skepticism and uncertainty" — Much conspiracism and emotionally distressed speculation

    "Critics" — including crackpots and socmed noise chambers

    "point to" — insinuate, suggest, pitch hair-on-fire fits, make up out of thin air

    "suspicious vote counting practices" — according to potsherds and tinfoil, and also cynical vested interests pretending extraordinary ignorance in order to manipulate the ignorant and emotionally desperate

    "extreme differences between the two major candidates' vote counts" — which are not in and of themselves suspicious

    "and the timing of the vote updates" — which actually appears to make sense according to law and circumstance

    "among other factors" — potsherds, spaghetti on the wall, dead communists, and the sort of make-believe that sweats hair dye

    "to cast doubt on the legitimacy of some of these spikes" — which is an amazing phrase when isolated like that, which in turn is both fair and not

    ― In American sales and politicking, there is value in a certain vagary or ambiguity, but if that pretense of uncertainty permeates the argument, we might wonder why. It is true that some critics would seek to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, but look at what the assertion actually says, "to cast doubt on the legitimacy of some of these spikes". Some of which spikes? Several spikes in three states? They mean four particular updates in Michigan, Wisconin, and Georgia. So, even taking the outstanding credulity of the Exeecutive Summary at face value, the prospect that the critics cast doubt on some of these updates invites an obvious question about why not all of them. This is political language; it's a sales job.​

    "While data analysis cannot on its own demonstrate fraud or systemic issues, it can point us to statistically anomalous cases that invite further scrutiny." — The further scrutiny would appear to complain about real circumstance compared to an unexpressed idyll that remains mysterious because the analysis itself seems more intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process according to crackpottery. No, really, the would-be analysis only goes downhill from here.​

    The next paragraph:

    This is one such case: Our analysis finds that a few key vote updates in competitive states were unusually large in size and had an unusually high Biden-to-Trump ratio. We demonstrate the results differ enough from expected results to be cause for concern.

    Note that standard: Unusually large in size, unusually high Biden-Trump ratio.

    The explanation of what that means is particularly silly.

    [(cont.)]
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    [2/6]

    One of the hardest aspects to explain about certain manners of conspiracism can be described as everything that is wrong with the setup.

    While this Substack analysis↱ purports to "demonstrate the results differ enough from expected results to be cause for concern", part of the problem with that is, well, everything that is wrong with the setup. To wit, they might be looking at a lot of updates, but they regard the data in a statewide context—

    With this report, we rely only on publicly available data from the New York Times to identify and analyze statistical anomalies in key states. Looking at 8,954 individual vote updates (differences in vote totals for each candidate between successive changes to the running vote totals, colloquially also referred to as “dumps” or “batches”), we discover a remarkably consistent mathematical property: there is a clear inverse relationship between difference in candidates' vote counts and and the ratio of the vote counts. (In other words, it's not surprising to see vote updates with large margins, and it's not surprising to see vote updates with very large ratios of support between the candidates, but it is surprising to see vote updates which are both).

    —which is why the late and scant discussion of counties stands out: These results are more localized than the statewide context. As the analysis continues, decontextualization plays an important role. Consider the parenthetic expression:

    "In other words, it's not surprising to see vote updates with large margins, and it's not surprising to see vote updates with very large ratios of support between the candidates, but it is surprising to see vote updates which are both"—The first question to mind might be, "According to what?" but we can come back to it. Look at the basic wordplay. Take out the word, "surprising"; replace it with the phrase, "statistically unusual". Some might even feel compelled toward refining that alternate expression, and the more particular the refinement, the more it makes a certain point. The use of the word "surprising" is not necessarily appropriate. Consider the idea of four or seven examples among a statistical range of nearly nine thousand. Perhaps certain results stand out as unusual or infrequent occurrences according to a particular presentation of the data, but it might actually be surprising if these deviations did not occur at all.​

    Decontextualization, and even recontextualization; the setup has already run awry. But the parenthetic note, including the wordplay, is a bauble of a potsherd:

    The significance of this property will be further explained in later sections of this report. Nearly every vote update, across states of all sizes and political leanings follow this statistical pattern. A very small number, however, are especially aberrant. Of the seven vote updates which follow the pattern the least, four individual vote updates—two in Michigan, one in Wisconsin, and one in Georgia—were particularly anomalous and influential with respect to this property and all occurred within the same five hour window.

    The italics are part of the original, and perhaps we are supposed to gasp in shock and horror, but let us be clear: They refer to a five-hour window in the late night of and early morning after Election Day during which large and dramatic blocs of votes in the running reports are not unusual, and even expected compared to the laws and circumstances in effect this cycle.

    That is, this all happened pretty much when we might think or even expect it would happen. As cause for concern goes, well, it's probably not fair to keep joking about everything wrong with the setup, because as jokes go, this analysis cannot even manage a proper setup.

    In particular, we are able to quantify the extent of compliance with this property and discover that, of the 8,954 vote updates used in the analysis, these four decisive updates were the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th most anomalous updates in the entire data set. Not only does each of these vote updates not follow the generally observed pattern, but the anomalous behavior of these updates is particularly extreme. That is, these vote updates are outliers of the outliers.

    Again, we're back to four of seven of eight thousand nine hundred fifty-four, and the question of what is statistically unusual compared to what is surprising. There is the expressed "mathematical property", described as "a clear inverse relationship between difference in candidates' vote counts and and the ratio of the vote counts", but ceteris paribus is not in effect; not all else is equal. We must, for the sake of the wordplay, pretend that the fact of statistical deviation itself is somehow surprising; conversely, the prospect of such a sample range without deviation should be unsurprising. The converse is problematic; the asserted mathematical property is too simply either defined or applied.

    And this is part of what's wrong with the setup. There is an air of simplicity, even to the point of requiring binary artifice in order to legitimize a poorly-defined thesis.

    According to the authors, the report considers four vote updates of statewide totals from the early hours of the morning after Election Day, and "predicts what these vote updates would have looked like, had they followed the same pattern as the vast majority of the 8,950 others". Moreover, they "find that the extents of the respective anomalies here are more than the margin of victory in all three states", which in turn is what the analysis intends, that is, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. That is, the report finds what it finds because of course it will, as that is what it was devised for.

    In its Background section, the analysis continues its blithe, requisite credulity:

    On Election Night, conflicting news reports came in that various precincts were stopping their count for the evening, sending election officials home, or re-starting their counts. There remains a large amount of confusion to this day about the extent to which various precincts stopped counting, as well as the extent to which any state election laws or rules were broken by sending election officials home prematurely. Whatever the case is, various precincts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania continued to report numbers throughout the night.

    By the early hours of the following morning, Wisconsin had flipped blue, as did Michigan soon after. A few days later, Georgia and Pennsylvania followed suit. Given the uncertain context, many American observers and commentators were immediately uncomfortable or skeptical of these trends.

    The question of conflicting reports or confusion depends entirely on the idea that all chatter is the same; the prospect that "many American observers and commentators were immediately uncomfortable or skeptical of these trends" is not explicitly inaccurate, but pretends ceteris paribus, that all else about this ostensible uncomfortable skepticism is equal. Quantitatively, enough conservatives grasped at enough straws that, sure, "many" is not an inappropriate word, but the reliability of such skepticism is apparently beyond these analysts' purview.

    The Background setup here really is as simple as it reads: "As this graph shows, Joe Biden overtook President Trump's lead through a small number of vote updates which broke overwhelmingly for Biden in Michigan in the early hours of the morning of November 4th." Such drama foreshadows the escalation: "The situation in Wisconsin is even more stark", says the analysis, because, "a single update to the vote count brought Biden from trailing by over 100,000 votes into the lead". That is to say, an expected count of mail-in ballots from Milwaukee and environs posted about when we expected it to, and favored Biden pretty much as expected.

    But at least we finally get to the heart of the matter:

    Various versions of these graphs spurred online discourse. While some commentators provided relatively partisan analysis, others merely expressed surprise at the near-vertical leaps in some of these vote updates. Is it likely this phenomenon would arise organically? In an attempt to address this question, this report assesses how extreme and unusual these spikes are with respect to both other vote updates in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia, as well as those around the nation.

    Through several investigative mechanisms, we find these four vote updates to be extraordinarily anomalous. While these alone do not prove the existence of fraud or systemic issue, it invites further scrutiny.

    Remember: In a range of that many behavioral samples, is the fact of results that don't look quite like others, that deviate from a generally identified trend, surprising? Would uniform conformity be more or less suprising? Also, is the asserted general trend real, and then, to what degree is it actually significant of anything?

    [(cont.)]
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page