So I checked the lead political story on CNN:
CNN poll: It’s a dead heat
Then I checked the lead political story on MSNBC:
NBC/WSJ poll: Very close race with one day to go
Feeling desperate, I even checked Fox News:
CLOSING TIME: In Final Hours, Are
There Still Undecideds Left to Swing?
Do you sense a theme? It’s one that we’ve suffered with for the entire election season: news media that are obsessed with the horse race rather than the issues.
Fuck the media. Only xkcd sees the truth.
And tomorrow is the race itself, with non-stop coverage of exit polls, with maps showing trends, and predictions, and declaring that one state has gone to one candidate or the other — it’s all our media live for, I think, is the ultimate orgasm of who wins, rather than the substance of the consequences of electing either of these people.
I hate them. I hate them all. I will not be watching any of those channels, I will not be visiting their websites at all tomorrow: I am going to vote and then I am going to shut out the yammering ninnies for the whole day, and I will check my newspaper for who the winner was on Wednesday. I might be nice and create an election day thread for you all here, but I will not be reading it myself.
The real election campaign is long over. We were supposed to have news that clearly discussed the differences and similarities between the two. We didn’t get that, so now we get numbers filtered out of noise.
Also, Salon’s top two articles on tomorrow’s election are all about the polls…but they also have an article by Robert Reich on Romney’s destructive policies. More of that, please. I don’t give a damn about the polls — the only one that counts is the election itself.
Right there with you, PZ. I’m totally ignoring TV and radio tomorrow.
(And I hope all you US residents are voting tomorrow, voting — if I can throw in this partisan bit — for Obama. Plus lots of Democrats in Congress.)
An additional irony is that the ones who are yammering about how close it is are demonsterably wrong.
I’m so tired of phrases like “if Romney wins” and “who wins the election”. The actual winners will be plutocrats and the religious right on the one hand, or women, minorities, gays, and the poor on the other hand (at least in relative terms).
Most media have been determined to cast the presidential election as a neck-and-neck horse race throughout the campaign — even when Obama had a commanding lead in the polls it was always “too close to call.” Today polls show a resilient Obama edge in the popular vote that is magnified in an Electoral College advantage that he never lost. Still “too close to call” or even to acknowledge the genuine difference. What we have is not only an avoidance of political content and what the two candidates stand for, it’s also an avoidance of anything contradicting the theme of a practically tied vote.
I agree there is a lot of noise, but frankly if someone doesn’t know the difference (and the sames) between Romney and Obama by now, its their own fault, not mass media’s.
I’m much more concerned with the abysmal lack of coverage or interest in local politics. Bond measures, constitutional amendments, propositions, school board elections, etc. Sometimes a big one will get some news coverage, but 90% of them get absolutely nothing. I would guess that most local political elections get decided by whether you have a (D) or (R) next to your name, with the voters knowing absolutely nothing else about the candidates or their positions.
Halo 4 comes out tomorrow so it should be pretty easy to find something to do other than watch the news after you’ve cast your ballot.
There is still hope that the election will remain undecided for awhile. Between post=Sandy problems running the election in the NorthEast, and all that “provisional ballot” stuff in Ohio (which cannot even be counted for a couple of weeks), assorted “absentee ballot” counting disputes in close states, it may go in for weeks yet.
I just hope there’ll be internet live coverage of voter suppressions happening at the polls. (Well, not hope, more like disgust and apprehension that it’s necessary.) (And internet coverage, because damn if any large-scale media source would cover such a story if it flew up and yarked in their faces.)
Will there be exit polls? My understanding is that they were abandoned after 2000, when it was shown that 11% of all self-described Democrats voted directly for Bush, giving lie to the much whined claim that Nader was responsible for the Bush regieme. There were no official national exit polls in 2004 and 2008, because fast were just too damn inconvenient for the media pundits and talking heads.
@Tualha #3 – I disagree. Regardless of whether Romney takes or Obama keeps the White House, the winners will still be the plutocrats: everyone else will lose. The only question is which group of plutocrats will come out on top.
Yeah, because Romney will surely throw the religious right under the bus such that they will “lose” either way. We all know how poorly the religious right are treated in America! Because Obama will surely mistreat gays, women, and minorities equally as much as a Romney administration. We all know how Republicans are so tolerant and permissive! Because Obama and Romney are just as pro-plutocrat as one another. We are all know how Republicans are just as willing to tax businesses and rich people as Democrats are! And just as willing to help the poor as well! And don’t even bother looking into their policies on war! So identical that it will make your brain spin! No differences at all. Nuh uh.
My mother made a good point: the closer the race is perceived to be, the more advertising the opposing campaigns are likely to buy. Therefore, it’s in the media’s interest to stir up that narrative and ignore both facts (i.e. Obama’s lead) and the issues.
More often than not, I find more true things in one single XKCD strip than in an entire newspaper.
I’ll call it right now, Obama has too good of a lead in the battleground states to loose the EC. The national polls have shifted toward Obama over the last few days to give him a slight edge in the popular vote. Like Nate Silver says, there would have to be a bias toward Obama in both the State and National polls for Romney to win.
(fix’d)
Also because exit polls were contradicting the results from voting machines. (Therefore, the exit polls must be inherently flawed and unreliable, QED.) *spits*
odd the way the exit polls had evolved into a very accurate predictor of an election until the 2000 election. Seems exit polls no longer predict the outcome of an election.
@Pteryxx #15
I forgot about that, thanks. Yup, it just Would Not Do when you have exit polls naming X the clear winner and then have Y win by a landslide. So, no more exit polls.
@10, Gregory in Seattle
blockquote Regardless of whether Romney takes or Obama keeps the White House, the winners will still be the plutocrats: everyone else will lose. The only question is which group of plutocrats will come out on top./blockquote
yes! the voter is screwed regardless of who is elected.
@ anteprepro
Apropros of that, there was an interview on CNN where the interviewee suggested that in spite of all rMoney’s bluster (here wrt Iran), it is Obama who actually has the power to undertake a more hardline stance (not that he would necessarily want to). This is because rMoney simply won’t have the werewithall to undertake any action for the next two years or so. He has to put the people in place first. And that takes time. Not even to speak of the connections he would have to put together with allies and enemies alike. Obama IS currently in this position.
In like manner: It is not about the economy. If it was about the economy, even if one argues that Obama is an idjit, he is currently in a far better position to undertake anything. If rMoney were to cobble together an administration, he would only be able to go back to the failed Rethuglican advisors of Bush, or (more likely) have to draw from a less partisan selection of advisors – likely the same Obama would be working with.
My (relatively unpartisan ) suggestion, is that if one wants a president that can do ANYTHING in a hurry, one’s only choice is Obama. That is the cold, practical reality of it all.
…
PS: I think it is good for Obama that everything is painted as . It Will push his supporters into voting. (I suspect this effect will be more marked among Democrats.)
My plan is to vote early and finally finish Resident Evil 6 while DarkInfant is napping. I’ll probably catch the Daily Show’s coverage at the end of the day, but that’s it.
@10, Gregory in Seattle
yes! the voter is screwed regardless of who is elected. And your vote hasn’t counted in over 12 years. The vote machines versus the exit polls.
Your vote is worthless.
In 2000 wasn’t George W appointed by the supreme court?
As opposed to “winning”?
And if Rmoney “wins,” will these same media report about the concerns of voter suppression and vote-machine rigging? Barely, if at all. We’ll all be thinking it, but they won’t be discussing it.
Voter suppression has been covered some, but is it treated as the national scandal it is? Not that I’ve seen. There should be visible OUTRAGE that one party’s leadership broadly believes that people who are likely to disagree with them are not fit to vote.
Vote-rigging risk concerns are, as far as I’ve seen, confined to alt. media and the pajamahadeen. You could argue that it’s not news until it happens, but that hasn’t prevented discussion of the possible effects of curtailing early voting hours, which is also speculative.
I can’t really see any reason to support machines with no physical ballot unless you are planning to steal elections. The right-wing’s support for voter suppression says all you need to know about their respect for the sanctity of voting.
Someone linked this over at A+ forum: a statistical analysis demonstrating vote-shifting in direct proportion to precinct size. I wish I’d seen it sooner.
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html
According to the article, vote flips happen at a rate less than 10%, adjusted for precinct size, which is a pattern selected to avoid showing statistical significance in any one precinct.
Chigau:
Pretty much, at least the first election. W did legitimately beat Kerry in ’04.
A while back I saw a headline on an election story saying there was a possible “Nightmare Scenario” with Ohio votes. I thought it was going to be about our illustrious Secretary of State, John Husted, who has done everything in his power to suppress the vote and insure a Romney win and how he was trying to confuse voters, avoid counting provisional ballots, and stop early voting, especially in Democratic leaning counties and the potential for real voter fraud from the top.
It wasn’t. It was about the fact that provisional ballots in Ohio do not get counted on election night, and there might be a lot of them, so we MIGHT NOT KNOW WHO WON ON ELECTION NIGHT/WEDNESDAY MORNING!!!!111! ZOMG!!!111!!
Yeah, that’s not a nightmare scenario for anyone except the media. Don’t tell me your nightmare is my nightmare, it’s not. In fact, I’d like to see exit polling and any release of results before all votes are counted outlawed. If Afghanistan can wait for donkeys to carry paper ballots out of the mountains, we can wait until all votes are counted twice, by default, and a single, solid result is announced at one appointed time.
I was sure you were talking about today’s Melbourne Cup horse race in Australia for a moment there…
Can someone explain to me what provisional ballots are ?
In 2000 wasn’t George W appointed by the supreme court?
Florida Legislature, actually.
@Matt Penfold –
In general, when you show up at a polling place your name is checked on a list and you are handed a ballot and you vote and that ballot gets counted.
If your name is not on the list (usually because you are at the wrong polling place or precinct), or if it has been marked off as having received an absentee ballot, then you can still get a ballot and vote, but it is a provisional ballot. That means you have to fill out more information and provide identification so that your ballot can be checked against the records. Basically, they look at your name and see if you voted at a different polling place already or if your absentee ballot already came in. If so, your provisional ballot is trashed, if not it is counted. All this takes considerable time, and if the vote is not close enough for your provisional ballot to matter, it doesn’t happen at all.
I think this is all state by state, as most election law is, so your results may vary.
gussnarp,
Thanks.
Some reasons provisional ballots are important is that a lot of people don’t know their polling place, and it can sometimes change without them being aware of it. What also happens is that more than one precinct votes in the same polling place (there are several at my polling place). Say you show up at the right polling place but don’t know your precinct. My precinct this year is 25-e. Another year it was 25-k. So maybe I didn’t check and just assumed it was the same, so I get in the 25-k line. My name’s not on the list, so I get a provisional ballot. Or maybe they ask me my address and then say, oh no, you’re in 25-f, that’s the next table over. So I go to 25-f and I’m still not on the list and I say, but they told me to come here. Then the poll worker says, OK, fill out this provisional ballot.
Part of the Ohio issue is that Husted didn’t want to count these “poll worker error” ballots, where the voter was sent to the wrong precinct by the poll worker. Why? because rich, old, white republicans who’ve been voting for years don’t make these mistakes.
Another solution to this problem is the permanent ink method used in Iraq and Afghanistan. You just show up and vote, but your finger gets marked with permanent ink and if you try to vote with an inky finger, you’re out of luck.
That doesn’t solve the absentee ballot. If you’ve been sent an absentee ballot and still turn up to vote, what if you’ve already sent in the absentee ballot? Can’t have you vote twice, so provisional ballot it is. Now maybe you got the absentee ballot just in case, but changed your mind. Or maybe your Republican Secretary of State sent out absentee ballot requests on official forms to every voter in the state, ostensibly to expand ballot access. But what really happens? First time voters, people who just aren’t as informed, or anyone in a hurry just sees this official form and thinks they have to fill it out to vote, so they do. Then they get an absentee ballot in the mail and they think, well I don’t want to vote absentee. I don’t trust that, I’m going to my polling place. Thus, they get a provisional ballot. Which Husted doesn’t want to count if they screw up even the tiniest technicality, including putting the wrong ID information on the form, even though Ohio law says the poll worker is supposed to put the ID information on the form.
I’m pretty sure Husted sent out those absentee ballot request forms intentionally to confuse some voters, causing them to vote provisionally, hoping that Democratic voters screw up more than Republican voters and he can avoid counting those votes.
@16 and @17 – I hate exit polls and think the US should do what Europe does, and impose a media blackout on election day. So I refuse to answer them. Or consider voters who refuse to participate because they don’t have the time; there’s going to be a built-in bias against them and I they’re generally going to be the less wealthy voters. That means the exit polls could easily have a built-in systemic bias that makes them less reliable than expected.
I share your skepticism about voting machines being reliable, but if I had to guess which one was more reliable – exit polls or the machines – I’d guess that most of the time, its the machines.
In 2008, I spent most of the day driving my brother across Wyoming and Idaho. Good times.
This year, there’s a volleyball game to go to, that should help.
Except that there’s a long history of documented reliability of exit polls compared to actual pre-voting-machine ballot counts. Any biases due to the nature of exit polls already have been accounted for during their use.
The Pfft:
I notice that the kind of people who oppose “activist judges” didn’t bat an eyelash when “UNELECTED JUDGES!!1!” decided the outcome of a Presidential election.
@Gregory in Seattle
Um, no. There are always exit polls. There were exit polls in 2004 and 2008 and there will be this year. There’s never been such a thing as an “official” exit poll. There’s nothing official about them. Various media outlets commission them, usually several come together to commission one big one, but it’s not official. The media certainly haven’t, and aren’t going to stop doing them.
Evidence of exit polls conducted after 2000:
Washington Post, 2004.
Pew Research, 2008.
Are the results of exit polls in the US released before voting has finished ?
I can’t believe that the election is tomorrow and I am still UNDECIDED. I just can’t make up my mind. Should I vote for Obama before work, or should I do it after?
They should be covering the absolute outrage of voter suppression by Republican legislators and Governors. And by Republican Secretaries of State who are in charge of running elections.
Here’s a 4:36 minute video that documents just one of the long, long early voting lines in Ohio.
More on the story here: Link.
Cleveland Plain Dealer link.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has had his voter suppression efforts defeated by court challenges at least twice. But he is not giving up. He still managed to restrict early voting hours, if not early voting days, and he is currently promoting rules that will result in more than 40,000 provisional ballots being thrown away. He is also conducting yet another bogus purge of voting roles.
Nine-hour long voting lines in Florida don’t faze Republican Governor Rick Scott. No matter how long the line are in urban (mostly minority) communities, he will not allow early voting to be extended. In Florida, early voting ended yesterday. Previous Florida Governors did extend early voting days. But then Obama won, so the mandate to restrict the vote got very serious indeed.
Matt–yes, they are. Remember, exit polls, as gussnarp noted, are not in any sense official or government-endorsed. They’re private endeavors by the media. As soon as the media have any numbers at all from them they go on about them constantly, reporting any shift up or down by the second. It’s a clusterfuck.
Well well well…
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/election-exit-polls-are-eliminated-in-19-states/
We have them in the UK as well, and whilst I don’t think there is a law about releasing them whilst polling is still taking place, the media do not report the results until 10pm when the polling stations close. As a result they do not shift.
should’ve followed up…
Any bets on “noncompetitive” states having surprise! GOP victories tomorrow?
Maybe the whole election should just be an online poll. Then we can Pharyngulate it. I realize there are some Libertarians and some who would vote Green, but I think enough of us would probably all pull together to put Obama over the top in the end, knowing that if we really split our vote three ways, the fundies would overwhelm us.
Although it could possibly send most US media outlets into permanent shock, one possibility would be to propose a moratorium on announcing election poll results and election campaigning in the last, say, 48 hours before the election itself. Such a moratorium is used in France with varying degrees of success. It’s not a hundred per cent effective, but it helps to give the voting public a bit of non-crazy time before casting their vote.
@Pteryxx – In this case I’m quite willing to believe it’s just a cost cutting measure. A surprise result in a non-competitive state would still result in massive controversy, with or without exit polls.
The sad part is the lack of demographic data on voters. There are some really interesting studies done on voting habits that use that data, and they can be interesting even in states that overall are non-competitive.
Mainstream Journalism is long dead. By and large these guys are Citizens United corporatist shills. I’m convinced they cover the race only as entertainment and a horserace largely because the top reporters make a gazillion dollars and the networks in advertizing no matter who wins. Most of the top media whether it be NBC, CBS or Faux, are one percenters who wont be hardly effected at all by the coming destruction of the social safety net and complete outsourcing of the remainder of our manufacturing base by the banksters and energy companies that really run this country. In other words again its profit over people. I will vote for corporate lite – Obama rather than Gordon Gekko, mainly because the supreme court could be the tipping point between overturning reproductive rights and strenghtening corporatist personhood. I have no illusions that we are on the long road towards corporatism, started with Reagan, but I have the hope we can stem the tide, at least for a while. Perhaps someday workers will be so sufficiently beat down that moronic America will wake up and actually really elect progressives, ala FDR. For now we must elect the faux progressive Barack Obama, there is simply no other alternative.
One has to wonder to what extent this media sensationalization of adversarialism contributes to the political divisions that wrack the nation.
Dewey wins.
@41 Lynna
Also at local level,
In addition to endless poll watching, some journalists are covering the nastiness that’s surfaced during the early voting process:
Link.
the thing that amazes me the most I guess about people in general and how it is expressed in elections and the campaigns is the dominance of ignorance and irrationality that seems to be encouraged by the politicians especially the republicans and the media.
the most important things seem to be entertainment and images. Politics as spectacle, with sports language one team vs another team. The feeling that voting makes no difference the seeming sameness of the parties.
so long as the public has its bread and circuses, TV and gasoline no one really cares.
war, health care, education, the economy, privacy vs security?
NFL, NBA, Prime Time TV, Tivo & Netflics & twiter !
uncle frogy
Robert Reich is really great. He does have a way of saying things wonderfully bluntly.
uncle frogy
Hurin, Midnight DJ on the Backwards Music Station@2
Glad you got Nate Silver’s opinion in here early.
Cheaters caught cheating again
That should be the headline systematically used every-single-time
Don’t let them pull a Lance Armstrong on your political system.
We had a comment on Canadian radio this morning that the ‘Undecided’ in the U.S. election prefer to vote for the winner, thus feeling that they didn’t waste their vote. So if the polls indicate a clear winner, then the undecided will vote for them. By claiming that the race is neck and neck, the media can therefore trick the undecided to vote for either candidate.
John Cleese put out an interesting video about proportional representation a few years back. I wish we would adopt it in Canada, since our system of government is easily adapted to it, although the U.S. congress might work. Basically if 40% of the voters vote for Party A, then 40% of the government representatives are Party A, if only 5% are for Party F, then 5% of the g.r. are Party F. So your vote is never wasted, and the goverment represents the voter demographic. Whether they would have problems with majority votes is another issue.
@58: It was put to a vote a while back in Canada, but the people said no to it. It was apparently really badly worded and communicated by the majority at the time (the majority are the beneficiaries of NOT having this system).
I’m going to be watching Comedy Central’s coverage. That’s all.
Geek alert! Here’s a topic journalists can and should attack immediately, as it may affect the reported outcome of the vote in Ohio. Remember Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, the guy who had to be told by the courts that he couldn’t specify more early voting days and longer hours of operation only for predominately Republican counties? The guy who had to be forced by the Court to reestablish some early voting days? The guy who fired two Democratic Party election workers without cause? The guy who is now running his second purge of voters from the roles without enough time allowed to process his numerous errors?
That guy, it turns out, also arranged to have new software installed on voting tabulation machines in every Iowa county. He did this without going through the usual testing and approval channels.
All the geeky details, including images of the software contract are now available in several places, including here and here.
More links for Jon Husted’s dirty computer tricks in Ohio, tricks that may affect vote tabulation in Ohio:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4779
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4782
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Lawsuit-Ohio-voting-machines-could-alter-votes-4009994.php
Right, the “most populous counties.” I wrote up-thread that the software change was made in all Ohio counties. I should have known better. Jon Husted has consistently tried to suppress or rig the vote only in the areas dominated by Obama supporters.
I hope Husted arouses the ire of geeks. He won’t know what hit him.
How about a story about ethics charges against Romney?
http://newsone.com/2074449/mitt-romney-ethic-charges/
No wonder he didn’t want those tax returns public.
@24, Pteryxx
If people would read this @24 and take it seriously they would understand their vote is worthless.
@24 describes one main method of vote manipulation.
Folks your vote is worthless.
There are other methods of vote manipulation.
Broken US System Needs Watching:
International Election Observers Could Face Arrest
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32939.htm
Oh joed. You read an article about how Republicans are rigging the system in favor of Republicans, and your conclusion is to support your same old garbled “Can’t Change A Thing” milquetoast, apathetic nonsense. The takeaway from that article should be that it is yet another way that Republicans are way fucking worse than Democrats, and should be incentive to vote and keep an eye on things, because if the support for Democrats is overwhelming, the fraud will either be pointless or need to be ramped up enough to become obvious. And it is also good news: The Democrat support is out there. It just needs to be mobilized and, if this fraud is actually happening, the tamperers need to be caught. But to ignore all that in order to weave the article into your “don’t bother voting, everything is too awful” narrative was awful sweet of you.
So, as usual, it comes down to this.
It’s always a choice between silly candidates, isn’t it?
If people would read this @24 and take it seriously they would understand
their votethis post is worthless.yes, cupcake, as all your other posts, this one too is worthless.
run along and play.
Lynna, thanks for the alert… I’ve passed the info along.