Trump Won Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has ruled that the 2019 law that allowed mail-in ballots was unconstitutional.  Prior to the law's passage, only 300,000 mail-in ballots were submitted.  These would be the standard absentee ballots that required a request from the voter.  After the law, the mail-in total exceeded 2.5 million votes.  Let's look at the 2020 election results.  The following graph is available at The Data Corner.:

Of particular note, 58% of Biden's votes were mailed-in while only 18% of Trump's were.  Reverting to the previous 300,000, but using the same proportion for each candidate, how does that look:

If mail-in ballots are disallowed, Trump wins 62% of the state compared to 37% for Biden.  This same trend goes across the country.  As I noted in a previous post, nearly 60% of Biden's votes were mailed-in vs. a third of Trump's.  Disallow mail-in, Trump wins in a massive landslide.

Of course, it is too late now.  Biden is president and no court will or should reverse the election, flawed or not..  However, this should be a clarion call to the states to get their voting systems in order.  Right now, too many citizens distrust the outcome of our elections.  It does not matter if the concerns are valid or not, only that the citizens are distrustful.  You want a functioning system that does not see more January 6 events, you need to have a system that both sides trust.

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Law of Averages

The Law of Averages is a weak law when applied to small numbers but becomes more reliable as the sample grows.  For instance, if 100 people flip a quarter 10 times each, you can expect about 500 heads and 500 tails.  However, if Bill flipped 10 consecutive heads while Stacy flipped 10 tails, that would not be surprising.  The more coin flips, the closer to 50-50 it should be.

In Michigan, Joe Biden had his strongest showing in Washtenaw County.  He crushed Trump, winning 72% of the vote compared to Trump's 26%.  His next best showing was Wayne County.  Biden won 68% of the votes to Trump's 30%.  As these are some of the most populous regions of the state, that explains how Biden could win despite only carrying 11 of Michigan's 83 counties.  But this leads to a question of those early morning batches:

3:50 AM, 59,215 votes were processed that were 92% for Biden.  Huh.  This is a vastly better showing than Biden had in his two strongest counties.  As noted in an earlier post, he stomped Trump with mail-in ballots by a 2 to 1 margin but this is 12 to 1.  Of course, there were 5.5 million votes cast so this is only 1% of the total.  This is like the example where Bill flipped 10 consecutive heads.  Just happened to lean very Biden.

6:31 AM, 185,069 votes were processed that were 95.9% for Biden.  Huh.  That's over 3% of all the votes cast in the state and it is even more lopsided.  As a whole, the state went to Biden by 50.6% to Trump's 47.8%.  The bigger the sample of ballots, the more it should tend toward that ratio.  If Biden had won these two batches by 63% to 37% - still stomping Trump, Trump wins Michigan.

Food for thought.

Trump's Landslide vs. Biden's Landslide

According to Pew Research, 27% of votes were cast on election day, 27% at early voting sites, and 46% via absentee or mail-in ballots.  The breakdown by candidate is interesting:

Trump - 37% election day - 30% early voting - 32% absentee/mail-in

Biden - 17% election day - 24% early voting - 58% absentee/mail-in

That means that 67% of Trump voters went to a polling station to cast their ballot while only 41% of Biden's did so.  What does the election look like in that case?

Trump 49,728,639 vs. Biden 33,325,465

This is a Trump landslide, a 60 - 40 split.  The number of people leaving their house to vote for Trump dwarfs the number who did the same for Biden.  Now let's look at the absentee/mail-in votes.

Biden 47,144,756 vs. Trump 23,750,992

That is a Biden tsunami, a 66 - 33 split.  This is a massive drubbing.

This split between Trump and Biden voters follows the candidates' behavior.  Trump was out campaigning and his voters came to the polls.  Biden spent most of the campaign season in his house and that is what the majority of his voters did.

Election in Four Vote Batches

At midnight on November 3, Trump was leading in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  If he held these three states, he would win re-election.  The balance shifted in four discrete batches of votes.

At 1:34 AM on November 4, Georgia ran a batch of 136,155 votes.  Of these votes, 82.4% were for Biden and 17.6% were Trump.  That is a 107,040 vote margin for Biden.  As of this writing, he leads Georgia by 12,670 votes.  Hmm.

At 3:42 AM, a batch of 168,542 votes were run in Wisconsin.  Biden received 85.1% of these votes.  He thus gained 118,216 votes in the statewide race.  His margin of victory for the state is 20,608.  Hmm.

At 3:50 AM, a batch of 59,215 votes were processed in Michigan, 92% going to Biden.  At 6:31 AM, a batch of 147,226 votes were run, 95.9% for Biden.  Biden gained 185,069 in the race thanks to these two batches.  The margin for the state is 154,188.  Interesting.

Of course, this could totally be cherry picking.  The margin is always somewhere but this does make for some peculiar graphs:

This graph could just be a brilliant piece of propaganda but there are several such graphs.  Some Democrat should produce graphs from previous elections that have this same pattern so as to debunk this.  Failure to do so only makes it more suspicious.  The only counterargument I keep hearing is there is no widespread fraud.  All right.  Four instances is hardly widespread.  It doesn't need to be widespread to make a difference.  Assure me there isn't fraud in these four lopsided vote batches.

Ballot Breakdown

Here's what I want to know.  This should be available but I haven't seen it.  What portion of each vote type did the candidates get?  Who won the early voters at polling stations?  Who won the absentee ballot vote and what is the ratio?  Who won election day voters?  Who won the mail-in vote?

There are, as far as I know, 4 types of vote:

1. Early in-person voting at a polling station.

2. Absentee ballot - one that the voter had to apply to receive.

3. Mail-in ballot - one that was mailed to registered voters unsolicited.

4. In-person election day voting at polling station.

What is the breakdown between Trump and Biden of these various types of vote?  Heck, what proportion of the vote do each of these types of vote represent?  Are mail-in ballots 10% of the votes or 50%?  My preference is for in-person voting, ideally on election day.  I have the least confidence in unsolicited mail-in ballots.  If mail-in ballots change the result, I have serious concerns.

China, Russia, and who knows who else have databases full of American voter rolls.  What would prevent them from setting up a print shop and just churning out mail-in ballots with their preferred candidate and sending them in?  Sure, lots of them will get rejected and many will be challenged when the actual voter shows up and claims to have not voted.  But a lot will be accepted.  Wisconsin had 89% voter turn out.  Really?  That seems high.  How many of those votes were mail-in ballots?  I want to know.

Benford's Law

Though I took a lot of math and even a couple statistics courses, I was unfamiliar with Benford's Law.  Even having read it, I'm not clear on why the pattern holds.  However, the graphs are interesting and it is funny that every candidate follows the pattern except Joe Biden in certain key locations.  Is this just so much cherry picking?  Could easily be.  Have the Russians turned against Trump and now sided with Biden?  Doubtful.  An interesting read.

Joe Biden's votes violate Benford's Law

Against the Trend

For the last 120 years, if an incumbent president received more votes in his re-election campaign than he received in his election, he was re-elected.  In fact, if the incumbent president merely maintained 90% of his original vote total, he has always been re-elected.  Until now.

Here is a chart that shows only presidents who were elected and then ran for re-election, which is why Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, LBJ, and Ford are not included:

In 2008, Obama received 69.5 million votes but won re-election with 61 million votes.  By contrast, Trump won in 2016 with 63 million votes but lost re-election win 70.5 million (as of this writing) votes.  Joe Biden, who doesn't hold a candle to Obama in the charisma department, received 75 million votes.

Ruinous Election

Whoever wins this election will be illegitimate to much of the country.  Already the courts are involved, making this Bush v. Gore II.  There are enough irregularities that will only serve to confirm to Trump voters that he was right when he claimed it was a rigged election.  Changing election rules on the fly was doomed to create problems and the piles of mail-in ballots have slowed the counting.  It's Florida 2000 all over again but in multiple states.  This kind of disaster is how you ruin faith in elections.

Our voting system needs to be overhauled.  It has needed it for years.  One would think that after Florida 2000, something would have been done.  Nope.  20 years later and it has gotten worse.  Nevada can count billions of dollars in an instant but can't figure out millions of votes.  Of course, voting is a state issue.  Personally, I'd like to go back to a system where we have election day rather than election season.  No early voting, no mail-in ballots.

This is par for the course in 2020.  What a year.

Supreme Court Emergency

With the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court is down to 8 members.  It went a whole year with only 8 members in 2016/7 so this should be no big deal.  No urgency.  Or is there?  Obviously, the Republicans have an incentive to move as quickly as possible lest they lose either the Presidency or the Senate - possibly both - in the election.  That's a politics question and politicians love to play politics.  However, there is another thing to consider.  The coming election may be contested.  Hillary Clinton has advised Joe Biden not to concede under any circumstances.  The push for unsolicited mail-in ballots - if enacted - is litigation waiting to happen.  Unless someone landslides - and maybe not even then - this election is already looking to replay the Bush v. Gore Fiasco of 2000.  Who decided that one?  The Supreme Court.  If we go to the court and it has only 8 members, a 4-4 decision could happen.  Then what?  The decision of a lower court stands?  Some regional court has final say on a national crisis?  I don't think that will be satisfying to the losers of that ruling.  Of course, the losers of a Supreme Court ruling won't be happy either.

2020 has been such a crazy year that a confirmation hearing during the election season is just what the country needs.  Trump can nominate a woman and let's see if the Democrats give her the Kavanaugh treatment.  Heck, Joe Biden should welcome the topic during the debates.  Although, there is some doubt about Joe doing debates.

Kanye 2020

The word is that Kanye West is running for president.  No, never mind, he isn't.  No, wait.  Yes he is. In fact, he even has a platform online: Kanye2020.  Let's check this out.

1. Restore faith and freedom of religion, notably by having prayer in the classroom.

Hmm.  Sounds like a Republican issue.  It should be noted that public education in America was founded in 1639 for the purpose of teaching literacy so people could read the Bible.  It's come a long way since then.

2. Restore sound national economy.  Reduce household and student debt.

Debt reduction?  That sounds like the TEA Party.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans hated the TEA Party.  The whole point of getting elected is to spend other people's money.

3. Restructure the education system to allow widest possible range of educational and vocational paths to opportunities and careers.

This is a sufficiently murky plank that it could be anything.  That he is concerned about the most at-risk and vulnerable populations says he wants to do something about inner-city schools.  Does this mean just more money (Democrat) or vouchers/charter schools (Republican)?  That it is qualified with a proverb from the Bible might lean toward the Republican view.

4. Maintain strong national defense but no quagmires that don't advance national interests.

This sounds like Trump.  Both Republicans and Democrats have been only too eager to engage in foreign adventures that have little to no benefit for the US.

5 Reform the legal system to provide true justice.  Recognize disparity in verdicts and sentences caused by lack of financial resources.

Hey, this is a good one!  Why do the wealthy elites secure a slap on the wrist for the same crime that results in a long prison sentence for someone who had a public defender?  Neither party wants this because they are all part of the wealthy elite!

6. Reform policing to treat all Americans the same.  Refocus on real crime.  Eliminate federal sentencing guidelines.

Generally ambivalent on this one.  The police already treat all criminal suspects more or less the same.  Sadly, blacks are more likely to be criminal suspects (FBI crime stats show that a greater portion of black population engages in crime than any other racial group).  That's a hard pill to swallow if you are a member of that group.  This one needs to be expanded to see where he wants to go with it.

7. Take care of the environment.  Make renewables a top priority.

Meh.  I have nothing against private enterprise trying to make a buck with renewables but all too often this turns into an effort to abolish more efficient and economical options.  Let the market decide.

8. Ensure that we always place Americans' interests first in foreign affairs.

Hey, the Trump Doctrine again.  Yes, America first.  The American government's top priority should be America.  Let the Mexican government look out for Mexico, the Canadian government for Canada, and so on.  For too long, our presidents have made deals with other countries that were far more beneficial to them than to us.

9. Support faith-based groups to provide local services.

Hmm.  That sounds like George Bush's Thousand Points of Light.  Rather than having government co-opt local groups, let's get the government out of the welfare business.  If the government pulls out, something will fill that vacuum.  It used to be churches and local charities that cared for the poor.  In fact, locals have a greater incentive to help local people than does a distant government that just sends a check or provides food stamps.

10. Creativity and the arts can be an important source of innovation and development.

Is this an argument for the National Endowment for the Arts?  Count me out.  If the market doesn't want to willing support your art, then the federal government sure as hell shouldn't tax you to support it.  In this day and age of crowdfunding sites, there is no reason you can't find a paying audience for your art.  I myself have funding movies, graphic novels, documentaries, and web series.  Abolish the NEA, defund PBS and NPR.

There are a few planks I can support but it generally shows too much faith in the ability of government to produce positive results.