The Red Wave That Wasn't

Plus: The editors field a question on U.S. ballot counting and talk more on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.

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The Red Wave That Wasn't

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Eric Boehm examine initial takeaways from last week's midterm elections.

0:42: Midterms post-mortem

34:59: Weekly Listener Question:

Brazil is a country with over 200 million people, and they counted all of their presidential election votes on election night. U.S. democrats, however, need weeks to count all the votes. What other explanation is there for this than cheating?

41:31: More on Elon Musk and Twitter

54:21: This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Maybe Republicans Need a Policy Agenda After All?" by Eric Boehm

"A Potted Plant Could Beat a Trump Republican," by J.D. Tuccille

"Jared Polis' Success Shows That Democrats Can Win Without Embracing Big Government," by Emma Camp

"Blake Masters' Defeat Should End the GOP's Fealty to Trump and the Big Lie," by Robby Soave

"Chase Oliver, Georgia Senate Race Spoiler: 'You Can't Spoil What's Already Rotten'," by Joe Lancaster

"J.D. Vance Seized His Chance, but the New Right Had a Bad Night," by Stephanie Slade

"Worries About Inflation Didn't Stop Voters From Approving Minimum Wage Increases," by Eric Boehm

"Colorado Voters Approve Decriminalization of 5 Natural Psychedelics," by Jacob Sullum

"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Is Ambitious but Disappointing," by Peter Suderman

"The Election Betting Markets Fell Short. They're Still the Most Flexible Predictor." by John Stossel

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor:

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Audio production by Ian Keyser

Assistant production by Hunt Beaty

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

What are we consuming this week?

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• The Long Ships

Eric Boehm

• Being Funny In A Foreigh Language by The 1975

Peter Suderman

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Nick Gillespie

• Hanging with Doctor Z

---

Comments

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[Mother's Lament]

Anyone satisfied with these Venezuela-tier elections, instead of being horrified, is either too stupid or too biased to care.

[Utkonos]

Either that or they’re too tide up in wave analogies so other concerns have been tabled.

[Nardz]

Correct

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Venezuela-tier? I wish they were that good. In some states *cough* Illinois *cough*, votes can arrive, without a postmark, for up two weeks after election day.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Really no point in wasting money on elections in Illinois. We already knew who was gonna win.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Spend the money on evacuating people, and then on walls to keep in the zombies.

[m40195971]

It’s worse than Venezuela.

If you’re a Venezuelan expatriate and live overseas, you must go to a Venezuelan consulate to vote.

If you’re a crippled Venezuelan or away in their military, you can vote absentee, but it’s counted before Election Day. There’s no counting after Election Day.

Yes, Venezuela has an Election Day. Not election week. Not election month. If you’re an able-bodied adult, you have one day to vote.

We are worse than Venezuela when it comes to voting irregularities. Even Jimmy Carter said so, and he’s not one to be sympathetic to Venezuela.

Source: https://www.telesurenglish.net/amp/analysis/Explained-How-Voting-Works-in-Venezuela-20180227-0021.html

[Brandybuck]

Districts count all their votes in one night. It's routine. I was an observer a few times, and it's very efficient. THere are two things that slow it down however, in comparison to a centralized authoritarian nation like Brazil:

1) Absentee and mail balloting. When the deadline is Tuesday at 7:00pm, you need time to allow for absentee ballots dropped in the mail at 7:00pm to be counted. The Post Offices does NOT count ballots, after all. This is why you get returns on time, but vote totals not confirmed until later. You know with 80% of the votes in who won, but you can't confirm actual totals until 100% come in.

1.a) For those of you whining that absentee voting is unfair to Red Presidents, consider that most of the military, especially those deployed overseas, have the right to vote to, and tend to vote Red. So why you not allow them to vote? Are you secretly Dumbocrats?

2) The complaints are regarding national vote. We do NOT have a central strong-man government like Brazil. Districts vote and report to the states. That is not instant, and typically involves certified documents, not phone calls. With presidential elections you also have the electoral college. Which IS counted immediately, but results not delivered until Jan 6th (hence the riot and attempted insurrection on that date by some (not all) members of Team Red).

In other words, the reason Brazil gets all of its elections done in one night is the same reason Mussolini got the trains running on time.

[Zeb]

Absentee voting is fine. For people who actually can't make it to the polls. Encouraging everyone to do it and making it easier to do just seems like a recipe for either actual fraud or rampant speculation about fraud, both of which undermine trust in legitimacy of elections.
And there are plenty of 1st world countries who manage to get votes counted on the day of. Now that may not be possible with current absentee ballot rules, but we could do a hell of a lot better.
Whatever you think of those who doubt recent elections, they make up a significant part of the electorate. That's a real problem and not one that will be solved by calling those people a bunch of stupid idiots who hate democracy. If anyone is serious about restoring faith in elections, they need to take those concerns seriously and behave as if they take them seriously. There may not be a lot of evidence for fraud, but there is a whole lot of room for fraud with the current voting systems in the US.

[Brandybuck]

As I said, with the exception of absentee ballots, our ballots DO get counted on election night. It's the official certification, which typically has to be delivered on official paper to a capital hundreds of miles away, that takes time. People who don't like the results will focus on the certification to make it seem like something is fishy that the vote total reported on the news the night of hasn't been certified yet.

We don't have a problem here, despite the questioner attempting to make it seem like fraud is commonplace. It's not.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I voted absentee for quite a few years. It is not the same thing as universal mail in balloting. In my view, absentee or mail in ballots should be required to be mailed in advance of election day to be counted and I don't see why that would be an issue. If you want to voted get your shit together and get it in the mail in time for the actual election or vote in person That's what I've always done. Maricopa County is claiming they can't count the votes because they got big dumps of mail in ballots on election day. Whether the ballot is cast in person or delivered it's still the same number of votes and signature verification is required either way. The idea that it takes an additional week to count these votes does not pass the smell test.

[MasterThief]

What sort of faith can we have that the ballot box isn't being stuffed when we don't know the total number of votes cast when polls close? All these changes for the purpose of making it easier to vote just look like they make it easier to cheat without getting caught. I have no clue why absentee/mail-in voting isn't required to be postmarked and received prior to election day. Between sloppy voter rolls, poor voter registration practices, mail-in voting, early voting, lack of transparency, and piss-poor security; I have every reason to believe that activists are given every motivation and opportunity to game elections

[ElvisIsReal]

That's because they are.

[VoteQuimby]

Not to mention plenty of countries that vote on weekends or make it a national holiday so people don't have to vote by mail, etc. In all the comments about stolen elections, nobody ever seems to want to make sure people actually have a chance to go in person and vote. They mostly seem to just want to suppress voters they disagree with.

[Mother's Lament]

"Not to mention plenty of countries that vote on weekends or make it a national holiday so people don’t have to vote by mail, etc"

Canada doesn't, Australia doesn't, the UK doesn't, Germany doesn't, Denmark doesn't, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... and none of them have mail in voting like the purple states.

The only reason not to want ID, paper ballots, purple fingers and public counts is because you're frauding.

You Democrats are all so eager for people to "vote", but then you treat those votes like used toilet paper.

[Will Nonya]

Australia has compulsory voting. It's not a matter of getting to but HAVING to.

While I agree ID should be required to verify voters fraud is not the only reason to not support the measures you list.

The problem seems to have less to do with how we conduct elections than with how the media covers them. Sensationalized and misrepresenting any detail that will draw attention from their audience.

[ElvisIsReal]

Are you sure about that?

https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/surprise-nobodys-coming-to-save-us

The simple fact is that littering the cityscape with millions of ‘legal’ ballots is an integrity hole that is simply too large to allow. When trillions of dollars in government spending (and/or Senate investigations) hang in the balance, elections must be transparent and verifiable. This means in-person voting (making it a holiday if you have to!) with video records of the number of ballots used at a polling station, and those ballots never leaving said polling station — instead they are opened directly in front of observers and tallied. Schedule staggered shifts and run the count for 16 hours if you have to (but you won’t have to, as Florida has shown after cleaning up their election process).

[Mother's Lament]

1) Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Western Europe do not have the issues with their absentee ballots that all the purple states are having.

1.a) Genuine absentee ballots for military are definitely not the same thing as the post-Covid mass mail-in voting occurring in purple states.

2) You bring up Brazil, but other Western democracies aren't having the dubious issues the US is. Most of these countries are (or were) in-person voting, ID required, paper ballots, but they're tallying their votes within hours, not days.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

America has become easily the most thoroughly corrupt nation in the 1st world, where practically everything is a con job, including the elections in half the country now.

And leading the way is this fake libertarian entity, which absolutely loves the shit out of it, because game recognize game.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Nope. Overseas military and diplomatic voters are out of the country in service of the country. Not the same thing as feeling too busy to drive to the polls at the neighborhood school.

And any alternate kind of voting has to prove that it is at least as secure as in-person voting (and that should require ID and/or other authentication).

[m40195971]

Mussolini did not get the trains running on time. That’s a myth.

https://professorbuzzkill.com/mussolini-didnt-make-the-trains-run-on-time/

[Dillinger]

cowardly awful taking on the roles of jornolists and not investigating the Machine.

[JanaWymer]

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[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1592243498258169856?t=CP0S4bmdHH1sdu3mDgsR9A&s=19

In 2020, Martha McSally spent $72 million. McConnell's Super PAC spent $14 million. Mark Kelly spent over $80 million. McSally lost by 2.5 points.

Blake Masters spent $9M. Kelly spent over $70M. McConnell pulled funding out. Blake is probably going to lose by 2-3 points.

Blake Masters entered the race as a first time candidate with no name ID, going up against an incumbent with an $80M war chest, was outspent 7-1, abandoned by national GOP and still came within around 3 points of winning. Enough of this crap about how he was a bad candidate

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1592261363606646784?t=A_9AdoX6LuWtPvH11FY6Eg&s=19

Republican senate candidates in every swing state were heavily outspent (not including PAC money).

AZ
Kelly: $73M
Masters: $9M

NV
Cortez-Masto: $46M
Laxalt: $12M

NH
Hassen: $36M
Bolduc: $2M

PA
Fetterman: $52M
Oz: $37M

GA
Warnock: $75M
Walker: $32M

Senator-elect @JDVance1 wrote an op-Ed today talking about how the Dem small dollar fundraising machine dwarfs ours by comparison.

All of our candidates being so heavily outspent and outside PACs not being able to make up the difference is a big problem.
[Link]

And keep in mind that the margins for all of these except New Hampshire were less than 5 points. Imagine what happens if Republican senate candidates had even money.

[m40195971]

If money from the FTX guy, employees of the bureaucracy, Big Tech, and Soros were subtracted, the Dem spending would be on par with Republicans.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Brazil is a country with over 200 million people, and they counted all of their presidential election votes on election night. U.S. democrats, however, need weeks to count all the votes. What other explanation is there for this than cheating?

Here's my underhand, slow, softball pitch strawman question.

Hell, it's not even a pitch, it's t-ball.

[Sheldonius Rex]

Pro tip: they're cheating.

[JanaWymer]

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[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The new word for election fortification: "Curing" rejected ballots.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

But the incumbent congresswoman's narrow lead could once again be overturned if thousands of likely rejected votes in favor of her challenger were to be "cured", as a recount looms over the Colorado race.

Every year in Colorado, thousands of ballots are reportedly rejected for issues related to signature verification, such as a missing signature or a discrepancy in the signature. Local officials then alert voters of the issue, giving them a week to fix the problem and make their vote count. The process, which is done in 23 other state besides Colorado, is called "ballot curing."

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Fuck me. If someone didn't fill out the ballot properly, it should be considered a spoiled ballot. It's done, it's tossed into the "no not count" pile. What these Democrats are doing is cheating by another name.

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1592336708040736768?t=sgVyq1AgtCxQ1qnhiS6y1g&s=19

“Candidate quality matters” they say as Fetterman gets elected despite not completing a coherent sentence and Katie Hobbs gets elected despite doing nothing.

Perhaps our problems are not so much about the quality of our candidates and more about Republicans shitting the bed when it comes to taking advantage of the evolving voting procedures Democrats have mastered to their advantage in states like PA and AZ

[ElvisIsReal]

The worst part is that this fortification ensures 2024's fortification in the swing states that matter most -- PA/MI/AZ

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

“Candidate quality matters” they say as Fetterman gets elected despite not completing a coherent sentence and Katie Hobbs gets elected despite doing nothing.

Doing nothing? She was vigorously standing guard over the count for her election, making sure Democracy was fully fortified, and ballots fully "cured".

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1592344110144565249?t=UYSPpuPe10hr7mkFq97Ckg&s=19

Confirmed: Recession Coming ???

When was the last time you saw shipping company layoffs BEFORE Christmas.

[Link]

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1592359780969947137?t=wipwxuK0WRSYmzwVjqUTWA&s=19

How RED was Arizona in 2022?

☑️ GOP beat Dems in House races by 6%
☑️ GOP take 6/9 House seats, FLIP 2 seats
☑️ GOP take 16/28 State Senate seats
☑️ Yee (Treasurer) outperforms Lake by 5%, Masters by 9%
☑️ Hobbs (D) takes Governor, Kelly (D) takes Senator

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

[ElvisIsReal]

The Ds need those seats to ensure they win 2024, so they took them.