absentee/early vote thread, part 2

[Phony Moderate]

At least 29,202,565 votes have been cast as of this morning. Over 63% of the total 2012 early vote.

Anyone know what percentage of the 2008 early vote had been cast at this point in 2012?

[Phony Moderate]

it's simple.

if cohn's model is even in the same universe than reality, than NC is clinton's and if she wins NC, she also wins high-educated CO/VA/NH.

That model no longer applies.

Pubs are coming home, including the educated Pubs. They are declaring themselves "undecided" in most recent polls, but expect that "undecided" is a codeword for shy Trump.

Shy Trump voters are not a thing.

*If* there are (and I'm not saying there are) they are probably claiming to be Johnson voters.

[Phony Moderate]

So is this election more like Sweden or Austria?

I personally see more parallels to the 1973 West Bromwich by-election. Enoch Powell's refusal to back the Tory is Romney refusing to endorse Trump and the 16% the National Front got is like the Johnson/Stein protest vote.

I know this sounds like irrelevant nonsense but as a provincial little Englander I am incapable of understanding international elections without somehow relating it to my country. Foreign concepts are hard.

I'm sometimes incapable of understanding British elections without somehow relating it to U.S. elections.

[Phony Moderate]

If Clinton loses the election because of NC and MI I could see the democrats pushing for an Australian-style mandatory voting law

I don't think so. These laws are completely ineffective, nobody is going to jail or fine people because they didn't vote. Automatic registration along with soft voter ID, like the West Virginia law, is the way to go.

Actually, this is wrong. These laws are perfectly effective: Australia routinely gets an over 90% turnout. No jail is necessary: small fine, say 20 dollars, administered like a parking ticket, would do the trick admirably.  May countries have been doing it for decades, and it is reasonably easily implemented.

Now, there are other reasons not to want that, but ineffectiveness is not one.

We have mandatory voting laws. That didn't help from seeing participation falling at record lows during the last two decades (just 54% in September 2015).
If people are disgusted with politics then no law can compel them to vote.

Australian turnout rates were, prior to the mandatory voting law being implemented, quite similar to what Greece's are today. But they immediately went up into the 80s/90s and have always stayed there in federal elections.