How to vote early, safely and by mail in all 50 states

Yes, too many "麻烦问题"s.

My reflection on this election and democracy: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

山重水复疑无路，柳暗花明又一村。

美国是民主有待完善。 大洋那边是根本没有民主。


still lots of twists and turns ahead.

丞相，你的链接有问题.

The polls are off big time.

US election: Can we trust the polls?

Are Trump supporters punking the polls?

The story behind the historical moment by NYT



WASHINGTON — With Florida looking red early on Tuesday night, President Trump and his advisers thought they were witnessing a repeat of election night 2016, when a victory in Florida foreshadowed a victory over all.

Inside the East Room, the mood was upbeat as hundreds of people, including cabinet secretaries, ambassadors and former officials who have remained loyal to Mr. Trump, mingled and dined on sliders and French fries. Officials who had been pessimistic about the president’s re-election chances suddenly started to picture four more years in power.

That mirage of victory was pierced when Fox News called Arizona for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 11:20 p.m., with just 73 percent of the state’s vote counted.

Mr. Trump and his advisers erupted at the news. If it was true that Arizona was lost, it would call into doubt on any claim of victory the president might be able to make.

What ensued for Mr. Trump was a night of angry calls to Republican governors and advice from campaign aides that he ignored, leading to a middle-of-the-night presidential briefing in which he made a reckless and unsubstantiated string of remarks about the democratic process. Standing in the East Room at 2:30 a.m., he dismissed the election as a “fraud” and claimed he wanted to stop the counting of votes and leave the results to the Supreme Court.

The Trump campaign knew Arizona could be up for grabs, but the Fox News call putting it in Mr. Biden’s column was symbolic, making it the first state that appeared to have flipped from the president’s 2016 batch of winning states. Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican of Arizona, had been on the phone all night with administration officials and campaign staff members, adamant that there were still Republican votes to be counted in his state.

Jason Miller, Mr. Trump’s political adviser, disputed the accuracy of the call on Twitter and frantically called Fox News, asking the network to retract it. He was unsuccessful. Instead of retracting it, the decision desk at Fox News doubled down on its call, putting Arnon Mishkin, the head of the desk, on air to defend the call. Several hours later, The Associated Press also called Arizona for Mr. Biden. (Other news organizations, including The New York Times and CNN, had not declared a victor by Wednesday afternoon because of absentee ballots that remained to be counted.)

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was also in touch with Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News owner, as the night wore on. And on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, insisted the president would win Arizona by 30,000 votes.

Keeping Arizona in play was critical to the narrow path the campaign still saw to a victory on Wednesday, along with Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Trump spent much of Tuesday evening and early Wednesday watching election results roll in on Fox News from the White House residence, where he connected with several Republican governors on the phone. In conversations with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, he asked about the possibility that fraud was being committed, according to people briefed on the call.

On Twitter, Mr. Ducey insisted that all the counting be completed before anyone else called the state.

Angry and feeling stung, the president and his aides watched as Mr. Biden gave a brief speech in Wilmington, Del., projecting victory for himself. “We feel good about where we are, we really do,” Mr. Biden told supporters, who honked their horns in support. “We believe we are on track to win this election.”

While Mr. Biden was speaking, the president tweeted for the first time all night, baselessly claiming that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election. In a follow-up tweet, he said that he, too, would deliver remarks. A podium with a presidential seal had already been set up in the East Room.

Mr. Trump’s advisers tried to persuade Mr. Trump to speak in the East Room before Mr. Biden made his remarks in Wilmington, but they were unsuccessful. Instead, they sat and watched as Mr. Biden set the tone for the night.

So it was hours before Mr. Trump actually appeared in the East Room. In the Oval Office, he huddled with aides who discussed how to frame the state of the race and whether he could declare victory or should take a more subtle tone.

He did not choose the latter approach.

“This is a fraud on the American public,” he told a crowd of supporters at 2:30 a.m., in remarks that were immediately criticized even by some of his allies, like Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor. The president continued: “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win the election.”

As the map closed in on the Trump campaign on Wednesday, with Michigan and Wisconsin being called for Mr. Biden, the president was not seen in public all day. A Marine who stands guard in front of the West Wing doors when the president is in the Oval Office had not been spotted all day.

From the residence, Mr. Trump continued making calls to supporters and friends throughout the morning, sounding subdued and somewhat dispirited to some people. Outside the White House, finger-pointing about what went wrong had already begun. Some aides said that Mr. Trump had often resisted entreaties from Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, and Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, and others to spend more time in Arizona. But they said he had resisted in part because he did not like traveling west and spending the night on the road.

They and several other aides had also tried and failed to get Mr. Trump to stop attacking an Arizona favorite son and war hero, Senator John McCain, a Republican whom the president has continued to criticize even after the senator’s death two years ago.

There were also questions as to whether, had the campaign not spent so much money before the coronavirus pandemic began, it might have had extra resources to spend in states where Mr. Biden had won or was leading by slim margins, like Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada.

But others defended the early spending by Mr. Parscale, who among other things had focused on increasing the president’s turnout with Latino voters, who ended up being a key part of his support in Florida.

On Wednesday, the president’s family was heavily involved in efforts to question the validity of the vote tallies. Mr. Trump had joked at a rally that if he lost, he would never speak to any of his adult children again.

Mr. Kushner was making calls, looking for what he described as a “James Baker-like” figure who could lead the legal effort to dispute the tabulations in different states, according to a person briefed on the discussions. (Mr. Baker led George W. Bush’s successful recount case in 2000.) The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was working out of the campaign headquarters in Virginia. Another son, Eric Trump, whose wife, Lara, has been heavily involved in campaign activities, spoke at a news conference in Philadelphia, alongside Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor.

“They’re not letting poll watchers watch the polls,” a visibly angry Eric Trump said, in a baseless attempt to cast doubt on the ballot counting still ongoing in Pennsylvania. Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, also made the groundless assertion that the election in Pennsylvania was being stolen. He also floated the idea of a “national lawsuit” about allegations of fraud, but it was not clear what that meant.

For all of the president’s superstitions, and his attempts to surround himself with the team that helped lead him to victory four years ago, he found himself in a far weaker position this time. In the final weeks before Election Day, Mr. Kushner reassembled a group of people who had been involved in Mr. Trump’s first campaign, including the former White House deputy chief of staff, Katie Walsh, to work with Mr. Miller and others on the final weeks of spending on television.

But by Wednesday, several White House officials and outside advisers said they were hopeful, but not particularly optimistic, that Mr. Trump’s legal challenges in several states would be able to change the trajectory of the race. The president himself tweeted a suggestion that “a large number of secretly dumped ballots” had cost him Michigan, a message Twitter quickly labeled misleading.

Top Republicans defend Trump on baseless voter fraud claims as concerns grow in the ranks
www.cnn.com/2020/11/05/politics/election-2020-congressional-republicans-trump-election-fraud/index.html

GOP Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, who is retiring at the end of his current term, suggested that the comments are "dangerous."

"A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong, it undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon," Hurd tweeted.

I guess we are all asking this question: When will we know the US election result – and why the delay?

"兰陵美酒郁金香，玉碗盛来琥珀光。"

百分之七十五亚裔支持拜登，如果把亚裔改成华裔，这个数字可能要小一些。感觉这次华裔挺川普的不少。
29岁以下的年轻人百分之五十九、30-49岁之间百分之五十五支持民主党。
50岁以上差不多对半。

转贴：

我为什么投票选川普

我是 2012 年为了儿子读书投资移民过来的。现在，我的儿子已经读大二了。我住在波士顿，从事保险代理。三年前，我参加了受洗仪式，成为基督徒。这次美国大选，我投了特朗普。如果我选拜登，他将毁掉这个国家。特朗普说"中国病毒"时，我觉得是不可原谅的。他的说法确实有问题，但如果跟一群坏人、一群魔鬼相提并论，我觉得特朗普稍微好一点。

我们这个镇大概有两万居民，华人占 15%左右。我估计大多数投给了特朗普，因为在居民群里，大家对现在的选举很失望。

从长远来看，拜登虽然给你一些糖果吃，但实际上他在破坏美国的秩序。他不要求过程公平，而是结果公平。他要每个人按比例享受公平，而不是鼓励大家努力。民主党要照顾少数族裔，但他们不把华人当少数族裔。虽然我们的人数比黑人、墨西哥人少，但在他们眼里，我们是模范少数民族（Model Minority），我们是精英，我们不需要照顾。所有的好处从我们这里拿走。

华人的传统是倾尽全家之力来帮助孩子进步，让他们自食其力，在社会上有一席之地。我为什么移民过来？是为了孩子读书，对不对？别的族裔的家长，他们没那么重视教育。不能因为他们的父母没有尽到责任，觉得他们的孩子可怜，就给予优待吧？民主党还给低收入人群乱发福利。发了之后，这些人就躺在那里吃福利，不去奋斗。但特朗普是鼓励奋斗的了。民主党制定的政策没有一个公平的规则。

在奥巴马上台时，这个国家就很分裂。那个时候，警察就不敢抓黑人犯罪。媒体上总报道警察杀死了多少黑人，但很多警察也被黑人杀死了，怎么不说呢？警察为什么杀死黑人呢？那是因为黑人犯罪太多。黑人为什么犯罪呢？他们说因为受到歧视。这么多年都在补助黑人，结果是什么样子？给的资助有没有落到实处，有没有真正地帮助到黑人社区？

文明不是一直向前走的，社会也不是一直进步的。民主党还要打开大门欢迎难民过来，尤其是穆斯林难民。穆斯林把欧洲搞成什么样子了？法国连着几起穆斯林砍头案。如果不是特朗普上台，减少了穆斯林移民的话，法国的今天就是美国的今天。

特朗普不是种族歧视。他说，你来我的国家，就要认可我们的价值观。你不爱这个国家，你就不要来。对不对？很对啊。

民主党打开大门让什么人都来。这样就公平吗？比如我投资移民，是花了钱，花了时间的。我的钱不是从天上掉下来的，是努力工作挣的。其他人可能是科技移民、亲属移民，要等抽签，要经过审批，走漫长的程序。但非法移民呢？翻个墙、跨个山就过来了。来了之后，还要给他们福利。民主党的公平和博爱都是在打击遵守法律的人，善良的人。对高学历、工程师或在等待抽签的人来说，是一种伤害。

我不觉得民主党是真正的博爱。拜登一上台，马上要大赦那些犯罪分子，要给非法移民发绿卡，还要每年迎接 10 万的难民。这些人进来后，又成了民主党的票仓。他们不是为了这个国家，只是为了党派自身的利益。

四年前，特朗普上台。他是不是民选的总统？当然是。但民主党有一天承认过他吗？没有。媒体都在唱黑特朗普，一天到晚断章取义，没有一句公道话。特朗普刚上台那天，加州闹得乱七八糟，打砸抢烧什么的。全国人民都觉得黑暗降临。然后，开始莫须有的弹劾罪名，完全没有把这个合法政府放在眼里，就为了一己私利搞得乌烟瘴气。

特朗普在位的四年，恐怖袭击没有了，那些支持民主党的却不当一回事。但我觉得很安全。我住在波士顿B镇，周边有很多社区学校，以前时不时都会收到电话威胁，说有炸弹。学校找警察排除，再发消息给家长。像哈佛、麻省理工等名校也是，经常收到这样的威胁。但特朗普上台后，我一次都没有听说过学校收到了恐吓电话。奥巴马在任时，叙利亚闹得乱七八糟；特朗普上台后，把ISIS 干掉了，但有人说过他的好话吗？这对特朗普很不公平。

理性的人知道，特朗普有很多的缺点，乱讲话、欠缺常识，平时爱说谎，这些都是华人不喜欢的。但总体来讲，他一切都是为了美国的利益，如果在美国的话，我们要承认这一点。

拜登不是为了美国利益，而是政党、个人的利益，有的人看不清这点。我们州大麻也合法了。现在俄勒冈州（拜登赢得初选的州）持有海洛因也合法了，这不毒害社会吗？民主党所做的一切，哪一点是为了人民好，为了这个国家好？

看看加州那边，950美金以下不算犯罪（2014年加州公投通过第47号提案，将低于950美元的财产犯罪，包括偷窃、入店行窃等降为轻罪）。黑人拿着袋子到超市装东西，超市的人不敢管他。房子空着，如果有人搬进去，并且交了水电费，住5年后那房子就可能归他了，没有保护私人财产（加州《逆权侵占法》，保障未经屋主许可入侵房屋居住者的权益）。

这次大选，拜登集团作假大家都看到了，但没有人去谴责他们。他的选民没有，媒体也没有。你说正常吗？这个社会已经堕落得没有道德底线了。