Originally Posted by
Craic
I have to take issue with the map as it's from a very biased source and moreover, obfuscates the voting system in the US as, in fact, land does vote in a weird way. Or, better said, political boundaries vote. So maps of popular votes are worthless except to stir up ire.
Also, to your last question. Here's something to ponder. The US does NOT like changing presidents after a first term (unless that term came on the heels of another president of the same party). So, before Trump, the last one was Carter. Before him, the last one was . . . a century ago? More? Something like that (Bush 41 came on the heels of Reagan's 8 years).
With that said, there was a perfect storm against the current president, and the effects of the perfect storm were heightened by a frenzied media and a president who liked to go burn down all the shelters figurative speaking (in other words, his tweets and responses were the absolute worst that could be said at any given moment). And, all of that said, he was within five million votes and won the majority of total battleground state votes.
Also note, "registered" isn't as much the issue as "identify as." In national exit polls via the New York Times, 37 percent of voters call themselves Democrats, and 5 percent of those voted for Trump. 36 percent of voters call themselves Republican, and 6 percent of them voted for Biden. 26 percent consider themselves independent. My guess is the 36/37 numbers are within margins of error, which means most-likely, there are an even number of Republicans and Democrats.
All of that said, there is definitely room for shenanigans. Consequently, it's why I am all for Voter ID. Of course, what also ticks me off is that Republicans will make it an election-cycle issue and then drop it until the next cycle. If they actually cared about it, they'd bring it up after an election cycle (presidential) and have an effective date after the midterms. At this point, I'd even be for tying the ID to the social security number and you have to provide the number when you go to vote. Why? Because everyone gets a Social Security number which means everyone's registered to vote. Moreover, Social Security numbers would assure dead people didn't vote as well as allow tracking of multiple voting (two different states due to different homes or places of residency, and so on).
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To be fair, the Republicans started the "let's investigate everything" mentality with Clinton.