In-Person Early Voting Has Started in Three States

Sure, Election Day is Nov. 5, but in-person voting has already started in three states: Minnesota, Virginia, and South Dakota. Voting there began on Friday. In Minnesota and South Dakota, voters can also turn in their absentee ballots in person now as an alternative to mailing them in. In Minnesota in 2020, 57% of the votes were cast early. By mid-October, another dozen states will be voting in person, and absentee ballots are also starting to go out. The election is not at some vague time in the future. It's right now. Here is a map showing when early voting starts by state.

Eight states have all-mail elections (that is, everyone is allowed to vote via mail, if they wish). These are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. If you want to stump your friends, ask them what Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire have in common. The answer is that none of them have early voting for all voters, although they make exceptions for certain voters.

Among other things, even if there is some kind of October surprise, the votes that have already been cast can't be changed, even if the people who cast them change their mind. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D), who is president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said he wanted two things between now and November 5: high turnout and low drama.

In some states, early in-person voting and absentee voting are very popular. In Virginia, for example, two-thirds of the votes are usually cast early, either in person or absentee. Many people vote early to avoid crowds and long waits on Election Day. Early voting has become increasingly popular. Here is a graph showing how it has increased over time:

As you can see, in 2022, after COVID was no longer ruling the land, Election Day voting sprung back to where it would have been had there not been a pandemic. Nevertheless, for the first time other than 2020, more votes were cast early in 2022 than on Election Day. Election experts expect the trend to continue. (V)

Uncommitted Won't Commit

During the primaries, a pro-Palestinian group called Uncommitted tried to get Democratic voters to vote for their candidates so they could have delegates at the Democratic National Convention. They got a few delegates, but the movement kind of went out—not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now they are back giving election advice. Here it is:

1. Don't vote for Kamala Harris.
2. Don't vote for Donald Trump.
3. Don't vote for a third-party or independent candidate.

So... don't vote at all, then. Having large numbers of people not voting will surely teach Joe Biden a lesson. In some states, it is possible to write in Donald Duck, but in most states write-in votes for any candidate who has not filed as an official write-in candidate are simply thrown out. As far as we know, fictional ducks are not allowed to file in most states.

Groups like this, especially on the "left," have a lot of trouble handling situations where you get a choice between a candidate who is bad (from your point of view) and one who is truly horrendously awful. They don't get it that going for "bad" may not feel good but gets you a better result than voting for truly horrendously awful. (V)

The Courts Are Deeply Involved in Running the Elections

On Saturday, we had an item about how the new Georgia Board of Elections is trying to change the rules in order to create chaos. In ordinary times, boards of elections try to prevent chaos, not cause it, but these are not ordinary times. Georgia AG Chris Carr (R) has warned the board that they do not have the legal authority to do any of the things they are trying to do and he will sue them if they continue, so we don't know how this will end.

Meanwhile, we have legal news about elections in three different states today.

• Arizona: Georgia is not the only state where there are shenanigans. Arizona is another one. There appears to be a pattern that Republican-controlled boards and legislatures understand that in a fair election, they would lose, so throwing sand in the gears of democracy seems like a good alternative to them.
  
  There is a case in Arizona that has been going on since 2022. A law called SB 1260, passed by the state legislature in that year, allowed county officials to cancel voter registrations under certain conditions, including when someone moves out of state. Federal law does not make it a crime to be registered to vote in two states. It is only a crime to vote in two states.
  
  Under SB 1260, it is a crime for an election official to register new Arizona residents to vote if they failed to deregister in their previous states, information the election official most likely does not know. SB 1260 also makes it a crime for someone in Arizona to forward an absentee ballot to a legal Arizona resident who is (temporarily) out of state but who still intends to vote only in Arizona.
  
  

  Previously, Federal Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix has ruled that the law is so vague and poorly written that neither election officials nor voters could know what was legal and what was not. Snow also ruled that SB 1260 violated voters' rights under the National Voter Registration Act, which requires that a person be notified before being removed from the rolls. Consequently, Snow ordered the state and the counties to stop enforcing the law.
  
  On Friday, Snow's ruling was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on a 2-1 vote. The Court did not rule on whether the law was unconstitutionally vague, but merely that the plaintiffs (three voter registration groups) did not have standing to sue because they could not prove they were damaged by the law. Only people whose registration was canceled would have standing to sue and none of the actual plaintiffs had their registrations canceled. Consequently, counties can now begin canceling voter registrations, even though as a general policy courts don't like to change election procedures within 60 days of an election.
  
  

• Nevada: In the Silver State, the issue is whether the Green Party should be on the ballot. The Green Party filed a petition to get on the ballot and obtained more than enough signatures. So they are on the ballot? Well, not so fast. Eagle-eyed Democratic lawyers, who do not want the Green Party on the ballot (anywhere), noticed that the petition form the Green Party used did not require the signers to attest under penalty of perjury that they were registered voters in the county corresponding to the address they listed. State law requires such attestation.
  
  Naturally, it ended up in court. It always does. In August, a state judge ruled that the Green Party acted in good faith because some election official had sent them an e-mail saying the form didn't matter. For the judge, the wording of the state law wasn't so important and the e-mail assurance got them off the hook.
  
  However, in September, the Nevada Supreme Court overruled the judge 5-2 and said that state law is what matters, not incorrect advice from an elections official. In other words, the Green Party's own lawyers should have checked the law themselves and acted on what they found. Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) told the court it was too late, anyway, because he had already ordered 2 million ballots printed.
  
  On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take the case. In an unsigned one-sentence order, it wrote: "The application to vacate injunction presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied." There was no further explanation. One possible reason is that on matters of election law, which is generally state law, the U.S. Supreme Court usually lets the state Supreme Courts decide unless there are constitutional issues raised (e.g., a state law that says everyone has to pass a literacy test to vote unless one of your great-great-grandparents had the right to vote). This case hinged on a question of state law.
  
  
• Wisconsin: Finally, in Wisconsin, Robert Kennedy Jr. fought tooth and nail to get on the Wisconsin ballot when he thought that would help Donald Trump; now he is fighting tooth and nail to get off the ballot when he thinks his presence will hurt Trump. The deadline for removing your name has passed, but Kennedy thinks the law is less important than what he would like. So he sued, and a Dane County judge ruled that it's state law that matters and the deadline has passed, so no. Kennedy didn't like that, so he appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. On Friday, that court agreed to take the case.
  
  Lawyers for the Wisconsin Elections Commission told the court they need a swift resolution because they have already started sending out absentee ballots with Kennedy's name on them. Requiring them to print new ballots would greatly delay the election process, in violation of state law. In particular, delaying the process several weeks would mean that overseas voters and military personnel might be disenfranchised just because one person failed to follow state law trying to get off the ballot that he had fought to get on.
  

In short, the court cases are already abundant. It's only going to get worse. The founding fathers labored under the illusion that election laws would be written and enforced by the political branches of the government. How wrong they were. (V)

Trump as Cryptoman

In the past, Donald Trump was fairly negative on crypto. He often called it "a scam." He said: "We have only one real currency in the USA. And it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollar!" All of a sudden, he loves crypto. What is going on?

First, he probably still thinks it is a scam, but he and two of his sons are now planning to do the scamming by setting up their own crypto exchange. That changes everything. When you are the grifter rather than the griftee, that makes all the difference.

Second, he thinks the kind of people who buy crypto are potentially new voters for him. He wants to appeal to them by sharing his newfound love of crypto with them.

Many people who speculate in crypto are young men. They know society expects them to make money, be good providers, and be savvy about finance. Many of them aren't and see crypto as an easy way to make a lot of money fast and prove their worth. Their views on masculinity, crypto, and Trump kind of align. In one survey, men who valued masculinity and also thought they were masculine weren't so much interested in crypto. They didn't have to prove anything to anyone. It is often the men who value traditional masculinity but don't feel they are completely there who buy crypto. About a quarter of (young) men feel this way. They are disproportionately Black and Latino. Trump is telling this group that it is not their fault: Immigrants are taking their jobs, China is taking their prosperity, and hiring policies favor women. He is offering them solutions: a border wall, tariffs, and ending DEI. Since they are already buying crypto, his coming out in favor of it makes them think he is their ally. Needless to say, he isn't, but as long as they think so, that is all he wants. (V)

Voters Expect Harris to Win--and It Might Matter

Pollsters normally ask: "Who are you going to vote for?" That might be the wrong question. A few polls do it differently. They ask: "Who do you think will win?" In a recent poll of Georgia, voters preferred Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by 3 points, but predicted by 11 points that Harris would win. Several other polls have had the same result.

One might think: Who cares about what the average voter thinks about who will win? Interestingly enough, there is some academic research on this from 2012. Going back 60 years and using state polling data, the leaders in the polls won the state 69% of the time. In contrast, the candidate the voters predicted would win actually won 81% of the time. In other words, asking people "Who do you think will win your state?" is a better predictor than asking people how they will vote and seeing who got the most votes.

The reason is not clear, but it could be that although a voter wants candidate X to win, he or she hears all the neighbors raving about candidate Y. The question about what the voter wants is just one data point, but the question about who will win the state collects information from many voters. That might actually be a better way to do forecasting.

Not all pollsters ask the "Who do you think will win?" question, but it might be useful if they would start doing so. It might be better than the standard poll. (V)

Yet Another Way to Forecast the Election

There are many ways to try to forecast elections. Using the fundamentals is one way. When there is peace and prosperity and no Americans are dying in a war somewhere, the incumbent's party usually wins. The polls are another technique. Maybe asking people who they think will win is even better. Then there are the betting markets. What about the stock market? Since 1928, when the S & P 500 was up during the last 90 days before the election, the incumbent party won the White House 83% of the time. That's macroeconomics. How about microeconomics? Here is the stock price during the past 12 months for DJT, the company that owns Donald Trump's boutique money-losing social media site:

As you can see, it has lost 80% of its value since its high in April and two-thirds of its value since the end of July. What's up? Two things. First, if Trump loses, very few people will want to hear what Trump has to say, so the company will probably fold due to its massive losses. The nearly straight downward line since the peak in July suggests that many of the stockholders think Trump will lose. Is this the wisdom of crowds or the stupidity of crowds?

The second factor is that Trump is now free to dump his stock. That will force the price down, maybe way, way down. Current stockholders may not want to be holding the bag when this happens, so they have been getting out gradually over the past month or two. If Trump were to try to dump tens of millions of shares now, the market in the stock would freeze because there would be massive amounts of stock for sale and no buyers. Well, with one possible exception. A foreign dictator with an unlimited amount of money to throw away could buy up all the stock at the current price. Trump would stand to gain a billion dollars or two. Who might do that? Russian President Vladimir Putin probably doesn't have the money to spare. Chinese President Xi Jinping has the money but is much too smart to waste it on trying to buy Trump's loyalty, which is worth less than his stock. The most likely candidate is Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman. He has so much money that he can afford to throw away a couple of billion in a longshot chance that Trump wins and then give him whatever his heart desires. (V)

Trump Suddenly Likes His Big Macs with SALT

As president, one of Donald Trump's most joyous achievements was sticking it to voters in blue states, in particular to well-off suburban voters who have been fleeing the Republican Party in droves of late. His technique was to ask Congress to change the tax laws to limit the federal tax deduction for state and local (property and income) taxes (SALT) to $10,000. Previously it was unlimited. This hit blue-state voters much harder than (low-tax) red state voters. In other words, it was magic. Effectively, a tax increase for Democrats without increasing taxes on most Republicans. Wonderful, no?

Maybe not. For the presidential election, it is still true that the limitation on SALT does not hurt Trump much. But there are about a dozen House races in rich blue states where the SALT limit is hurting the Republican candidates because the Democratic candidates are making the elimination of the $10,000 limit a big part of their campaigns. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) talks about this so much, he has been nicknamed Mr. SALT. If the Democrats win the trifecta, they are very likely to do precisely that.

This puts Trump in a bind. While he loved the idea of punishing well-off suburban Democrats in blue states, he is now afraid that his position might cost Republicans the House. If he wins the White House but Democrats control either chamber of Congress, they are going to block all his legislation and make it impossible to pass the budget he wants.

Currently there are 16 House districts that Joe Biden won but which are represented in the House by a Republican. Ten of these are in New York, New Jersey, and California, all states with high state and local taxes. The Republican House incumbents in those districts are being squeezed. Trump has responded by flipping 180 degrees and saying that he now wants his signature achievement, and the one that gave him the most joy, to be obliterated. He has to hope the voters believe him.

Meanwhile, back in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is trying to pass a budget. His members in those 16 districts want the budget to remove the $10,000 limit so they can vote for its removal and then campaign on it. Members from deep-red districts absolutely do not want a tax cut focused on well-off suburbanites in high-tax blue states. It could get messy. (V)

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