US "Mid-term" Elections 2018

[Montmorency]

ACIN, about California's turnout: if you include all eligible voters, turnout wasn't even 30% turnout. Going by 7.3 million votes so far in the governor's race (7.2 million for House), 25.6 million eligible voters, and 18 to 19 million registered (where you got 37% I gather). Even less turnout in the Senate race (25% turnout of eligible). Is this what happens when you're known as the state of surplus voters? It's crazy that Florida could cast more votes (8.2 million) than California with hardly half the population. I raise an eyebrow at the people who are confident a meta-gerrymandered sexpartite California could reliably deliver 12 Dem Senators.



In updates on the election, votes are still being counted in several congressional districts.

Arizona Senate race still tallying, but it looks like the Democrat will win this one after all. If so, only a 2-seat gain by Republicans.

Dem Stacey Abrams in Georgia governor race refuses to concede the election and is demanding a recount. ACIN, seriously, do a review of the shadiness in the Georgia election, up to and including the hundreds of missing (hidden) voting machines and the apparent thousands of early votes that were not tallied for some reason.

Florida counts/recounts are ongoing and the gap in the Senate race is just 0.2% (0.4% in the governor race).

The skin-of-the-teeth nearness of a real national Dem sweep should only galvanize us all to try harder. Remember that the overall popular vote surge for Dems is at least that of the historic Republican surges of 1994 and 2010.

So you've got the worst of both worlds - a rigid basic structure that in essence can't be altered and all the "fixes" not which can be bulldozed. I don't think that suddenly changing things is a good idea or even possible given the existing frameworks.

In times where things are homogeneous this can be easily overlooked, but now when the need for strong processes is more clear than ever (with the popular vote and the elected officials diverging ever wider) the ability to change the core appears to be absent.

So, given all that is in place, the only realistic solution would be for the Federal government to try to do better on less tasks and leave the states themselves to focus on aspects that are not agreed on - the 2nd amendment (and Supreme Court interpretation aside), it might well be that some states would ban guns and others would not. Clearly pretending everyone is exactly the same is working less and less well.

Devolving to the states would leave most of America indicating like a Third-World country.