My final thought on the voting…..it comes from…. Eugene Debs: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.” (now you see why I have not voted for a winner since 1976)
A little more history can not hurt.
Tonight there will be families glued to the TV in anticipation of the vote count for president…..some will rejoice and some will lament.
As usual I have a question….when did election night become this all encompassing thing?
And the answer is….
On the night of Tuesday, November 4, 1952, Americans across the nation gathered around their television sets to follow the results of the presidential race between Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democrat Adlai Stevenson. That year, a television could be found in roughly one-third of U.S. households—compared with less than 1 percent in 1948—and politicians were just beginning to experiment with TV as a communication tool.
Many Americans were experiencing election night as they never had before. News networks would be announcing the next president live on TV. Adding to the anticipation: NBC and CBS planned to use new computer forecasting technologies to predict the results based on early returns.
“It was the first real national television campaign with TV ads and then election night coverage,” says Richard Craig, professor of journalism and mass communication at San José State University and author of Polls, Expectations and Elections: TV News Making in U.S. Presidential Campaigns. “It turned it into much more of a televised event.”
By the 1950s, in an era of rapid technological innovation following World War II, TVs were rapidly making their way into American households. Ninety percent of households would own one by 1960.
When TV news networks broadcasted election returns in 1948, they reached a much smaller audience than in the years to follow. A lot went wrong for the media that election night, says Ira Chinoy, author of Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting and associate professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
First, TV news organizations’ were criticized for their lackluster presentation of the election returns. Reporters essentially recited the latest vote counts and hand-wrote them on chalkboards. Plus, Chinoy says, many journalists went into 1948 election night expecting that Republican Thomas Dewey would defeat Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman as the pollsters predicted, in what became an embarrassing moment for the news stations. (This was also an issue in print journalism, leading to the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.)
https://www.history.com/news/1952-election-night-television-computers
Now you know what brought on this desire to sit up all night waiting for the election results.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Bomb threats at polling places around Atlanta in democrat areas. – reports are FBI says from Russia
That is just sick….sounds more like a third world country. chuq
I predict FDR will win a 5th term.
If only. chuq
There is no longer any reason for any of us to ever discuss elections or voting again because as of the time I am writing this, there is probably no prospect of any of us ever living to see another legitimate election in the United States at all. One party is now in total control of the Senate, The House and the Executive and they have unlimited power to do what the hell ever they want to do and there is no one who can oppose them and if somebody does oppose them that will be the practical end of that person or persons …They have total unlimited and unchecked power.. all the guard rails are gone …all the checks and balances are crippled and destroyed –so let the cleansing begin. I hope the sons of bitches who have brought us to this point realize that they are just as much subject to being victims of what they have unleashed as anybody else and that nobody is safe in America any more.
A sad regrettable day chuq
Election Night was always a big deal in the UK, with TV coverage extended until late. Since the advent of 24-hour news channels, it rolls on with no breaks. Seems like Trump is going to win, I cannot say I am surprised. I would have been more surprised if America had voted for a black woman to be the president. A sad day.
Best wishes, Pete.
Me as well….and this country is screwing itself yet again. chuq
After I had been telling the world that Trump was going to win the election, there really was no need to spend a whole night to find out that i was correct…as usual. LOL
But you stayed up…..right? chuq
I stayed up alright but not for my own curiosity but to be able to crow afterward to a friend who sometimes doubts my abilities.