I had traded on this market and I shouldn't have. I've closed my position at a 2 mana loss and won't trade again. It's the best I can do at the moment.

@traders for the next few days, please point out any news from credible media (I'll use the Metaculus definition for that in case of doubt) of possible violations of the first three bullet points - polling places are open, voters can vote and, once there are credible media-reported results, state officials confirm those.

@BrunoParga Does something like this not count?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/us/ballot-box-fires-what-we-know/index.html

@BobLoblaw while it's really disturbing, I'll say this is not enough to resolve NO; it seems this was an isolated act, not a systematic operation, especially not by either state; one critical point for me not to consider this as enough to resolve NO is that the ballots are either recoverable, or the voters involved will still have a chance to make their voice heard. From what I read it seems Oregon did much better than Washington, but even WA is still protecting the normal conduct of the election.

What do you think?

(Edited to add:) Furthermore, we'll likely see that the number of ballots in question is far lower than what would be needed to affect the outcome of the Presidential election in either state, even with very adverse assumptions. We'll have to reassess if similar incidents reach enough ballots to be, say, within an order of magnitude of the margin of victory. That's not a hard and fast rule; unfortunately, there might be some subjectivity involved.

In any case, one thing that's clear is that the least favorable assumptions should be made about the contents of any lost ballots; in this case, for example, should Harris win those states, we'd assume for this question that all of the ballots were for Trump, just to be on the safe side.

@BrunoParga Ok, I agree with your reasoning (both for the purposes of resolution and general thoughts).

Absolutely, it won’t be “normal.” Last couple elections haven’t felt “normal.” This one can’t be expected to be MORE “normal”, it has significant novelty already.

There is already significant level of threats of violence against election workers. That is NOT normal. There are concerted legislative and extralegal efforts to disenfranchise entire groups of people— not normal in my lifetime, except the ex-felons and likely I’ve been unaware of a few other types.

@ClubmasterTransparent if you think the resolution criteria will turn out to be NO, then you could make a lot of mana betting that way.

What qualifies as "significant violence"?

@Jo2e2b I'll wait until after The Pivot to answer.

@Jo2e2b so. January 6 clearly counts, and an isolated incident of some drunkard punching someone at a polling place doesn't count. I think the line between that is if it's something someone could get indicted for, and it was intended to disrupt or affect any of the steps I described. There doesn't have to be an actual indictment, since successful coups are very forgiving to those who abet them; and I'll use my best judgement as to whether there was this intent.

Can you clarify “in each state, at least 50% of electoral votes are cast for the winner, according to the actual result”? The winner of the popular vote of the state? What’s the “actual result”?

@oh for the purposes of this question, I defined:

> "States" includes DC since it also votes for President, and "the actual result" is that declared by credible news media.

What I mean by that is the candidate which, according to the best of our knowledge as reported by credible news sources, is the one that won the popular vote. In Maine and Nebraska, this applies statewide and also to each Congressional district, since they split their votes.

That subquestion is basically "will at least 50% of electors be faithful to the popular vote?"

@BrunoParga If a state does not have a majority popular vote winner, would you consider that by itself to be an abnormality?

@DanPowell no. That is a fairly common occurrence, isn't it? Like, the "spirit" of the question here is that elections are generally normal, but 2020 wasn't because of the attack on the Capitol, and there is a considerable chance (which is what we're trying to estimate with this market) of something going abnormally in 2024. People voting such that no candidate has an outright majority in a state is not abnormal.

@BrunoParga so that basically means the electors are assigned as set forth by that state’s procedure for assigning electors and there isn’t massive disagreement about what the vote totals are (something like Florida in Bush/Gore would be near the far end of what is normal, while Georgia in 2020 would the near side of abnormal)?

@DanPowell I think "that state's procedure" is the crux here. If a state decides its procedure is just to ignore the popular vote (as reported by independent organizations - what I am calling the "actual result" for the purpose of this question), and just let the legislature decide, I'd say that's abnormal.

I know what happened in '00 and I have no idea how I would judge that - possibly, as you said, on the far end of normal - and I don't know/remember what went on in Georgia in '20. Why do you say it's in the near side of abnormal?

Are these candidates for a No (particularly if both resolve Yes, Trump is federally allowed on the ballot but not in one or more states):

@Frogswap given that it is within states' legal power to decide ballot access rules, I would say that any given candidate being or not being on the ballot does not affect the resolution of this question.