If given the option, which recent US presidential election would you flip?

foolm0r0n posted...

Does he not know he described jim crow?

Lopen posted...

The only problem with that is you'd have a ton of people not voting and it'd be even tougher to rule out fraud or biased questions.

Well aware yes.

Lopen posted...

You're tying the EC to that and yes that's probably more "correct" to do but it's also completely irrelevant to the discussion we're having here (EC in current day) as we don't have any slaves contributing to populations at the moment.

I'm not the one tying the EC to the Three-Fifths Compromise. The Founders did! On purpose! They told us they did! You say it's not relevant to the discussion we're having but I only mentioned it way back when because you said the reason we had it was to give small states representation.

I'm saying - bullshit. That's the story we tell ourselves as a country now because we love whitewashing our history (this is a human nature thing, sure, but we should recognize when we're doing it) and pretending things were a lot nicer, cleaner, and more noble than they actually were.

This isn't a case where the Electoral College, Three-Fifths Compromise, and House of Representatives all came together at different times and "whoops that's an unintended interplay between them! gosh what a mess!" They were all designed at the same time, in the same document, and linked together on purpose for the same reason (well not the House as a whole but its design relevant to this discussion) and we don't have to suppose that or anything because we have the writers telling us that was the case.

Trying to claim it was actually all about giving small states more representation is revisionist history that tries to ignore the context and history behind its creation and adoption and acting like history began in 1865 at the earliest. To the extent there was concern and intent behind the Founders to give less populous states a stronger voice you had that in the Senate. Now, yes, it's true that the Senate apportionment plays a role in EV votes too but a) like I already said this effect was in some cases overpowered by the Three-Fifths Compromise influence on the EC such that some of the smaller states were actually losing representation because that part had far greater weight when actually applied but also b) this is all also within the context that there wasn't some grand plan to ensure diversity of thought and interest in the government - it was to make sure the elite clubs of powerful, landed, white men in small states didn't lose their seats at the table.

We are so far from the "original vision" of the Founders on this and so many other things (Suffrage extended to slaves and women, direct election of Senators, the existence of political parties, the artificial cap on the House of Representatives, etc.) that an already distorted system has become downright grotesque and so far removed from whatever designs that it may have had that it should just be put out of its misery. You can try and make up a reason for why it still serves a purpose but it would be completely divorced from history and that's what I took issue with to begin with.

Again, my only venture into this debate was to refute the notion that the EC was designed and adopted with the intent to give smaller states greater power. Certainly it does do that at present but very little of its creation and adoption suggests that was why it was designed or implemented. Both by the words of its creators as well as the actual math and results it produced immediately once put into place. I never ventured out to what, if any, purpose it serves today. You can have that debate with others here if they want to have it - I'm not particularly interested in doing so. I just objected to the whitewashing of its history that I saw.

ZaziGuado posted...

We should elect Presidents using Eurovision scoring.

On the condition they all perform vocally on stage before voting begins just like the actual Eurovision.

Politicians lie about the why of things for all sorts of reasons
Politicians misrepresent the why of things for all sorts of reasons
Politicians compromise with other shitty politicians so things can get done

I don't doubt people said it at the time and I don't doubt it was intended because the system had to be signed off on and there were enough people involved that were just out to help themselves and their own, but no I do not think the system was entirely birthed to empower slave owners-- there is a much much easier way to do that and that's just to allow slave owners to register slaves and have registered slaves count as extra votes. So easy.

Why I'm saying I don't think you're actually thinking is because you're taking historical accounts as though "it happened that way just because people said it happened that way" but if you look at why the system is as it is you'll see there is a lot of robustness to it to accomplish exactly the "whitewashed things" I'm saying it should accomplish.

I'm not in love with it. I'm not saying "this system is great because this quote from schmucky mcschmuck back then says it's great"-- I'm completely looking at it from the theory lens. And the theory makes sense. The practicality of implementing it in terms of detecting voter fraud makes sense. I don't have a horse in propping up the founders like you have in tearing them down, I'm just explaining why the system works and why popular vote isn't really better.

Lopen posted...

Why I'm saying I don't think you're actually thinking is because you're taking historical accounts as though "it happened that way just because people said it happened that way" but if you look at why the system is as it is you'll see there is a lot of robustness to it to accomplish exactly the "whitewashed things" I'm saying it should accomplish.

So we're just going to ignore that I looked into and mentioned how the first Electoral Colleges ended up apportioning votes in a manner that is the very opposite of what you claim it was meant to do?

Or that I keep framing these in the context of history beyond "stuff politicians said" and instead stuff they did.

You're simply sitting at the top of an ivory tower and asserting your opinion as the objective truth of the matter and dismiss any refutation of it as "oh politicians could be lying" or "oh you can't think for yourself you're just parroting historical accounts" or "i'm simply objective. i don't have an axe to grind like you "

That's why I said "how convenient" all the way back then. Contrary to what you may believe, I'm entirely willing to accept reconsideration if presented with evidence or compelling argument that refutes my stance. But that's not what I'm getting here. Instead, from the very beginning, you snidely say I'm not capable of independent thought and "craving validation" (...why the fuck would i even care? i already hate myself. if anything, i'm looking for confirmation of my worst fears that everyone else does too. But I guess I don't have your enlightenment-like ability to just analyze people over the internet based on like three sentences in a debate over history) then pidgeonhole me as some "rando" and recurring character you bring up in arguing with other people like you're some lord overseeing a play. I haven't been given a reason to consider your view of this beyond "well if you actually could think for yourself you'd see that it's obvious" which doubles as somehow an ironclad defense against contravening evidence or arguments because it's apparently so self-evidently true that anything that undermines it must be wrong or faulty in some regard.

This isn't an exchange or talk about ideas, it's just a sanctimonious sermon.

Guys

Lopen spent most of 2016 saying that liberals were overreacting for being upset at the rise of Trump

Then he vanished once it got bad

Now he's back once things have gotten (mildly) better to keep moving goal posts

Quit wasting your time

Thorn posted...

This isn't an exchange or talk about ideas, it's just a sanctimonious sermon.

OK

Well if that's all you're getting out of what I'm saying I'll just stop talking because you're clearly not reading anything.

Thanks for letting me know.

KamikazePotato posted...

Guys

Lopen spent most of 2016 saying that liberals were overreacting for being upset at the rise of Trump

Then he vanished once it got bad

Now he's back once things have gotten (mildly) better to keep moving goal posts

Quit wasting your time

What an actual sanctimonious sermon looks like btw

Lopen posted...

Well aware yes.

So I mean yeah sure we could wish that we could magically do that in a fair way

Or we could just have the person who got the most votes as the winner which is much easier to accomplish

Lopen posted...

Before California every state had equal population

Then that evil California arrived... and ruined our perfect Electoral College...

What if I told you the Electoral College was designed to limit Virginias power and instead increased its power by a lot because politicians are often stupid

Eddv posted...

What if I told you the Electoral College was designed to limit Virginias power and instead increased its power by a lot because politicians are often stupid

I'd say you're a lot better at citing history without being pretentious about it than Thorn is.

And also that I knew that but it has no bearing on the current state of the EC.

Lopen posted...

And also that I knew that but it has no bearing on the current state of the EC.

It does a little. Its a system that never worked as intended and has always been blatantly manipulated over the years by whoever had the more clever politicians.

We have all these super low pop western states in the first place because the short sighted liberals of the 19th century thought 20 years of senate control was worth blatantly making our electoral system less representative because again they were pretty dumb.

Im not sure why you wanna preserve such a system beyond I dunno a preference for incorrect math.

I wonder what it's like to have your entire personality be devil's advocate

In general, people overvalue controlling Congress here and now over permanent structural changes.

Eddv posted...

Im not sure why you wanna preserve such a system beyond I dunno a preference for incorrect math.

Potential to be better than popular vote with some tweaks combined with not being notably worse than popular vote

Also harder to outright cheat in strangely/easier to audit.

VintageGin posted...

I wonder what it's like to have your entire personality be devil's advocate

For you it's pretty easy-- just be a devil's advocate one time.

Lopen posted...

Potential to be better than popular vote with some tweaks combined with not being notably worse than popular vote

Also harder to outright cheat in strangely/easier to audit.

Samuel Tilden has entered the chat

Had to Wikipedia. Dumb situation but not sure why relevant in today's voting climate.

Eddv posted...

Also harder to outright cheat in strangely/easier to audit.

A literal instance of it being easier to cheat due to the format.

Eddv posted...

A literal instance of it being easier to cheat due to the format.

In the late 1800s . I don't think that's viable today in scrutinized regions.

Stuffing 200k fraudulent votes into a bunch of regions where things aren't contested seems much more viable. Which means you'd need to recount literally every region in close elections. Which wouldn't happen because we'd recount using the old standards or people would and there wouldn't be enough scrutiny in the regions and the votes would be uncaught again.

Lopen posted...

In the late 1800s . I don't think that's viable today in scrutinized regions.

Stuffing 200k fraudulent votes into a bunch of regions where things aren't contested seems much more viable. Which means you'd need to recount literally every region in close elections. Which wouldn't happen because we'd recount using the old standards or people would and there wouldn't be enough scrutiny in the regions and the votes would be uncaught again.

Youre aware there was literally a scheme using the exact same loophole that was at the core of the attempted coup on 1/6 right?

Unaware. And you're saying attempted as in it didn't work? Might actually support what I'm saying. Give me the deets man.

I respect Lopen's arguments but I still think it makes less sense for a majority of voters not to determine the POTUS no matter how little it might happen. Especially since it has happened twice in such a fairly short span of time. I also find it interesting how both elections in question were impacted heavily by Bill Clinton (less obvious for Gore, but many think that if Gore hadn't distanced himself from Clinton following his impeachment Gore would have still won the election due to Clinton still being popular following his impeachment...oh no, totally doesn't remind me of anybody!).

I'll also admit that I despise both Bush and Trump and that's probably clouding my judgement. I still feel like I find Bush more reprehensible as a politician despite everything, though Trump is many orders worse as a person.

The plan was for Mike Pence to, as Vice President, refuse to certify the electoral votes cast in Georgia Arizona and Wisconsin on account of "fraud" and thus force the election to a house vote he would have won.

Pence refused and an angry mob was whipped up to try to force him, he STILL refused and so that mob stormed the capital.

Legit only avoided this outcome because Pence got a phone call from Dan Quayle of all people begging him not to do it

A situation neatly avoided if more votes simply wins the election.

Eddv posted...

The plan was for Mike Pence to, as Vice President, refuse to certify the electoral votes cast in Georgia Arizona and Wisconsin on account of "fraud" and thus force the election to a house vote he would have won.

Pence refused and an angry mob was whipped up to try to force him, he STILL refused and so that mob stormed the capital.

Legit only avoided this outcome because Pence got a phone call from Dan Quayle of all people begging him not to do it

A situation neatly avoided if more votes simply wins the election.

That scenario isn't because of the Electoral College, it's because of the method for aggregating votes from different states. If you had the election decided by a national popular vote, Pence would still have been opening envelopes containing the vote tallies from the different states. Only it would be even more prone to abuse at this stage of the counting because any red state could have submitted a fraudulent vote tally asserting, let's say, that the entire state population had voted for Trump when it was really a 55/45 thing with 70% turnout.

What would Pence be supposed to do when presented with such a hypothetical vote tally? Count it anyway because his job is only ministerial? Refuse to count it because of obvious fraud, opening the door to other VPs rejecting legitimate vote tallies they don't like? With the EC, the margin within a state doesn't matter so this kind of scheme wouldn't achieve anything.

Going back through some of the posts earlier in the topic, one thing that stands out is just how arbitrary the pro-EC arguments are. The national popular vote is simplistic and smooth-brained, but when you zoom in to a state level, THATS where the popular vote becomes fair and legitimate. But if youre against national popular votethe same issues exist at a state level. States are still divided internally on a rural/urban level, and if politicians are trying to win those states, theyre going to campaign in the centers with the most voters, rather than going out to the boonies. The same is true on a district level, because even in an ideal scenario where districts are fairly drawn to the satisfaction of both major partiesyoure still going to have high population and low population areas, and politicians will be more inclined to campaign in one over the other.

It just feels completely arbitrary, which is also why history matters. There are low population states that exist less because of a unique culture, and more because of political wheeling and dealing to ensure that the senate stayed equal at a certain time, or gave one party an advantage at a certain time. Even on a district level, its redrawn every ten years, and even in a good faith scenario with fair mapping, youre dividing the populations vote share for (I hate using this word as much as I am) arbitrary reason. Division for the sake of division.

I guess I dont understand why popular vote is considered ideal on a micro level, but becomes smooth brained to support on a macro scale. To use the earlier argument, what if you have a state with two districts that both go 50.1%-49.9% to the same party. Under your proposed ideal system, a state with four electoral votes that is statistically 50-50 would result in a 100% win for that one party. 2 votes for the state popular vote win (given to represent the senate), and 1 vote for winning each of the two districts. Why is THAT popular vote scenario okay, but when you extrapolate it out to a national scale, it suddenly becomes untenable?

Another hypo: Suppose North Dakota decides to allow non-citizens and even non-residents to vote. Trump campaigns heavily in Russia, asking Russian citizens to vote by mail in North Dakota under its new system of allowing non-citizens and non-residents to vote from anywhere in the world. 90% of the Russian population votes from Trump, as a result of which he wins North Dakota by 100 million+ votes, making the votes from the other states entirely meaningless.

To deal with this potential problem, on a legal level, the constitution would need to be amended so that states would not be able to set their own election rules for federal elections. On a practical level, you would almost certainly need to scrap the system of the VP opening the election returns from the states and Congress counting the votes. Because the disputes would increase, not decrease.

In "fairness" to Lopen he wants proportional electoral votes, a system that is definitely better but still raises the question of why we're even bothering if it's not to just give conservatives occasional victories they don't deserve.

Kenri posted...

In "fairness" to Lopen he wants proportional electoral votes, a system that is definitely better but still raises the question of why we're even bothering if it's not to just give conservatives occasional victories they don't deserve.

based on my reading, it was foolmo who wanted proportional electoral votes, whereas Lopen still wanted electoral votes within the states to be apportioned by winning individual districts. Hes been touting the Nebraska/Maine system for a while.

Oh, yeah. The Maine system is what I meant but I used the wrong word for it. My bad!

I do think the proportional vote is better but I mostly don't care about the whole election layer of the system. The power gained in the election is the biggest issue, and the unbalanced power promised by US federal elections makes it impossible to have a just system. Other countries like Russia and Iraq have the same issue. You're electing despots, whether it's a "fair" election or not. You can't solve it with an election system. It's like putting nuclear bombs behind a fancy encrypted lock system - the existential danger is still gonna be there.

Well I think the rep cap is stupid and Cali should obviously get more. But the base 2 votes for each state for their Senators is good to give Wyoming and its ilk some vague relevance.

I just want electoral college with tweaks. Exact tweaks are up for discussion. The district method is better but again the gerrymandering potential is a concern.

But yeah it's all a matter of scale to what Inviso is saying. Like yes obviously every small town isn't going to have campaign presence but for activists it's more reasonable for someone in northern Colorado to head to Denver than it is for them to head to Texas or California. Throw districts into the mix and it becomes even easier.

Like stuff like the thing eddv is talking about is a procedural problem that could exist with popular vote too as red sox said-- just baggage that isn't wholly relevant to the discussion much like 3/5s compromise

foolm0r0n posted...

I do think the proportional vote is better but I mostly don't care about the whole election layer of the system. The power gained in the election is the biggest issue, and the unbalanced power promised by US federal elections makes it impossible to have a just system. Other countries like Russia and Iraq have the same issue. You're electing despots, whether it's a "fair" election or not. You can't solve it with an election system. It's like putting nuclear bombs behind a fancy encrypted lock system - the existential danger is still gonna be there.

Ok but id still rather have the layer of encryption.

Like yes Russia has a similarly powerful president but the blatant unfairness of the elections has resulted in an absolute unchanging dictatorship that, even in your dimmest view of the US, DOESNT exist here

Lopen posted...

Like stuff like the thing eddv is talking about is a procedural problem that could exist with popular vote too as red sox said-- just baggage that isn't wholly relevant to the discussion much like 3/5s compromise

So I have given you math, Ive given you historical examples, ive given you a recent example of ways in which this system doesnt work, is prone to abuse and fraud and is not representative and you just shrug.

I dunno man I think you just like Steve Kornacki pressing map buttons

I would rather you refute red sox's posts than handwave mine

Like the question isn't whether EC isn't prone to abuse and fraud the question I'd whether Popular Vote fixes literally any of it when the issues you're having are with procedural baggage loopholes that wouldn't necessarily removed if we moved to that

Like it's easy to say "well you don't have historical examples of popular vote being hit with loopholes and fraud" when we've never actually used it

You're basically arguing like a bible thumper here. No we can't prove this would happen with popular vote as well but why wouldn't it? Explain what of anything you've said is bad about electoral college is exclusive to electoral college.

Like here is a simple example of why it's harder to rig an electoral college vote

Say we have an election where popular vote is within 500k

Say electoral college is split in a way such that 23 states are cleanly (like 60%+) going to each candidate, and there are 4 contested states left.

In a popular vote approach, we could pump an additional 1 million votes split any way we'd like among the 50 states. In an election of 150 million voters we only need to add 1% of the total vote, and you can literally do it anywhere in the US. Very easy to blend an extra 100k votes into a state that got a large turnout and the polling wasn't close because it's going to be a small amount of votes proportionally . Do that 5 times and you've closed the gap. 10 times and you're winning.

Electoral college you either need to do it in one of those 4 contested states which are going to have a HEAVY amount of media and regulatory attention OR the amount of votes you need to add into the calculation to flip one of the uncontested states becomes completely blatant to the point where you don't even need to be paying attention. Flipping a 60-40 to a 50-50 would require an outrageous amount of fraudulent votes, enough that it would be impossible to really slip by. You'd need like 1/5 votes to be fraudulent to flip it. It's not plausible for that amount of fraud to be undetected even if people aren't particularly trying to.

Ultimately this isn't the main reason I think Electoral College has utility, but you're saying "it's harder to cheat in a popular vote election" and I'm saying the math of how polls work strongly disagrees with you. It would be much easier.

Lopen posted...

I would rather you refute red sox's posts than handwave mine

Like the question isn't whether EC isn't prone to abuse and fraud the question I'd whether Popular Vote fixes literally any of it when the issues you're having are with procedural baggage loopholes that wouldn't necessarily removed if we moved to that

I have had red sox blocked for close to a decade now lol

Eddv posted...

even in your dimmest view of the US, DOESNT exist here

It's a matter of what the public will accept. You go as far as you can without triggering revolution. That's the achievement of the US system for being around for so long.

And if someone like Trump can get millions to accept him just by getting 51% of votes, we will inevitably become Putin's Russia.

Key thing to note is that for Trump supporters, 51% is not enough to accept Biden, they went for revolution against that. Would 55 or even 95% have changed anything?

Lopen posted...

Like here is a simple example of why it's harder to rig an electoral college vote

Say we have an election where popular vote is within 500k

Say electoral college is split in a way such that 23 states are cleanly (like 60%+) going to each candidate, and there are 4 contested states left.

In a popular vote approach, we could pump an additional 1 million votes split any way we'd like among the 50 states. In an election of 150 million voters we only need to add 1% of the total vote, and you can literally do it anywhere in the US. Very easy to blend an extra 100k votes into a state that got a large turnout and the polling wasn't close because it's going to be a small amount of votes proportionally . Do that 5 times and you've closed the gap. 10 times and you're winning.

Electoral college you either need to do it in one of those 4 contested states which are going to have a HEAVY amount of media and regulatory attention OR the amount of votes you need to add into the calculation to flip one of the uncontested states becomes completely blatant to the point where you don't even need to be paying attention. Flipping a 60-40 to a 50-50 would require an outrageous amount of fraudulent votes, enough that it would be impossible to really slip by. You'd need like 1/5 votes to be fraudulent to flip it. It's not plausible for that amount of fraud to be undetected even if people aren't particularly trying to.

Ultimately this isn't the main reason I think Electoral College has utility, but you're saying "it's harder to cheat in a popular vote election" and I'm saying the math of how polls work strongly disagrees with you. It would be much easier.

We saw with the 2016 and 2020 elections just how heavily scrutinized and de centralized the actual nuts and bolts vote counting is in this country.

To do this your way youd need a massive coordinated conspiracy or a level of institutional support for fraud that would be pretty notable.

To defraud the public with the EC, literally one person would have had to behave differently.

foolm0r0n posted...

It's a matter of what the public will accept. You go as far as you can without triggering revolution. That's the achievement of the US system for being around for so long.

And if someone like Trump can get millions to accept him just by getting 51% of votes, we will inevitably become Putin's Russia.

Key thing to note is that for Trump supporters, 51% is not enough to accept Biden, they went for revolution against that. Would 55 or even 95% have changed anything?

Yeah its pretty concerning for sure.

Lopen, your logic is accurate in theory, but not in practice. In theory, yes, it would be easier to push fraudulent votes in a pure popular vote, because there would be less oversight possible due to the sheer scale. And in theory, it would be harder to push fraudulent votes in individual states because they'd be under much heavier scrutiny. In practice, it's much different though.

The sheer scale of popular vote makes it so even small percentage margins are MASSIVE in terms of sheer numerical value. In the modern era of presidential elections, there have only been three elections (out of sixteen total, so less than twenty percent) in which the popular vote margin was less than 1 million. We've reached a point where the number of votes cast overall is so large that in order to rig the system and vote stuff in a meaningful way, you'd need to be incredibly blatant about it. And that level of blatancy, combined with a likely extreme divergence from exit polling data, would make it easier to ferret out attempts at fraud.

Meanwhile, because the state level elections are so much smaller, the margins of victory are smaller as well, which means it would take much less effort to try and push fraudulent votes in the right states to achieve a specific outcome. And while again, in theory, there would be more oversight to catch that fraudulent voting, the fact that elections are handled on a state-by-state basis rather than fully federally means that oversight depends entirely on the existing state government. And in situation in which one party is willing to engage in voter fraud widespread enough to swing a state from one party to the other, you have to consider the likelihood that they would have a back-up plan to avoid getting caught...or make it so getting caught wouldn't matter. All it would take is ONE right person in ONE right place (a statewide election official of some kind) to completely swing things.

I don't think number of fraudulent votes is important as much as percentage of the pool those votes in terms of detection. Yes a state election can be flipped with a much smaller amount of votes, but that smaller amount will be more glaring.

Also here is the red sox post since you have him blocked.

That scenario isn't because of the Electoral College, it's because of the method for aggregating votes from different states. If you had the election decided by a national popular vote, Pence would still have been opening envelopes containing the vote tallies from the different states. Only it would be even more prone to abuse at this stage of the counting because any red state could have submitted a fraudulent vote tally asserting, let's say, that the entire state population had voted for Trump when it was really a 55/45 thing with 70% turnout.

What would Pence be supposed to do when presented with such a hypothetical vote tally? Count it anyway because his job is only ministerial? Refuse to count it because of obvious fraud, opening the door to other VPs rejecting legitimate vote tallies they don't like? With the EC, the margin within a state doesn't matter so this kind of scheme wouldn't achieve anything.

To me this feels like you're attaching baggage to the EC when a lot of these procedures exist relatively independent of the EC and would carry over to popular vote as well because why wouldn't they.

Lopen posted...

That scenario isn't because of the Electoral College, it's because of the method for aggregating votes from different states. If you had the election decided by a national popular vote, Pence would still have been opening envelopes containing the vote tallies from the different states. Only it would be even more prone to abuse at this stage of the counting because any red state could have submitted a fraudulent vote tally asserting, let's say, that the entire state population had voted for Trump when it was really a 55/45 thing with 70% turnout.

What would Pence be supposed to do when presented with such a hypothetical vote tally? Count it anyway because his job is only ministerial? Refuse to count it because of obvious fraud, opening the door to other VPs rejecting legitimate vote tallies they don't like? With the EC, the margin within a state doesn't matter so this kind of scheme wouldn't achieve anything.

I mean if were changing the constitution we can make it so this isnt Pences problem. Its a procedure that envisions the results being delivered by horseback. We can modernize it.

Again, it's not how "obvious" it is, so much as the general logistics of it being something to feasibly worry about. Under the popular vote, in order to rig the system with fraudulent votes, you would need to coordinate a massive effort to somehow inject over a million unexplained votes into the system, and at that point, that is a cumbersome effort that would require a great deal more effort and skill than any political party actually has.

But under the electoral vote, not only do you have situations like Florida in 2000, where the popular vote in the state came down to a five hundred vote difference (something small enough that it could theoretically have had fraudulent basis, without raising a red flag)...but you also have completely legal situations where if the right party has the right man in a position like statewide election commissioner or secretary of state, they can purge the voter rolls, or decide certain votes can't be counted, and that in and of itself could swing a result, given the narrow margins. It only takes one person, acting independently in that situation, rather than any sort of complex and coordinated effort.