2020 Presidential Election

[Meadmaker]

I think it is a legitimate concern and one reason I vote in person. (The other reason is that my state won't let me vote by mail.)

But, the problems I saw seemed to be related to the machine that was printing the ballots after people made their selection. It wasn't always printing properly. I heard one person opining that it may be because she reached for the ballot before it was done printing, but the poll workers didn't really engage her on the "why", they were focused on getting another ballot together and properly cancelling the first ballot.

The only warning they gave me was to be careful that I didn't get hand sanitizer on the ballot, as they were about to slide it across a table where the hand sanitizer dispenser left globs of excess sanitizer every time someone used it. (They need a process person at each polling place to address their setup, but that's a whole other rant.)

Is this a touch screen that then prints a ballot as the artifact? I haven't seen one like that.

Here in Michigan, we only use paper ballots. The voter fills them in. There is a perforated section with a number at the top. The poll workers tear that number off, and then put the ballot in a scanner. If there's something wrong with the ballot, the ballot is rejected. I don't know what "something wrong" might be, though.

The absentee ballot works just the same, except you are suppose to leave the number attached. I don't know if that number, either in person or by absentee, can be tied to a specific voter.

Anyway, I'm confident that there will be a larger than average number of "spoiled ballots" this year, and that the regular ballots will take longer to count. I hope that the results are clear enough that the election results are not in doubt among people with brains. i.e. if a Biden landslide materializes, then it will be no big deal that 1% of absentee ballots got rejected. However, if a state has a margin of 0.2%, and 1% absentee ballots are rejected, that's a big problem.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Given my understanding of California electoral law (which is frankly second hand and incomplete), it is very hard for an unrelated party to deliver an absentee ballot of this type to the electoral authorities.

so my best guess is that there was no intention to deliver a single one.

They are collecting GOP ballots. They want to turn them in.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Off topic but I just walk into the local polling station, point at my name on the electoral roll, get my ballot paper, fill it in and pop it in the box. No need for any ID at all.

It was like that in Texas until Obama became president.

Meanwhile back in the US, why aren't there simply more polling stations ?

It is like that in the parts of Texas that Obama did not win.

Our elections are run at the county level. I live in a rich white suburban county so I have nice libraries and school district buildings to vote in that are fairly well staffed. Rural counties likewise have no issue running elections. But large urban counties face a lot of challenges and get very little support from the state.

One interesting change this year is that the NBA owners have offered their facilities for voting and the turnout has been overwhelming. I hope this is used to help find more polling locations in those areas.

 

[Andy_Ross]

What? The argument is that when someone is registered to vote and his name is entered into the rolls, he shouldn't have to provide additional ID at the polls, a practice some states have instituted to making voting harder.

In the U.S., credit cards aren't used as ID, most people don't have passports, and the people who do don't carry them around routinely. There is no U.S. national ID.

In the UK you get sent your polling card. You take it along, they cross you off their list and you vote, no other ID is needed.
Polling stations are all local and have about a thousand people on the roll max.

Even small villages have a polling station. Schools, village halls, church halls and community centres are favourite locations. There are even a few in village shops and pubs if that's all that is available.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Is this a touch screen that then prints a ballot as the artifact? I haven't seen one like that.

Yes. I haven't kept track, but it seems like every few years we change systems completely. The easiest was all electronic, but I suppose we didn't like the trees that survived that election.

This election you are handed a mostly blank long narrow piece of paper (about the size of A3 paper folded in half lengthwise). You feed that into the machine and it gives you your selections on a touch screen. You are no longer allowed to vote straight ticket, which is weird. To make it easier they list all the republicans at the top of each sub list. So, you touch each name, and then go back and fix them because the touch screens are a bit ****. Once you are done and click three reminders that your vote is final once printed, it spits out your long sheet like a receipt. You take that receipt to a reader that reads the receipt and the poll worker gives you an "I voted" sticker.

Most of the printing is bar codes, but it also lists out your selections in text so you can double check them before submitting to the reader.

 

[Dr. Keith]

In the UK you get sent your polling card. You take it along, they cross you off their list and you vote, no other ID is needed.
Polling stations are all local and have about a thousand people on the roll max.

Even small villages have a polling station. Schools, village halls, church halls and community centres are favourite locations. There are even a few in village shops and pubs if that's all that is available.

I will say the one nice thing about our system is that I can vote at any polling station in my county. This allowed me to go to a station that I knew was larger and easier to access than the one closer to me.

There was one guy who was miffed that he couldn't vote in our county even though he lived in the next county over.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...

And what exactly is so "onerous" about taking rather bare-minimal steps toward making sure that a voter is actually somebody who's allowed to vote?

Democrats really need to drop this particular brand of piffle. It can't seriously serve, or even honestly be meant to serve, any purpose but to try to increase voter fraud in the Democrats' favor, which casts a bad light on their complaints about voting shenanigans that favor the Shenanicans.

I take it you've haven't made a serious attempt to find out why it is onerous.

Some people have no home address, especially Native Americans living on reservations.

Some people cannot afford the fee to get an ID.

Some people can't get to the DMV office to get an ID. In some liberal areas, the GOP controlled cities and counties closed all the DMV offices except those in Republican neighborhoods, and even those were only open a couple days a week with limited hours.

It wasn't just voter IDs, it was a concerted effort to suppress Democratic votes.

There was never more than a rare instance of voter fraud discovered. The whole voter ID and limited polling places and times has been an outrageous effort to suppress votes.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I take it you've haven't made a serious attempt to find out why it is onerous.

Some people have no home address, especially Native Americans living on reservations.

Some people cannot afford the fee to get an ID.

Some people can't get to the DMV office to get an ID. In some liberal areas, the GOP controlled cities and counties closed all the DMV offices except those in Republican neighborhoods, and even those were only open a couple days a week with limited hours.

It wasn't just voter IDs, it was a concerted effort to suppress Democratic votes.

There was never more than a rare instance of voter fraud discovered. The whole voter ID and limited polling places and times has been an outrageous effort to suppress votes.

Funny, when I linked a documentary to you saying exactly these things you said it belonged in the CT subforum. eta: Unless I'm getting usernames mixed up.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Funny, in Norway all I need is my credit card (or passport). Why do you think this is not good enough?

Oh yeah, because everyone has a credit card.

I know you aren't in this country so I can see why you haven't read all the voter suppression news.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Funny, when I linked a documentary to you saying exactly these things you said it belonged in the CT subforum. eta: Unless I'm getting usernames mixed up.

If you are talking about the more than an hour long video, it did belong in the CT forum. The subject was how Trump was going to steal the election, not just by voter suppression, but by a half dozen states nullifying their election results and proclaiming their EC votes go to Trump.

 

[Bob001]

If you are talking about the more than an hour long video, it did belong in the CT forum. The subject was how Trump was going to steal the election, not just by voter suppression, but by a half dozen states nullifying their election results and proclaiming their EC votes go to Trump.

I haven't seen the movie, but that is a legitimate concern if the numbers are close.
https://www.salon.com/2020/10/06/tr...-state-electors-no-matter-the-results-report/
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...-state-legislatures-choose-the-next-president
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/25/trump-attack-election-electors-republicans

 

[Matthew Best]

In the UK you get sent your polling card. You take it along, they cross you off their list and you vote, no other ID is needed.

You don't actually need to take your polling card with you, and no ID at all is needed to vote.

It would be laughably easy to vote for someone else, and there'd be almost no way of being caught - as long as you knew that that person wasn't going to vote themselves.

 

[Bob001]

You don't actually need to take your polling card with you, and no ID at all is needed to vote.

It would be laughably easy to vote for someone else, and there'd be almost no way of being caught - as long as you knew that that person wasn't going to vote themselves.

And yet it rarely -- if ever -- happens, right?

 

[Bob001]

This whole issue could be solved if we just issued concealed carry permits to every citizen automatically. But no, the DEMs just hate democracy.

Justice Barrett will straighten that out.
https://www.salon.com/2020/10/15/am...-than-her-republican-defenders-in-the-senate/

 

[acbytesla]

In the UK you get sent your polling card. You take it along, they cross you off their list and you vote, no other ID is needed.
Polling stations are all local and have about a thousand people on the roll max.

Even small villages have a polling station. Schools, village halls, church halls and community centres are favourite locations. There are even a few in village shops and pubs if that's all that is available.

It worked that way in the State of Washington too. Although the card was never needed. You gave the poll worker your name and they would look your name up and you would sign and print your name on the voter roll and they would hand you a ballot. You'd enter the booth make your choices and then after word you'd drop your ballot in the ballot box and they would give you a sticker that said "I voted".

Only once was I ever asked for idea. Now, they send you ballots in the mail or a drop box. There are ballot drop boxes at pretty much every public library and lots of government buildings.

 

[Meadmaker]

I take it you've haven't made a serious attempt to find out why it is onerous.

Some people have no home address, especially Native Americans living on reservations.

Some people cannot afford the fee to get an ID.

Some people can't get to the DMV office to get an ID. In some liberal areas, the GOP controlled cities and counties closed all the DMV offices except those in Republican neighborhoods, and even those were only open a couple days a week with limited hours.

It wasn't just voter IDs, it was a concerted effort to suppress Democratic votes.

There was never more than a rare instance of voter fraud discovered. The whole voter ID and limited polling places and times has been an outrageous effort to suppress votes.

I'll just put in my usual plug here. Some of you have seen it before.

In Michigan, you have to provide an ID to vote. Pretty much any government document will do just fine. I can't remember the list, but it's easy. If you don't have that, I think they will accept utility bills. If you don't have any of those, then they give you a form that you fill out as an affidavit, so your signature is an ID.

That's it. It works. No voter fraud, or at the very least it is incredibly easy to detect fraud if it occurs. If there are suddenly lots of affidavits, then there's some shenanigans going on. No disenfranchisement of people without drivers' licenses or other ID, or who get there and discover that they left their wallet at home.

It's such a simple, common sense, system. I don't know why other states do anything else. Oh, wait. i do know why other states do anything else. They want the disenfranchisement of the "wrong" voters.

 

[Bob001]

I'll just put in my usual plug here. Some of you have seen it before.

In Michigan, you have to provide an ID to vote. Pretty much any government document will do just fine. I can't remember the list, but it's easy. If you don't have that, I think they will accept utility bills. If you don't have any of those, then they give you a form that you fill out as an affidavit, so your signature is an ID.
......

That's exactly the whole point. Who is going to risk a felony conviction to try to cast one vote under somebody else's name? When a majority of people who can legitimately vote don't?

 

[kookbreaker]

1) Well he gave the farmers huge subsidies to make up for all the money they lost due to his trade wars

2) He save the suburbs....of Des Moines, at least

Trump obviously knows what the Queers are doing to the soil.

 

[Elagabalus]

...Only once was I ever asked for idea. Now, they send you ballots in the mail or a drop box. There are ballot drop boxes at pretty much every public library and lots of government buildings.

So you've no idea what you're talking about, do you?!!

 

[Andy_Ross]

The official Twitter account for Trump's reelection campaign was suspended.
@teamtrump

It came back after a video about Biden was removed but they re posted the same video and got suspended again.

It's back again without the offending video.