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Trump's Second Term

Hans said:
I lived in Oregon for twenty years and always used mail in, prior to that I was working in Europe & the Middle East and used mail in ballots. Also additionally when in the military I used mail in for state local elections too. So the last time I went to a place to vote for a President was 1976
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I've lived in Oregon since 1990 and I've only voted by mail since then.
 
Utah has been justly proud of its mail-in voting. Back in the day, we were trying to rise about our reputation of a state filled mostly with dust, Mormons, and cow ◊◊◊◊. We still have all of those, but we also have a surprisingly high-tech government infrastructure. Our mail-in voting system was built largely by Republicans, who previously had absolutely no problem with its security. They designed the security. We've voted by mail for at least 20 years. There are still polling places and voting machines, but those are largely for those with residual Luddism. You can check online the status of your registration and any ballots you have submitted.

Voter fraud is still a felony here. And it is sporadically charged, but not in any quantities that affect results. Two glitches happened recently. First, when we adopted the policy that 17-year-olds could vote in the primary if they would be 18 when the general election happened, several ballots were inadvertently sent to 17-year-olds for a general election. That was quickly caught, and it was a non-issue to invalidate the ballots in the tabulator. Second, Mormon missionaries who serve outside of Utah still sometimes receive ballots at their Utah addresses. Their parents would call them up and ask them how they wanted to vote, then they would fill out the ballots for them and sent them in. That's a felony, and they were charged. But that was something like 17 defendants in a state with 2 million voters.

When Covid hit, lots of states hit us up for how to secure a mail-only election. We were happy to help. Republicans had no problem helping other red states do a mail-only election.

It has been only after Pres. Trump's bloviations that our Republican-dominated legislature has tried to raise issues of "election integrity" in mail-only elections. How desperate for power do you have to be to drown your own baby just because Donald Trump wants you to?
 
A particular feature of mail-in balloting (called vote-at-home* by advocates) is
that it costs state governments less to administer, e.g., by a whopping 40% in
the case of Colorado.

There's also the issue of lost productivity and wages on polling days. Lost wages from voting?
Criminal!

* The Gemütlichkeit! It burns! But in a good way.
 
JayUtah said:
The Utah population is shifting blue faster than practically any other such state. Republicans have had a supermajority in the legislature for decades, and are now scared.


Proposition 4 was a bipartisan voter initiative that blunts the partisan gerrymander. Utah is one of the most radically gerrymandered states in the country. It required electoral maps to be drawn by a bipartisan commission. It passed with about 55% of the vote, meaning that a substantial number of Republican voters switched sides to vote for it. Registered republicans are about 51% of the state, yet our entire congressional delegation is guaranteed by the gerrymandering to be Republican.

Republican lawmakers tried to overturn it in court and lost, because the Utah Constitution does not allow the legislature to override a voter initiative when that initiative intends to reform government itself. Republican lawmakers then called themselves back into session to propose a constitutional amendment removing the restriction. That requires ratification by the voters. Republican lawmakers misstated the purpose of the amendment in the ballot language and got caught. Republican legislative leadership had previously repealed a law that required ballot language to be written by the legislature's office of legal counsel, and gave that power to the president of the Utah senate and the speaker of the Utah house.


Bwahahaha!

Judges in Utah are appointed by our Republican governor and confirmed by our Republican-supermajority legislature. They're about as "radical left" as Clarence Thomas. Plus, they were unanimous in disallowing the dishonest amendment proposal.

Sadly our legislature is in session now and has passed two laws that will radically reshape the Utah judiciary. They packed the supreme court, increasing the number of justices from five to seven. This lets them immediately put two more ultraconservative judges on the bench and give themselves a 4-3 majority in the state Supreme Court. And they just created a new court out of thin air to hear "constitutional" issues. Again, this lets them appoint new judges specifically to hear their power-grab cases.


It would take another whole post for me to describe all the laws Republican lawmakers are ignoring in order to gather these signatures. The signatures are being gathered by paid out-of-state operatives (illegal). The gatherers are supposed to carry an exact copy of the proposed ballot measure, but they have conveniently "forgotten" them (illegal). In Utah County (the conservative county one valley south from the capital), the county clerk has received a record 500 complaints about unlawful signature gathering. I myself have challenged these signature-gatherers when I see them.


Utahns are frantically struggling to make their voices heard. The state legislature is terrified of losing its supermajority. The Republican Party is terrified of losing its monopoly on representation in Congress. Utah is simply not as ultraconservative as it used to be, and we want our elected leaders to represent who we really are.


That's today, and last I checked they were 80,000 signatures short of getting their measure on the ballot.
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But we all know what is the ultimate power in Utah, and it ain't the state legislature, but aonother organization with its HQ in Salt Lake City.
 
dudalb said:
SO it OK for Euros to rip the Unites States, but heaven forbid any American criticsing Europe. ......
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They do respond positively to a speech that is not a direct attack on them.

Mr. Vance’s speech last year was met by a stunned silence, even gasps. Mr. Rubio’s softer version on Saturday morning drew a standing applause by those in the hall of the Bayerischer Hof hotel, a stately remnant of the old Europe that Mr. Rubio seemed to be idealizing. His words were deemed reassuring by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
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dudalb said:
SO it OK for Euros to rip the Unites States, but heaven forbid any American criticsing Europe. ......
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By all means, feel free to criticise any European country whose politics you disagree with, but do it in an appropriate thread, instead of whining every time anyone makes an uncomplimentary comment about American politics and politicians in a thread devoted to American politics and politicians !
 
tero55gervais
Celebrating Presidents' Day. Which reminded me of the photo ID they had to present to be able to vote. Wait..they used signatures. And maybe a wax seal.
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www.threads.com

Tero Gervais (@tero55gervais) on Threads

Celebrating Presidents' Day. Which reminded me of the photo ID they had to present to be able to vote. Wait..they used signatures. And maybe a wax seal.
www.threads.com www.threads.com
https://www.threads.com/@tero55gervais/post/DU0bl4fDgcf/media
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https://www.threads.com/@tero55gervais
 
dudalb said:
But we all know what is the ultimate power in Utah, and it ain't the state legislature, but aonother organization with its HQ in Salt Lake City.
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Indeed, there is more of a Mormon supermajority in the legislature than there is a Republican supermajority. I think it's 94%, the last time I checked. However it's amazing to see how often the legislature breaks with official Mormon doctrine and policy to express policy that is actually more restrictive and conservative than the church's official position. Mormons are not institutionally MAGA, if you can believe it. But our legislature certainly is.

During the pandemic, the church was adamant about wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Mormons tend to believe in science. Yet the legislature went with more politically charged policies forbidding mask mandates and compulsory vaccination. This led to some embarrassing cases where some Mormons cited "religious objection" as their justification for being excused from Covid mitigation, only to be stymied when the church's official doctrine didn't support it. The feeling overall is that many Mormons are MAGA not because the church tells them to be, but. because they were all along.

Mormons have been traditionally Republican for decades. The last Democrat to carry Utah was Lyndon B. Johnson. We haven't had a Democrat senator since the 1970s. It made sense in the pre-MAGA era when both Mormons and Republicans had a fairy unified social agenda. However, Utah Republicans are more about MAGA now than they are about Mormonism. We'll see, though. Mormons have a new leader who used to sit on our state's Supreme Court. He's just getting his feet under him, so watch this space.

More to the topic of the thread, the Utah Republicans announced last night that they think they have enough signatures to put the redistricting proposal on the ballot. But again the official signature certification takes three weeks and won't be final until later in the month.
 
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