HDWill

I'm still wondering, is the huge partisan divide in absentee vs in-person voting enough to get Trump re-elected? In-person voting is much more dummy proof. All the less-competent Republican voters, as long as they are already registered to vote and show up at their assigned polling place, are going to have their votes counted. Whereas many people who are easily confused, not good with details etc who intend to vote by mail will make mistakes and not have theirs counted.

civilservant

And.... burn.


Oh Bald Eagle. 'Uncle Sam' as you are known.

How you spoke for most of America in advance of us knowing it:

Steerpike

Along these lines ... "Millions of mail-in ballots haven’t been received by election offices in critical battleground states, where recent slowdowns in mail deliveries risk some votes not arriving in time to count for the presidential election.As of Oct. 30, more than seven million mailed ballots had not been returned in the 13 most competitive states that require ballots to arrive on or before Election Day, a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project found. That’s about 28% of the more than 24 million ballots that had been tallied in those states, the Elections Project data show."
From - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elect...?ocid=msedgntp

dave_j

This election, and the last: Trump is/has been a warning.
Trump won the last election because the poor were grasping at straws and demolished the blue wall. As Trump himself said, "what the hell have you got to lose?"
If Biden wins, he'd better make inroads into improving living and working conditions and pay for the poor working classes or son of Trump, whoever he might be, will take over from where Trump left off, and he'll have a brain, won't be infatuated with golf and Fox News and be far more dangerous. He'll be of italian/russian descent, will have learned from Trump's mistakes, won't be crippled by Covid and'll be around for some time to come.

vespucci

In my experience as a poll worker very few ballots were rejected by the machine; I think Trump's bashing of postal voting will work to his disadvantage as leaving it till election day there'll always be a percentage who won't actually get to vote.

Lion in Winter

And then you get this sort of thing. A local effort in Texas to reject 100,000 ballots.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20201...ive-thru-votes

retzie

Technically speaking, people who cast mail-in ballots could still turn up and vote in person. This is perfectly legal*: the in-person vote will supersede the mail-in vote (if it arrives).

I mean, I don't think people will actually do this, but just in case anyone sees that and despairs that their vote will be wasted.

*Unless this varies by state? It is explicitly mentioned as okay in NY.

scrubbedexpat091

California emailed me an electronic version of the voting sticker.

bc2015

I wouldn't say that in-person voting is dummy proof in all parts of the US. Look at what happened in 2000 in Miami-Dade county with their chads.

bc2015

It varies from state to state. Most allow in-person voting on election day, some require you to bring the ballot that was mailed to you so it can be destroyed, some will only allow you to cast a provisional vote (which means it gets counted last).

As I learned in the past few months, there isn't really one election happening, there's 50+1 elections happening, all run differently with different rules.

zzrmark

I was just chatting to the missus about the absence of school shooters since March. (Yes, I'm in the correct thread). She said that they'd had an active shooter drill just this past week. Apparently schools are gearing up for trouble next week, because I was in school talk mode I couldn't figure the significance of next week in relation to kids shooting up schools. It would seem that our local Trumpsters are getting twitchy trigger fingers and the schools are worried that kids who've been indoctrinated by their families will make a 'nuisance' of themselves on campus.

My good lady was breathing a sigh of relief earlier this week after a kid in her class, that she has had some concerns with, was relocated to another class following the 'great reshuffle' caused by kids rejigging their schooling options. Her exact description of him was 'he's a racist asshole' and she was concerned that his attitude towards some of the, let's say 'streetwise', black kids from the poorer areas of town was going to end up with them jumping him in class and physically beating his rural backward ass to death. 30 years in the job means she has a knack for spotting troublesome kids and she reckons he's right up there in the 'kid goes rogue with gun at school' category and he'd be just the kid to let loose next week if the orange turd opens his mouth, doesn't help that he has parents who are on board the Trump civil war train...

HDWill

As far as I know all the states have abandoned those problematic punch-card type ballots that became infamous in 2000. The common system now of electronic voting with a paper ballot printout is far less error prone.

robin1234

Yes, there was legislation in the early 2000s that mandated all states to upgrade to less vulnerable systems. However, some states have potentially problematic systems.

Eight states will be using systems in 2020 with no paper backup.
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecu...n-2020-despite

This page from ballotpedia gives a basic listing by state of the type of machines used.
https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_metho...pment_by_state

scrubbedexpat091

I assume based on the QR Code on the top of my ballot, that they just scan that and their systems know what I voted.

The actual votes are also listed, but I wouldn't call it a traditional ballot, it's just a printed piece of paper, the actual marking of the ballot is done online, then click done, it produces a pdf file, print, fax, done.

California has made overseas voting much easier than previous years and to think back in 2004, my ballot was a photocopy of the ballot, mailed to me, was so ghetto really back then.

Maybe one day, there will be a way to submit the ballot online too, as of now fax or mail the only options.

Lion in Winter

I know it's in The Guardian, and that therefore we shouldn't believe it at all, but I don't like this talk of tightening races at all. I'm not sure the country can take another four years of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-election-2020