[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

I'm hoping that's the line to request a ballot, not the line for the drop box... though they are at the same location. I only had to wait about half an hour to vote for Obama, barely any line at all for other elections (at my polling place). Shocked by how few drop boxes there are---have to walk to City Hall. Planning to go at an off hour just in case.

The length of time people have to wait varies radically by location:

'In 2018, turnout increased 39% compared with 2014, marking the first time since 1914 that half of eligible voters had participated in a nonpresidential election. That in itself led to some delays, as polling places dealt with more people than they had expected. Regardless of reasons, twice as many voters – 6% – reported waiting more than 30 minutes in 2018 than in 2014.

However, no federal law governs wait times. Nearly two-thirds of voters in 2012 and three-quarters in 2018 waited less than 10 minutes. But long wait times are a chronic problem primarily for Latino and Black voters in “precincts with high minority populations, high population, and low incomes.”'

https://theconversat...-to-vote-141267

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Sorry Hoosier,
I skipped over the wait time part of your post last time I saw it.

Terez, on 19 October 2020 - 03:20 AM, said:

Gwynn ap Nudd, on 19 October 2020 - 02:54 AM, said:

So a question for those in the US. Every time there is a US election, there are stories upon stories of long wait lines to vote. This includes the advance polls. There articles about long line in Georgia and Texas published already. News media, and American news media especially, tends to sensationalize so I never really get an idea of whether hours long lines are common or just the couple spots picked out by the media. Does anyone have a real sense how long the waits typically are?

I voted in the advance poll for the BC provincial election today, and from getting in line to leaving it was less than five minutes. That was with way fewer poll workers than there usually are - likely due to Covid restrictions. Last federal election there was no line at all for the advance. I used to work the advance and election day polls back when I was a broke college student. On election day waits would hit 45 minutes to an hour in the evening as people voted after work. There were never lines at the advance.

It's definitely not like that everywhere. I've never had to wait a significant amount of time to vote. Right now, that's because I live in a very small county in corn country, but even when I lived in a bigger town with no early voting and voted on the black side of town, I never had to wait that long. But my precinct was, notably, on the south side of the tracks (less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico), and the precincts north of the tracks (where most of the town's black population lives) might be a different story. That's in Mississippi, by the way: the only state in the nation left with no early voting of any kind except for absentee ballots which have very strict regulations; most people can't get them. Also the blackest state per capita.

This is a bigger problem in specific places than it is in others. Georgia is a big one. The current governor was Secretary of State when he ran for the office against Stacey Abrams (a black woman), and he had power over elections and used it to his advantage, and Republicans all across the state do the same thing. Georgia is a red state with a significant black population that is threatening their red-state status and the videos of long lines in that state are almost always in communities with a high concentration of black voters. This shutdown of polling locations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; this madness for the primary in Jefferson County, Kentucky; this random attempt to disenfranchise Hispanic voters in Dodge City, Kansas, etc. etc. etc. It doesn't happen everywhere, but it happens a lot, and it's deliberate, and it causes real damage.

I definitely can understand difference in access in places, especially red states. I mean it's no secret why Texas is allowing one ballot drop off box per county. Loving (population 134) and Harris (population 4.7 million) are allowed one each. Wtf is that?

The voter ID stuff is in the same vein. When I was at Uni I voted with something like a hydro bill (electricity) as my ID because nothing else had my current address on it. Some of the restrictions passed on ID seem ludicrous.

[Obdigore]

Gwynn ap Nudd, on 19 October 2020 - 02:54 AM, said:

So a question for those in the US. Every time there is a US election, there are stories upon stories of long wait lines to vote. This includes the advance polls. There articles about long line in Georgia and Texas published already. News media, and American news media especially, tends to sensationalize so I never really get an idea of whether hours long lines are common or just the couple spots picked out by the media. Does anyone have a real sense how long the waits typically are?

I voted in the advance poll for the BC provincial election today, and from getting in line to leaving it was less than five minutes. That was with way fewer poll workers than there usually are - likely due to Covid restrictions. Last federal election there was no line at all for the advance. I used to work the advance and election day polls back when I was a broke college student. On election day waits would hit 45 minutes to an hour in the evening as people voted after work. There were never lines at the advance.

I'd suggest its the norm in large city areas where the state is held by the GOP. It's a continuation of the Jim Crow era tactics, and more recent in the US since SCOTUS invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, which was mostly preventing these people from doing these things.

I've never had an issue, but I've never voted in a large city in a state held by the GOP.

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 19 October 2020 - 04:14 PM

[EmperorMagus]

In Canada (BC), it took me exactly 6 minutes from getting to the voting location until I left. I voted last Sunday at 7:30 PM on my way to buy some groceries. It was on one of 7 advance voting dates available in addition to the mail-in vote option. I could register to vote on the same day with 1 piece of picture ID or just 1 person to vouch that I was entitled to vote.

It is wild when I hear the horror stories of voting in America and compare it to my experience. Isn't the right vote guaranteed in the US constitution? Why doesn't voting receive the same level of protection that guns do?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

EmperorMagus, on 19 October 2020 - 06:33 PM, said:

In Canada (BC), it took me exactly 6 minutes from getting to the voting location until I left. I voted last Sunday at 7:30 PM on my way to buy some groceries. It was on one of 7 advance voting dates available in addition to the mail-in vote option. I could register to vote on the same day with 1 piece of picture ID or just 1 person to vouch that I was entitled to vote.

It is wild when I hear the horror stories of voting in America and compare it to my experience. Isn't the right vote guaranteed in the US constitution? Why doesn't voting receive the same level of protection that guns do?

'As someone in Barrett's position ought to well know, a law on the books isn't worth much if there is no way to enforce it. The constitutional amendment giving Black men the right to vote after the Civil War remained on the books all through Jim Crow, as did the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1877, which guaranteed broad equal protections and barred segregation. Without any ability after Reconstruction to federally enforce the law, however, it was meaningless, and by the end of the 1800s, as a result of voter suppression laws like literacy tests and poll taxes, the Black vote was approaching zero in the South. James Moone argues in the new book "Republic of Wrath" that the ability of Democrats to suppress Black votes was partly thanks to Republicans' own self-interested bigotry in how they wrote the amendment. Some Republicans had pushed to make voting a firm constitutional right, unbridgeable by state authorities. But other Republicans still wanted to be able to suppress the votes of Irish and Chinese immigrants, who tended to favor Democrats, so the compromise language purposely left loopholes that both parties would later exploit.

[...] the Voting Rights Act of 1965 singled out areas of the country for enforcement where the Black vote was being disproportionately suppressed. That provision was updated in 2006 and wiped out by the Supreme Court in 2013, all in the name of deference to Congress.

The Supreme Court recently announced that it would hear a new set of cases that could gut what's left of the Voting Rights Act. As Barrett noted, pieces of the Voting Rights Act still remain intact. But not if Amy Coney Barrett gets to rewrite it.'

https://theintercept...ing-rights-act/

Recent headlines from 'reason.com':

'Judging From His Grilling of Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Richard Durbin Thinks Voting Is More Important Than Staying Alive

The senator thinks people with felony records should lose the right to armed self-defense but not the right to cast a ballot.'

https://reason.com/2...-staying-alive/

'Gun Control Puts Your Life at Risk

In the 20th century, far more people were murdered by genocidal governments than by armed criminals.'

https://reason.com/2...r-life-at-risk/

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 19 October 2020 - 06:53 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'I Wrote Trump's "The Art of the Deal." And I'm Terrified of What He'll Do Next.

[...] If he doesn't "win" in every contest, real or imagined, then he sees himself as a loser. If he isn't in total control, he feels weak and humiliated. If he isn't dominating, he is succumbing.

This is what Trump believes it is to be a real man, and from that perspective, his recent behavior makes perfect sense. No disease is going to tell Trump what to do. He treats COVID as just another opponent he must squash—not by bringing the crisis under control for the sake of all citizens, but by minimizing and sneering at it himself. [...]

Trump's lack of empathy and absence of conscience have long given him the license to invent his own rules, define his own reality, defy norms, and break multiple laws. He lies without shame, and the more unacceptable he finds the facts, the more he dissembles. The volume of his lies has increased from five per day in the first year of his presidency, to 23 a day in the spring of this year, and almost certainly much higher during the past several months. In the 18 months that I spent with Trump to write The Art of the Deal, I never once saw him express affection or comfort to anyone, including his three young children. I saw no evidence that he ever had a single true friend.

Now, sensing defeat, Trump is doing what he's always done under stress: doubling and tripling down on whatever fictional facts he wishes were true. But this time, his brazen tactics have produced exactly what they're meant to defend against. He looks weaker, more vulnerable, and more out of control than at any time since his election. His poll numbers have plummeted.
For Trump, and for so many men desperate to hold onto control they fear is slipping way, the tactics include disparaging rather than encouraging others, reacting harshly rather than reasoning calmly, seeking certainty rather than struggling with complexity, and blaming others in a conflict, instead of first reckoning with their own responsibility. As the psychologist Terry Real puts it, "We raise boys to live in a world in which they are either winners or losers, grandiose or shame-filled, perpetrator or victims."'

https://www.thedaily...at-hell-do-next

'We're Living in the Shadows of a Bush v. Gore 2.0

The same people spending money to put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court are also trying to suppress the vote.

[...] If Barrett is confirmed, the Supreme Court will have three justices who worked on behalf of the GOP on the 2000 litigation that resulted in George W. Bush winning that year's presidential election. Barrett, who testified that she couldn't recall anymore what work she did for the campaign, joins Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh as three of the luckiest election lawyers in history, a fact Barrett dismissed in her testimony as an unremarkable coincidence.

[...] Barrett was[...] "a young lawyer working for Martin County Republicans … who were in a desperate attempt to make sure hundreds of absentee ballots for voters in Republican households were counted … even though local Republicans had actually removed the ballots from the office of the Supervisor of Elections, added the required voter ID numbers … and returned them. And they got those ballots to count: 673 of those ballots would have otherwise been uncounted in a state that Bush ended up winning by 537 votes."

[...] the lawyers who are popping up around the country demanding, under the false flag of "vote fraud," that voter rolls be purged and voting in a pandemic become more deadly, are coordinated by the same people, and with the same unknown funding that has put more than 200 conservatives judges into lifetime positions on the federal courts.

[...] Trump's legal teams have begun to cite the equal protection rationale that supported Bush v. Gore in legal challenges around the country, somehow claiming that the case, which was supposed to have no value, now invalidates state procedures for balloting by mail, because they lack in uniformity in violation of constitutional equal protection.

[...] Any one of these challenges, if it reaches the Supreme Court and relies on the logic of the per curiam holding in Bush v. Gore, will now face a 6–3 conservative majority, of which three worked on the litigation—and most of the justices will have been seated by the same secret groups that are funding the litigation.'

https://slate.com/ne...ett-scotus.html

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 19 October 2020 - 08:17 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

What would make a Supreme Court ruling like Bush v Gore seem more defensible, if Trump's allegations of voter fraud don't seem convincing enough? The destruction of large numbers of ballots.

The attacks on ballot boxes have begun:

'Blaze Sunday night appeared to be intentional

A fire inside an official election drop box in Los Angeles county has damaged voters' ballots and is under investigation for arson

[...] The fire required firefighters to spray water into the box to extinguish the flames, likely causing significant damage. Video from the scene showed dozens of wet and burnt ballots.'

https://www.theguard...ed-arson-attack

I hope they're sufficiently prepared against arson, bombings, and militia attacks at locations where ballots are being stored....

Looks like the post-Barrett court will rule that state legislatures do not have to go by the state constitution when it comes to voting or choosing electors:

'In a 4–4 Split, the Supreme Court Lets Pennsylvania Make Voting Easier—for Now

[...] "The final argument that Republicans are advancing is the boldest and perhaps most dangerous one. The argument is that when state supreme courts apply their state constitutions' provisions protecting a right to vote to loosen voting rules in a pandemic, these state courts are usurping the power given by the Constitution to state legislatures to set the manner for conducting presidential elections. The argument echoes an argument that three conservative justices on the Supreme Court accepted in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case ending that presidential election. It's a dangerous idea that a state court applying a state constitution is taking away legislative power, particularly in states like Pennsylvania where the state legislature has itself approved the constitutional provisions being applied.

But this argument is likely to resonate with at least some of the conservative justices on the court. [...] state legislatures could try to disenfranchise voters and take back their power to appoint presidential electors directly even after the votes are counted."

Now we know that this hotly contested question deeply divided the justices. It took them almost two weeks to issue an order, and no one ended up writing a dissent. Instead, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the court's liberals in voting to not grant a stay. All the other conservative Justices would have granted a stay, meaning they likely agreed with the state's argument. (It is possible they agreed with a different argument made by state Republicans, but if they did, they did not say.)

[...] it means that we have no guidance from the court as to when and whether a state Supreme Court can rely on a state Constitution when it expands or changes state voting rules in a presidential election. Even though Democrats opposed the stay sought by Republicans in the case, they begged the Court to fully take the case and give an explanation as to the scope of state court power in this case. This lack of guidance could be a huge problem in the two battleground states—North Carolina and Pennsylvania—with Democratic state Supreme Courts and Republican legislatures who could battle over any post-election voting rules.

Further, it shows that President Trump was right about the role that Judge Amy Coney Barrett could play in any post-election litigation over the winner of the November election. He has said he wants Barrett on the Supreme Court to decide such a case.'

https://slate.com/ne...-law-order.html

'[...] blocked the lower court's orders [...] that would have required officials to notify Texans whose mail ballots were rejected because of an apparent signature mismatch and give them an opportunity to address the issue. Under current law, election officials can reject a mail ballot if they determine that the signature does not match the voter's signature on file; officials must notify the voter of the rejection within 10 days. But even then, the voter may not be given an opportunity to fix the problem.

[...] "The state election code does not establish any standards for signature review, which is conducted by local election officials who seldom have training in signature verification."

So at best, the disposal of ballots may be entirely capricious. At worst, it could disproportionately target groups of voters that the existing government would rather not have voting — minority groups, for instance, that may be likely to vote Democrat. It may be hard to say what the motivation is for the laws in this particular case, but the GOP's actions in the past decade have made clear that they see restricting the right to vote as a vital part of retaining electoral power. The court's reasoning lays bear this motivation: Based on the slimmest fears about "voter fraud," they can justify restricting voters' rights as much as possible.

[...] In a remarkable sentence encapsulating the emerging right-wing view of voting rights, the decision explained:

"Because Texas's strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state's voting procedures place on the right to vote, we stay the injunction pending appeal."

While this may sound like dry legalese, it's a dramatically bold and unambiguously dangerous idea. The court's claim is that "any burden" on the right to vote can be justified if it is meant to restrict the opportunity for voter fraud.

This notion sounds like a farcical caricature of Republicans' views on voting, but it's an actual statement from right-wing judges defending a right-wing administration. It falls apart under even the mildest scrutiny though. While preventing voter fraud is surely a legitimate interest of the state, there must be some reasonable limits on how far the government can go in trying to prevent it.

[...] justified the stay in part by arguing against the idea that there's a due process protection for the right to vote. But even if there is, the court argued, there isn't a right to vote by mail — that's simply an option that Texas provides without being obligated to.

This reasoning, though, is spurious. If Texas provides voters the option to vote by mail, it is not reasonable that it can then simply reject those ballots based on dubious and unreviewable claims of a signature mismatch that the voter may not even be alerted to until after Election Day has passed.'

https://www.alternet...against-voting/

'If your signature has changed over the years, absentee voting may not be the best option. Because voters can't use an ID to prove who they are, as they do at the polls, elections office staffers scrutinize the signatures on absentee ballot envelopes.'

https://www.nydailyn...?outputType=amp

Thought I wouldn't have to have to worry about that in my state:

'Pennsylvania: Mail ballots can't be discarded over signature

With concerns rising in Pennsylvania that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots will be discarded in the presidential election over technicalities, officials in the presidential battleground told counties they aren't allowed to reject a ballot solely because an election official believes a signature doesn't match the one in the voter's file.'

But now it looks like that too will be decided by the Barrett Court, after the State Supreme Court decision is appealed:

'Pennsylvania Supreme Court [...] will again decide on a crucial aspect of electoral administration in the swing state: whether counties are authorized or required to reject ballots on the basis of signature analysis.

[...] warned that thousands of Pennsylvania voters would be disenfranchised if "arbitrary signature comparisons and challenges to signature variations are allowed to be used as a basis for rejecting mail and absentee ballots," is seeking a declaration that counties may not reject applications or voted ballots because of a "subjective perception of signature variation."'

https://www.post-gaz...es/202010140152

Damn, I hope I can find out exactly what my signature looks like on my voter registration card... though hopefully the people evaluating the signatures locally won't be Republicans.....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 October 2020 - 03:11 AM

[Mentalist]

And y'all laughed at me when I related to the voter shenanigans in "Republic of Thieves" and called them "childish"

I'm getting bad flashbacks of Ukraine 2004 election news stories. Thankfully, at that time, Constitutional Court was able to tear the Central Electoral Committee a new one for failing to be transparent- which is how we got a re-run, and the eventual success for the Orange Revolution.


What's next? Carousel voters?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Allowing election officials to throw out ballots because they think the signatures don't match closely enough seems like a terrible idea, but....

'several users on the infamous 4chan message board claimed to have found similar vulnerabilities in the Oregon and Washington state voter registration system[...]

[...] "if someone logs in to VoteWA.gov and accesses an online ballot, the ballot previously mailed to the voter is placed on hold. Only one active ballot can be live at one time, even if multiple physical ballots have been issued. Once a returned ballot is received by county election offices, the signature on the return envelope is checked against the signature on file in the voter's registration record."

[...] "Unless someone has a voter's driver's license number and issuance date, no changes can be made to that voter's registration record on VoteWA.gov," Zabel said. "Printing another's ballot would not be considered fraudulent. However, attempting to vote someone else's ballot is voter fraud, and punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. If a ballot is returned for a voter but the signature does not match, the county elections office will reach out to the voter to cure the ballot."'

https://www.vice.com...hacking-attempt

Article argues that hackers won't be successful at changing voter details because they'd require the driver's license number and issuance date---but if they get those (from Trump supporters in the police force, for example?)... election officials might have a difficult time.

Very few people write in cursive on a regular basis, and signatures afaik are almost never checked for matching signatures on file. Many people just scribble most of the letters, and signatures change over time (usually become more illegible I'd guess, as people realize no one ever checks them).

[Edit: 'police have unrestricted access to the DMV, driver's license, and warrant databases'

https://slate.com/ne...-your-name.html
]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 October 2020 - 06:10 PM

[Cause]

Im pretty sure the system will log every Dmv search an officer does. The high number of searches not linked to cases would tip someone off.

[Malankazooie]

A lot can be said about Trump, but the pos has some hustle in him. Fucker is going to every place he can to get more votes. I know that was a common criticism about HC in 2016. Trump far and away out campaigned her in the states where he needed to win. I'm getting 2016 déjà vu feelings.

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 20 October 2020 - 11:43 PM

[Cause]

The fact that race is even competitive when one candidate still says covid is no big deal and will just disappear is a mystery to me

[Macros]

Let me take that further

The fact that this is still a race when one candidate is a documented sex pest, racist, lying, swindling, tax dodging piece of shit is a mystery to me

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Threatening emails reportedly sent to Democratic voters in three swing states, sparking investigations

Sender address was from the far-right Proud Boys, but the origin is unclear

[...] The emails, which appeared to target Democrats using data from digital databases known as “voter files,” told recipients the group was “in possession of all your information” and instructed voters to change their party registration and cast their ballots for Trump.

“You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you,” warned the emails, which by Tuesday night were said to have reached voters in four states, three of them hotly contested swing states in the coming presidential election.'

[...] Some cybersecurity experts were already pointing to the possibility of foreign involvement.

Online analysts traced the pathway of at least one of the emails through a server in Saudi Arabia. The Internet Protocol address associated with metadata in the email had previously been reported, pointing to its likely use in scam or phishing operations[...] Vice, citing a similar email purportedly from the Proud Boys and threatening Florida voters, found another possible path through a server in Estonia.'

https://www.washingt...emails-florida/

[QuickTidal]

Azath Vitr (D, on 21 October 2020 - 06:19 AM, said:

“You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you,” warned the emails, which by Tuesday night were said to have reached voters in four states, three of them hotly contested swing states in the coming presidential election.'

Never could you craft an email threat that showcased just how scared you were that your chosen orange leader was going to lose...LOL

The desperation is pretty insane.

[Malankazooie]

Debate on Thursday. I guess a new rule will have the mic turned off at the beginning of each topic discussion while the other candidate has a 2 min time to speak. Doesn't seem to make much of a difference to me. The rest of the time, each topic will have total 15 min for discussion, mics will be on and it will be another garbage heap of a mess of Trump interrupting bullshit.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'A man from Frederick, Maryland, is facing federal charges for allegedly threatening to kill and kidnap Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris[...] James Dale Reed, 42, was caught on camera leaving a threatening letter on the doorstep of a resident who supports the candidates, authorities said. "We are the ones with these scary guns, we are the ones your children have nightmares about," the note read, among other graphic threats.'

https://www.thedaily...harris?ref=home

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 21 October 2020 - 05:23 PM

[Cause]

I can’t wait for the 60 min interview

[Malankazooie]

Didn't Trump cut it off? And he said he would be releasing his version prior to the 60 minute segment on Sunday. Which, can he even do that?

[Cause]

Something tells me if they had footage that would corroborate his version they would have released it already. I suspect another interview like the one he had with Chris Wallace,where he made a fool of himself, but maybe even worse.

Though yes it would be wierd if they had their own cameras recording the interview but maybe they had an audio recorder?