Voting By Mail

[iNow]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

In addition the court-packing (which recently manifested itself in the Wisconsin decision which disenfranchised many absentee voters),

It’s even worse than that. Now the GOP legislature and courts are trying to throw out TENS of THOUSANDS of ballots that got mailed bc the post offices themselves didn’t always postmark them (or their standard postmark lacked a date)... so for this ridiculous arbitrary reason they’re planning to simply toss them into the trash. 

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/11/21217546/wisconsin-ballots-postmark-supreme-court-rnc-dnc

[Sensei]

South Korea holds traditional elections on 15 April 2020 (today). See the crowds in front of the offices.

If some of them are infected without symptoms it must end up with catastrophe. Just wait one or two weeks...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/south-korea-votes-in-first-national-election-of-coronavirus-era

http://www.apimages.com/Search?query=lee+jin+man+virus

[Janus]

On 4/9/2020 at 11:59 AM, MigL said:

Wisconsin was a Democrat primary, with only a Democratic candidate, and an independent, trailing so badly, he threw in the towel the next day.
Think about it.
How would voter suppression benefit the Republicans ?

Someone might Have already answered this later in the thread ( I did a quick perusal, but might have missed it.)

Isn't wasn't about the Democratic primary. There was also a State Supreme Court position up for election.  The seated judge was a Trump-supported conservative, and the opponent was more liberal.   By forcing the vote, and reducing the number of polling places in Democratic leaning Milwaukee to 5,  the hope was to keep voting down (which generally favors Republicans anyway), especially in places that generally would vote Democratic.    As it turned out, it didn't work, or at least not well enough, as the Trump-supported seated judge lost to his opponent.

[MigL]

I wasn't aware of the Supreme Court election.
Thanks Janus.

[iNow]

Coronavirus in Wisconsin: At Least 7 Cases Tied to Election Day Voting

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/wisconsin-election-coronavirus-cases.html

[Airbrush]

"Vote fraud in the United States is exceedingly rare, with mailed ballots and otherwise. Over the past 20 years, about 250 million votes have been cast by a mail ballot nationally. The Heritage Foundation maintains an online database of election fraud cases in the United States and reports that there have been 1,285 cases of vote fraud...."

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/494189-lets-put-the-vote-by-mail-fraud-myth-to-rest

"Mail-In" voting is a misnomer.  It is really "at home" voting, since in many states most vote-at-home ballots are returned to the polls personally, without mailing them.

250 million AT-HOME ballots over 20 years and 1,285 cases of voter fraud.  That is an average of 64 AT-HOME ballot fraud cases per year.  Out of 250 million votes cast gives a voter fraud rate of 0.00051% (1285/250,000,000) about ONE AT-HOME ballot fraud out of a total of about 195,000 AT-HOME ballots (250,000,000/1285).

John Oliver made a case for the difficulty, high risk, and low reward for voter fraud.  To commit MAIL ballot fraud you need to know dead people and have their personal info.  Then you can request absentee ballots for each of these dead people.  You need to fill out a change of address form for EACH one, substituting YOUR address for theirs.  Then you need to forge their signatures.  These are crimes with your true address attached to the evidence!  Voter lists go thru periodic checks, such as social security notifying the polls of deaths.  If you get caught you may be charged with several felonies that may include jail time.  All of this effort for only ONE vote.  Each act of fraud adds to your prison term.

Advance this Youtube to minute 8:00 for the part about mail vote fraud.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by Airbrush

[iNow]

In 1933, one man set fire to a building in Germany and Hitler claimed it was the result of communist agitators and he won his election the following week. It became known as the Reichstag Fire and was used as a pretext to pass laws which took away people’s freedoms and to crack down on anyone not completely supportive of the government. 

This spring, white nationalists broke windows and vandalized buildings and businesses to make it look like BLM protests were out of control and that rioting was out of hand. It’s known as a false flag operation and it worked. This was used as justification to send in federal agents to US cities... agents with no identification or badges (what some called secret police) who without warrants picked up citizens from the streets who weren’t breaking any laws and took them away in unmarked vans with no due process. 

Now, Trump claims voting fraud is rampant with mail in voting, a process which is gaining traction this year to drive turnout safely during a global pandemic. People don’t want to stand in lines for hours and touch dirty screens that pass covid to the masses, but mail in voting causes turnout to surge and high turnout tends to mean far fewer republican victories. There is no evidence mail in voting is any more fraudulent than in-person voting, nor that absentee voting is in any relevant way different from mail-in voting (a distinction without a difference that Trump lees making).

Who wants to bet that Trumps henchmen purposefully seed the mail with fake ballots in a few months precisely in a way that they get caught and publicized? The obvious motivation is another false flag operation / Reichstag fire to manipulate people into supporting their own objectives and all just so they can use those planted fake ballots to point to news stories about fraudulent voting activity?

I mean, he’s already defunding the post office and closing locations in key voting districts to slow them down on the system side, even placing his own unqualified campaign donor like a puppet to be in charge of the post office and do his bidding.

Maybe I’m wrong, but you wouldn’t exactly be surprised if evidence came out showing this happening in couple of months, would you?

[Area54]

9 hours ago, iNow said:

In 1933, one man set fire to a building in Germany and Hitler claimed it was the result of communist agitators and he won his election the following week. It became known as the Reichstag Fire and was used as a pretext to pass laws which took away people’s freedoms and to crack down on anyone not completely supportive of the government. 

This spring, white nationalists broke windows and vandalized buildings and businesses to make it look like BLM protests were out of control and that rioting was out of hand. It’s known as a false flag operation and it worked. This was used as justification to send in federal agents to US cities... agents with no identification or badges (what some called secret police) who without warrants picked up citizens from the streets who weren’t breaking any laws and took them away in unmarked vans with no due process. 

Now, Trump claims voting fraud is rampant with mail in voting, a process which is gaining traction this year to drive turnout safely during a global pandemic. People don’t want to stand in lines for hours and touch dirty screens that pass covid to the masses, but mail in voting causes turnout to surge and high turnout tends to mean far fewer republican victories. There is no evidence mail in voting is any more fraudulent than in-person voting, nor that absentee voting is in any relevant way different from mail-in voting (a distinction without a difference that Trump lees making).

Who wants to bet that Trumps henchmen purposefully seed the mail with fake ballots in a few months precisely in a way that they get caught and publicized? The obvious motivation is another false flag operation / Reichstag fire to manipulate people into supporting their own objectives and all just so they can use those planted fake ballots to point to news stories about fraudulent voting activity?

I mean, he’s already defunding the post office and closing locations in key voting districts to slow them down on the system side, even placing his own unqualified campaign donor like a puppet to be in charge of the post office and do his bidding.

Maybe I’m wrong, but you wouldn’t exactly be surprised if evidence came out showing this happening in couple of months, would you?

Over the course of decades I have read a dozen major biographies of Hitler and scores of books on the Third Reich and Germany in the inter-war years in an effort to understand how Hitler achieved and retained power. Despite that study I feel no closer to an answer. I remain as bewildered today by the fascination that Trump seems to exert on a substantial portion of the US population. The brink that the USA seems to be teetering towards is different from the one that ravished Europe almost a century ago, but it may turn out to be no less damaging globally. There is much good sense in America: I set aside my atheism for a moment to pray that it will overcome Trump's cynical narcissism.

[dimreepr]

3 hours ago, Area54 said:

There is much good sense in America

We can but hope...

[iNow]

10 hours ago, Area54 said:

The brink that the USA seems to be teetering towards is different from the one that ravished Europe almost a century ago

History doesn't always repeat, but it often rhymes. 

For years, I'd think of WWII Germany and wonder, "How did the people let that happen? How is it possible nobody stepped up to stop Hitler before it was too late?" Now, I look around what's happening in my country... in my community... in my own family... and I think, "This is how. This is exactly how that happened."

There's a deeper erosion of trust. We're fed lies and bullshit in massive quantities, and told we cannot trust objective observers. We cannot trust the media, or the experts, or the "anyone who disagrees with those in power." People are untethered to reality, and when inaccurate assertions get challenged or corrected, the person who shared the challenge or correction is attacked and treated like an enemy. 

At this point, anyone who still supports Trump does so because they see his approach as a feature, not a bug. At least in 2016, we could assume that some people just got duped. They'd simply bought the snake oil from this PT Barnum sales guy and bought into his marketing hype. It happens. People make mistakes, but given all we've learned in the intervening years, the only way one could continue supporting him is if you like what he's doing.

As for mail in voting... I hope I'm being too cynical, but my intuition is we're going to see several false flag operations where people supporting Trump intentionally seed the election with fake mail in ballots so they can further use them in their efforts to erode our acceptance of truth or the validity of democracy itself. 

[CharonY]

5 hours ago, iNow said:

History doesn't always repeat, but it often rhymes. 

One of the rhymes I see is what is nowadays sometimes called "Identity politics". It builds a view of a us versus them and it is astonishingly successful in pushing otherwise unsavory folks to power. What has changed are the tactics and delivery methods (especially with the internet). But we still see very similar slogans used by those autocrats. 

It is always simple answers to big questions and almost quick to find someone to blame. In the Weimar Republic it was the communists and globalists (i.e. Jews) that threatened somehow the better days of Germany (which did not really existed for that long in the first place).

Goebbels drew a picture of a country in peril from the inside and the outside and emphasized autarky and disconnection with the rest of the world. "Certainly we want to build a wall, a protective wall", he said. Within these walls there then will be a distinction between those that are loyal and thus worthy and the others. By making folks fighting them, they galvanize their base against a common enemy and obfuscate their own actions. At some point, it will become "the will of the people", which includes erosion of rights and descent into authoritarianism.

It worked then, it works now. 

[iNow]

I liked your post because we lack option of sad face. Agree with all of your comments and keep hearing many of the same rhymes you just spit (spittin rhymes is an old term for freestyle rap). 

 

8 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Identity politics". It builds a view of a us versus them and it is astonishingly successful in pushing otherwise unsavory folks to power. What has changed are the tactics and delivery methods (especially with the internet). But we still see very similar slogans used by those autocrats. 

It’s no Ali G or Borat, but your comment reminded me of this eloquent amd on-point speech from Sacha Baron Cohen last year:

 

 

[StringJunky]

Looks like the Republicans are trying to set up mail-in voting to fail:

Quote

Senator launches investigation into Postal Service delays

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Democratic senator said Thursday he is launching an investigation into changes at the U.S. Postal Service that are causing delays in mail deliveries across the country just as big volume increases are expected for mail-in election voting.

A plan imposed by Louis DeJoy, a Republican fundraiser who took over the top job at the Postal Service in June, eliminates overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers and orders that mail be kept until the next day if distribution centers are running late.

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said DeJoy, an ally and donor of President Donald Trump, has failed to provide answers about service delays “that are preventing Americans from receiving critical mail on time, including prescription drugs, business mail and mail-in ballots.″

https://apnews.com/a291ebc31c5638aa5a9adafc2ff2b430

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by StringJunky

[Airbrush]

On 8/5/2020 at 2:07 PM, iNow said:

At this point, anyone who still supports Trump does so because they see his approach as a feature, not a bug. At least in 2016, we could assume that some people just got duped. They'd simply bought the snake oil from this PT Barnum sales guy and bought into his marketing hype. It happens. People make mistakes, but given all we've learned in the intervening years, the only way one could continue supporting him is if you like what he's doing.

As for mail in voting... I hope I'm being too cynical, but my intuition is we're going to see several false flag operations where people supporting Trump intentionally seed the election with fake mail in ballots so they can further use them in their efforts to erode our acceptance of truth or the validity of democracy itself. 

For 1/3 of Americans, entertainment is very important to come from their president.  Their favorite entertainment, besides pro wrestling and Nascar, is watching Trump bashing Dems, the cruder the humor the better.  I will never forget the big, long-lasting grin on Maria Bartiromo's face while Trump battered "Crooked Hillary" calling her a "nasty, nasty, woman" at the WH Correspondent's dinner.  Don't forget the 1/3 have been suffering for 8 years of Obama's tyranny, which to them was a never-ending nightmare, which is not entertainment.  Trump was the perfect "anti-Obama" at the perfect time.  Since the 1/3 really like what Trump is doing, they are with him all the way.  They also probably like his looks, WWE swagger, and incessant sarcasm.

I think you are correct about "mail-in voting false flag operations" leading up to the election.  There may be fraudulent ballots manufactured and ALL blamed on Dems. 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Airbrush

[dimreepr]

 

 

[Ten oz]

On 8/9/2020 at 11:34 PM, Airbrush said:

For 1/3 of Americans, entertainment is very important to come from their president.  Their favorite entertainment, besides pro wrestling and Nascar, is watching Trump bashing Dems, the cruder the humor the better.  I will never forget the big, long-lasting grin on Maria Bartiromo's face while Trump battered "Crooked Hillary" calling her a "nasty, nasty, woman" at the WH Correspondent's dinner.  Don't forget the 1/3 have been suffering for 8 years of Obama's tyranny, which to them was a never-ending nightmare, which is not entertainment.  Trump was the perfect "anti-Obama" at the perfect time.  Since the 1/3 really like what Trump is doing, they are with him all the way.  They also probably like his looks, WWE swagger, and incessant sarcasm.

I think you are correct about "mail-in voting false flag operations" leading up to the election.  There may be fraudulent ballots manufactured and ALL blamed on Dems. 

During the 2016 election only 55% of eligible voters participated. Of that Trump got 46% of the vote. Meaning only 25% of eligible voters in 2016 voted for Trump. So saying 1/3 of Americans is too high.

[CharonY]

13 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

During the 2016 election only 55% of eligible voters participated. Of that Trump got 46% of the vote. Meaning only 25% of eligible voters in 2016 voted for Trump. So saying 1/3 of Americans is too high.

That mostly speaks to political apathy in the US population, though. If you look at approval ratings, polls show that around 40% of Americans look at the current state of affairs and thing that it is just fine.

[Raider5678]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

That mostly speaks to political apathy in the US population, though. If you look at approval ratings, polls show that around 40% of Americans look at the current state of affairs and thing that it is just fine.

Aren't those usually of "registered/likely" voters?

Edited August 11, 2020 by Raider5678

[iNow]

9 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

Aren't those usually of "registered/likely" voters?

No. The 40% is the floor of Trumps seemingly unshakable approval rating and it’s not restricted to registered or likely voters 

[CharonY]

 

2 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

Aren't those usually of "registered/likely" voters?

What INow said. Polls of likely/registered voters actually are slightly more in favour (~42%) 

[Airbrush]

There is no discussion about DeJoy removing 650+ mail sorting machines?  This is because Trump announced that his intention was to make mail-in voting something "we just can't have."  Except for Florida.

The last I heard is when Dems interrogated DeJoy about this.  He said they stopped removing sorting machines and mail boxes.  When asked if he will put them back, his answer was "No sir."  Then no follow up to that question?!  In DeJoy's opinion the "extra" sorting machines are not needed.  So if or when there is a big backlog of mail-in ballots, DeJoy can say "I thought we didn't need them.  Oh well, too bad."

Edited August 28, 2020 by Airbrush

[dimreepr]

All we know is, it's gonna be messy if Trump doesn't win and disastrous if he does...

[iNow]

44 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

When asked if he will put them back, his answer was "No sir."  Then no follow up to that question?!

Actually, the House passed a bill to address this. Even though votes were mostly along party lines, there was bipartisan support from a number of Republicans who also voted in favor of it. Yet again, however, the Republican controlled Senate (the same ones who voted against allowing investigation during impeachment) are just ignoring it.