Stealing in plain sight
Trump is systematically and openly trying to rig the election by destroying voting rights…the rights that so many civil rights activists faced violence and death for demanding.
Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have taken to the courts dozens of times as part of a $20 million effort to challenge voting rules, including filing their own lawsuits in several battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada. And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting — everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day.
So that he can steal another election and continue his campaign to smash everything.
“All Americans deserve an election system that is secure and President Trump is highlighting that Democrats’ plan for universal mail-in voting would lead to fraud,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews. “While Democrats continue to call for a radical overhaul of our nation’s voting system, President Trump will continue to work to ensure the security and integrity of our elections.”
That’s a lie though. Mail-in voting does not lead to fraud.
Trump is a moron, but I don’t think it’s a partisan issue to have concerns about voting by mail.
I worked as a poll watcher once, and I was very impressed with all the safeguards in place to maintain the integrity of the vote. The vote was machine counted, and voters knew right away that their ballot was correct and had been counted. When the poll closed, the results were called in. The ballots were then sealed in a secure, locked, signed container in case they needed to be inspected. The machine was also locked so its results could be inspected.
Let’s contrast that with mail-in voting. You drop your vote in the mail, and who knows what happens after that. It could be lost in the mail:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vote-by-mail-ballot-counted-election/
Maybe you live in a heavily Democratic area and have a Republican mail carrier who throws out half the ballots, figuring they’re most Democratic votes?
If your ballot does get there, then what? Maybe the person counting them decides to throw out ones they don’t like. Maybe they’re just bad at their job and they misplace a bunch of them. Who knows?
Mail-in voting works in states like Washington in the sense that votes get counted and elections get decided, but who knows how many issues simply go undetected? With Trump’s slim electoral college victory last time, even a small number of problems could tip the balance.
Maybe I’m being paranoid (although that CBS article is alarming). Maybe the number lost never is statistically going to make a difference in an election. But it just seems much more prone to problems than well-regulated in-person voting.
(And to be fair, there are also a lot of upsides to mail-in voting, especially convenience that could lead to higher rates of participation. Oh, and not catching COVID-19.)
Multiple nations have mail-in voting without issue. USA is different as it has a morass of different systems, yet every investigation into voting fraud has cleared mail-in voting. And let’s not forget that some US states permit early voting and voting by mail with no need to supply a reason; if you want to vote by mail, you get to do so.
Holms, you must be wrong. After all, Skeletor says so. He knows more than studies. He thinks about things.
Skelly,
I think you are dramatically over-estimating the security of US voting machines and the system they’re part of. I won’t bore everyone with the details but the problems are great both in principle and practice. The attack surface has also changed significantly since the systems and machines were designed and individuals and small groups have as much ability to disrupt elections as foreign powers.
Postal votes have all these problems and additional ones, but none of this is really the point. The point is that postal voting is going to be essential this time around and Trump is doing his best to undermine it for reasons everyone can see.
His efforts at sabotage may even be self-defeating… in an election where most votes will almost certainly be cast by mail telling your own voters not to do so isn’t the best move. I dunno how things will shake out, but if he wanted to capitalize on this situation he should’ve started in February (like so many other things).
Skeletor –
We do. We know what happens after that. We can track our votes. I just tracked mine for the primary. And they do pay attention at the other end. A few years ago they rejected my vote because they had doubts about the signature. I phoned them to whine, and then sent a follow-up signature as requested, and they accepted it. At the time I saw it as a form of voter suppression, which it is, but by god it’s evidence that they’re not being casual about it.
I had already forgotten about that, thanks for the reminder. I now remember the long agonizing wait (probably all of 72 hours) to get that confirmation via email. Actually my concern came from my ballot initially not being picked up by my mail carrier from my door slot for 3 days. I don’t get mail every day but 3 days is unusual and it peaked my paranoia so I ended up dropping it off in the box outside the post office. I’ll probably do right away next time just to be sure.
I tracked mine twice, just because I could. First the morning after I sent it, knowing it would most likely not be registered yet, and it wasn’t, and then the next day, when all the boxes were ticked, with an exclamation point at the end.
I probably checked every 10 minutes, and yet again after the email! It was my first time ever voting by mail and I hope Pennsylvania decides to make it an option permanently. I liked having the ability to research the voting questions in real time instead of trying to remember my choice (or most likely seeing it for the first time) when I got to the poll. And I’m lucky, Allentown has always been great at polling locations and I’ve never lived more than a 5 minute walk from my polling station.
In Alabama, there is only absentee ballot (that is, it requires justification), rather than vote by mail, and the state is oh-so-generously allowing people who don’t wish to vote in person during a pandemic to use “illness” as a justification. There is no mechanism to confirm receipt and recording of an absentee ballot. I’m planning to drop my ballot off at the Absentee Election Manager office rather than mail it, even though doing so requires that I show ID and must be dropping off only my own ballot, not anyone else’s.