U.S. Politics: Here At the End of All Things

[Maltaran]

8 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Yeah, I'm reading this like 'what the fuck'. Pretty much everyone in the UK can stroll down to their nearest polling station (most often in my experience primary schools) no queue and vote. And all the votes are counted within about 12 hours, some constituencies get them counted in an hour. 

Apparently we have 50000 polling stations, so one for every 1320 people. 

We also have an independent Electoral Commission that sets down uniform national requirements, instead of 50 different states where the ruling party can give different parts of their state different numbers of polling stations 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I vote in every Democratic primary and I vote Dem in every election. This is not a secret. I’ve made no secret of this over the years (despite a few people thinking I’m a Republican because I’m a centrist Democrat).

I volunteer, as you may have read, in the voting process. Frankly, it’s tremendously stressful. Answering calls on the voter hotline IS STRESSFUL. Being a certified poll watcher TAKES HOURS of time. 

Is voter suppression an issue I care about? YES, which is why I donate money to Fair Fight Georgia.

Os it my main issue? NO. My main issue is #1 gender equality and #1a LBGTQ+ rights, and I’m not ashamed to say that or fight for those as my main issues. Therefore, most of my effort goes to those issues.

Second is the environment, which is why I serve as a volunteer on several committees in my area regarding local plants vs invasive species, coordinating with the county DOT on major initiatives in keeping our local creek trash-free, and coordinating several subdivisions in “Keeping Cobb Beautiful” doing litter pick-ups.

Other than that, I’m working on an IPO.

Fighting a mini-fever, trying to catch up with a fast moving thread, but damn. This post probably looks something like this in real life:

 

[ljkeane]

8 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

We also have an independent Electoral Commission that sets down uniform national requirements, instead of 50 different states where the ruling party can give different parts of their state different numbers of polling stations 

In fairness I don't think the Electoral Commission actually decide how many polling stations there have to be or where they're located. That's apparently down to the Returning Officers to decide, or actually the Acting Returning Officers who're effectively the real returning officers. All pretty straight forward really.

[argonak]

19 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

We also have an independent Electoral Commission that sets down uniform national requirements, instead of 50 different states where the ruling party can give different parts of their state different numbers of polling stations 

America has the Federal Elections Commission, but it needs to have a certain number of members to function, and right now there aren't enough appointees for them to even try to do their job.  But even when they do they're still rather powerless.  

[Relic]

uh huh

[GrimTuesday]

So I'm watching Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing, and am baffled by why the Democrats are even bothering to show up. It is inevitable that she is going to be confirmed, and by actually participating, the Democrats are giving this process legitimacy. They should be holding press conferences in front of the senate, and decrying the process as illegitimate. Absolutely nothing they say or ask changes the fact that ACB is a theocrat who intends to judge like a theocrat and everyone knows that.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, A Prince of Dorne said:

Went to vote in Columbus, Ohio yesterday around 2:00. Looked like a 2-3 hour line at least. I didn't have time to wait that long so had to drive home. I'm currently wondering how many people did the same.

And early voting in Ohio started a week ago

But doesn't your county have a special problem this year with a lot of the absentee ballots that were sent out being printed incorrectly and having to be recalled? Because of that I would suspect that people in Columbus are much more likely to want to be voting early in person than most other places in Ohio. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

See the politically correct term for racist is Race-realist or ideatarian.

“bullshit peddler” or “horrible human being” also work.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

However, if, as @Chataya de Fleury indicates, it is still 30+ minutes even on the slowest days in some locations, then that's unacceptable voter suppression, and changes need to be made.   

How do you feel about online voting, or something similar in nature? 

[Zorral]

What's this again about how rethugs can't, won't, and haven't been competent to do anything to, you know, really interfere with voting and elections?

Quote

Cut cable crashes voter registration site across Virginia on last day to register

An outage Tuesday is preventing Virginia residents from registering to vote on the last day to do so.

“Due to a network outage the Citizen Portal is temporarily unavailable,” the Virginia Department of Elections website says. “We are working with our network providers to restore service as quickly as possible.”

The agency tweeted that a “fiber cut” near the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center is causing the outage.

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article246420715.html

Goes nicely with those phoney ballot drop boxes the rethugs putting up in California, doncha think?

 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

How do you feel about online voting, or something similar in nature? 

I work as a professional in software engineer and this is 100% accurate. 

https://xkcd.com/2030/

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

37 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

So I'm watching Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing, and am baffled by why the Democrats are even bothering to show up. It is inevitable that she is going to be confirmed, and by actually participating, the Democrats are giving this process legitimacy. They should be holding press conferences in front of the senate, and decrying the process as illegitimate. Absolutely nothing they say or ask changes the fact that ACB is a theocrat who intends to judge like a theocrat and everyone knows that.

I would sincerely respond to this post, but telling you how I feel could let you know how I might respond in the future, so just some blah blah blah I <3 the Constitution, with a bit of go fuck yourself, and look, there's 99 red balloons over there!

[Ormond]

In terms of comparing the time it takes to vote in the USA vs. other countries --

I know it isn't the whole story, but part of the difference would be how many things many Americans have to vote on in a single election. As I reported last Thursday, it took me about 31 minutes to vote early in person in Douglas County, Nebraska. At least a third of that time was spent in actually filling out my ballot. In addition to voting for President, US Senate, and US House of Representatives, I had to vote for State Senator, County Clerk, County Public Defender, County Commissioner, State Public Service Commission board member, State Board of Education member, Omaha Public Schools board member, Metropolitan Community College board member, Metropolitan Utilities District board member, and Omaha Public Power district board member. Then there were "retention elections" (where the question is "Should Judge X be retained in office, yes or no?") for a total of eleven different judges at different statewide or district levels. Finally I had to vote on six ballot proposals, dealing with whether casino gambling should be legalized (three parts), capping interest rates charged by payday lenders, removing the possibility of slavery as a criminal punishment from the state constitution, and increasing the repayment period for tax increment financing.

Please tell me if I'm wrong, but my belief is that in a parliamentary system like the UK, Canada, or Australia, all you have to vote on in a national election is one member of Parliament, period. That should take you about 15 seconds. I took at least 10 minutes filling out my ballot, and that's because I had done homework to be able to make most of the decisions quickly before I got to the polling place. Someone who had no idea about the ballot proposals before they showed up at the voting booth and then read them carefully and pondered them before deciding would have taken much longer.

The amount of things to vote on varies wildly from state to state in the USA, with on the average there being less on the ballot in most Southern states than Northern ones. And I know this isn't the only problem with how long it takes to vote. But the fact we have to vote on so many different items is some part of this. 

(And this even slows down people returning absentee ballots. I have a friend in Michigan I talk to on the phone at least once a week. He does not have either television or Internet service at home, having been someone who used the Internet at his public library before Covid-19. He has filled out the main questions on his Michigan ballot but not all the judges he has to vote on in Michigan, because he wants to be a good citizen and do some homework on them before he does, and that's not easy for him right now. And there isn't even a daily local newspaper in Ann Arbor for him to subscribe to anymore.)

[Fez]

12 minutes ago, Zorral said:

What's this again about how rethugs can't, won't, and haven't been competent to do anything to, you know, really interfere with voting and elections?

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article246420715.html

Goes nicely with those phoney ballot drop boxes the rethugs putting up in California, doncha think?

 

Well, first of all, give me one iota proof that this was election-related, just one. That's all I ask for. As opposed to this just being an unfortunate coincidence. Because, ya know, the number of people who would even know that that cable would affect the voter registration site is vanishingly small.

The California thing more proves my point. It was really stupid, limited in scope, and caught almost immediately. Also, based on the locations they were put in, it seems more like that was a plan to try to harvest additional Republican votes; not discard Democratic votes.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

I work as a professional in software engineer and this is 100% accurate. 

https://xkcd.com/2030/

It really would be that hard to do. The problem would be getting people to trust the process. 

Shit, I feel like I've heard that before.....

[A Prince of Dorne]

37 minutes ago, Ormond said:

But doesn't your county have a special problem this year with a lot of the absentee ballots that were sent out being printed incorrectly and having to be recalled? Because of that I would suspect that people in Columbus are much more likely to want to be voting early in person than most other places in Ohio. 

Yep, 50,000 incorrect ballots were mailed out. So I'm also worried people will fill out and return those ballots but they won't be counted 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I would sincerely respond to this post, but telling you how I feel could let you know how I might respond in the future, so just some blah blah blah I <3 the Constitution, with a bit of go fuck yourself, and look, there's 99 red balloons over there!

No Judge can say anything else without violating Judical canons.  I do not want Judge Barrett confirmed but she entirely correct to decline to answer those questions.  I would have said exactly the same thing if Judge Garland had actually gotten hearings and a vote, as he should have.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No Judge can say anything else without violating Judical canons.  I do not want Judge Barrett confirmed but she entirely correct to decline to answer those questions.  I would have said exactly the same thing if Judge Garland had actually gotten hearings and a vote, as he shouls have.

So then perhaps it's wrong? 

[argonak]

Washington does our ballots with paper copies.  I like this, it gives a comfort of knowing that the papers can be physically recounted.  I can also go online and see when they received my ballot and that it was counted.

I think the nice thing about a digital voting system would be if it got screwed up, you could just have a re-do pretty cheaply.  You could also in theory login and check your vote to make sure everything was good.  But to do it right would require federal infrastructure, which a lot of the states would take issue with from a constitutional perspective.  And people would probably always worry that it wasn't really. . . "real."  

I think if it were up to me I'd do a combined system, where I could login, vote, then print it out and drop it off for verification purposes.   But i also guess a lot of people would be concerned if voting wasn't completely anonymous anymore.

[Fragile Bird]

@Ormond you are absolutely correct! In city elections we vote for a councillor and a mayor, but in provincial and federal elections we vote for a member of the legislature or parliament. The party that elects the most members wins, and the party leader becomes Prime Minister. We don’t vote for judges or DAs or dog catchers. In Ontario, anyway, maybe some provinces have someone else on the ballot.  
 

Part of your problem is electing members of congress every two years. At the very least that should go to 4 years, with half being elected every two years.