If you’re going to compare mechanisms of civic engagement, perhaps don’t try to compare apples to kiwis.
12 Likes
fwiw, I didn’t name the video. I went back to fix the error and couldn’t find where I’d written that, before realizing it was the YouTube video title.
2 Likes
IIRC The Turtle is facing serious opposition this year. He has to try to preserve his seat.
The ballot counters might want moon suits, unless the ballots could be sterilized.
False equivs are all some folks have.
13 Likes
I worked an election poll one year. In my 30s at the time and the youngest worker at my poll.
I heard they are paying people better now, so if you can kill a day to run it, and a few hours on the weekend to train, you too can help run the polls. I was quite pleased with how ours went that day.
4 Likes
Came here to say all of my very liberal friends in Kentucky keep pointing out this was Bipartisan, that mail in ballots have been available for months, and that the polling places are not your typical church/school but instead are massive sports arena’s or similar. Still the optics look awful.
2 Likes
Right? Just doing the math, if 10% of the people in that district have to vote in person, and there’s 4 machines at that location, and it takes only 5 minutes per person to vote, it would still take those 61,000 people 75,000 total minutes to vote, or 1,250 hours. If it’s a big stadium and there’s 40 stations, that’s still 125 hours.
Even in states like mine with vote-by-mail, there are still in-person polling places for people who, for one reason or another, are eligible but did not get their mail-in ballot in time for the election.
1000x this. That has been one of the big learning points during this pandemic for a lot of people (some still haven’t learned, apparently). If you’re going to close something down, close it all the way down, not partway. Partial closures just concentrate everyone into fewer, tighter areas and makes things worse, not better. In something essential like voting, spreading out the demand is much better than concentrating it into fewer polling places and forcing tighter spacing with more contacts.
10 Likes
The grandson started working the polls at 18. He chose not to do this year’s primary, but says he’ll do the November election “if it’s safe.”
8 Likes
“The Left” has been “complaining” about voter suppression for decades, if not centuries. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was about voter suppression. People have died to stop voter suppression. Voter suppression is not a local issue that started in Kentucky last month.
Hiring managers are responsible for filling vacancies. Other states manage to run elections.
10 Likes
I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but my mind keeps circling back to “the cruelty is the point.” I don’t believe that they don’t know what they are doing. And it’s not what they say they are doing.
Far better to have too many locations and bored volunteers than to overload the system.
But if the goal is voter suppression, this is an excellent way to accomplish that. The more obstacles in place, the more people will be discouraged. The pandemic just gives them an excellent excuse.
Consider: the concern for public safety on the one hand and then downplaying the pandemic by people in political/informational authority all the way up to the President on the other.
So. Which is it?
Is it too dangerous for people to go out to vote, but not too dangerous to go without a mask and attend Trump rallies, or reopen everything asap to save the economy? What defines the distinction?
5 Likes
I’m thinking of doing it again this year because at 44 I have a better shot at it than the retirees who usually run them.
2 Likes
Oh, it’s definitely voter suppression. I’m with you on that completely. With a side of not-giving-a-shit-about-people sauce.
8 Likes
Ohio pays you for a training session and the day, 1099. According to the grandson, they always have enough, but if they had more they could offer people shorter shifts. There are some parts of Ohio’s bureaucracy that run really well, surprisingly enough.
7 Likes
Kentucky has a Democratic Governor and presumably he appointed the Election Board or the individuals in charged of staffing it.
Regardless:
The polling location is not your typical small school/church building. Is this the right way to do it? I don’t know but all the reporting I’m seeing is definitely at odds with what the people I know who live in Kentucky are saying.
5 Likes
Given the lack of job stability and “the gig economy” it really is too hard to spend the day voting or even considering volunteering one’s day when one can’t simply take time off or will be looking at a 20% pay cut, or risk being fired to go vote.
3 Likes
People are still going to have to drive much farther out of their way to vote. It will drive down voter participation, especially since it’s literally right before the vote. It is 398 sq mi.
5 Likes
Nope, no attempt at voter suppression here:
Limit who can be allowed into the building at one time (pandemic restrictions) then say that whoever wasn’t already past the doors wasn’t in line. This is a test-run for November.
7 Likes
Those are some angry and radicalized people right now. Good.
7 Likes
