We’ve been early voting (except for the primaries this year, as we couldn’t find the time to go, except on the day of) since the pandemic. It’s eased the strain on our polling station (which often has a line on voting day).
But the point is that the 2020 election (despite everything) went smoothly everywhere (for the most part), despite claims of vote rigging. And the few people who did try and cheat (which have been nearly uniformly Republicans, with a couple of people who voted wrong by mistake), were caught.
I think the big problem this fall is going to be acts of voter suppression and maybe voter intimidation. And then of course, howls of “voter fraud” from the far right if they do poorly.
To test that the USPS isn’t intercepting ballots, mark an inner envelope in some way that clearly indicates it’s being used not as an actual vote but as a test of the postal service’s ability and willingness to deliver votes in a timely fashion. Include a completely blank ballot inside so it’s not possible to tell by weight that this is a test mailing.
Put those marked inner envelopes in a normal outer envelope like any other mail-in ballot and drop them in mailboxes scattered around the district. If they all arrive where they’re supposed to then it’s likely that USPS is handling the votes correctly. The more such tests you perform the lower the likelihood that USPS is somehow mishandling or intercepting ballots.
I just moved back to Kansas and did early voting for the primaries as well, mostly to vote on the abortion question on the ballot. It seems there are more areas for early voting, or at least advertise it more, in this county so I will be doing that more in the future.
I agree the 2020 election went well everywhere and was very secure. Like I said, this state elected Josh Hawley and Mike Parson… just don’t trust them to not pull some shenanigan to throw out some mail in ballots or something.
With places doing blanket voter purges and other shenanigans, what is going to happen when their tactics start inhibiting the low information voters who vote Republican and don’t know they had to re-register? They absolutely are targeting minorities, but as their tactics get broader, there has to be a point they start disenfranchising their own?
Understood. There are going to be attempted shenanigans this year, for sure (not just you Missouri, but everywhere) that are going to have to be pushed back against, hard.
I think they are probably okay with this, as long as they can maintain enough to swing the vote their way. Plus, as the Jim Crow era showed up, there are always ways to ensure that the “right” (white) people with the “right” (far right, racist) politics vote while the “wrong” (POC, progressives) don’t… The question becomes whether the courts will support election integrity…
Oregon has been voting by mail for decades. There are so many good reasons for it, beyond just convenience. For one, voters are less likely to be judged (and hassled) based on appearance. Open carry idiots can’t intimidate people trying to vote. But one of the under-rated advantages is that you can sit and go over the Voter’s Pamphlet or internet for every candidate and ballot measure in detail and make more informed decisions than you can in a voting booth.
To be clear, I am not against mail in voting. I am all for it. But given how red Missouri is, and the concerted effort Republicans were making to poo-poo the idea of mail in voting, and the prediction that more Democrats were going to vote via mail, I just didn’t put it pass them somehow trying to interfere. Fortunately my fears were unfounded.
I have less concerns about it in Kansas. Though I found out this county has a really good early voting system and voted early for the first time ever earlier this month.
I like your idea of having the time to research each candidate, even the more local races, with a mail in ballot in hand. I try to at least go to one of those voter guide sites before going in so I know what the smaller races are about.
Although also, in the modern, Trumpian, tr0lling-the-libs version of conservatism, “do these people believe this?” is sometimes a question that doesn’t make any sense. Trump - and those like him - doesn’t “believe” in anything, there are things that assuage his ego and things that threaten it, and the things that assuage it are adopted as part of his worldview and he expects everyone else to do so as well. The concept of objective reality has been entirely discarded.
I remember the reaction to the “reality-based community” thing, back during Bush the Lesser: it was taking subjective reality and elevating it over the objective one, and it was worrisome to put it mildly.
Now, as you say, a lot of the US right wing seems to have abandoned reality entirely. And that’s deeply scary.
Yup, the GOP hates the disabled, elderly and serving military now. Prior to the mainstreaming of Neo-Nazis, those were reliable groups for voting Republican.
Plus it avoids a lot of the shenanigans local/state politicians do to suppress voting such as removal/reduction of polling places in high population centers and onerous Voter ID laws. Moreover many elderly and disabled people can’t physically get to the polls.
