Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/26/someone-tried-to-burn-down-an-early-voting-ballot-box-at-the-boston-public-library.html
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But he’s defending democracy!
If his Glorious Leader Drumpf doesn’t win the electoral college by losing the popular vote AGAIN, how can the result be called democracy? Surely you can see his actions are perfectly logical and justified?
I’m sure that His Orangeness will be quick to tweet that he’s heard that some people think this is a bad thing, but that he doesn’t know about it, and won’t condemn it. That’ll make it all better, right?
Right?
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My guess will be some college republican clowns finding some random homeless guy on the streets of Boston, “hey buddy, here’s $500 if you go light that ballot box on fire” then when the police catch them, fox news can scream ANTIFA until the cows come home.
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I think it’s more like some political clown dressing up to avoid easy identification from the CCTV images. I doubt that the person doing the action was homeless or that this is an act of random property destruction. We should consider the possibility that this was a political act, intended to generate publicity and to discourage the use of ballot drop boxes (and by extension, mail in voting).
IMO, attempting to destroy a ballot box is a terrorist act, and if identified and arrested, person doing this is should be prosecuted as a terrorist.
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Or maybe: that was the point. Maybe they weren’t actually trying to sway the vote — there were only 122 ballots in the box at the time of the fire, 87 of which were unscathed, and only 5-10 of which were “badly damaged” — but rather, were just to agitate and accelerate and create some fear in general.
AKA “sway the vote” ^^’ . “Suppress the vote” also works, if you prefer. In my opinion, there’s very little uncertainty, in re: the general intent here, although the specifics may be a bit hazy.
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It seems that in both of these arson cases the drop box’s design went a long way towards limiting the damage to ballots by cutting off airflow and suffocating the fire. When I dropped mine off a couple weeks ago I noticed that the slot with a spring-loaded cover just barely opened up wide enough to accept the ballot envelope, so no large objects could be inserted and it would be tricky to insert something that was burning.
I don’t know if this is the case in most places, but in CA you can easily check online to see if your ballot was received and processed within a couple days of dropping it off or mailing it in. Just another reason to vote early, so that there’s still time to do something about it if bad actors try to steal your vote.
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Doesn’t matter who it is. The effect is to increase the mistrust of voting, which plays into Republican strategy.
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Absolutely. Because the voting process is secure, there is no real way to effectively destroy votes in significant enough quantities to sway and election (disenfranchisement is a whole lot easier, anyway). Therefore, the only actionable method that regressives a have is to sow fear that a) vote tallies will be tainted and b) that voting is an inherently dangerous activity. In other words, using fear and intimidation to sway individual actions and public opinion beyond the capabilities one would otherwise have. The very definition of terrorism.
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The flaw in their plan is that these incidents are encouraging people to vote in record numbers. The obvious attempts at voter suppression all over the news are only seen as positive by 45’s base. Hopefully, they’ll catch these destructive ballot box clowns and charge them with something that will make any copycats decide it’s not worth the risk.
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I dunno…not sure I’d attribute any motive to the act at this point.
Nor would I guess as to his current housing status.
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The Republicans, they hate our freedoms.
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Yes, you are correct. The act itself is one of simple criminal vandalism (albeit on government property), and the motive of the perpetrator is not clear. And yes, the difference between criminal mischief and acts of terrorism is in the intent of the actor, rather than the effect of the act.
Although the outcome of this action (whether it was done by a 14 year old on a drunken dare, or by a 23 year old proud boy wannabee) is the same, we still need to identify the arsonist and determine their motive, and then to charge this person with the appropriate crime. And if there is evidence to believe that the act was politically motivated, then a terrorism charge should be included in the list of offenses.
We don’t know (yet) the motivations of this jackass. Regardless of intent however, a nontrivial number of people are now more reluctant to vote using a ballot drop-box than they were last week. Whether or not their act was politically motivated, the perpetrator(s) managed to significantly damage the trust in our voting process.
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See?!?! The Dems are engaging in major ballot fraud to erase the republican votes.
At the BPL.
In MA.
I can guess how the majority votes would go for in that area.
It sucks not living in a swing state, since all I get to do is vote for down-ballot candidates and questions.
(BTW, Yes on #1 and #2 in MA!).
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I guess some people are against having a Democracy. Democracy does seem inconvenient when you’re losing.
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What about parking cars near ballot boxes, with dashcams and other concealed devices set on continuous recording?
They may cover themselves, but I bet they didn’t remove the plate from their cars.
Pretty sure that this now masked person has already been protesting as antimask somewhere.
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Republicans are a
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The article is paywalled. Does it say anywhere whether voters who dropped their ballots in that box have any recourse to assess whether their ballots were received or whether they can be replaced?
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And that BallotTrax thingy works just great! I dropped our four ballots off in the box at the embassy in Brussels. Ten days later I got the email that they’d been handed off to the USPS, two days later the San Diego Registrar had them, eight hours after that they’d been signature-verified and handed off to be counted.
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[quote=“PsiPhiGrrrl, post:9, topic:183185”]
The flaw in their plan is that these incidents are encouraging people to vote in record numbers.[/quote]
Yes, this. 
People are through taking shit, and this is just going to lead to people being more careful, and maybe keeping an eye out for vandals.
I’d like to see the next person who tries this kind of thing to get thrown in the river.
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