Apparently an arrest has been made: “Worldy Armand, a 39-year-old Boston resident, was taken into custody late Sunday …”
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“Voters can go online to see whether their ballot was processed. Those who used that dropbox between Saturday afternoon and 4 a.m. Sunday and can’t confirm the status of their ballot online should contact the Boston Elections Department immediately, officials said.
Voters whose ballots were affected can either vote in person or by a replacement ballot that will be mailed to them, officials said. If those voters don’t submit a new ballot, “their original ballot will be hand-counted to the extent possible,” election officials said.“
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Really can’t jump to the conclusion at the moment that this particular (Boston) incident had anything to do with politics.
I feel the same about Baldwin Park unless it was trying to drive an extremely local issue in a certain direction. Baldwin Park is pretty diverse and in some worn data (2012) looks to skew 70/30 DNC v. GOP. It may be closer to 60/40. But Baldwin Park does have it’s political characters. They’ve had eight police chiefs in seven years, the latest one on leave after accusing the mayor of corruption. That chief is seeking $10,000 in court - paltry compared to the sums the City of Los Angeles routinely doles out to avoid court confrontations.
It got crazy a few years ago between a Mayor Pro Tem and a gadfly businessman. TL/DR the former sought a restraining order against the latter because of a third party commenting on the critics blog that he knew where the former lived, as well as a bunch of crude comments protected by the first amendment. Judge tossed it.
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I’m not sure I would be dissuaded from voting if the early ballot dropoff near our library was vandalized and/or destroyed. Disclosure: I already turned in my vote and it was confirmed. My issue would be ‘Where can I vote that my ballot will be appropriately counted?’ More significantly, how difficult is it when this option is ruined?
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In MA, there is www.trackmyballotma.com, which links to the state elections site. It will tell you if your ballot has been received (and when) and if it has been accepted (or not). I mailed my ballot at the post office on the 17th (Saturday), and it was marked received and accepted on the 20th (Tuesday).
If you are in MA and are using any non-in person form of voting, you should verify that your ballot was received and recorded. Although the Presidential (and Senate) elections are not in much doubt here, there are 2 ballot questions (vote yes!) that may be competitive.
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Can someone clarify this to a confused non American. What type of ballots go into these drop boxes? Do mail in ballots go in the mail or just these limited drop boxes.
Probably varies state to state, but generally these are for mail-in ballots that people chose to drop off in person rather than entrust the postal service to deliver it on time. (They get picked up directly by the county so they skip the middleman.) In my own case I used one because there are no longer any public mailboxes in my neighborhood and this way there’s no way it could get stolen out of my mail slot when waiting for the letter carrier to pick it up or whatever.
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You can do both. Only 1 state has universal mail-in voting, but every where else, voting in person is the norm. They set this up for people to drop off their ballots early because of the pandemic. But you can also put them in the regular mail. You can also walk them into the county, as well.
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That’s no longer the case. Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Washington state, and Washington DC all have voting by mail as the default option as their permanent system, and a lot of that pre-dates COVID. Some other states like California, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, and Vermont have automatically sent ballots to all registered voters this year, mostly due to COVID.
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I knew about Oregon, but was not aware of the others! Thanks!
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Oregon was the pioneer, not just for universal vote-by-mail, but also for automatic registration. Washington beat us to postage-paid ballots, though.
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If this is the same guy (and how many Worldy Armands can there be?) based on his Twitter thread I’m less convinced this was a political act. He seems a bit off, but not in a “mastermind” kind of way…
https://twitter.com/warmand32?lang=en
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I’m in CA. The drop box I used was inside a business and could only be accessed during business hours. It made me feel pretty comfortable that no one would be messing with it. It was in a busy area, but not obtrusive.
Voted for Harris/Biden and Blue straight down the ticket.
So, honest question here: would this fit the definition of terrorism?
Michigan registered voters all received no-reason absentee ballot applications in May. This is a new right for Michiganders, but we couldn’t have timed it better - this was a 2018 ballot measure. I’ve now filled out two ballots from the comfort (and internet access) of my own home, and dropped them directly at my city clerks’s office - it’s maybe 3 blocks from the post office, so why bother risking mailing in a state already being eff’d with by Post Master General Chaos.
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Neat Segway
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Yes. It would.
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A hyper local angle on the arrest. I’m from Boston. Are you from Boston?
“Wordly Armand” sounds like the name of a character from a Pynchon book.
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