If it is anything like the UK, it will remain unchanged except for a lack of representation for staff, and a giant cut for the people that are pushing it.
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I think we may be missing the only important question: What needs to be done in the swing states that will make an Electoral Collage difference? Nothing else matters. The most critical three states are Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Voting rules in all three are pro-voter, including, I believe, no-excuse absentee or mail-in, along with same day registration. All three states have Democratic governors, attorneys general and secretaries of state; these are the three critical state jobs. In addition, almost every major city in these states has a Democratic mayor, and the suburbs are increasingly blue.
How is it possible that a party with this much clout in a state can’t get its voters to vote? All I hear are complaints about not getting enough federal money. Well, theres not going to be much more federal money. How about elbow grease!?
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Smoke signals.
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“political will”?
Well, maybe, assuming that your state legislature is nimble enough to be able to change the laws, if necessary, to permit an election going to all mail-in. Witness the recent debacle in New Mexico. Oh, and finding the budget.
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what these people think will replace the USPS
The Central Party Committee.
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These are really excellent points! There have been a few mail-in elections recently in New Mexico, and when the absentee ballot arrived, the instructions appeared to be in 1 point font, confusingly written, dense and without clarifying white space, and lots of hoops to jump through which, as you’ve noted, can be used to disqualify your ballot.
“Voter fraud” is for chumps. The pros do “election fraud” – as you noted, finding innumerable ways to disqualify ballots (and might there be a partisan bias as to whose ballots are DQ’d?) Typically, you can’t find out whether your ballot was discarded until after the votes have been counted … and that’s way too late to do anything about it.
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But that’s not secure in any sense. And worthless during the windy season.
The clacks!
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In New Mexico, interestingly, ballots are generated on demand. Years back, we switched from the traditional precinct polling place with huge stacks of ballot books, nearly all of which had to be destroyed when the polls closed, to vote centers. In counties with vote centers, you walk in, identify yourself, and a ballot customized to your precinct is printed out for you. No large scale printer contract is required.
Although it might be more efficient to do this in vast printing runs for all-mail-in…
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Wait until rural (and therefore largely red) America realizes that its far-flung local post offices and daily mail deliveries are gone for good. Republican congresscritters who represent these sprawling, thinly populated districts will have a lot of explaining to do.
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Trump is underwater in all three of those states.
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For some reason, when Trump rolled out his “Three Step Plan” yesterday, I kept thinking about the Japanese “Three Alls Plan” for China, i.e. Kill All, Burn All, Loot All. Certainly Trump has done an excellent job with step one, with an official body count of 37,000, an unofficial count double that, and indirect related deaths on top of that, so pushing 100,000. Second, Trump has “burned” pretty much every state as the cavalry never arrived, and indeed was never sent. California is now on its own trying to stand up an adequate level of testing and states are relegated to trading ventilators. Third, the looting of the treasury is exquisite. For example, “Senate Republicans inserted a tax loophole provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that will see 43,000 millionaires indirectly receive up to $1.6 million each in stimulus money.” Mnuchin actually tried to set up a $500 billion slush fund. Truly, Trump is an anthropogenic disaster of the highest order.
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Here is a trumpers thoughts about the subject copied from Facebook.
Has nothing to do with employees being veterans! Do you want to pay tax money to keep bailing out the post office? And pay for postage? Email is free, on line banking is free, most lenders give you a discount for paying online! Snail mail is a dying dinosaur.
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Magic drones that will traverse the country mounted on sleds in a system of underground tunnels. They will be deployed within a few months, according to Elon Musk.
So, no reason to worry …
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"The conundrum, Gebbie fretted to TPM, is that if election officials wait even more than a few weeks to put in those orders, it would be too late for those vendors to scale up their own capacity.
Just what Republican Governors,Secretaries of State and Legislators needed to hear. They’ll mark their calendars accordingly. We’ll get a new spike of C-19 cases for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Retailers better prepare now.
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What a depressing article.
“But obtaining that equipment takes several months, National Association of Presort Mailers president Richard Gebbie told TPM after the call, and vendors wouldn’t make that seven-figure investment without the contracts to justify it.”
Right. We just spent a trillion on an economic rescue package, but ballots cannot be printed because of a necessary “seven-figure investments” in new machinery. Makes perfect sense.
“They’re often one part of an extremely complicated supply chain that allows large-scale vote-by-mail elections to run smoothly.”
Right, because it needs to be really complicated. Otherwise, not OK.
“And now the presort mailing industry needs to figure out if it will have the capacity to meet the surge in demand for services like printing ballots, stuffing envelopes, sending ballots, and tracking them through the mail.”
Right, of course. We all remember how the US response after Pearl Harbor was delayed by several months because the National Association of Companies That Put Those Little Stickers on the Airplane Windows (NACTPTLSAW) hesitated to invest in new sticker printing machines. Right?
Sometimes I feel this country is really lost …
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And malls are going to make a resounding recovery once this is all over. That’s why Amazon is valued so poorly by investors, who thinks there’s any need to deliver actual packages to the house once we can all jump in our cars and crowd together again?!!? /s
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Long term thinking doesn’t apply. I have a couple of trumpers that I talk to on Facebook periodically (when it hits the fan to see how they respond). Another is literally in the hospital with covid 19 symptoms, and is still posting about the Democrats. Monday they were like rabid animals swinging on a cage. It has hit home that this isn’t a game, but they will never admit it. The meanest tell it like it is folks are attacking on very personal levels. Interestingly, wives are posting about what a fool trump is because he is on the air daily.
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