Heh! Churchill. The Mark Twain of H.L. Menckins.
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When I heard Markey’s speech this morning, I heard a 80 year old with a brain that works compared to another 80 year old that thinks through his gut.
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It will be up to the Supreme Court whether this program moves forward. If it does, it stands to have a considerable impact on who votes, and how they do it.
More important, it will make the federal government supreme over elections and voting. States will be “perfectly able” to manage their elections… as long as they do it the way the federal government orders.
It’s like saying the federal government can tax people, but the states can decide whether or not their citizens have to actually pay it.
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“It will require state election officials to feed into two USPS systems lists of voters which must match up exactly. Each ballot will then get a bar code, which will then be matched with the lists and, again, must align exactly.”
That states that each ballot is identified by a unique bar code, and that each bar code is associated with a voter, which means that the ballot is not secret.
This is a violation of Massachusetts law, which requires a secret ballot. The VBM system here is simple. The local election officials mail ballots to registered voters who have requested same. The package includes a mailing envelope (addressed to the local election officials), a ballot, and an inner manila envelope. The voter marks the ballot (which bears no identifying information) and places it in the manila envelope (which has the voter’s name and a barcode), seals and signs the manila envelope, and places the manila envelope in the mailing envelope.
I drop mine at the town hall.
Sure, poll workers could get nosy when opening the thousands of ballot envelopes and take note of who votes for whom. But there isn’t a fucking list in the hands of the authoritarian federal government which could be matched to scanned ballots.
If SCROTUS lets this stand, then they are even more corrupt then we already know.
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the Pentagon has completely cut off the press
Everything the federal government does is “national security” which must be hidden from the American public.
Therefore, what’s the point of voting?
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“I have 14 children, Groucho”.
Groucho: “You have 14 children? Why do you have so many kids?”
Woman: “Because I love my husband”.
Groucho: “I love my cigar too, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while.”
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In Wisconsin, it’s 72 counties, but in every municipality the clerk sends them out so add hundreds more. In addition, although the ballot drop box ban was overturned in 2024, many locations never went back to using them. And even when they did, it was in larger cities in limited numbers for security reasons.
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I used to have a name and a signature and an identity.
As always, TSF is going to do something worse than anyone expects.
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They’ve added a correction to the end of the article:
Correction: This post originally said we are three, not two months out from the election. How embarrassing. We are two months out.
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My problem with ranked choice is that there is already enough election conspiracy bull-hockey out there, and the typical low-information voter won’t understand the process. When their favorite gets tossed in the second or third round, they’ll scream, “Vote fraud.”
I understand that it helps eliminate wack-a-doodle candidates, but I fear it will just result in more of the kind of crap the R’s and TMF have already sown.
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Don’t leave out the point that John and Anna are Amish.
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Here is another reason not to trust the post office with ballots.
In my mail yesterday my only piece of mail was a promotional offer for one of my Credit Cards. Low interest on a balance transfer.
If I made the balance transfer by October 14, 2025, I would get a promotional interest rate through at least August 1, 2026.
Since it is now September 2, 2026, I am figuring this envelope has been floating around the USPS for a year
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I’m also from MA, the Berkshires. A jungle primary in MA would likely produce undeserved Republican victories, as you suggest. I don’t like the idea of removing the influence of parties from the electoral process. The problem in MA (and possibly CA) is that Dems have dominated for so long (even when we’ve sometimes elected a Republican governor) that the party has an entrenched internal power structure which too often blocks the paths of people not playing the insider game. That puts voters like me in a difficult position. I may like the candidate who isn’t in tight with the insider politicos but, at the same time, want my representative to be able to serve my district effectively, even if that means voting for the candidate I’m less enthusiastic about. Ranked choice voting might alleviate the problem voters like me face. I don’t know. But forget jungle primaries.
Talk about entrenched power structures. I was amazed when I got my Dem primary ballot at all the races there were. I’d read and heard nothing about most of them because the candidates were running unopposed. Out of, I dunno, maybe 20 races, only 4 were contested: for the governor’s board; Barrett (age 79) vs. Fitch (for rep to the state house); Neal (age 77) vs. Whalen (for rep to Congress); and Markey (age 80) vs. Moulton. The incumbents won every race, though Fitch came close and Whalen did well.
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Give kitty a good ear scratch from me, please.
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Outstanding point. One that shouldn’t be minimized.
All this dancing around by Republicans, based on “fraudulent votes”, is aimed at allowing them to see specifically who is voting for specifically what. That info will be added to the voter’s secret Palantir profile, so, if necessary, the federal government can “take appropriate action” to ensure “national security” is protected by catching unapproved votes by approved voters.
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Colorado is also VBM: I think it’s the county that mails ballots to registered voters. We can then drop off completed ballots in boxes or we can mail them. It’s getting the ballots out that most worries me–if people have to go pick up their ballots, many won’t. I’d rather volunteer to drive out to people’s homes, to hand-deliver blank ballots.
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I live in WA state- I liked the idea of a top-two primary when I moved here, but I have come to see it as a disaster. Seattle is overwhelmingly democratic- only 20-30% of voters will vote for a republicans. However, with two equally popular leftist candidates plus some also rans, the winning % is in the low 20s. A couple of years ago, our progressive but milktoasty city da was challenged from the left by a prison abolitionist with no practical experience. The local alt weekly championed her, open strategizing about shutting republicans out of the general. The result was the incumbent was squeezed out and the general was between a law-and-order republican whose campaign promises didn’t relate to what the city da actually does and a caricature of a unqualified lefty activist. The republican won.
Ranked choice is what you want- a real chance to undermine self-perpetuating logic about “electability”, an opportunity for party outsiders to build a constituency, and a much lower risk of the candidate everyone hates winding up on the ballot in the general (although Eric Adams shows it takes voters a couple of cycles to grasp how ranked choice works)
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Today is a dark day in U.S. history. In direct violation of the law, a serving “president” is on a coin that will circulate. No one has stopped this lawlessness. Why?
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