The last presidential election flipped democracy on its head after conspiracy theories and Trump’s desperation to stay in power helped fuel a violent insurrection, an attempted legal coup and the spread of election disinformation at a national and local level. Heading into 2024, experts who spoke to TPM warn those same threats, and more sinister outgrowths of them, will plague this year’s presidential election too.
It’s not Trump or conspiracy theories. It’s Americans. They’ve been groomed to believe outrageous things without any evidence to prove them. FOX, Alex and Trump are just making bank on American gullibility and provinciality.
Summary:
1 Election Deniers Are Running The Show
2 Election misinformation and disinformation
3 Violence, harassment, and intimidation of election workers
4 The weaponization of a decentralized election system
5 Voter suppression and voter intimidation
I’d add a 6th:
Inveterate political stupidity and assholery on the part of almost half of the electorate – which you have regardless of 1-5 above. Over the decades, this problem hasn’t been recognized, let alone addressed. Its roots surely go way back to the early colonial period, very much involving slavery.
They’re selling self frighterounsess down that church. It’s why abortion is such an issue for them: Nobody can win an argument when one side is calling the other a baby killer.
It is time that we ACTIVELY help our friends and neighbors - those who are actively discouraged from voting because of race, religion, ZIP code, etc. - find their way to the poll and help them cast a valid vote that will be accepted in this plebiscite. Don’t buckle to the hegemony of the Snot Goblins among us!
As someone who has voted at the same polling place for over 40 years it sort of baffles me that people don’t understand that states, and counties run all of our elections. We never had to show a picture ID until either the 2020, or 2022 election. Prior to that the county BOE mailed out to each registered voter a sample ballot. You took you sample ballot with you and they scanned the bar code that was printed on mailing. Then after 20-25 years of fighting over photo ID we have to show a photo ID.
When I first started voting we had punch card ballots, which changed to electronic ballots, which changed back paper/fill in the circle ballots that were are electronically read.
The county changed from assigned polling stations you had to vote at, to county wide polling stations. I still vote at the same place, since I’d have to pass it if I’m going somewhere, or coming back from somewhere. And it’s got plenty of parking.
What I can’t wrap my head around are the folks that think there are problems, yes running out ballots at one polling station can be a problem, unless of course you have no assigned polling place and go to another polling place. Then they bring up vote by mail, well some Republican states have used this method for decades. Then there’s electronic voting, do you use an ATM? There will always small hiccups, i.e. weather, now the postal system, and black outs-that’s why they have paper ballots on hand.
The US population is more mobile than ever, no one stays in one place anymore, except me. And I’ve seen the methods that I have voted change over time. This is nothing new. The only thing I’d recommend is to check that you’re still on the voter rolls, a couple of times before the election.
Came so close yet managed to miss what still seems to me the biggest threat of all: Election workers have not only been threatened and harassed; they’ve also been driven out and replaced – by MAGA committed to getting Donald Trump into office by any means possible
Locally, we are blessed with a lovely lady named Beth Majeroni. She got her start going to school board meetings to complain about books. Got nowhere. Then she decided to take on the local Board of Elections about voting machines. She should have been talking to her Representative in the state House. But no, she insisted the BoE listen to her, even as she spoke about secret Grand Jury matters. Video of her visit to the Board of Elections linked below. It’s kinda fun.
Now, she’s running for a State Senate seat. She understands nothing, but she just needs a more powerful position to bully from, that’s all.
So un/inconsistent signatures? For the life of me I can’t sign my name the same way on anything. Never could, so for me it’s not that I don’t physically write in cursive anymore, it’s that I’m old, older, in a hurry.
This thing where someone needs a position, or a better position to bully from baffles me. She sounds a bit like the two women from Mom’s For Liberty that Scott Pelley interviews for 60 Minutes. They have talking points, but no thought process.
I plan on ignoring alla the crap and filling out my mail in ballot this November and taking it to my County Recorder’s Office and sticking it in the box like I did recently in our presidential preference election.
