In WA state, we vote by mail. The return envelope is postage paid but drop boxes are available and convenient. There is a drop box within walking distance of my home. Our old polling place was half a block closer than the drop box.
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drop boxes are more reliable than USPS these days (thanks, DeJoy!)
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The NRA pipeline for Russian money has been staunched (I think) but the outside money will find a way. The NSA knows whose phone to tap for details of foreign plots to influence the 2024 election
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I think you’ll find the NSA like everywhere else in government is shot through with evangelicals trying to save us from whatever pays this year.
Look at George Santos - how easy would it be to place an operative in our government?
The GOP were using a Russian intelligence operative to try and string up Joe Biden. They guy’s name was Smirnov, for God’s sake.
Half of the congressional snakehandlers are smoking meth down at the local truck stop glory hole - kompromat is something we should have got on them years ago.
Too late.
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Work for mail-in ballots everywhere. It increases turnout and here in Colorado there have been only a few bad actors, all Republicans.
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Except you – and me. For some 47 years now I’ve voted in the same elementary school gym, in the same way (paper/fill in the circle ballots that are electronically read). Correction: since COVID, I’ve usually voted early, dropping off my ballot in a box outside Town Hall. I like voting in person but also like not having to worry that I might have to navigate a snow storm or that I might be sick on election day. When I vote in person, I enjoy running into people and chatting with my son’s kindergarten teacher (he’s now in his 40’s), a poll worker. She always asks after him, seeming to remember nothing of what I told her last time (she’s in her '90’s). She also always remembers that I went to the U of Mich. and regales me with tales of her days playing in the marching band – she played in the/a U of M marching band just a few years ago at a reunion.
Out of curiosity, I just checked online my Massachusetts town’s Republican ballot for today’s elections. The Republicans have no Town Committee – just not enough Repubs any more, I guess. (The Democratic Town Committee took care to run 13 people for the 13 slots.) Republicans have one candidate for the male rep to the Repub State Committee – a Repub state rep from the county next door – and one for the female rep (his wife). (The Dems have one person in the male slot, a man in his '80’s – a gasbag but a good guy, and two in the female slot (though I was able to learn NOTHING about the younger female; the older one is 78 and has long been active). The Libertarians had 6 or 8 people running for president, no one for any committees. Williamson and Phillips are still on the Dem presidential ballot. Get a load of the Republican ballot – is this happening everywhere? Christie, Ramaswamy, Hutchinson, DeSantis, Haley, No Preference, Write-In, and Ryan Binkley (google him if you’re interested – I’d never heard of him before; he suspended his campaign when the MI results came in).
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It wasn’t until COVID that my county had “no excuse” early voting. Before you had to go the BOE and have an excuse, it could be flimsy, but an excuse must be given. It was so popular during COVID they had to take over a small concert hall, or maybe it was a rec center.
The only times I ever had to wait was on my way home from work, was in 2008 and 2012. We had our line snake up and down hallways, and even into then out other rooms. And the only time I thought that there could get nasty was in '08 when I guy who was in line, he was about 10 people ahead of me, called his girlfriend to get him some McDonalds. There isn’t a McDs that far, but certainly not next door. We snaked down a hallway, across that hallway, up the other side, around the corner, down that hallway into then out a another room, before we could get to check in to vote. This guy almost had his head scalped because of the food delivery his girlfriend brough him.
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I still hope there are more of us than them. Plus, once again, TFG is not running against Hillary Clinton.
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Of course there is no problem with the ways in which we’ve been voting. Everybody knows that to be true. This whole voter ID to prevent voter fraud was always the GOP way to suppress the vote for Democrats. Those most likely to have trouble getting a photo ID statistically vote Democratic. Voter suppression tactics were then added to voter ID requirements - fewer polling places in Democratic strongholds, running out of ballots in those same districts, etc. And then Trump and his enablers tripled-down on the voter fraud claims - and here we are. It is nothing more than a pure power-grab.
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This is why we have to work hard to have an overwhelming blue turnout.
I just find it funny that most of the states that I know of that have vote by mail are majority Republican.
At one time political junk mail was treated as 1st class. All mail received had to be checked to make sure every piece of political mail had to be delivered by or on election day.
DeJoy is a problem but a large portion of Postal management does not even rise to incompetent.
Speaking of election deniers running the show (threat #1), a few months ago one of the Republican members of the Maryland State Board of Elections was arrested for his participation in the January 6 assault on the Capitol. It was quite a shock.
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Welcome Khaya, good report, please bring us more.
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And yet Biden still won, we kept the Senate and only lost the House by a small margin. It’s interesting that all this voting doom and gloom has been talked about since before 2020 and yet I don’t remember any major disturbances, violence or any other disruptions in the last two elections (other than the made up ones by the GOP and TFG) reported on tv or in newspapers. Are there hurdles? Yes but it appears that the majority of voters expect it and it hasn’t stopped people from getting to the polls and voting. November will be the same on all counts.
Forewarned is forearmed. These five threats are all related and have to do with the vile efforts of people who want to stop us from voting. It is up to each of us not to be surprised if we confront any of them and to all of us collectively push back at anyone who would deny our ability to case our votes and have them counted.
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The process in Chicago is cleaner than it’s ever been. I think we have David Orr perhaps more than anyone else to thank for that, as Cook County Clerk for so many years – having a reformer for all that time who was from outside any traditional party machine. I thought I’d been spoiled living in Iowa and Minnesota, but it’s honestly even smoother here and it has very obviously gotten better while I’ve lived here.
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My plan for the 2020 election was to go and turn in my ballot by myself with all senses on the alert - situational awareness, ya know? Then, if anything seemed amiss I planned to abort the mission and return in the company of my son in law. He’s large - 6’1" and shoulders twice as wide as mine. Then there are the black belts - judo, jujitsu, multiple flavors of karate, bokken. But this time I’m thinking that if I go to turn in my ballot and find anything amiss I will call the cops, the local democratic party, and the local NEWS station!
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