There are ways to insure that your mail-in ballot is counted. States like Oregon and my state of WA have a system where you can verify online that your ballot arrived and is counted. If you don’t trust putting the ballot in a mailbox, you can drop it off at a secure location like the local courthouse. Most cities and larger towns have GOTV help for homeless people, who can vote using a local landmark as an “address.”
VBM completely bypasses the issue of voter ID checks at the polls, or voting days where people can’t get off work, or are too ill to go to the polls. And of course it’s the only system appropriate for a pandemic where you’re risking your life going to the polls for in-person voting. Not just your life, but that of the volunteer poll workers who tend to be retired and the most at-risk demographic.
Of course it can take time to set up a good system. That’s the main issue with trying to get this in place for states that have no absentee ballot system at all. But for those states that do, absentee ballots should be extended.
The article made clear it is not a people of color “properlytrained issue. Rather, it is a racially targeted discriminatory issue based on the county trained ballot checkers!
If Vote by Mail is to work people need to dump misinformation, particularly that they’ve already assimilated and get information. Not trusting the Post Office is just damn silly. If there’s a place to invest distrust it’s in the people who receive your vote if you live in a GOP controlled state.
Just mail the damn thing. You can bet your ass your vote won’t be counted if you don’t cast it. If in person voting is not an option just mail the damn thing in. If the Mailman botches it he’s risking losing a very cushy job. If election officials toss it you did your best. Get over the doubt planted by those that don’t want you to vote and mail the damn thing in.
Here in TX, the Election Office itself could / should be much more transparent. The problem in TX is that once someone completes the application form and puts it into the mail, there is ZERO feedback from Elections and never an announcement as to when the Ballot is to be received by the voter.
Those who Vote in Person get a voter registration card...so it is not like it can't be done, In Texas County Commissioners need to step in and make demands of their County Election officials.
Wow. Historically the system has been fixed numerous times. Voting. Rights Act. Was struck down. Poll taxes were banned. Yet somehow there is always an obstacle to fix …racist hate can’t be fixed.
You’re not the problem. The huge number of people whose two possible outcomes are “bother mailing in a ballot” and “just skip it, it’s worth the trouble going all the way down there” are the problem.
"In order to become a naturalized citizen of the United States, until recently you had to answer this question: “What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?” The correct answer, according to the United States government, was, “The right to vote.” But that “right” has always been on shaky ground. Just as the Constitution once countenanced slavery, it also allowed voting to be restricted to property-holding white men. The Thirteenth Amendment expunged the stain of slavery from our basic law, but the Constitution has never fulfilled the democratic promise we associate with it. Put simply—and this is surprising to many people—there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to vote. Qualifications to vote in House and Senate elections are decided by each state, and the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”
Can and have VBM systems disenfranchise POC? Sure.
Would it lead to more disenfranchisement than in-person voting during a pandemic? Surely, not.
If we see a specific county or state doing VBM poorly, then we should call them out. However, I have a hard time believing POC would be worse off under VBM system that have been shown to radically increase turnout.
In what state are you voting? In Oregon, you don’t need a stamp to drop your ballot off at any number of ballot drop off sites (at schools, at libraries, post offices… i.e. at pretty much every publicly facing government office). And I’ve even had ballots forwarded to me in Washington after I moved away from Oregon, and I’ve had to update my info so they unregister me there.
In Washington, it’s also a vote-by-mail state, and there are ballot dropboxes everywhere, but the ballots themselves also are postage pre-paid so there’s no need to put your own stamp on them. I’ve seen mixed results in terms of turnout by demographic, but that turnout is almost always higher on special/non-presidential elections. Sure there are issues with mail delivery to some people - but that doesn’t negate the fact that those people can still obtain their ballots by picking them up in-person (oh God but that’s the same as voting in person!).
I think people should also be able to print their own ballots, though that opens up the need for them to have access to the internet and printers. Maybe there should be a service where people can have their ballot delivered to their house by some common carrier who delivers things to people oh wait that’s called the mail.
As to ‘special envelopes’, there’s a security sleeve that’s optional if you want to make it extra hard for someone to shine a laser through your ballot and see what you marked (in the highly likely event…), but otherwise just a return envelope that you have to sign. SO tough. Much harder than taking time off work and standing on line for hours, then reviewing your voter pamphlet in a tight little space while people wait on your ass to do their civic duty too. So much easier.
Washington resident here. I love our vote by mail system except I wish all ballots had to be received by Election Day like it is in Oregon. I have never heard that VBM creates problems with minorities.
WI law now requires that the clerk responsible for the absentee ballots not provide them until they have proof of a valid WI ID (such as an electronic image of the WI driver’s license) that exactly matches the name and address in the clerk’s voting registration records. Then before the absentee ballot is returned, the envelope enclosing the ballot must be signed and dated by the voter in front of a witness, and then the witness must also sign and date the envelope. So those living alone and in isolation due to the pandemic might have a difficult time finding a witness without breaking social distancing.
If the clerk’s office in Milwaukee goes outside of these guidelines, I suspect the GOP will protest and try to get all the ballots tossed.
New Mexico. There’s continued discussion about making ballot return envelopes postage paid, but this hasn’t yet been guaranteed. The extra envelope is to enclose the ballot to facilitate anonymizing prior to counting. When a marked ballot is received, the voter’s name is checked off as having voted, and the date received logged. Then the ballot is removed and put into a communal pile for later counting. That is, iff the signatures “match” and any additional stuff, like NMDL copy for first time voters, are present. If not, the voter’s record is further updated to note “ballot rejected.”
So, you trust the Internet, eh? And your virus-ridden PC, phone, or tablet?
I’ve never had to wait more than a few minutes to vote when standing in line because I’m able to come in during the 2-4 weeks of early voting that New Mexicans enjoy.
There is nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote. None, including all the amendments that you cited. It is one reason why the expiration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was such a tragedy.
You can believe whatever myths that you want, but the fact is that millions of Americans are deliberately and legally disenfranchised with no violation of any Constitutional right to vote because there isn’t one.
Governor Cuomo and the State of New York Board of Elections would like you to hold their beers while they explain to you the fine art of disenfranchisement.
The DNC needs to start recruiting people to go door to door in less affluent cities and rural areas and help potential voters fill out their forms and mail them.
