This article was first published at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Libtards waNt illegaLs to Vote iN GreAter numbers than TheY diD in 2016, 3,000,000. NeVer Mind, trumP will wiN electorAl in samE landslide as Previous!!!1!one!!!11!!!
The GOPfascists will be very happy to delay/cancel/interrupt elections. Free and fair elections are the thing they fear the most. Donât let them win this argument.
This is a bullshit article.
âAmong the possible downsides of a quick transition are increased voter fraud, logistical snafus and reduced turnout among voters who move frequently or lack a mailing address.â
Letâs address that starting premise:
increased voter fraud - "While all types of voter fraud are rare, including mail-in ballot fraud, Patrick said, states must take necessary precautions. " Its literally addressed by their own reporting, but they insist upon presenting it as a looming problem.
logistical snafus - Multiple, very large (Hello, California and Florida!) states have been offering Vote By Mail options for a number of years. A number of states (Hello Oregon, you with the highest voter participation rates in the country!) exclusively conduct their elections via mail ballots. The point I am making, is all the the âlogistical snafusâ presented in this article have either been addressed or are just as prevalent (if not more so) in same day balloting. The collective experience from the âlaboratories of Democracyâ that states are supposed to be, provides a solid blueprint for expanding it into the rest of the states.
reduced turnout among voters who move frequently or lack a mailing address - This one in particular really gets me. The fact of the matter is, people who receive a VBM ballot are significantly more likely to vote than those that donât. In my county alone, its roughly 40% higher. Oregon routinely beats the nation in voter participation. Oh, and just to be clear, voters who lack a mailing address are usually prevented from voting same day as wellâŚsince they canât verify what precinct they are in.
This is horrible reporting, and it stuns me that it is from ProPublica, who I used to think was a pretty solid organization.
ProPublica points out the problems which if not done correctly can be issues.
BUT the solution is not to bag on vote-by-mail, which works great in WA and OR (CA is a cautionary tail as our bill made it optional by county, which did not work well as some folks were mailed ballots and did not expect to get them, i.e. the system was not well explained) it is to see that a robust bill is put in place at the federal level, rather than allow state and local officials - of wildly different levels of competence and at times on the R side - venality - to potentially screw it up.
We do too much of this bed wetting on our side of the fence, worried about if it is perfect. The fucking house is on fire and the living room is filled with boxes of cordite.
Both-siderism means double-plus-good reporting, dontcha know!
This isnât a both siderism style article, however.
Its explicitly aimed at dampening down enthusiasm for a voting method that is (1) more efficient (2) provides a paper trail (3) and, in light of the pandemic, considerably safer for the voters.
Jessica Huseman needs to be called out and publishing this sort of tripe.
The elephant in the room (in this article) is the presence of people who are doing everything they can to make voting as unpleasant and messy as possible.
The âthrow up oneâs handsâ type of unpleasant and messy
The type of article which breeds despair.
Fortunately the people in the 1940s who got an army of 100,000 to 10,000,000 in two or three years did not read those kinds of articles
I agree the ProPublica article was tilted heavily on the downsides of VBM, and not just for states that would have to start from scratch. It implied â without actually saying it â that states like Oregon and Washington are subject to voter fraud, when itâs been working just fine.
It might be a nightmare for some states to convert to at least optional VBM by November, but I donât see any alternative. If one of the barriers is the cost, then the Federal government should step in and help with funding. Of course, expanding the franchise is the last thing the GOP wants, but we might win that fight with the right messaging. At the local level, even Republicans want to be able to vote.
Fuchs said that the state will likely mail absentee ballot applications to all voters over the age of 65 and give younger people the option of applying for a mail-in ballot. âOur goal is to make people aware of their options and empower them as to their choices,â she said.
So basically, Georgia is going to automatically mail ballots straight to Trumpâs demographic, and everybody else has to go out of their way to ask for one.
Funny, that.
My takeaway was that VBM is good, not perfect, and that expecting states to implement VBM who have never done it prior to the election is unrealistic and will result in yet another electoral clusterfucque. If done properly, it works great. But that assumes a level of competence and funding on the part of the states and counties that is not in evidence. It also assumes a period of time we simply donât have. The VBM ballots will need to be ready for distribution by the end of august or early september.
By the '24 cycle, I would expect to see VBM pretty much standardized across the country. But to try to rush it now would really play more into the hands of those wanting to suppress the vote through chaos and confusion.
Actually, thatâs incorrect on several levels.
In Florida, for example (a state that DOES use VBM), we are holding our non presidential primaries in August(which, like every election will also have VBM votes). So we wonât even know who is going to be on the ballots by August.
Secondly, and this may vary by state, but its roughly the same, ballots are mailed out 30 days in advance of the election. So that would be the first week of October, not August or September.
Thirdly, the time frame and mechanics for designing and printing same day ballots is the same for VBM ballots. Because they are going to be counted by the same machines. There is the additional printing cost of the envelopes, and the return envelopes, but in the scheme of things, thatâs a relatively minor issue.
Actually, thatâs an imprecise statement as well. All states provide absentee ballots to at least some voters. 2/3 of the states donât require any excuse to receive such a ballot in the mail.
And they do so relatively competently. Funding could be a problem for some states, but thatâs what we need Congress to step up to the plate for, instead of setting up unaccountable slush funds for the Fortune 500 corporations.
There were a whopping 10 cases of voter fraud in Oregon in 2016, out of 2,051,448 votes cast. Voter fraud is a complete non-issue in regards to vote by mail.
The problems mentioned in this article are EASY to resolve, for the most part just copy what has worked elsewhere. In Arizona with a very large Latino population and numerous native tribes, Ballots are printed in both English and on the reverse side in Spanish and designed to be read by machine in such a way that if you answer on one side it wonât pick up the other. Exceptions to the requirement for vote by mail can be made for tribes that have lousy mail service. People that need a specific language ballot make a request for that ballot ahead of time and those are printed and mailed as needed to those that require them. Signatures are checked by hand by trained election personnel who look for basic matches not perfection. If a personâs signature has changed too much they are notified by phone call and asked to submit a new signature card which is scanned into the system, their ballot is held snd checked. All of this can be made a requirement of the law. Using Georgia which LOOKS for excuses to throw out ballots from legitimate voters as an example of what can go wrong is not a good example. Georgia can be reined in by making the best examples of vote by mail the requirement for a National vote by mail program. Fonts can be specified, paper can be specified, whether voters are given a chance to correct ballots can be specified. Ballot harvesting by those with evil intent can be forbidden, in AZ we have a different situation regarding ballot harvesting, it isa common method for Latinx communities to wait until someone from an appropriate organization comes by to pick up ballots. Because of that ballot harvesting actually results in more ballots getting delivered. The solution is not a blanket ban but a requirement for those organizations that want to harvest ballots to register with the state and be given credentials, and increase the penalty for failure to turn in legal ballots and for filling out another personâs ballot improperly to be a felony and include serious jail time. The solution to voters who are impaired and need help filling out a ballot has already been handled in AZ by having the person who helped fill out the ballot provide name, contact information, and signature under penalty. Funds to switch over voting machines and to get manufacturers to produce more are already included in the proposed law. These problems can be handled by including best practices in the law.
OT and fyi⌠couldnât help but notice the brand of hand sanitizer shown in the photo --> Uline. Uline is owned by Liz and Dick Uihlein. Hereâs something about them from a June 7,2018 NY Times article:
The Midwestern couple has joined the upper pantheon of Republican donors alongside names like Koch, Mercer and Adelson. They have spent roughly $26 million on the current election cycle, supporting more than 60 congressional candidates, working outside the party establishment to advance a combative, hard-right conservatism, from Washington to the smallest town.
Mr. Uihlein (pronounced YOU-line), a scion of one of the founders of Schlitz beer, underwrites firebrand anti-establishment candidates who typically defend broad access to assault weaponsand assail transgender rights. He has also bankrolled partisan newspapers and backed Roy Moore in Alabama even after he was accused of sexual misconduct with underage girls.
Hereâs the article: The Most Powerful Conservative CoupleYouâve Never Heard Of
The âfraudâ as describe in the article strikes me as a misnomer. The provided examples:
There is bipartisan consensus that mail-in ballots are the form of voting most vulnerable to fraud. A 2005 commission led by President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III â George W. Bushâs secretary of state â concluded that these ballots âremain the largest source of potential voter fraud.â Ballot harvesting scandals, in which political operatives tamper with absentee ballots that voters have entrusted to them, have marred recent elections in North Carolina and Texas.
are felony election tampering, not what Iâd consider fraud. Hmm⌠NC and TX⌠which party could have possibly been the instigator?
Sums this article up nicely.
The superiority of VBM is and has been clear for years (thank you WA and OR for pioneering the way). The question isnât âshouldâ we do VBM, but âwhatâ we need to do to implement 50-state VBM in 8 months.
There is no other alternative if you want to preserve our Democracy during a pandemic which will very likely still be active in November.
Oh, itâs to hard⌠Please, this is not that difficult, just do the federal and make it standardized for each state.
Following the same federal guidelines, font and so on, each state would then do their state and local elections to mail into the state capital in a separate mailing. Would be one helluva boost to the Post Office as well.