With the caveat that there is still a few hours left of polling places being open, election officials and voter advocates are beginning to express some relief that they’ve made it this far without any major election fiascos.
It’s almost as if the shift towards mail in voting and in person early voting helped election administrators avoid some of the worst issues (unconscionable lines, etc) that popped up on election days in the past. Imagine that.
America is still America. People still vote and have respect for the process. Of course, this is our last chance. It’s a close run thing. Never take it for granted.
There’s been an ongoing robocall campaign of millions of calls telling people to “stay home, stay safe”, happening over the past few weeks. Wish this had made the news sooner: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/03/robocall-election-day/?outputType=amp
I’m seeing reports of 2+ hour lines in WI, and I regard any voting line over 15m as unconscionable. But WI voters did brave unnecessarily long lines in the 2020 primary to eject a nakedly partisan gop supreme court judge.
I managed to get in and out in 10 minutes but live in rural Wisconsin. They had a ballot scanner which made things go much quicker then the machines from previous years.
Unlike some states that are sending out absentee ballots to all registered voters in light of the pandemic, Tennessee officials require residents to give a reason if they want an absentee ballot. Maybe they’re older, or have a disability, or decided it’s “impossible or unreasonable” to vote in person due to COVID. But if you’re someone who just wants to vote early , that doesn’t work.
State law says one reason you may obtain an absentee ballot is if “You are observing a religious holiday that prevents you from voting in person during the early voting period and on Election Day.”
So if there was a religion that simply declared Election Day — for any election — a holiday, it would serve as a legitimate reason to request a ballot no matter who you are …
Introducing: The Church of Universal Suffrage, an officially registered non-profit religious organization that exists purely to circumvent Republican voter suppression in Tennessee.
It was established earlier this month by Tim Jacobs , an employee of the state’s Department of Environment & Conservation.
That’s awesome, but I doubt it will survive the inevitable legal challenge once they get a few thousand converts.
It’s 4:45 pm in the West, and races are already being called. I knew AP and the rest just could not contain themselves…knowing that absentee/mail-in votes are counted after those cast at the polls: I’m listening to NPR repeating the races already called…but acknowledging the millions of uncounted mail-in ballot
No matter the fact the everyone in media knows this is a very different world than 2016. I am truly disappointed.
I hope they become a Mega Church. And that they bitch and moan like all the Segregationist Blatantly Political churches did during the Obama Administration’s observance of the tax exemption requirements.
At 6 AM my polling place (NY burbs, well-to-do, lived here 5 years and never waited more than 5 minutes) didn’t open due to tech issues. I went back at 10 AM and the line took about 25 minutes, no delay to vote once I got to the front. Apparently they rolled out a new iPad system that scans our licenses and matches signatures to the ones on record.
IMO if that prevents my ballot from being tossed for mismatch, it was worth it, but I had the flexibility to go back (and I’m a teacher, so on any other day I wouldn’t have been able to go back). But I have no guarantee that it was actually validating my signature.
Or at least they were until President Cornered Rat decided to try to steal the election through the extraordinary gambit of gaslighting the nation with false claims that he won while the votes are still being counted.