This story first appeared 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.
In spite fo heroic measures by some, the GOP will inevitably try, and possibly succeed, in compromising mail in ballots.
So postal workers are scrubbing postmark dates?
If voting by mail (which I do routinely in Ohio) is indeed ripe for fraud, then it is ripe for fraud for everyone and all classes of voters. Seniors at home, residents of nursing homes, business men traveling, military and residents overseas, out-of-state students - can’t they all commit the same fraud? If you ban it for some, it seems to me you have to ban it for all. Either get to the poll or don’t vote. (I don’t advocate this at all, just pointing out the illogic of their stance).
This issue has been intentionally made confusing. As long as it remains that way people will give up and that’s the goal. I’ve yet to see anyone break this down into simple terms.
Any system premised on election integrity that disenfranchises so much as one eligible voter must be fixed.
No legal ballot may be rejected for administrative reasons.
If the intent of any voting legislation or rule is to target a group for suppression it’s authors are guilty of a felony in the 3rd degree with mandatory minimums designed to discourage that behavior.
Clear it up and get it done.
Whether the Ballot You Mail Is Counted May Depend on Where You Vote
Whether the Ballot You Mail Is Lost, Invalidated, Rejected May Depend on Which Red State You Live In
FIFY
Simple solution, as in 2000: COUNT EVERY VOTE!
No. If ballots go through a postage meter, they may not have dated postmarks. If turne in to the Post Office, they may miss being stamped with a postmark for any number of reasons–including the demand to process tens of thousands of mailed ballots. And postmarks are often illegible because of worn machines in the Post Office, being fed in to the machine the wrong way, getting skewed in the machine, or just having the ink rubbed off in the mail handling or delivery process. Take a look at your mail and see how many postmarks are not legible.
It hasn’t happened to any appreciable degree in the states that have “organiucally grown into” a 100% VBM system as the article puts it, like in my Washington state. It’s the most tamper-resistant method, the one that expands the franchise more than any other voting system. Every state should be moving towards it, even if it has to be baby steps with expanded absentee ballots. Especially this year.
The way to address and promote it is a simple sentence – “President Trump votes by mail in Florida, why can’t everyone vote that way?”
I don’t think that’s quite accurate. The article clearly documented variability at the county level.
My mail is perfect. I have the greatest mail in the history of mail. In fact, people are always saying to me “sir, your mail is perfect…how do you do it?” and I tell them it must just be luck or talent or some combination thereof.
Perhaps the Post Office ought to go a layer deeper into this crap.
1 Right now their destruction is in the wet dreams of the GOP.
2 The Democrats want to preserve and strengthen the USPS.
3 The more votes counted the better Democrats do.
If I worked for the PO I’d see that writing as on the wall. I’d bust my ass to make sure every ballot was clearly post marked and if I had to I’d hand deliver them to the Elections Office. 2020 is an existential election for the USPS.
Not enough emphasis is put on the fact Rethugs, including the 5 white guys sitting on SCOTUS, are hell bent on taking the vote away from as many voters as they possibly can. It is the only way they can win in some elections. This is a problem that could reasonably be solved if not for the Rethug agenda.
It seems one can reasonably deduct from the article that more legit votes are tossed than should be if your agenda were to gather as many legit votes as possible.
Good point, but I was focusing that most GOP voter suppression hijinks seem to originate at the Red State level…
Sorry, the post office will be in liquidation by then. Ballots must be sent by either fedex or ups depending on which one wins a contract with your county to provide a 5% discount for pickup and delivery (which must be scheduled at least 5 days in advance to avoid the rush).
There are a lot of people who would love this scenario.
Don’t be sorry. The jive you just wrote been written for 20 years now. It’s always just around the corner…like The End of Times. If the GOP were dumb enough ( they aren’t ) to wack the PO Before the election they’d cease to exist after it.
Thanks for republishing this great article. We as citizens should relentlessly attack the GOP for its constant efforts to limit the voting opportunity of any citizen or see that certain votes cast are not counted. The vast majority of Americans recognize that the right of all citizens to vote is the basis of our democracy. The voting suppression committed by GOP electeds and party officials needs to be exposed.
Context counts in framing the story. The GOP seeks to eliminate millions of democrat votes under the guise of stopping fraud. They have historically failed to identify voting fraud beyond a handful of cases.
An old trick to toss ballots that has been popular with the GOP involves the signature. The signature of any individual varies with every signing. There is no such thing as an exact match. The GOP seeks to not count the ballots of Democrats that do not bare EXACT MATCH signatures.
How many voting Americans would go to any length to ensure that their ballot has not been rejected by GOP pretext? All Americans should be granted the legal means to ensure that their vote is actually counted. If the GOP targets vote rejection in swing states and districts of many of the 60 million registered Democrats, they and all citizens should be legally granted some form of proof that their vote has been counted in a given election.
Democracy Docket (https://www.democracydocket.com/our-cases/) is one of many organizations that is fighting to preserve the right to vote. Obviously, it is up to each and all of us to make sure our vote gets counted.
Remember back 20 years or so when people waited in long lines to vote in person, and then when it came time to officially close the polls those people waiting in line couldn’t vote? And the simple remedy that arose was to send a poll worker(s) outside, and mark the end of the line. The people still in line could vote, it just kept someone who arrived at 7:03 (our polls close at 7PM) from voting.
The exact match verification, or verifying one’s signature to what’s on file with the state, bothers me because as I keep saying my signature has changed over time. My signature has changed as my eyesight has changed. And then there’s the did I sign it with my full middle name or just initial? Back when we signed the poll book I could check which way I was listed.
How does vote by mail work? If I was to vote by mail how is it tabulated and how is it determined that the vote came from a registered voter? I don’t know anything about this and im curious. I live in a small town in Texas so I doubt very much if will be an issue for me , they’re gonna make me go to a poll,but everything seems to point to mail in voting being the way to go.
Voting in the U.S. is a system run by hundreds of state and local governments using a broad variety of methodologies, inconsistent standards, and often managed by people who have vested interests, some of whom are wholly corrupt. What could possibly go wrong?
This is one of those areas where a process developed in the 18th century is in serious need of reform and modernization.