The Voting Thread (Procedures, Turnout, Legal Challenges)(Update: Trump to file suit in PA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, GA) (1 Viewer)

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    Lapaz

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    There is a lot of push-back from Trump on voting by mail, but most states allow it, and 1/3 allow it without any excuse. His rationale is that it will lead to vast fraud, but of course that isn't his real reason. His real reason is that he thinks it will be worse for conservatives, but studies have shown that states that have instituted much broader voting by mail haven't had any statistical changes in party voting.

    www.politico.com

    Stanford study: Mail voting doesn't benefit one party over another

    Coronavirus-spurred limits have intensified a push to allow more mail balloting in November.
    www.politico.com www.politico.com

    Voting Outside the Polling Place: Absentee, All-Mail and other Voting at Home Options

    Most states offer at least one method for any eligible voter to cast a ballot before Election Day. While some states provide early in-person voting, this webpage addresses absentee voting and all-mail voting.
    www.ncsl.org

    Although, normally voting by mail doesn't affect party votes, I bet it might this year if we have another resurgence of Covid, because I think the right is much more apt to discount the virus than the left. I know that is why Trump is against it.

    Whether you're left or right wing, expanding mail in votes is the right thing to do to reduce the likelihood of spreading the virus, to expand voter participation, and to make it easier for those that do show up to stay distant. It will also allow any people with susceptibilities to remain safer. I think voting by mail could be made extremely secure by having people vote using traditional postal mail, coupled with requiring a confirmation either by phone, email or text. If done by phone, then voters can provide confirmation that can include confirming their form number. If done by email or text, it can include a picture of their form, and then confirmation that that was their form. Rather than staffers individually calling people, this can be automated by having voters call the number, text the number, or email the address provided to them on their form. A website can even be created with a database of those that have voted, and perhaps a link to allow people to confirm their vote was correctly registered. For people without computers, a site can include a means to access the database over the phone with some confirmation information. These types of systems are used extensively by banks and other sites that need security, so I think they are mature enough to use. We could even use such a site for people to confirm their vote on the day of the election.
     
    MT15 said:
    He won’t. They never prosecute politicians who lie about their residences. The 2020 sitting VP put down the Indiana Governor’s residence as his home address, IIRC, so that he could vote in Indiana despite owning no property there and not residing there for over 4 years. They did nothing.
    Click to expand...
    His family actually owns a ton of property in Indiana. Commercial property though. Mostly consisting of shuddered gas stations with leaking underground storage tanks too. At least Pence had actually lived in the state and at the address he used. Meadows has never set foot on the property he used and should be publicly dragged for it.
     
    Idk, this doesn’t seem like real fraud to me. He has to vote somewhere, right? As long as he doesn’t vote in two places then I don’t really care. It is just the height of hypocrisy when paired with his crying about voter fraud though, just not worth any sort of prosecution, I don’t think.
     
    MT15 said:
    Idk, this doesn’t seem like real fraud to me. He has to vote somewhere, right? As long as he doesn’t vote in two places then I don’t really care. It is just the height of hypocrisy when paired with his crying about voter fraud though, just not worth any sort of prosecution, I don’t think.
    Click to expand...
    Fraud is fraud.
    Burn him.
     
    Its a shame this day and age this is happening. The fact that there is a lawsuit and not arrests just blows my mind...

    Pro-Trump group sent armed members door-to-door in Colorado to “intimidate” voters: Lawsuit​


    he USEIP is also working with the Colorado Republican Party on its "Election Integrity Operations," according to the Times Recorder. A USEIP member is in charge of the GOP's program and has given joint presentations with Epp, the group's co-founder. Heidi Ganahl, the leading Republican candidate for Colorado governor, promoted the group during a recent event, declaring that they are "doing great things."
    Click to expand...

    Defendants' objectives are clear. By planning to, threatening to, and actually deploying armed agents to knock on doors throughout the state of Colorado, USEIP is engaged in voter intimidation," the lawsuit states. "USEIP's public-facing actions are a clear signal to Colorado voters — especially voters of color — that to vote in an upcoming election means facing interrogation by potentially armed and threatening USEIP agents at their doorstep thereafter."
    The lawsuit claims that some members have worn "badges" and falsely accused voters of fraud.
    Click to expand...

     
    Optimus Prime said:
    Ha!
    =========================
    Mark Meadows, who grew up in Florida, moved to North Carolina in the nineteen-eighties and opened Aunt D’s, a sandwich shop in Highlands. He later sold the restaurant and started a real-estate company with a line in vacation properties. (He showed a few to my parents, in the nineties.) He became active in local Republican politics, and, in 2012, ran for Congress and won, going on to represent North Carolina’s Eleventh District until March, 2020, when he resigned the seat to become President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.

    Earlier that month, he sold his twenty-two-hundred-square-foot home in Sapphire. He and his wife, Debbie, also had a condo in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. But, as the summer passed and the election neared, Meadows had not yet purchased a new residence in what had been his home state. On September 19th, about three weeks before North Carolina’s voter-registration deadline for the general election, Meadows filed his paperwork.

    On a line that asked for his residential address—“where you physically live,” the form instructs—Meadows wrote down the address of a fourteen-by-sixty-two-foot mobile home in Scaly Mountain. He listed his move-in date for this address as the following day, September 20th.

    Meadows does not own this property and never has. It is not clear that he has ever spent a single night there. (He did not respond to a request for comment.) The previous owner, who asked that we not use her name, now lives in Florida. “That was just a summer home,” she told me, when I called her up the other day. She seemed surprised to learn that the residence was listed on the Meadowses’ forms.

    The property sits in the southern Appalachian mountains, at about four thousand feet, in the bend of a quiet road above a creek in Macon County. She and her husband bought it in 1985. “We’d come up there for three to four months when my husband was living,” she said. Her husband died several years ago, and the house sat mostly unused for some time afterward, she said, because she had “nobody to go up there with anymore.”

    She only rented it out twice, she told me. The first renter, she said, was Debbie Meadows, who, according to the former owner, reserved the house for two months at some point within the past few years—she couldn’t remember exactly when—but only spent one or two nights there. The Meadowses’ kids had visited the place, too, she said. The former owner was in Florida at the time, but her neighbors, the Talleys, whom she described as friends of the Meadowses’, debriefed her later. As for Mark Meadows, she said, “He did not come. He’s never spent a night in there.”................

    www.newyorker.com

    Why Did Mark Meadows Register to Vote at an Address Where He Did Not Reside?

    In September, 2020, Donald Trump’s then chief of staff claimed to live in a mobile home in North Carolina.
    www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com



    Click to expand...

    Looks like his wife is involved too

     
    So the Supreme Court just used the shadow docket to throw out the WI state district maps (not the US Congressional map). It was dissented publicly by two justices. This was after the SC declined to make AL correct its gerrymandered maps “because it is too close to the election”.

     
    Would you support this?

    I’m on the fence on it honestly
    ========================

    The first step toward ending our voting wars is to recognize that every citizen should play a role in shaping our nation’s destiny.


    In the wake of changes that made voting more convenient, and resulted in record turnout in 2020, state after state is making it harder for citizens to cast a ballot.

    Congress is deadlocked on whether the federal government should protect this most basic of all democratic rights. False claims of election-rigging in 2020 led to a violent attack on the very process of transferring power.

    As a nation, we vacillate between inclusion and exclusion, between embracing democracy or retreating.

    Breaking this cycle requires a game-changer. We propose universal voting.


    Under this system, every U.S. citizen would be legally obligated to vote, just as every citizen is obligated to serve on juries.

    By recognizing that all of us, as a matter of civic duty, have an obligation to shape our shared project of democratic self-government, we could move from our 2020 voter turnout high — some 66.8 percent of eligible voters — much closer to 100 percent democracy.

    Universal voting takes seriously the Declaration of Independence’s insistence that government is legitimate only when it is based on the “consent of the governed.”

    The Founders did not say “some of the governed” (even 66.8 percent). Including everyone in our system of government would live up to the promise made at the birth of our republic.

    Universal voting would tear down barriers and elevate our civic obligations. It could undergird other reforms and make clear that our country’s commitment to democracy is unapologetic, confident and complete.

    As a public responsibility, voting is no less important than jury duty. Universal civic-duty voting would put an end to legal assaults on voting rights. Those responsible for organizing elections would be required to resist all efforts at voter suppression.


    By bringing all citizens into our democratic experiment, universal voting would tell those who run political campaigns to stop treating elections like invitations to exclusive parties.

    There would no longer be an A-list of “likely voters” and B- and C-level lists of those less likely to participate.

    Political candidates would have to appeal to all of us, rather than strategize on how to turn out their base while discouraging the other side’s supporters from casting ballots.


    More than two dozen democratic countries have versions of compulsory participation. One of the most successful models is Australia’s. The United States adopted the secret ballot after Australia tried it first. We should do the same with universal voting……..

    Those with a moral objection to voting could assert conscientious-objector status, as they can for the draft. To avoid the compounding of fines and fees of the sort disproportionately imposed on low-income people of color, we propose that any fine imposed for failure to vote — no more than $20 — not be compounded with interest and penalties, nor could it be the basis for any criminal warrant. And the penalty could be waived in exchange for an hour of community service…….

     
    Optimus Prime said:
    Would you support this?

    I’m on the fence on it honestly
    ========================

    The first step toward ending our voting wars is to recognize that every citizen should play a role in shaping our nation’s destiny.


    In the wake of changes that made voting more convenient, and resulted in record turnout in 2020, state after state is making it harder for citizens to cast a ballot.

    Congress is deadlocked on whether the federal government should protect this most basic of all democratic rights. False claims of election-rigging in 2020 led to a violent attack on the very process of transferring power.

    As a nation, we vacillate between inclusion and exclusion, between embracing democracy or retreating.

    Breaking this cycle requires a game-changer. We propose universal voting.


    Under this system, every U.S. citizen would be legally obligated to vote, just as every citizen is obligated to serve on juries.

    By recognizing that all of us, as a matter of civic duty, have an obligation to shape our shared project of democratic self-government, we could move from our 2020 voter turnout high — some 66.8 percent of eligible voters — much closer to 100 percent democracy.

    Universal voting takes seriously the Declaration of Independence’s insistence that government is legitimate only when it is based on the “consent of the governed.”

    The Founders did not say “some of the governed” (even 66.8 percent). Including everyone in our system of government would live up to the promise made at the birth of our republic.

    Universal voting would tear down barriers and elevate our civic obligations. It could undergird other reforms and make clear that our country’s commitment to democracy is unapologetic, confident and complete.

    As a public responsibility, voting is no less important than jury duty. Universal civic-duty voting would put an end to legal assaults on voting rights. Those responsible for organizing elections would be required to resist all efforts at voter suppression.


    By bringing all citizens into our democratic experiment, universal voting would tell those who run political campaigns to stop treating elections like invitations to exclusive parties.

    There would no longer be an A-list of “likely voters” and B- and C-level lists of those less likely to participate.

    Political candidates would have to appeal to all of us, rather than strategize on how to turn out their base while discouraging the other side’s supporters from casting ballots.


    More than two dozen democratic countries have versions of compulsory participation. One of the most successful models is Australia’s. The United States adopted the secret ballot after Australia tried it first. We should do the same with universal voting……..

    Those with a moral objection to voting could assert conscientious-objector status, as they can for the draft. To avoid the compounding of fines and fees of the sort disproportionately imposed on low-income people of color, we propose that any fine imposed for failure to vote — no more than $20 — not be compounded with interest and penalties, nor could it be the basis for any criminal warrant. And the penalty could be waived in exchange for an hour of community service…….

    Click to expand...
    I am absolutely against compulsory voting. Sorry, freedom to vote or not vote is a core value, as is freedom to live life and practice whatever religion or not practice any religion or be straight or not straight. The only compulsory thing I'm willing to concede is paying taxes, and maybe single payer health care. Outside of that, nope, not on board with it.
     
    DaveXA said:
    I am absolutely against compulsory voting. Sorry, freedom to vote or not vote is a core value, as is freedom to live life and practice whatever religion or not practice any religion or be straight or not straight. The only compulsory thing I'm willing to concede is paying taxes, and maybe single payer health care. Outside of that, nope, not on board with it.
    Click to expand...
    I'm kind of on the fence with @Optimus Prime on this one.

    I can see some very solid arguments for it. The article points out some of them, in particular that a lack of compulsory voting can shift focus to galvanising a small portion of the electorate and even actively seeking to discourage other parts of the electorate. As far as forcing people to vote goes, as long as there's the option to abstain through not marking or spoiling a ballot, they're not forced to vote for anyone. It means that if they don't want to vote, they would have to do so actively and consciously. From the point of politicians, they still have to assume everyone is going to turn up at the ballot box and potentially vote for or against them, which should force them to consider a potentially much broader range of the electorate than they may do at present.

    And in theory, compulsory voting should be accompanied by the appropriate measures to make voting easily achievable for everyone (naturally, because obliging people to do something that's not possible for them to do is inherently wrong).

    But I'm not sure we can assume that compulsory voting would be accompanied by the necessary measures to make it viable in practice. Which would raise the prospect of people being fined for circumstances outside their control. The article cites Australia; it appears the penalties for not voting vary by State, but in Queensland, reportedly over 19,000 people were issued fines for not voting during the pandemic (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-04/sunshine-coast-ecq-fines-for-covid-vote/100190272). That excluded people not voting for the first time as well, and 7,000 who had the fee dropped for having what was found to be a "valid and sufficient reason". That's still a lot of people; can we assume they're all being willfully negligent of their social responsibilities, or might a lot of them have good reasons for not voting, just not reasons they've either been able to present, or reasons wrongfully found to not be "valid and sufficient"?

    There's also the question of whether compulsory voting would be meaningful. That is, how would the people who would otherwise have not voted engage in practice? Would they engage with the campaigning and make a considered choice, or just turn up and vote for 'whoever' or spoil their ballot?

    And in as much as reform to make voting easier and extend outreach accompanied by compulsory voting might increase engagement and turnout, how much of that would be down to the reforms, and how much down to voting being compulsory? If we can potentially achieve the goals of increasing turnout and engagement with reforms but without making voting compulsory, isn't that an argument against compulsory voting in itself?

    So, yes, on the fence.
     
    Voter turnout was the highest it had ever been in 2020

    That record high was 67% of eligible voters. A full third of people who could have voted didn't

    For a country that has turned politics and government into a national pastime, that's kind of shameful

    According to the article in Australia you have to vote but you don't have to vote for anyone or anything, you have the option to turn in a blank ballot of write in Mickey Mouse

    I do think that election day needs to be a national holiday, paid time off to vote, plenty of polling locations

    basically, the opposite of what a lot of the new laws say

    When people don't fill out their census that has an effect on everyone else around them

    Same is true for those who don't vote
     
    Oops:

    “A former Trump administration official now running for Congress in New Hampshire voted twice during the 2016 primary election season, potentially violating federal voting law and leaving him at odds with the Republican Party’s intense focus on “election integrity.”

    Matt Mowers, a leading Republican primary candidate looking to unseat Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, cast an absentee ballot in New Hampshire’s 2016 presidential primary, voting records show. At the time, Mowers served as the director of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign in the pivotal early voting state.

    Four months later, after Christie’s bid fizzled, Mowers cast another ballot in New Jersey’s Republican presidential primary, using his parents’ address to re-register in his home state, documents The Associated Press obtained through a public records request show.”

    apple.news

    Trump aide seeking New Hampshire House seat voted in 2 states in 2016 — POLITICO

    Matt Mowers cast an absentee ballot in New Hampshire’s 2016 presidential primary.
    apple.news apple.news

    This is actually probably a violation of law, but completely unenforceable. He moved back in with his parents and moved his voter registration, thus being able to vote (again) in the Republican primary in a different state. Federal law prohibits voting twice in any election, whether general or primary, but there’s no enforcement mechanism. So, I guess this just mostly illustrates the hypocrisy of Rs fear mongering about voter fraud. They’re okay with it when they get a chance to do it.
     
    More examples of widespread voter fraud
    ===============================

    Two Florida men charged with filing ballots in two states in the 2020 presidential election confessed to voter fraud, according to court records.

    Charles F. Barnes and Jay Ketcik, residents of The Villages in Sumter County, Fla., pleaded guilty to casting more than one ballot in the election. Voter fraud is a third-degree felony that can result in a maximum five-year prison sentence.

    Barnes, 64, and Ketcik, 63, will be able to defer prosecution if they abide by the court-ordered requirements that State Attorney Bill Gladson set, according to pre-trial intervention documents. The men will avoid further punishment if they complete 50 hours of community service, attend a 12-week adult civics class and meet regularly with a supervising officer, among a handful of other requirements.

    “If you comply with these conditions during the period of deferred prosecution, no criminal prosecution concerning this charge will be instituted in this county,” Gladson wrote. “If the defendant violates the terms of this agreement, and this case is returned to the court’s docket, this document shall be admissible as an admission of guilt.”

    Ketcik, a registered Republican, was among three Central Florida residents who had expressed support for former president Donald Trump before being arrested in December following reports that they cast more than one vote during the 2020 election, according to various Florida news media outlets. Barnes, who has no party affiliation, was arrested in January and faced similar charges. Both men were released from jail after paying a $2,000 bond.

    Ketcik voted by mail in Florida along with casting an absentee ballot in Michigan, prosecutors say. An arrest report shows that Barnes previously had an address in Connecticut..........

     
    We drove through The Villages last January just out of curiosity. I didn’t much care for it. There’s a fake downtown area that reminds me of Disney, it’s made to look older than it is, just has a fake look to it, like a movie set. And I am not keen on only having old people for neighbors.

    Just not my thing.
     

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