One-fifth of all mail-in ballots disqualified in NYC primary, signaling possible November crisis

[Bugenhagen]

Why are we allowed to go to stores, bars, schools, public buildings, and large gatherings as long as we are wearing masks and social distancing as much as possible then? You didn't answer the question. Here is the statement:




I've been to very busy voting booths in very busy parts of town and there's never more people than your average downtown hipster bar on a Friday night (thank you early voting!) Bonus, they're more spaced too! My locality had something like 15 voting booths open. We can open more so we limit the number of people to no more than 100-150 at a time. People are already waiting in massive queues safely, and socially distanced, to get tested for COVID. We have both the hardware and the available people to do it and the COVID testing lines were the perfect experiment. Here's another idea. Break up voting into into 50 stations, and make voting go from November 4th to November 10th. Allow POPULATION_SIZE / BOOTHS / 6 people per day, organized by last name, to go to these booths between 8am and 8pm.

So the democrats are yet again inconsistent:

1. The pandemic is too dangerous so we need to stay inside so we need to restrict people's movements
2. Protests are too important to stay inside so we need to allow people to congregate to express their first amendment rights
3. The pandemic is too dangerous to allow people to congregate to express their first amendment right to vote

Importantly, voting is at least as important as the first amendment right to protest - why the inconsistency? This fact pattern makes no actual sense.



Early voting has successfully reduced queue sizes since it's inception. For the people who cannot go to a voting booth because of active COVID we already have a solution for those special cases called absentee ballots. The goal is to reduce the number of absentee votes because they cause problems and allow for election interference even through honest mistakes, not increase the number of absentee votes to the limit of the population.

People who are diagnosed as ill, the day, few days, week before and there may be lots, how do they absentee ballot? What would the process be?

Sanitary measures making lines huge. Gop funded voter intimidation agents prowling the lines (they wanted retired seals as more scary).

The problem postal voting is largely restricted to friends, family or others 'helping' elderly & demented voters fill their's out.

Ballot harvesting (collecting votes for drop off at a center) is not really a factor with postal voting other than granny is going to vote Biden so I'm not putting her vote in the mail.

In any case it will just be a fraction of a percent and you can be sure Conservatives will be doing it more so it will be at least balanced.

Meanwhile in Australia... These would be perfect for voting queues.

Fix the fucking postage stamp problem, job done.

 

[gwb-trading]

Today everyone on Donald Trump's mailing list in North Carolina received an email urging them to vote via mail-in ballots. The email had a subject of "Request your ballot". The "request your ballot' link in the email took you to Trump's campaign website rather than your county website to request an absentee ballot. The campaign website tries to make you donate and give more information -- it is not even known if the last step actually requests an official N.C. absentee ballot for you or if the campaign website sends you "customized" one.

Trump encourages NC supporters to vote by mail, as he attacks voting by mail
https://www.wral.com/trump-encourag...y-mail-as-he-attacks-voting-by-mail/19232331/

President Donald Trump on Tuesday expanded his mail-in voting message, encouraging North Carolina supporters to vote absentee even as he continued to assail vote-by-mail.

"We're going on to win a tremendous election in November, to be exact November 3 in North Carolina," Trump told supporters who'd dialed into a telephone rally. "You can request absentee ballots right now. Absentee ballots are great."

In recent months, Trump has increasingly tried to discredit mail-in voting. He falsely tweeted in July: "Mail-In Voting is already proving to be a catastrophic. The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race."

Election experts have told CNN there is no real difference between absentee voting and no-excuse mail voting and the two are "essentially the same thing."

During Tuesday's telerally, Trump encouraged supporters to "watch that other people aren't cheating, because that's what they're looking to do."

At the same time, he told his audience: "Absentee voting is a secure process. It's initiated by the voter -- you request it -- and every voter is verified. Every vote is verified. It's the exact opposite of Democrats' voter fraud scheme. They want to mail ballots to every eligible voter all over the state."

North Carolina marks the third battleground state where Trump has signaled supporters to cast their votes by mail; he has made similar comments to supporters in Arizona and Florida. On Monday, campaign surrogate and Trump son Eric Trump encouraged supporters to vote absentee as well, telling them at a bus tour stop, "In Florida you have an honest system, so vote absentee. Your vote will be counted; it's real."

Calls for supporters to vote absentee may belie a larger concern amongst Republicans -- that they trail, significantly, in absentee ballot requests. Per data compiled by North Carolina, as of August 12, a total of 88,212 registered Democrats had requested absentee ballots, compared with just 33,546 registered Republican voters there. In North Carolina, any registered voter can request a mail-in absentee ballot, and no excuse is required to vote absentee by mail. Ballots must be received by the board of elections by the Tuesday before Election Day to be counted.

The North Carolina Democratic Party fired back in a statement Wednesday.

"Donald Trump's botched response to this pandemic is the reason so many North Carolinians are choosing to vote by absentee ballot this year in the first place," communications director Austin Cook told CNN. "Voting by mail in our state -- that is, voting by absentee ballot -- is safe, secure and reliable, and that's why Trump, his family and advisers have all voted by mail in the past. While the NCDP is hard at work engaging voters and encouraging them to vote in the safest and most convenient way for them, the Trump campaign's incoherent message on voting by mail is only hurting our democracy and his own party."

But even as Trump encouraged supporters to vote absentee, he couldn't resist casting doubt on the process, warning, "We're stopping really some very important items that they want. They want to do things that are very unfair with mail-in ballots, and they want to make sure that they're covered because it just is going to create a rigged election, in my opinion."

"President Trump has consistently and rightly said that where a voter cannot make it to the polls, they should request an absentee ballot," Thea McDonald, the Trump campaign's deputy press secretary, told CNN on Wednesday. "The President has also correctly distinguished between chaos-ridden universal mail-in voting systems, which led to New York's and California's train wreck primaries, and traditional absentee mail voting systems, like the tried and true system in North Carolina -- a distinction Democrats and many in the mainstream media purposely ignore to sow confusion."

The most notable recent case of alleged ballot fraud occurred during the 2018 midterm elections, when North Carolina Republican operative Leslie McCrae Dowless was accused of falsifying ballots on behalf of GOP congressional candidate Mark Harris, a candidate Trump supported.

 

[Buy1Sell2]

Today everyone on Donald Trump's mailing list in North Carolina received an email urging them to vote via mail-in ballots. The email had a subject of "Request your ballot". The "request your ballot' link in the email took you to Trump's campaign website rather than your county website to request an absentee ballot. The campaign website tries to make you donate and give more information -- it is not even known if the last step actually requests an official N.C. absentee ballot for you or if the campaign website sends you "customized" one.

Trump encourages NC supporters to vote by mail, as he attacks voting by mail
https://www.wral.com/trump-encourag...y-mail-as-he-attacks-voting-by-mail/19232331/

President Donald Trump on Tuesday expanded his mail-in voting message, encouraging North Carolina supporters to vote absentee even as he continued to assail vote-by-mail.

"We're going on to win a tremendous election in November, to be exact November 3 in North Carolina," Trump told supporters who'd dialed into a telephone rally. "You can request absentee ballots right now. Absentee ballots are great."

In recent months, Trump has increasingly tried to discredit mail-in voting. He falsely tweeted in July: "Mail-In Voting is already proving to be a catastrophic. The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race."

Election experts have told CNN there is no real difference between absentee voting and no-excuse mail voting and the two are "essentially the same thing."

During Tuesday's telerally, Trump encouraged supporters to "watch that other people aren't cheating, because that's what they're looking to do."

At the same time, he told his audience: "Absentee voting is a secure process. It's initiated by the voter -- you request it -- and every voter is verified. Every vote is verified. It's the exact opposite of Democrats' voter fraud scheme. They want to mail ballots to every eligible voter all over the state."

North Carolina marks the third battleground state where Trump has signaled supporters to cast their votes by mail; he has made similar comments to supporters in Arizona and Florida. On Monday, campaign surrogate and Trump son Eric Trump encouraged supporters to vote absentee as well, telling them at a bus tour stop, "In Florida you have an honest system, so vote absentee. Your vote will be counted; it's real."

Calls for supporters to vote absentee may belie a larger concern amongst Republicans -- that they trail, significantly, in absentee ballot requests. Per data compiled by North Carolina, as of August 12, a total of 88,212 registered Democrats had requested absentee ballots, compared with just 33,546 registered Republican voters there. In North Carolina, any registered voter can request a mail-in absentee ballot, and no excuse is required to vote absentee by mail. Ballots must be received by the board of elections by the Tuesday before Election Day to be counted.

The North Carolina Democratic Party fired back in a statement Wednesday.

"Donald Trump's botched response to this pandemic is the reason so many North Carolinians are choosing to vote by absentee ballot this year in the first place," communications director Austin Cook told CNN. "Voting by mail in our state -- that is, voting by absentee ballot -- is safe, secure and reliable, and that's why Trump, his family and advisers have all voted by mail in the past. While the NCDP is hard at work engaging voters and encouraging them to vote in the safest and most convenient way for them, the Trump campaign's incoherent message on voting by mail is only hurting our democracy and his own party."

But even as Trump encouraged supporters to vote absentee, he couldn't resist casting doubt on the process, warning, "We're stopping really some very important items that they want. They want to do things that are very unfair with mail-in ballots, and they want to make sure that they're covered because it just is going to create a rigged election, in my opinion."

"President Trump has consistently and rightly said that where a voter cannot make it to the polls, they should request an absentee ballot," Thea McDonald, the Trump campaign's deputy press secretary, told CNN on Wednesday. "The President has also correctly distinguished between chaos-ridden universal mail-in voting systems, which led to New York's and California's train wreck primaries, and traditional absentee mail voting systems, like the tried and true system in North Carolina -- a distinction Democrats and many in the mainstream media purposely ignore to sow confusion."

The most notable recent case of alleged ballot fraud occurred during the 2018 midterm elections, when North Carolina Republican operative Leslie McCrae Dowless was accused of falsifying ballots on behalf of GOP congressional candidate Mark Harris, a candidate Trump supported.

He has to. If the mail in system is allowed to proceed, he wants his voters to get a ballot.----and get 2 or 3 if possible. Good Lord.