I couldn’t find a topic on this – if there is one, Mods please move this post to it.
With the POTUS nominees sewn up already, I thought there maybe should be an omnibus thread to discuss primary results.
Illinois had its primary yesterday. A couple of thoughts:
As expected, Biden and Trump won in their respective parties. Biden got 91.3% of the vote, indicating to me that there are some Democratic voters who don’t want him as the candidate. (I know – well, duh!) But Trump got 80.7% of the Republican vote. (Haley, no longer running but still on the ballot, got 14.3%.) So there are twice as many GOP voters as Dem voters in the Prairie State who aren’t happy with their party’s choice.
I worked as an election judge. DuPage County used to be one of the most Republican counties in the country. Rather than having preprinted ballots, we now print ballots on demand and (as might be expected) we get some stats we never compiled before. One is the number of ballots handed out for each party, and we had more voters getting a Democratic ballot than a Republican one. Illinois is a solidly blue state, but I was a bit surprised to see DuPage county be so blue.
Depending on how the early voting and vote by mail stuff is handled in your area, the mix of ballots printed at the physical polling stations on election day may be highly representative, or highly unrepresentative of the electorate as a whole.
IMO/IME, anyone voting in person on the day if any other voting option(s) are available in their jurisdiction is doing it wrong. People voting in person on Election Day are the least aware and informed voters of the citizens who actually bother to vote at all. Anyone with any savvy uses a different method to vote. IMO/YMMV.
Different opinion here. I like going to the polling pace and physically entering into the process.
The experience might be different if I lived elsewhere. I live where it’s physically easy to get to the polls and the lines are never long, even though voter percentage in my precinct is always among the highest locally.
That’s voting done right. Hours-long lines for a ballot are to be avoided, and are often deliberately constructed to be avoided except by the unfavored minority. I agree early balloting should be a right. I also think it removes people from what should be a collective endeavor.
On what do you base your opinion? I’d be interested in anecdotal evidence or whatever that indicates people who vote on election day are the least aware and informed.
Although I’ve often voted early, that hasn’t always been the case. Like Exapno_Mapcase, I enjoy going to the polling place. I particularly like it on election day, when I most feel part of America as I vote. I have never and will never unless it’s my only option vote by mail. To me there’s not enough gravitas in dropping my ballot in a mailbox.
There was talk among the election judges yesterday that some employers offer a certain amount of paid time off if the employee’s work hours don’t allow them to vote before or after work. I expect employers who provide this benefit provide it only on election day. Thus could be a motivator to vote on election day regardless of how well-informed the voter is.
I got curious as to whether my polling place was typical in the breakdown between Democratic and Republican ballots. According to CBS, as of 6:26 this evening with 90% of the vote counted, Democrats cast 64084 votes for President, while Republicans cast 49719. So it looks like DuPage County is now pretty solidly blue.
This is how I felt before I was the Government worker in charge of polling places. I was in one of the most racist places in the very large racist state when Obama was running. There is some PTSD involved and I don’t like to go into polling places anymore. It is much more comfortable to drop my mail in ballot in one of the handy ballot boxes. They are checked daily and the cameras are very obvious.
Before then? Voting in person made me feel like part of what is good about being an American.
I don’t have the option to vote in person and I wish I did. I too like voting in person. Short lines are ok, conversations might start up and I enjoy that.
Of course, since I’m in California, I don’t stand too much of a chance of encountering a MAGAt. I’m not sure I could be polite to one of those. I mean, I’d try, but since I feel that supporting trump is pretty much traitorous these days, I’m not 100% sure I’d succeed.