Uh. Mueller has already sent people to prison.
I firmly believe voting should be on weekends. Unfortunately that is not the case, in the US or in Canada. Instead, I vote early (on weekends), but early voting varies considerably from one jurisdiction to another.
Mueller holds former Roger Stone aide Andrew Miller in contempt for refusing to testify before the grand jury.
I don’t know that weekends would really help. Not everyone has the weekend off, in fact, it is those who are most marginalized that are most likely to have to work on weekends.
Most states have some form of early voting or absentee voting, which isn’t as good as, say, an election holiday, but it’s there for a lot of people in many states - up to 37 states, I think.
It’s a given that the plutocrats are going to make voting difficult. People have to assert their rights. Generally speaking, there aren’t many excuses for not voting. “It’s hard,” or “It takes an hour” isn’t an excuse. We’re talking about people’s civil rights, potentially. It’s worth an hour or two (or more) of your time once in a while.
I did early voting a couple of times, mostly to show support to some of my friend who were early voting, but it was pretty stupid. I waited about 4 hours in line for that. I try to avoid early voting, as it is time that someone else has to wait, when I don’t have a wait of my own.
I disagree with absentee voting, and were I in charge, it would be eliminated. There would be more polling stations, and more poll workers, and maybe extend voting from one day to a week, but you have to actually visit a polling booth and cast your secret vote there. Anything else invites corrupting influences into your vote. Retirement homes and hospices can have a voting booth come visit for a day. Military deployed out of their home districts can get absentee ballots, but they should still be filled out and sealed in a private voting booth(though being able to print ballots on demand should make it pretty much the same process as voting in the states).
But, is it worth an hour of my time? Yes. Two? Sure, but that’s really annoying. More than that, as much as 7 hours? I think I may need to be inspired.
At the risk of sounding morbid, when the white baby boomers start dying off I think that is when the GOP will start to reform. Until that happens they are guaranteed 60 million votes no matter how badly they fuck everything up.
The GOP will reform, but probably not until the 2030s. Until then they know they can act however they want and always count on 60 million votes come election time.
Why?
The idea that Pence would be as bad as Trump (or nearly as bad) is simply false. Pence has horrible ideas and horrible morals----but he is not popular.
The only reason that Trump has gotten away with his outrageous ethical violations (mostly stealing from US taxpayers) and his dangerous and destructive Executive Orders, is that Congress is terrified of Trump’s base. They fear losing their lucrative seats in Congress and they fear personal harm.
Pence has no such base. Sure, there are some Evangelicals who think he’s pretty swell—but Pence will fill no stadiums at his rallies.*
Congress will act to rein in Pence. Therefore Pence will not be as much of a peril to the US as is Trump.
*Trump hasn’t been filling them lately, either, but he still has quite a few rabid fans.
It is an avenue that is ripe for fraud and abuse.
Wow. I early vote in Chicago precisely because there is no line. I’ve literally never waited more than 5 minutes to vote for any election since they started doing early voting here.
Well, I mean, so are voting machines, sooo …
I’m tempted to say that we should go back to paper ballots, but if you can’t trust the people who count the votes, I’m not sure it would make a difference. If CNN says that 90% of my neighbors all voted for Captain Crunch - how would I contest that?
If I could, I’d move to England & become a strict monarchist.
Meanwhile, Trump’s fat fucking fingers have been wearing his smartphone’s touch screen out the last 24 hours. Holy Christ, is Mueller on his mind or is Mueller on his mind?!
A crackpot theory of mine seems to be coming closer to being proven: Attorney General PGT Sessions is fighting his own War of Northern Aggression by refusing to resign - probably because he fucking hates the guy now.
That was long long ago and far far away. It doesn’t exist anymore.
I’ve early voted in the Chicago suburbs twice. The first was the 2016 general election; Mr. Middon and I went on a Saturday and waited in line about 10 minutes. The second was the primary earlier this year; there was no wait.
I was a poll watcher for the 2016 general election. In my precinct there was frequently a line, but it moved quickly. I doubt anyone waited more than 20 minutes.
I am reconsidering voting early for the election this November. Unless I go to the Dupage County Board of Elections office (which is a pain to get to) I would have to use a voting machine rather than a paper ballot. The voting machines used here are, I’ve been told by someone who worked for a commission working to prevent voting fraud, pretty susceptible to hacking. The type used here have a paper tape backup – the votes cast are printed on the tape which the voter is supposed to review before pressing the button to submit – buy apparently there is no easy way to check the paper tape against the tallies in the machine. Frankly I think a relatively simple machine that would use OCR software to tally the votes on the paper tape for a routine periodic check would be fairly simple to create, but I suspect it would be seen as cost-prohibitive.
Since I’ll have the option of a paper ballot if I vote at my local precinct on the official voting day, I’ll likely do that.
(Of course, the machine that reads the paper ballot could be hacked, but checking results by reading the ballots through a different reader, would I guess show a problem.)
womp, womp.
Agreed on voting machines that have no paper trail. I don’t really trust them at all.
However, my problem with with absentee ballots is more than just the potential fraud with the falsification or “losing” of them, but that votes may be bought or intimidated.
A vote should be secret, no one should know how you voted, and the absentee system allows one to remove that secrecy. When you get to the ballot box, it should just be you and your ballot (and an assistant if you are truly disabled). There should be no way to prove to someone else how you voted, so your vote will not be swayed by money or threats.
If you can’t trust the people who count the votes, become one of the people who count the votes. They are always looking for volunteers. If I had any concerns in that regard, I probably would, but I know several of the poll workers personally, and I trust them. If we started bringing in professional poll workers, Diebold employees or some such, I’d be a bit more concerned.
At the end of the day though, the only way to make sure that your voice is not heard is to not vote. If you vote, who knows how that will work out, whether your vote is ever counted, and even if it does, if it really means anything. If you don’t vote, then we know exactly how that works out.
If I could, I’d become a monarchist too, so long as I’m the monarch.
What sort of fraud and abuse are you so concerned about?
Because I worked elections, I had to vote absentee. Never had any concerns around doing that. There are always going to be people who need to avail themselves of this option. What if you’re overseas? What if you’re in the hospital?
Oregon has had vote by mail for many years. It’s one of the few things the Republicans and Democrats agree is a good system.
Re messing with elections with paper ballots: I worked elections for years, and I can tell you, there are double-checks built into the system at every turn. The ballots were optically counted, but the ballots were stored for a long time (can’t recall how long) in case a hand recount was required. Random audits were done to ensure the machines were rendering the same counts as hand counting.
Individual persons were never left alone with ballots. My job was usually to go pick up ballots at various precincts. A deputy sheriff accompanied me. But we had no guarantee to work the same job from year to year, so no way to plan on it. We were given our assignments as we turned up.
The folks working the precincts always worked in pairs, both paid election officials and volunteers at each precinct. There were always election watchers present. Every sealed box of ballots we picked up was signed for by me and counter-signed by the deputy.
We transported our ballots to election headquarters, where everyone worked out in the open together in full view of one another. We presented our boxes of ballots which were signed for as we passed them on and ticked off on lists to ensure that all ballots came in from each precinct.
When the boxes were unsealed, the unsealing was witnessed by at least one other election worker. Ballots were then individually tweezed for paper slivers along the sides to ensure they would go through the counting machines – only the sides of the ballots, never the body. Then the ballots were stacked into the machines and optically counted.
Honestly, I have no idea how anyone in our county could have gotten away with hiding/destroying/miscounting ballots. And if anything went awry, the ballots were simply recounted.
I know elections are handled differently from place to place, but I can’t believe that basic oversight procedures aren’t built in to every system. In our case, there wasn’t a single part of the process that wasn’t witnessed and accounted for.
ETA: Ah, I see you already answered. Hopefully there is still useful information here for others.
How would someone know in advance who planned to vote absentee? How would persons exercising this right be targeted?
I often hear that vote-by-mail is subject to intimidation by a spouse, etc., and I suppose some of this may go on. Mostly not, though, and it would have to happen on a grand scale in order to be effective, don’t you think?
Isn’t someone who is vulnerable to being bullied and/or intimidated likely to be that way whether voting in secret or otherwise?
Yes, you are correct. This is the right course of action in a democracy such as ours. And you’re correct about the election boards, too - they love seeing new faces.