FYI, in cases where postage on returning Absentee or Vote-By-Mail ballots has not been affixed or is insufficient, it is the U.S. Postal Service’s policy to not delay returning ballots to the appropriate Board of Election as addressed on the return ballot envelope.
I’ve never bought stamps at the grocery store, or been with someone who did. But at least in my neck of the woods, they often have little signs at the register saying you can buy stamps there.
True, it’s not in their advertising flyers, but they advertise that fact to the people who actually go through the checkout line.
Now that’s a new one to me. The ATMs at PNC branches don’t have stamps, at least the ones I’ve been to don’t. And since I don’t want to pay to get access to my own money, it’s been years since I’ve used a ‘foreign’ ATM.
That was my line in the sand. I’m usually for getting people to learn, trying to explain the importance of voting, talking about down-ballot races and how (even if you can’t do anything about the president) local races have an immediate effect on your life.
But when someone says “I’m too stupid to buy stamps.” I have to agree with them, they shouldn’t be voting. Really - they shouldn’t be walking around on the streets. They’re a danger to themselves.
My folks did taxes in our small town. My job in the enterprise was to stuff as many forms into an envelope as possibly (the second and subsequent ounces being cheaper than the first) and take them to the post office.
I became very good at estimating weight - I almost never had too much postage on the envelope when it got weighed at the PO, and was almost never a full stamp short either (we only had the first ounce stamps, so I was attempting to post the Price is Right amount of stamps on them (close without going over).
My friend, Mr. Rainbow said the same thing, basically.
I see you’re making an assumption I did not intend, because I didn’t specify one thing: this would be similar to how it works in the military, where they still vote in their home jurisdiction. I know of the problem of having college students overwhelm the surrounding town.
The idea is this: the student, when signing up for that semester, also signs up for absentee voting, same as someone in the military. They would then be able to either vote in an electronic absentee ballot that is properly protected, or, if not possible, they’d get an absentee ballot, but it would be at the point when they vote–at an on-campus booth, staffed in the usual way. They present their ID to get their ballot, and include a copy of the ID in the absentee envelope to show who they are–just as much security as with Voter ID laws and volunteer poll watchers.
This would be handled not by charitable organizations but by the college itself, possibly with the help of the government of the surrounding town, county, or even state.
Yes, it would take a lot of doing. But it makes no sense to me why, if we want everyone to vote, we don’t make it as easy for college students to vote as it is for others, including our military. That said, I know this is a pipe dream, and that the best we can do now is via these charitable organizations. They just need to make absentee voting as easy as possible.
I have even more ideas for the charities: set up some faux booths near the actual school “post office” where you get your mail. That way, when you remind them to get their ballot, they can go get it and immediately take it to these booths and vote, seal it up, get a stamp if necessary, and then send it back off. If they can set up near a mailbox drop off, even better.
Sure, there would be reminders all over campus, and maybe even a few small information booths, but the big showdown would happen there. And since it’s absentee, it could be spread out to keep from huge lines.
Of course, there could still be other “voting” locations on the day of, ideally near other mailing boxes. Again with stamps, or possibly a stamp machine.
That’s the entire point of that article. It makes you think this is about stupidity rather than apathy.
It is not stupid to not know where to get stamps if they’ve never used them. They just didn’t care enough to ask Siri or Google or Alexa where to get stamps.
I’m not for having any barriers to entry at all. If they would have voted if they had easy access to stamps, then I want them to have easy access to stamps. Hell, why doesn’t the campus post office–the same place where they check their mail and got their ballot–have a stamp machine?
I may have voted for one Republican in a local office, due to the Independent just being stupid. It wasn’t a position where they’d make law or anything, though.
I also had to vote for a lot of Independents simply because no Democrats would even run for these local offices. I remember a few elections ago when it was the opposite: no Republicans. Weird.
I’m not even sure what the party affiliation means for some of these things. What would be the difference between a Democratic and Republican county treasurer, for instance?
I’ll be casting a very long ballot tomorrow. Two federal offices, three state offices, seven state propositions, four county offices, eight county propositions, 25 judicial “retention elections”, and one local school board bond issue. I will cast a vote in all of them except the one where a Republican is running unopposed for my county council district. I’m not voting for a Republican for any reason.
Fuck you, I’m not going to vote Democrat. (I hear they frown on people voting twice.)
I too followed the principle of “Vote all democrat; refuse to vote when it’s just an unopposed Republican.” I also didn’t vote when I couldn’t figure out which one they were, like with a bunch of attorneys that were on the ballot for some reason.
Oh, and I had to provide my own stamp for the ballot. I don’t know where to buy them; I have an old set of Forever stamps I bought several years ago, and I expect to still have some of them left when I die of old age.
I like to think of myself as too smart and independent to vote for someone just because they have a D next to their name.
I do my due research, and then (almost always) vote Democrat.
We get mail in ballots in my county. There are drop off boxes for your ballot at all government buildings and most libraries. No stamp needed. You can drop off your ballot 24-7.
Not sure if this is the case in other county’s. Check your county website. Probably want to look under County Clerk/Recorder.
I voted for anyone with a D by their name. Every one.
(I skipped the city and county ballots because I’m not educated on local issues and have no reason to care.)
I will never vote Republican for the rest of my life.
Pretty sure this has been debunked as the misleading bullshit it is several times around here but it keeps getting trotted out.
6-12% of Bernie voters voted for Donny.
Compare that to:
- 10% of Marco Rubio voters voted for Clinton
- 32% of John Kasich voters voted for Clinton
- 24% of Clinton voters (in 2008) voted for McCain
The main takeway though is that those who voted for Bernie and then Donny were not democrats in the first place. They hated Clinton and were not fond of Trump but when Sanders was no longer an option they very much did not identify as liberals or with Clinton. SOURCE
So, what we can tell from this is that Sanders had the cross-party appeal Clinton almost completely lacked and would have been a better bet to run against Trump. But the Clintonistas were too fucking blinkered by their golden gal to pay attention to the fact they were putting forward a candidate who was the second most disliked candidate in political history and when it comes to petulance were far less likely than Bernie Bros to toe the line.
That shows that Clinton did have cross-party appeal by getting some voters who voted for the more mainstream republicans, but lost the big demographic of 2016, which was the voters sick of both parties.
You living on Planet Earth? (Yes) Do you have some means of emigrating to a different planet? (No). Then it is in your best interest to do anything you can to facilitate the utter annihilation of the Republican Party.
In addition, if you aspire to the title of “decent human being,” it’s pretty much your moral obligation.
And welcome back to the Err Apparent. Hope you stick around this time. 
Yup.
19% of Obama voters said they would vote McCain if Obama was not the one running in the general. SOURCE
Did they both have cross party appeal?
Anyway, the 12% of Bernie Bros defecting looks less and less alarming all the time when compared to how well supporters of other candidates will get in line if their preferred candidate loses.
I think 2008 was somewhat a reversed dynamic of 2016, where McCain did pick up some moderate democrats, but Obama did much better with his base, and also picked up tons of people who just wanted to get someone new running things and didn’t care about party. If Hillary had been the nominee, those numbers show that McCain’s cross-party appeal would still have been in effect.
Obviously, McCain also picked up racists.