It hasn’t happened.YET.
What was that saying from the '60s, “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.”
I wish it were happening faster, too.
Here in the south of the world we prefer the variant “With the leaders ahead of the people or the people with the heads of the leaders”…
Adam Schiff is, and I very much doubt he’s the only one.
Turnout so far for mail in voting is huge for a special election and is at the rate of a major regular election. There has been a second surge after the recent No Kings rallies. Democrats outnumber Republicans and nonpartisans combined.
Recent polling among likely voters show 68% - 32% in favor.
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/polls-newsom-gamble-redistricting-21114836.php
Cool!
I think this is a somewhat appropriate thread to ask this question. I’m watching MSNBC report from a number of different polling places in California, interviewing people in line, talking about the general mood, etc. The key take away that I see is that all of these lines are enormously long and will take at least another couple hours to clear.
Unless I’m grossly misunderstanding things, every single voter got a ballot in the mail. Now I had a year where I misplaced mine and had to go vote in person, but these lines seem to be far beyond folks that just had an administrative accident. Any insight as to why so many people are still voting in person?
I’m a native Southern Californian, but I’ve been living in Washington (where it’s all vote-by-mail) since the end of 2003; so I’m only guessing. Maybe California voters want to be absolutely certain their votes are counted without question?
Polls just closed in California and NBC is already calling the vote on Prop 50 as a win for the YES side. That was fast!
Maybe? But when I drop off my ballot, either in the mail or in one of the special ballot boxes all over town, I very quickly get a text from the relevant CA authority confirming that my vote was received, and another later when it’s counted.
I don’t think we’ve ever received confirmation, though there is a site we can go to, to track our votes. We were late this year. The Spousal Unit only put our ballots in the drop box on Sunday.
I’ve been voting absentee for like 30 years since back when you had to apply for it. My job required lots of travel so I got declared permanent absentee. I think some people just procrastinate until it’s too late to mail.
It’s just very slowly grown in popularity. For decades it was an option, but one you had to proactively sign up for in advance and be put on a register of absentee voters. By 2012 it was over 50% of voters and then in 2016 a new law was passed to eventually expand that to near-universality by 2019-2020. This combined with COVID pushed it into the norm.
But many people still just prefer voting in person, either through inertia or tradition. Especially older people - in 2024 ~20% of votes were cast at the booth.
Sure, but in theory at least, they had until 8 to drop the ballot in the box.
This is a total guess on my part, based on my years’ experience watching TV news. It is this: MSNBC went out and looked for polling places that would be crowded, which I suppose they could find by researching previous special elections. There are two reasons for them to do this that I can think of: one is to make the visuals more interesting, always important on TV; and the other, considering that network’s political point of view, is to help “prove” that the results of the election are legitimate, as there has been some expectation for Trump’s team to try to discredit it. Again, I have no actual evidence for this, just some rather cynical suspicions.
Voting is a community action. Some people prefer to do it in the physical presence of other members of the community. There is, or at least used to be, a sense of mutual celebration.
Why did neither the mail-in nor the in-person ballots refer to Prop 50 or Proposition 50? They only refer to it as “Measure 50”. Every official information booklet and ad called it Prop 50 or Proposition 50. It must mean the same thing, but they should be more clear. Maybe that is a back-up plan with a secret Measure 50 that means the opposite of Prop 50 to be revealed only if the vote goes the wrong way.
I don’t know why anyone would wait to vote in person on the last day, but maybe just never got around to voting. The in-person voting sites opened a couple weeks before Election Day, and a large number of additional sites opened 4 days before Election Day. My experience with those sites is that there is no line and the dozen volunteers working there are excited to finally see a voter show up. The mail-in or drop-off ballots are placed in an envelope with the voter’s name printed on the outside, which some people might not like. For somebody who has voted in person before, the process may seem easier than having to read the procedure for mail-in or drop-off. There is a good chance the news goes to sites with the longest lines, just like after a storm they show the areas with the worst damage.
It’s like people who wait until the day before to do their taxes.
Or don’t start Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve.
I feel called out…