It would need to be recorded, would it not?
It would also be a gigantic propaganda coup for the Social Democrats, and a sure sign that there is hope for the US after all.
No it would not count. Not unless Bernie and Liz filed and were approved as write in candidates on the ballot.
I suspect that’s the kind of detail that varies by state. But your vote for Mickey mouse won’t be reported to the public, because no one cares. It will just show up as part of the difference between ballots cast and ballots cast for candidates on the ballot. Which might be okay if your only goal is to do something with your frustration, and the race isn’t close on your state.
This is our first election as residents of North Carolina. We’ve voted by mail in Florida for the past nine years, and it was very simple. Fill out the ballot, put it in the envelope, sign the envelope (I think maybe you had to write in a little identifying info; I don’t remember that part), drop it in the mail or at a ballot collection box.
We requested mail-in ballots for this year, and got them last week. In NC, we need to fill in the ballots, put them in one envelope that then has to be signed by either two witnesses or a notary, and include copies of our IDs in a plastic window on the other side of that envelope. That then goes inside a larger envelope, which gets mailed (we need to provide postage) or dropped off at an early voting location.
I get mail-in ballots because we travel a lot and I never know if we’re going to be around on election day, but I might just go vote at an early voting location. Seems like there are too many ways to accidentally screw up the mail-in ballot and have it get disqualified.
Probably not by accident.
Yeah, that’s nuts, and certainly on purpose. I’d certainly choose to vote in person in that situation.
Yeah, I’m convinced it’s rat-fuckery of one kind or another. Possibly a couple of different kinds. 
I may be strange, but I hope the closeness of the race actually boosts Harris’ total votes since people will be scared of Trump’s actual return to power.
I wonder what the turnout will be. Same as 2020 or much less?
I don’t see her getting 80 million votes like Biden. She may need that? Maybe not?
I voted Friday afternoon. I am in the reddest county (or so it seems) in Ohio, and that was evident by the cars in the parking lot.
I voted for Harris/Walz, Uncle Sherrod, and all the Democratic candidates for Ohio Supreme Court. Also for the operating taxes, and for the citizen board to end gerrymandering.
I didn’t vote for all the unopposed red races. There were a lot, too, including for Sheriff.
Now, the waiting…
Re mailing your ballot,
I regularly send and receive letters from Canada to Germany that arrive in a week, so it may not be the Canadian post office that is the problem.
As for voting, I voted early in the BC election this past Friday. Walked about half a mile to the polling station, chatted with the friendly elections staff, and discovered BC is using a new process vote voting. Previously, you got a small paper ballot, marked it, folded it so it couldn’t be observed, and stuffed it in a ballot box, where it would later be counted by hand.
This time, there is still a paper ballot you mark with a sharpie, then place in a folder so it can’t be seen. You hand the folder to an election official who inserts it in a scanner that sucks the ballot out of the folder, scans it, and registers it. It was kinda cool.
The elections people say the results will be tabulated very quickly on election night, and in the case of very close elections, the ballots will be counted by hand. It seemed an excellent compromise between old, slow paper ballots and the techno-wizardry/potential mess of electronic voting machines.
Also for the first time, my id/voter registration was checked via a laptop rather than a huge paper printout that election officials checked and then drew a line through my name once I had received my ballot.
Of course, if my candidate loses, it will be proof the system was rigged!
We’ve had ballot-reading machines for years, but my district is just now moving from checking in voters in giant books to using an iPad. (Or some kind of tablet. I think the town clerk called it a poll pad.)
You are the hero your state’s cats and dogs need.
Yup. We’ve been doing it that way for several years. The paper ballots are stored locked up for, I believe, two years, so that they’re there if needed; and I believe they also do a random check handcount on a small percentage of sites each election.
The last time or two I voted I was also checked in electronically – which makes my signature even less like the one I put on record some 35 years ago than it would be if done on paper; but even when I vote early and therefore at the county seat instead of at my district polling place, there’s likely to be somebody there who recognizes me anyway.
In my state, the person checking you in is supposed to repeat your name in a clear loud voice, so anyone nearby knows who you claim to be. This is actually our identity security (rather than physical IDs.) It feels a bit quaint, honestly.
Seems like it would be most useful in smaller places. I’d think that in cities, the chances that anybody there at the moment would know who’s supposed to go to that name would be a lot lower.
They don’t do it here, anyway. You used to sign a book; now you sign some sort of tablet thingy. I never heard them call out names – but I did use to joke that at the local district location anyway, I usually have two forms of ID – “she knows me, and he knows me.” While I usually don’t recognize people, there are a whole lot of people around here who recognize me; and this is true to some extent even at the county seat, where we have to go for early in-person voting (the county’s small enough to only have one location for this.)
I mean, last time i voted early, the woman who checked me in was a friend of many decades. A lot of people actually do recognize me around town.
But yeah, saying the person’s name aloud seems unlikely to catch someone impersonating another voter.
Today 10/14/24 is the day Florida begins counting their mail-in ballots. Not that they’ll release the numbers, but anyone like me who’s waiting to see their ballot get counted, the wait ought to be over soon.
Of course today is a federal and state holiday, so everything governmental is closed. Maybe they’ll count tomorrow.
I think that’s also the hope of the Harris campaign. The tone of the email solicitations I’m receiving from the campaign is uniformly dire.
Another North Carolinian here….
If you go to vote in person, you need to bring the mail-in ballot you received.
It’s your ballot, you only get one. If you go to vote in person without it, you’ll be told you’ve already received your ballot.
If you bring the ballot, you can either vote it at the polling place or else they’ll spoil it and exchange it for an in-person ballot - I’m not really sure exactly how it works. If you don’t, I THINK they’ll let you cast a provisional ballot but it’s only counted once they determine you haven’t returned the mail-in ballot.
North Carolina has a very tightly controlled voting system, it’s so tight that it barely qualifies as a secret ballot. There is a bar code and number on your ballot and it’s tied to your name. When I go to early voting ( I’ve never done same day ) they print out a form with all your identifying details as well as the ID number and bar code, and the ballot itself, which only has the ID number, and they ask you to double check that both numbers match.
I’ve never been crazy about the fact that anyone with access to the information in the system could pull a copy of your ballot, but most people seem more concerned about security than they are about secrecy.