Here I suspect it will be at the bank like outdoor drop box at top of a flight of 20 steps at the front door. There’s a ramp too so we are ADA compliant.
I just checked my local drop box locator, and they said they won’t have them listed until October, but they did provide a picture of what the box looks like.
So someone who wants to be a 21st century, on steroids, Dick Tuck, now has at least six weeks to build copies.
I’m not saying that will happen. But these drop boxes are a new enough idea, in my state, that I think something will go wrong with them.
Mail voting, done at least several weeks before the election, seems to me a proven technology. It has risks, but there is also a significant risk I will have a cold on election day. Before COVID – no problem. Now – a problem.
Another problem is that Trump will declare victory on the morning of November 4, saying that further counting of mai, and drop-box, ballots should stop. And perhaps a bigger problem is that the formal result of the counting of electoral votes is announced by Mike Pence on January 6. Unless DJT has already fled to one of this UAE golf facilities, I can’t see Trump failing to order Pence to say their ticket won. Then Pence has to decide whether he is loyal to democracy or Trump. I can’t predict what happens then.
Unless Trump wins legitimately, we are in for a post-election crisis. What I can’t see now is how voting in person, vs. drop box mailing, vs. U.S. mail voting well in advance, is going to impact how the crisis unfolds, or the outcome.
My town will have a drop box in front is town hall. Actually, it’s already there. The location is what certifies it.
I wonder what it would take to float a rumor on Qanon that the real drop box is the dumpster behind the Waffle House?
Fortunately, Trump is not in charge of counting votes. I would hope that elections officials in all states would sneer at this and keep counting. I know they would in my state.
Let’s leave that conspiracy to another thread.
I know in America (most places? All places?) people get their mail picked up from their actual house, but are you able to post things from a Post Office too? Because I’m thinking, for extra vote security, drive to a solid Red area and mail your ballot in from there … those envelopes are probably going to arrive at their destination
Good plan!
Yes, you absolutely can mail an item in person at any Post Office.
I have to deal with 200-300 people face-to-face during my normal workshift. I don’t see voting in person as any more risky, and based on the last election I voted in, it’s probably less.
Needless to say, your mileage may vary.
Based on Pence’s past actions and his view of government and religion, I’d bet on him choosing personal loyalty to Trump over democracy and the constitution. Certainly over human decency and anything progressive. He’s scum with a polite veneer.
Wait, are you saying that if the electoral vote count is Biden 1000, Trump 0, a piece of paper to that effect is given to Pence, and he announces that Trump won by 4000 electoral votes, that that announcement is unverifiable, unchallengeable, and legally binding?
I’ve got a couple of questions:
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I think there should be several options for voting . . what about online voting from one’s home or from a public venue such as libraries, post offices, government buildings, etc.? I guess there’ll be security concerns, but I don’t think online voting is vastly more vulnerable to hacking than other more publicized methods.
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If the post offices will be having difficulty in delivering ballots, how about assigning priority to ballots from the first day you can send in the ballot to the last day permitted? I don’t think anyone will die if they have to wait on their Victoria’s Secret catalog, but ballots, medicines, Social Security checks and other important items should be prioritized. Dejoy can ignore bulk mailings, catalogs, and other unnecessary items till after the election.
How does this sound?
Yes, my normal workshift now takes place in my bedroom, and I might see my husband. I agree that voting is not a super high-risk activity – probably a lot less so than grocery shopping. I would plan to do it if I hadn’t gotten a post-card saying “want to vote by mail this year? Just send this back.”
But… I got sick with a respiratory bug right before my town’s last local election (in April) and I thought it was irresponsible for me to go to the polls. I requested an emergency absentee ballot (which I got) but it wasn’t totally certain it would arrive on time. So I’m partly voting by mail because I know I won’t have a last-minute problem doing it.
I think there are MASSIVE security problems with voting on-line. My credit card number has been stolen a couple of times. I bet yours has, too. No huge deal, get a new card, work out the issues. A non-trivial number of people have had their identity stolen. Huge pita, but it can be dealt with.
But once the vote is counted, that’s it. There’s no backsies. No “dealing with it” or fixing it retroactively. If someone steals the election on election night, they can prevent the “work out the details” part.
If the post office weren’t being intentionally crippled there would be no problem at all with delivering ballots. Of course ballots should be prioritized. But also, of course functional sorting equipment shouldn’t be removed and destroyed. THAT’S the problem with the post office – bad actors, not some structural problem that we can just fix in some straightforward way.
Depends whether the Republicans are in charge or not.
Understood.
Not so much loyalty to Donald as it is fear of Democratic political domination for the next decade or more. The potential damage of “socialism” justifies any anti-democratic actions the Republicans might take. I believe that’s the answer to any question that begins “why are they doing this and how do they think they can get away with it?”
“When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”
Thus spake Alice, the Eternal Optimist.
Honest question: Why are Democrats so invested in mail-in voting? It seems to me that lots of young people and poor people will not bother. I’m guessing there are a lot of people under 30 who have never mailed a thing in their lives.
Then you get threads like this, where everyone is terrified Trump will screw with the process.
Mail in voting seems to me to guarantee that the losing side will not accept the result in any remotely close election. There will always be lost ballots, ballots that show up a week after the vote has been certified, etc. The process is loose enough that there will be infinite numbers of ways to claim fraud and a stolen election. It sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.
Or is that the point? If Trump wins a mail-in election you can just call shenanigans and demand a do-over? Cause that’s the only way I see this helping the left. Old people and rural/suburban folks, all of whom are the most Republican voters, are totally comfortable with mailing things. The Democrat’s constituency, not so much.
Are you serious? All indications are that mail-in balloting will bring in a huge increase in voting in November, just as it had in primaries and in states that have had it for years. A fully-staffed post office can handle the mild increase in mail. Fully funded election staffs can handle the vastly increased numbers of mailed in ballots.
The sole reason the republicans are against it is exactly that it will increase voting, but by the “wrong” people.
And it’s true that older voters use the mail more, which is exactly why trying to destroy the post office is a self-destructive move since it targets the Republican base.
The only way that mail-in voting won’t work perfectly is if the administration and its flunkies deliberate sabotage the process.
Your post is amazingly wrong in all but one detail. Republicans are “a recipe for disaster.”