Republicans take early lead in early voting

[Gyrate]

Just to add a data point: I had a Florida absentee ballot, and if I had mailed it from within the US postage would have been free (or covered by Florida, presumably). So no stamp issues.

Since I’m out of the country at the moment I had to pay postage but that’s entirely reasonable.

[Eonwe]

@HurricaneDitka

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A stitch in time saves nine.

[Johnny_L.A]

I’m non-partisan. When I lived in my native state, I was registered non-partisan. Up here, there’s no by-party registration.

I mailed my ballot yesterday. Straight Democrat.

[bump]

@HurricaneDitka

you want someone else (the USPS) to deliver your ballot to the correct location for you, you may have to pay the pittance

Italics above are mine.

That’s why it’s not a poll tax. The state itself isn’t levying a tax at all- you can deliver the ballot yourself, or you can have someone else- USPS, FedEx, UPS, a commercial courier service, a friend’s teenage child, your spouse, etc… to deliver it for you. Not all of those cost money.

There’s not a requirement that you use a delivery service in the first place, and no requirement that if you do, that you use the USPS.

And that’s leaving out the fact that the USPS is a federal agency, and the voting is regulated by the states.

[ZipperJJ]

@Whack-a-Mole

It seems Millennials have a problem with early voting:

College students say they can’t send in their absentee ballots because they don’t know where to buy stamps

:smack:

FWIW, the college students of today are not Millennials, they’re Generation Z. The title of the article shows it’s about College Students, and the first line of the article notes that it’s about Generation Z.

Millennials are in their late 20s and early 30s, and in the workforce (or at least trying to be). They’re not college students.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@Whack-a-Mole

I disagree.

The state is handing you a ballot and then telling you to pay some money to register your vote.

Granted it is a minuscule amount of money but I do not think poll tax jurisprudence rests on an arbitrarily small amount of money to be ok. No amount is ok when it comes to a poll tax.

In addition to the points others have made about there being plenty of free ways to turn a ballot in, this logic leads down some pretty silly paths.

They don’t give you a pen, either, and you literally do need a pen to fill out the ballot; it’s written right on the instructions.

But that’s not a poll tax either.

[Whack-a-Mole]

Dunno if it will amount to much but seems promising:

Early voting among young people in key US midterm battleground states has surged dramatically, the latest data shows, suggesting a potential jump in enthusiasm for Democratic candidates.

With six days to go until election day, Texas and Georgia, two traditionally Republican-leaning states, have increased their early vote rate among 18-29 year-olds by nearly five times or more compared to 2014.

SOURCE: Midterms 2018: Early voting by young people up 500% in Texas and Georgia

[adaher]

Probably won’t help in Texas but Stacy Abrams has got to be thrilled.

[Gatopescado]

@HurricaneDitka

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A hand in a bird’s bush gets you 3 to 7, or elected.

[suranyi]

Bumping this because we now know that Nate Silver and Nate Cohn were right: Early vote information has no predictive value for determining election outcomes.

[GIGObuster]

@HurricaneDitka

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Those where very big bushes and that was a very tiny presidential hand.