Not being familiar with Andy Biggs, I have no idea how that is relevant to my statement.
And that’s the sort of civic, social experience I was thinking of. The first time I voted at, or after turning eighteen, the precinct worker recognized me immediately, as apparently I was a classmate of one of her children. At the time, I didn’t remember who she was and decades later, I still don’t.
How is it cheaper? I see definite added expenses of mail packaging and postage. Still need workers to verify signatures; most physical poling places are public, so no expenses there; you’re still going to need some kind of machine to read the votes. I suppose you now have 1 per county instead of 1 per poling place, but is the hardware that expensive?
Something did occur to me while reading this discussion. People claiming that mail-in ballots are enough to sway a national election are still bonkers, but what about local? Some of the municipal / township / whatever elections are decided by less than 10 votes. Could some of the scare-mongering fears above actually work for local elections?
Perhaps, if people can be motivated to actually vote in a local election, it might swing things. But isn’t that a good thing?
As for the lower cost, I imagine there is a substantial cost to setting up and staffing all of those polling locations all over town. You need poll workers and police and so forth.
ISTR Republicans used to love mail-in ballots, as they tended to represent a large section of overseas military voters who skewed conservative.
Then we had a pandemic in which voters on the American left were far more likely not to want to go to a crowded polling station in person, unlike voters on the right, and suddenly mail-in ballots was characterized as fraud-ridden nightmares.
Funny, that. But to be fair, they did have some examples of vote harvesting to draw from.
At least by us, all of the poll workers are volunteers. I suppose that if they don’t get enough volunteers they may have to pay people.
And I wasn’t thinking “increased local voting” patriotism, I was thinking “find a couple of ballots in the garbage and vote for myself” fraud. Useless in federal elections; could effect local elections.
I know that every year, and particularly during the pandemic, local elections officials were pleading for volunteers to work the polls.
You have to be able to match the signature of the actual voter for this to work.
Most of this has been answered, but I see a couple that have been missed:
You can do that voting in person, also.
And, if you’re determined enough, you can find out what’s on the ballot ahead of time, and do your research at home before going in to vote.
(That’s not an argument against mail-in ballots, though. I think people should be able to vote either way.)
True.
Last time I voted in person, however, that experience included a group of several loud anti-vaccine anti-maskers next behind me in the line – which was in an enclosed hallway.
We also have had incidents of voter intimidation at polling places. When there are no polling places that issue vanishes.
I’ll say that when Washington went all mail-in, it made voting so much easier. It’s simple and uncontroversial, and we’ve been doing it for a long time without problems.
As far as I can tell, the only real downside to it is that it makes it harder to disenfranchise people. So it’s bad for people who want to harm democracy.
This is probably the biggest positive of mail-in voting: a more informed electorate. I’m weird; I actually do investigate the candidates on my ballot (at least the ones not running unopposed) and the ballot initiatives. I actually compile newspaper commentary for the use of my household. I don’t say “vote for this person” or “vote for this act”, but I bring in what I can find from independents on the issues and let them decide. Everyone in the house votes - if you don’t vote, you can’t bitch about the results.
In 2020, Biggs joined Representative Paul Gosar in a video falsely claiming that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. They claimed that Arizona’s voting machines were faulty, and Biggs claimed that poll-watchers were allowed to participate in vote tabulations in Detroit. They also demanded an audit of Maricopa County’s vote count.[24] Later, Biggs falsely claimed that 10,000 Maricopa County voters were “disenfranchised” without giving evidence.
In December 2020, Biggs was among 126 House Republicans to sign an amicus brief for Texas v. Pennsylvania , an unsuccessful lawsuit that asked the Supreme Court to overturn election results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, thereby denying Joe Biden from taking office as president
Biggs also spoke at rallies promoting the “Stop the Steal” election conspiracy movement, and has claimed antifa was behind the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.[28] He denied that he was involved in planning the event and the riots as alleged in an article by Rolling Stone and a video posted by Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander.
On October 7, 2021, Biggs again falsely claimed that we don’t know who won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.[
On March 4, 2020, Ken Buck joined Biggs as the only two representatives to vote against an $8.3 billion emergency aid package meant to help the U.S. respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.[17][18] In a statement, Biggs called the bill “larded-up” and “bloated”.[19] Ten days later, he voted against the larger Coronavirus Response Act, which passed the House, 363–40.[20] Biggs said he opposed the second bill because it provided benefits to domestic partners and thereby “redefined the family”
Needless to say, he was one of the 147 representatives who voted objecting to Pennsylvania’s and Arizona’s Electoral College votes just before the shit hit the fan on January 6th, but he had no suspicions about his own reelction. Two of his brothers have disavowed him and his anti-masking, COVID-embracing actions.
In short, he is an asshole of the first water and has been in all the papers. So, no, I would find no pleasure in rubbing elbows with the assholes who elected him. They’d probably infect me with COVID anyway.
Bingo.
They are public, sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that they belong to the Board of Elections.
I don’t know what they pay, but I do know that they pay something to the school to use its gym on voting day. Not to mention, my voting location the last few years has been in a church, I’m certain that’s not “public”.
It can be a bit pricy.
Not an up to date cite, but it does go to show that many millions are paid just for that hardware.
They also represent senior citizens, who tend to skew conservative. Before Ohio went to no-fault absentee ballots, you could still get one with the only “explanation” being that you were over 55(? coulda been 65, it’s been a while, and I’m having trouble finding specifics about a law no longer in force).
Volunteer doesn’t mean unpaid. Around here, election workers make around $150 for their day of work.
Almost every year, I get a postcard asking if I would be interested in volunteering.
Signature requirement, although see also RitterSport’s post #10.
~Max
It doesn’t require that much determination. I just go on my local election board website, put in my address, and I can get a copy of the upcoming ballot.
I need to do that anyway to find out my polling place, as it moves around from time to time. (Yes, I do get a postcard with it in the mail, but that usually gets tossed with the junk mail.)
True. Much of it’s also in/on the local news; though it helps considerably to have internet access. (That’s actually a large part of why I originally got online; I was tired of finding parties on the ballot who I couldn’t find out anything about. That still occasionally happens even with internet access, but it’s less common.)
However, it requires even less determination to look at something that was delivered to one’s door.
Usually school board, often local city council or other municipal office. At most they have a facebook page, and often not even that.
Most of the time, anyone running for a national office has enough presence and enough news about them to get a decent grasp of their positions. State offices fairly often are easy to research. But local’s always a crapshoot.
On the plus side, the local office is one where it’s more likely that you’ve actually met the candidate in person, maybe they are even your neighbor.
If you are going to be looking them up online anyway, it’s not much different. In fact, the ability to cut and paste from the online ballot into google saves me a few seconds and some small potential for typos.
I love how they do it here in Oregon.
About 3 weeks before the actual election, the Elections Board sends out a pamphlet with all the candidates’ statements and position papers by interested parties on ballot initiatives. I can take my time to go through everything and mark how I intend to vote. If I still have questions after reading through the pamphlet, I have time to research online before deciding.
Then the ballot arrives about a week after the pamphlet. I fill it out and on my next trip to town, drive to a ballot depository and drop it in. After a couple days, I check online to see that the ballot has been received by the Elections Board. Simple as Larry.
Oregon doesn’t permit “mailing time.” Your ballot had better be in a depository box or at the Board of Elections by 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, or it won’t be counted. You can certainly mail it, but until the USPS is out of the hands of Louis DeJoy, I won’t trust that option.
Not true anymore. As long as the ballot is postmarked by 8:00pm on Election Day, it can be counted – up to 7 days after election day.
While I’m totally ok with this, I can see a hue and cry coming from the usual suspects when Oregon’s tallies change after election day. Proof of fraud, donchaknow.
Hey, thanks for fighting my ignorance! I didn’t realize the law had changed.
I’m fine with it either way, because I’ll always get my ballot in on time. But yeah, I’m sure the “Vote Fraud!” types will find a way to try and message it as somehow suspect.
Indeed, vote by mail is one of the very few things that both sides of the political spectrum had long agreed was a good thing: conservatives liked it because it allowed more active duty military and the elderly to vote, and liberals liked it because it made it easier for everyone across the board to vote. People who had / have issue with it either have a fundamental lack of understanding of how the process works (IME people who either don’t live here or haven’t lived here long enough to vote in an election) or have drunk the Kool Aid, 2020 vintage, and now believe it’s rife with fraud despite there being zero evidence.
Oregon went vote-by-mail before I was old enough to vote so I’ve never voted in person. I have no idea how that process works but VBM certainly seems easy and effective.