As long as some states require ID to vote, then those states OUGHT to make such ID freely and conveniently available to all, otherwise it amounts to a poll tax. Once Democrats control Congress and the White House, I hope they will pass a law to that effect.
Yes, they have to sign, get a receipt, and log them in. Controlled circumstances.
Moderating
This is one of many off topic posts you’ve made in this thread, urbanredneck2. Drop the tangent.
Too many people lack the imagination and/or knowledge of the world to see that many adults get by in the US sans photo ID. My elderly, disabled dad certainly would — except he’s an immigrant, so my mom hung on to his green card for safekeeping. (He lost all the other cards, ID and otherwise, over time. As people do. And he doesn’t need them anymore, so why replace them?)
And of course — any of us able-bodied, still-driving, booze and cig-buying normals could be without ID on Election Day if our wallet is lost or stolen.
I don’t know why I bother with reasonable arguments, though — GOP election officials have repeatedly made it clear, when speaking to GOP audiences, that the purpose of ID requirements is suppressing the Democratic vote, not preventing fraud.
I think of Omar Little (the fictional stickup man), who told his grandma he worked a legit job in the cafeteria at the airport. When asked why the cafeteria at the airport, he said something like “She Damn sure ain’t gonna go all the way out there to eat now is she?”
I’m guessing Mz. Little hasn’t left Baltimore in a good long while, does her banking either at a local branch where she’s known or is just “unbanked,” etc. She probably leads an extremely circumscribed life, geographically and socially. (Edit: extremely C’s by my standards. She may find it rich and fulfilling!)
Think she worries about replacing her state ID when it expires? Even if she does, plenty of old-timers like her don’t. But they still have the right to vote.
Let me preface this by saying I hope the Republicans get hammered on November 3rd. That said…
This looks like a mildly slimy way to increase the chances that Republicans will vote. According to the article the boxes have been set up at conservative gathering places (like churches). It’s hard for me to judge the legality given CA’s (supposedly) liberal ballot box law. I’m not automatically going to believe the Democrats on this.
Would you have a problem if Dems set up boxes in inner-city areas in Texas? (Assuming it was legal.)
Full text (PDF image) of the cease-and-desist order sent by California Attorney General and Secretary of State to various Republican party offices, demanding they immediately stop using those unofficial ballot drop boxes:
https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/66/a6/1091e1c049b9a6eb6f53f9c4297c/cagopceasedesistletter.pdf
In the hypothetical that it’s legal? Maybe? I don’t really want the political parties running the general elections. It’s the state’s job and they should make voting accessible to all eligible voters.
The problem with the parties getting involved is that they don’t have any incentive to get the “wrong” ballots counted. During recounts, they work really hard to make sure they aren’t counted. Wasn’t there already a scandal in, uh, North Carolina(?) where some Republican operative was collecting ballots and discarding the “bad” ones?
I feel the same: I’m uncomfortable with the idea although I wouldn’t be outraged if I thought the ruling party was playing a bit loose. I’m sure CA Republicans feel that way, just like TX Democrats.
I wouldn’t have a problem with the CA ones if I thought they were legal. Since they don’t allow the chain of custody required by law to remain intact, they aren’t.
On the other hand, if the appropriate officials in TX put a monitored drop box in a location that makes it convenient for a large number of people to vote, that in my mind is a good thing.
It’s funny, just a few months ago CA Republicans sued over ballot harvesting with the party chairwoman arguing:
Patterson argued that voters “aren’t leaving their ballots on the front steps,” and that the practice of ballot harvesting “requires an in-person hand off.”
But today they argue that it doesn’t.
I can’t be the only one who thinks that it is insane that a mail in ballot can be rejected because the signature doesn’t match, as judged by some dude who has zero experience analyzing signatures assuming signature analysis was even a thing that made sense in the first place.
That has always sounded insane to me, too. As always, I would like to hear from someone living in one of the all-mail states, especially someone who has been an election judge there. Wait, do all-mail states have election judges? What do they do?
THEORETICALLY, that’s the case for in-person voting, too. I’ve known a few poll workers, and they have no special training. You come in, you say who you are, you sign, they compare to what’s on file. If the signatures don’t match, they’re supposed to question it. I guess the only difference is that if in person, you can re-sign or give some other proof that you are who you say you are.
Just talking about this with my NJ brother. He signed his voter card sometime back in the 1990’s, and knows that his signature has changed/deteriorated a bunch since then. However, he dropped his ballot off last week, and per the website it has been accepted.
Elections workers are trained in signature verification here in Oregon. Here’s a link to their Vote By Mail Procedural manual:
Page 83 gives an overview of what they’re trained to look for.
I don’t think this is as hard as others seem to think it is. While my signature may have changed somewhat over the years, the basic strokes I use to write that signature haven’t. See sample signature changes starting on p. 73.
OK. I read it. I remain 100% unqualified to make that determination as is anyone else whose training on the topic was reading this training manual.
My understanding is their training goes beyond just reading the manual. I think I read somewhere along the line they are trained in classes as well.
This just has not been an issue in our all-vote-by-mail state for more than 20 years.
If someone falsely signs my ballot and manages to do a facsimile that passes judgment at the BOE, what happens when I contact the BOE to say I haven’t received my ballot? And how did they learn to mimic my signature, anyway? For that matter, how did they get my ballot out of my locked mailbox? And what do they accomplish by submitting my fake ballot that’s only going to piss me off and cause me to contact the BOE to complain I never received my ballot?
You can see why this whole caper is difficult to scale up to a point where there is any meaningful change in election results, right?
That’s right. Excerpted from the original article:
According to evidence at the elections board hearing, Dowless and his assistants illegally gathered up absentee ballots from voters by offering to put them in the mail, and in some cases forged signatures and filled in votes for local candidates.
Apparently it doesn’t matter how much training they’ve received as handwriting analysis is unreliable
The Master has spoken: " No forensic technique has taken more hits than handwriting analysis. In one particularly devastating federal ruling, United States v. Saelee (2001), the court noted that forensic handwriting analysis techniques had seldom been tested, and that what testing had been done “raises serious questions about the reliability of methods currently in use.” The experts were frequently wrong — in one test “the true positive accuracy rate of laypersons was the same as that of handwriting examiners; both groups were correct 52 percent of the time.” The most basic principles of handwriting analysis — for example, that everyone’s handwriting is unique — had never been demonstrated. “The technique of comparing known writings with questioned documents appears to be entirely subjective and entirely lacking in controlling standards,” the court wrote. Testimony by the government’s handwriting expert was ruled inadmissible."
And this is testimony from an “expert” that was rejected for being unreliable. I submit that some guy who read this manual and nodded his way through a morning seminar at the airport Marriott shouldn’t have any say in whether my ballot gets rejected.