It’s really easy to “talk tough” on an anonymous internet message board. Not so much when you you receive multiple threats a week from people in the community in which you live not only toward you but your family and friends, or are the focus of vandalism and intimidation on a continuous basis. All for the “offense” of ensuring that the cornerstone of our democratic system—ensuring the integrity of the electoral process—is under concerted threat from one political party which continues down the path of increasingly unclothed nascent fascism.
Well of course it’s impossible to know for sure until one personally experiences a real threat. All I can say is that the thought doesn’t fill me with fear. I think I’d be more angry than frightened.
A verbal threat is “a real threat”. Don’t take my word for it; walk up to some random stranger and threaten to beat their face in if they don’t vote for your preferred candidate, and see how far “But it wasn’t a real threat!” gets you with responding law enforcement. [Note: don’t actually do this; it will not go well for you.]
Whether your imagined internet bravado against hypothetical threats is actually representative of how you would respond or not, the reality is that many election officials and volunteer workers do feel threatened and are intimidated about doing their jobs.
Let me note how utterly unprecedented this is; even during the Civil Rights era in the late ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties, threats against poll workers and election officials were basically unheard of, even as anti-segregationists were intimidating, beating, and lynching civil rights marchers in broad daylight. The United States has been regarded around the world as the apotheosis of “free and fair elections” despite how disjointed our state-by-state system is and how messy our politics can be because it is largely transparent, run with competence and dedication by often volunteers and poorly uncompensated officials, and almost totally free of any kind of violence and intimidation…until the 2020 elections. Now, we are in literal danger of not being able to adequately staff polling stations and perform election counts while at the same time one party has been arguing for purging voter rolls, making almost wholly baseless claims of voter fraud, and trying their level best to restrict voter access and prevent absentee voting and vote-by-mail schemes.
And don’t forget, even if the person that issued the threat doesn’t follow through on it, someone else may. Has Trump ever personally followed through on a threat or does he rely on his dog whistles to motivate his base to do his dirty work?
If it were me on the receiving end, I would much rather the people threatening me are aware that I have a low threshold for turning this over to the police. I don’t see how any good could possibly come from antagonizing them.
Aren’t there typically multiple polling sites that people can choose from?
While telling someone “you need to drive or bus a little further to vote” could be seen as having a chilling effect on their voting rights… It’s not as serious a violation as telling someone “if you vote next door, or even walk around outside on voting day, you might run into your violent ex who you have a restraining order against, and that’s too bad so sad, your restraining order is suspended for the day!”.
I have one polling site on election day. I think there’s another if I vote early, or I can vote absentee, I guess.
Most of the volunteers who work my polling site on election day are in their 70s or 80s. I’m glad you’re tougher than a 75-year-old woman, but she might not feel as comfortable with the threats. I’m honestly stunned that you don’t see the issue for democracy with threatening violence against poll workers and election officials – it’s straight out of a fascist playbook.
Nope. Around here, at least, you have to show up at the right one for where you live.
Early voting’s an exception – you have to show up at the county seat, wherever you live in the county (though you still have to show up in the right county; and there’s still only one choice. I’m not sure how many feet away from the school it is; it’s only a couple of blocks, and much closer to some houses.)
I’m sure that’s true in case someone shows overdose in line or something. But what’s this business about a “fentanyl laced letter”? Unless poll workers are licking these letters, or a police officer with a drug dog walks in at the wrong time leading to a comical misunderstanding, what is some fentanyl on a letter actually going to do to anyone? This reeks of the same uneducated paranoia that leads to police officers having a panic attack when they think they touched fentanyl.
Not where I am (although everyone can vote absentee).
Typically, in Pennsylvania, there are hyper-local offices on the ballot, such as for a school board member who represents a sliver of the school district. So the ballot at each polling place tends to be a little different.
If they stop schools from being polling places, I suppose the average distance to polling place will slightly increase, making voting a bit less convenient. This would slightly favor the Democrats because Republicans tend to be low propensity voters.
Interesting. Here in California, I’ve always been spoiled for choice. It’s never been something I’ve had to think about - on election day I look up “voting places near me” and pick one from the list, usually one that I can walk to.
I wasn’t even sure what the rule was, so I looked it up. My city hasn’t posted voting info yet, but a town I’ve lived in before did. I’m no longer in LA county so I’m not actually sure if this applies to me or not. But at least in LA county, any registered voter from the county can vote at any polling station in the county.
It surprises me that this isn’t the case elsewhere.
Alright, I did some more research. Being able to vote anywhere in the county is a new thing this year, and just for LA. They’ve rebranded ‘polling centers’, which are more local, to ‘voter centers’, which are county wide, and now every polling place will be a voting center.
In prior elections, and I assume this will be the case in my new county too, I got a handful of locations to pick from.
ETA: Actually I think the Vote Center thing is state wide after all!
Another vote for “Not in my experience.” Partly because, as @PhillyGuy notes, ballots may be different for different districts.
But also, if there are multiple places you can vote, it’s a lot harder to stop people from voting multiple times. (I’m guessing there are ways, but they would rely on electronic communication that hasn’t always been available.)
There are lots of legendary narratives about fentanyl being so deadly that its mere presence kills. These go way back, decades before fentanyl took the starring role, and don’t need to be true or even scientifically plausible to be effective at influencing people’s decisions.
As has been said: there are often local offices on the ballot. My county legislature has multiple districts, and I need a ballot for the correct district. I suppose it would be theoretically possible to stock all the districts with all the ballots (which is presumably what the county seat does, for the early voting) but it seems like quite a hassle and a probable waste of a lot of paper, or else a significant risk that some stations would run out of particular ballots.
That’s the practical reason I can think of. – I can think of another, for rural areas: in this area, at the polling station for a specific district most voters will actually be identified by sight, as in, at least one of the poll workers will know almost everyone who shows up. (I say, 'we’ve got voter ID. She knows me, and he knows me . . . ') A district or two away, it’s quite likely none of them will know me.
But I suspect another reason is “that’s the way we’ve always done it around here.” Dating back, undoubtedly, to when there was no way for Voting Site A to find out on the day whether somebody’d already voted at Voting Site B; they checked your name off on a list written on paper. Recently they started entering it on a device and I presume the device reports countywide.
If you can’t get to your polling station, you can get an absentee ballot.
Common “knowledge” says fentanyl can be absorbed through the skin.
Technically true, but it takes hours or days of direct contact or significant sweating. Fentanyl-laced letters aren’t actually dangerous, but actual danger doesn’t matter to the domestic terrorists sending them.