Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post report on rampant Republican cheating in the 2020 presidential election.
“Over the past five days, the on-time rate for ballots in 17 postal districts representing 10 battleground states and 151 electoral votes was 89.1 percent — 5.9 percentage points lower than the national average. By that measure, more than 1 in 10 ballots are arriving outside the Postal Service’s one-to-three-day delivery window for first-class mail.”
“Those delays loom large over the election: 28 states will not accept ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they are postmarked before.”
Try to imagine the harm that is done when someone votes twice in an election and gets away with it. Or, maybe, they vote when they weren’t entitled to vote, either because they’re not properly registered or they’re not a citizen. Maybe they vote in the wrong precinct. Or, they could fill out an absentee ballot of their deceased mother. They are many ways people can attempt to commit voter fraud, but they usually result in a single additional vote being counted, and there are only a handful of elections that have ever been decided by one vote. Yet, to avoid these small-level threats to our elections, all of which are illegal and come at a high risk of prosecution in return for no plausible benefit, we now have all manner of Republican obstacles to voting. We have voter ID laws. We have states reducing how many drop-boxes are available for ballots. We have arbitrary cut-offs for accepting mail ballots, even when they’re postmarked on or before Election Day.
All this does is reduce how many total votes are counted, and the changes are designed to disproportionately harm Democratic candidates. This is all bad enough, but now the administration has deliberately sabotaged the delivery of mail ballots and had the Supreme Court intervene in some states to say late-arriving ballots cannot be counted. This can disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, perhaps more. And it’s all being done because Democrats are more responsible about avoiding the spread of COVID-19, and so are more likely to vote by mail.
This is cheating and it should be illegal. If the Democrats none the less win this election and get control of the White House and Congress, they must make this illegal. If the Democrats lose elections because of this, God help the country because this will not stand.
Check this shit out.
That’s really bad, the reliability of the mail varies by location, I have not noticed problems here in AZ.
That’s how Trump wins.
He’s been talking about how “mail-in ballots are fraudulent” for months, and he’s been specifically using DeJoy to delay/destroy ballots to prevent them from being counted.
I never understood people continuing to advocate for mail-in ballots. This is an emergency. Everyone needs to vote in person, as early as possible. I just hope it isn’t too late.
Initially, mail in ballots seemed safer. Since then, polling places have become better equipped at setting up adequate social distancing practices, masks/face coverings indoors, sterilization of voting machines, etc. At this point, voting in person, even in the midst of a terrible spike in cases, is probably a low-to-moderate risk activity. I know that there are some COVID-19 related preprints out there in the research literature documenting that as a reasonable conclusion. The data appear to be there. I and my crew did early voting in person. That includes a couple of us who have some pre-existing conditions that should make us think twice about being in any enclosed space for too long. We each have our own stylus to prove it. One member of my household could probably easily vote absentee. My state seemed to extend a waiver on mail-in based on covid-19 concerns. We talked about it, but the problems with the postal service were too bad to ignore. So in-person voting was it. Been nearly a couple weeks. So far, so good. No one has covid-19 symptoms. Vote in person. If it is too late to for early voting, have a plan for Tuesday. At least there is better assurance it will get counted. I’ve been saying this all to my personal circles for a good while now. I hope enough of them listened.
Obviously too late now for mail voting, this election, not enough time left.
Mail voting was fine for years, before the DeJoy/Trump sabotage of it, it should be fine again after DeJoy and Trump get kicked out.
I have been doing it for maybe 15 years or so, it’s pretty convenient.
Still another reason Trump and his administration must be prosecuted and locked away in a jail, where the only TV available plays CNN and MSNBC.
The AZ website has always stated that if you mail your ballot, you should do it at least *6 Days before the election so it is received by election day. I don’t see the problem as long as people understand the rules, and it’s nice to be able to get results **election day.
I have been playing with the map and the details about when the different states will be called to see if there can be a projected winner on election night. That way we can avoid any of these legal disasters. This is what I have come up with. Biden can win on Tuesday night itself in the following scenarios
Biden wins:
1) NC and FL: Both states dump the mail ballot early and we should know quickly. If Biden wins both he is President, simple as that. He can lose PA, WI, MI and STILL win. I am VERY confident based on running numbers for the early vote + NYT and Marist Polls of Biden handily winning NC by +4 points. Trump is down roughly 450k votes, but there won’t be enough of the electorate left on E-day to make that up. For FL, I suspect if we get to 80% turnout we win. We are at 60%, and hopeful for a big weekend of early voting. But FL is FL.I think we will win by +2, barring cheating.
2) Winning NC + GA + either IA or AZ. The internals released by the campaign showed Biden up 3 in GA. I think we have a 50/50 shot at IA. AZ I feel a bit more confident about.
3) Win NC + AZ and hope that WI results are clear enough to be called early morning. That gets to 269. Winning the second Maine CD would put Biden to 270.
Then the rest of the midwest won’t matter. It is absolutely crazy that we even have to consider about this sort of nonsense.
I sure hope you’re right but, for me, it’s petal to the medal. Making calls and telling people to drop their vote in a dropoff box or go to the polls on Tuesday. It’s too late for the mail.
According to the 538 widget, if Biden wins any one of FL, GA, or NC, his chances go to >99%. If he wins AZ, his chances go to 98%. If Trump wins one of these states, his chances go up from about 10% to 26-28%, and we have to wait to see what Pennsylvania and Wisconsin do. It is about 50/50 if Trump wins 3 of 4.
This is, of course, a polls based prediction, and not a mathematical calculation as you have done. It assumes that, for example, if Biden wins FL, then he’s likely to win several other states. It doesn’t take into account any possible skulduggery in those states. But still useful to keep in the back of your mind when watching the returns. Personally, if FL gets called for Biden I’m opening the champagne…and if it gets called for Trump, I’ll probably have a PTSD episode remembering election night 2016.
I find it depressing that people can be so mendacious. And that so many can play these games all the way into the highest level of government including the judiciary. What happened to our democracy? Do Democrats have the stones to prosecute? Assuming they don’t steal it. Bastards!
So far the encouraging signs about prosecuting officials is that Biden hasn’t ruled it out, saying he will essentially let the JD investigate what they need to and get out of their way. Dejoy will pay for his crimes. But they also need to pass a voting rights act and it seems there is some good chances it will happen if we retake the Senate.
I have no idea how any responsible voter who has paid attention to anything the past 4 months could possibly choose to vote by mail-in ballot, and at the very least not drop it off in person at the Board of Elections or an official drop box.
This is exactly why I have said the polls don’t mean anything. It’s easy to tell a robot or a person that you’re going to vote for Biden. It’s entirely another thing to mark a ballot, turn it in, and have it count. The only remotely reliable method to do that is IN PERSON.
This current USPS election fraud has been WELL KNOWN for months. MONTHS. How long have we been reading about “fraudulent mail-in ballots”, Louis DeJoy mothballing the USPS, etc? MONTHS.
Vote early, IN PERSON. Freedom ain’t free.
It is guaranteed that there are people, right now, on Friday, who just put their ballots in the mail this afternoon. What’s the chance those ballots get counted? How many hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots are going to either miss the deadline, or fail to be valid because of an “envelope” issue, or signature miss-match, etc?
What a fucking nightmare. This isn’t doom and gloom or paranoia. It’s realism.
Received my ballot 2 weeks ago Tuesday. Filled it out and took it directly to the county elections office the next day.
I got mail on the 13th, into the outgoing mail on the 14th. Checked status on the 22nd, it had been signature verified and counted.
My feeling is that once people started feeling the effects of deliberately slowed mail, they decided to either make triple sure their mail ballot was mailed early, or went to early vote. The mail has been slow since late summer. Or long enough for this sabotage to become a factor in people’s voting plan.
And, even if COVID wasn’t enough to persuade people, the mail got some folks off the sidelines. Folks want government to work. The mail is the most visible representative of government for the population. When the mail comes late, people sit up and take notice.