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Should absentee ballots be illegal?


Should absentee ballots be illegal?  

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  1. 1. Should absentee ballots be illegal?

    • Yes
      17
    • No
      60


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1 minute ago, Koko78 said:

 

You're correct. Fictional people and the deceased must be oppressed and disenfranchised!

No, it will be fair, and you will lose. 

 

You guys didnt even want to protect our voting voting systems from Russian hacking, took a lot of pressure to get Moscow Mitch to finely get something done there. Shameful 

 

 

 

The military votes with absentee ballots 

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5 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

 

How, genuinely asking? Wouldn't it be just as easy to hack electronic voting systems that have no paper trail? Mail in ballots have to be tied to an individual voter and leave a paper trail. It also takes place over many weeks which gives election officials an easier time noticing abnormal voting patterns. 

  That's why you go back to the machines that were in nearly all voting locations most of the 20th Century.  The kind where once you pull the big lever closing the curtain you pull a little lever for each candidate that you want.  Then you pull the big lever and then the big curtain opens to let you exit.  

14 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Democrats are terrified more people will vote 

FIFY once again.  Did you find your GED?  

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States that vote entirely by mail see little fraud.

Five states, including the Republican bastion of Utah, now conduct all elections almost entirely by mail. They report very little fraud. The state is among the six states with the highest percentage of mail-in votes in the last election in 2018, all of which had Republican state election supervisors at the time, according to David J. Becker, the director of the Center for Election Innovation and Reform.

Colorado, which has 3.5 million registered voters, has been a vote-by-mail state since 2014.

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13 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

Look at California in 2018 and it’s ballot harvesting issues. It’s not difficult to see how rampant fraud can be when there’s no oversight — which there wouldn’t be if the elections are federalized. 
 

Voting is a right people have died to protect and pass on. Saying we can’t do it today because of a bug is the height of cowardice. It’s time to be smart AND brave. 

 

Once again how is in person voting more secure? You have zero paper trail for any fraud. California's "ballot harvesting" is your example and it doesn't even remotely constitute fraud (collecting people's ballots for them and dropping them off at the polling place isn't fraud as long as all people are registered voters.) You could potentially have an operative hack into a system and change votes with a push of a button without anyone knowing with an electronic system. Whereas if you have mail in ballots the paper trail is easy to track and log and there is actually less chance of fraud. It also expands voting access. 

 

You are right people died to protect the vote and we should be doing everything in our power to ensure that everyone has ample access to vote rather than setting one day with limited time at limited locations for people to vote. I just don't see any evidence that voting by mail is more susceptible to fraud than electronic systems that have no paper trail. 

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9 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

Once again how is in person voting more secure?

 

Oversight, certifications, and receipts. 

 

9 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

 

You have zero paper trail for any fraud.

 

How many names have been taken off the rolls in several states since 2016? Hundreds of thousands.... 

 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_begins_removing_5_million_inactive_voters_on_its_rolls__140602.html#!

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/01/04/judicial-watch-wins-suit-california-forced-to-remove-up-to-1-5-million-inactive-voters-and-clean-up-its-rolls-709972

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/01/25/texas-secretary-state-widespread-voter-fraud/

 

11 minutes ago, billsfan89 said:

 

 California's "ballot harvesting" is your example and it doesn't even remotely constitute fraud (collecting people's ballots for them and dropping them off at the polling place isn't fraud as long as all people are registered voters.) 

 

It is when those votes aren't taken to the proper places, and/or changed before they arrive. Which is what happened in droves in CA in '18. I saw it with my own two eyes. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, billsfan89 said:

 

How, genuinely asking? Wouldn't it be just as easy to hack electronic voting systems that have no paper trail?

 

Mail in ballots have to be tied to an individual voter and leave a paper trail.

 

It also takes place over many weeks which gives election officials an easier time noticing abnormal voting patterns. 

 

 

And there is where the problem arises.

 

You have NO PROOF whatsover that it was the actual qualified voter is the one who is casting the vote........unlike in person voting 

 

A quick search shows that there has been constant abuses, 50 - 60 votes from the same 10 person dwelling, lost thousands of military absentee ballots, and more.

 

Clearly you have never worked in a nursing home, where residents are "assisted" with their votes.

 

 

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28 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

And there is where the problem arises.

 

You have NO PROOF whatsover that it was the actual qualified voter is the one who is casting the vote........unlike in person voting 

 

A quick search shows that there has been constant abuses, 50 - 60 votes from the same 10 person dwelling, lost thousands of military absentee ballots, and more.

 

Clearly you have never worked in a nursing home, where residents are "assisted" with their votes.

 

 

.

 

When I vote in person (New Jersey) all I need is a signature. You still have to sign a mail in ballot so there is no real verification process on either end besides cross referencing each voter to a voter registration number to see if they are valid and only voted once. In fact a mail in ballot can be cross referenced before it is fully counted whereas you are counting on local people's judgements for the electronic systems as once a vote is put into the electronic system it can't be cross referenced. 

 

Without a receipt system for in person voting there is no backup of the votes which leaves it hugely vulnerable to hacking and other malfeasence that can't be traced without a paper trail. I don't see how in person voting (which would still be allowed) is any more secure. I also don't see any inherent risks to mail in ballots which you can cross reference as they come in weeks ahead of time. The risks of voter rolls and dead people voting are risks that still exist with in person voting. 

1 hour ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

Oversight, certifications, and receipts. 

 

 

How many names have been taken off the rolls in several states since 2016? Hundreds of thousands.... 

 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_begins_removing_5_million_inactive_voters_on_its_rolls__140602.html#!

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/01/04/judicial-watch-wins-suit-california-forced-to-remove-up-to-1-5-million-inactive-voters-and-clean-up-its-rolls-709972

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/01/25/texas-secretary-state-widespread-voter-fraud/

 

 

It is when those votes aren't taken to the proper places, and/or changed before they arrive. Which is what happened in droves in CA in '18. I saw it with my own two eyes. 

 

 

 

You could have all sorts of fraud without a paper trail in an in person voting system. In fact once a local election clerk allows you to vote there is no way of knowing if that vote was legitimate or not. Where as a mail in ballot can be cross referenced before it is officially counted. Fraud is a risk in any system, I don't think you have fully demonstrated that there are more inherent risks to a mail in system compared to a electronic in person system. 

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2 hours ago, Tiberius said:

No, it will be fair, and you will lose. 

 

You guys didnt even want to protect our voting voting systems from Russian hacking, took a lot of pressure to get Moscow Mitch to finely get something done there. Shameful 

 

The military votes with absentee ballots 

 

Oh, we're back to Russian "hacking" now on the wheel of stupidity?

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Here's an excerpt from the book, "American Story" which is a series of interviews by David Rubenstein that he conducted at the Library of Congress by biographers of historical American figures.

He interviewed Robert A. Caro on Lyndon Johnson. 

 

"DR: He finally decides to run for the Senate in 1948. Why is he called Landslide Lyndon after the '48 election?

 

RC: Six days after the election, he's still behind the governor of Texas, Coke Stevenson. And suddenly another ballot box is found, a ballot box for Precinct 13. They open it and, if I remember this correctly, two hundred ballots were cast for Johnson. They were all cast by someone using the same handwriting nd the same pen, and these people actually voted in alphabetical order.

 

DR: Technically, he won by how many votes?

 

RC: Eighty-seven votes."

Excerpted from "The American Story, Conversations with Master Historians" by David M. Rubenstein, published by Simon & Schuster Copyright 2019. 

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15 hours ago, Koko78 said:

 

Oh, we're back to Russian "hacking" now on the wheel of stupidity?

Around and around it goes, where it stops... is actuallylly at the same damn place.

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Democrats trying to use coronavirus crisis to rewrite US election law

 By David Harsanyi

 

 

I’m sorry, but you have no constitutional “right” to vote by mail. You have no constitutional “right” to vote six days after an election is over. Nor do you have any “right” to censor information related to an election. Not even during a pandemic.

 

This week, the US Supreme Court ruled that a lower federal court couldn’t overwrite Wisconsin’s election laws and force the state to accept ballots without any postmark deadline nearly a week after the election. Likewise, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Gov. Tony Evers didn’t have the authority to arbitrarily suspend in-person voting.

 

If these dictates had been allowed to stand, they would have created destructive precedents, taking elections out of the hands of local legislatures. If we discard legal norms every time there’s a crisis, we no longer have a nation of laws.

 

The usual suspects, of course, lamented the alleged anti-democratic animus of Chief Justice John Roberts’ high court. Liberal pundits, apparently unable to differentiate between partisan policy preferences and the rule of law, launched into their customary hysterics, denouncing the Supreme Court for disenfranchising minorities and putting people’s lives at risk.

 

But the court doesn’t exist to fix your local government’s incompetence or make life safer. It exists to uphold the Constitution.

 

None of this is to say that the situation in Wisconsin is fair to voters, who had to risk standing in lines during a dangerous pandemic. Many states have contingencies in place for emergencies. Wisconsin — while it had plenty of time to pass new guidelines — does not. That’s a Wisconsin problem, not a Supreme Court problem, not a “democracy” problem and definitely not a federal problem.

 

If Wisconsinites don’t like their laws, if they’re disappointed in legislators, if they’re furious at the state’s high court and bothered by the governor’s ineptitude, then there will be plenty of future elections to right those wrongs. In no version of a healthy “democracy,” however, do we override existing laws, passed by previous elected officials, through fiat.

 

But make no mistake, the Wisconsin case will be used in the broader push to federalize and centralize elections to create a more direct democracy — even though such efforts are antithetical to US governance.

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has already proposed mandating automatic and same-day voter registration, ending ID requirements, compelling states to have 15 days of early voting and forcing states to adopt voting by mail, among other liberal pet projects. She wants the federal government to bribe states billions to adopt these standards.

 

{snip}

 

Then again, people of goodwill can disagree over the particulars of election policy.

 

It’s far more critical to note that neither the Senate, nor the House, nor the White House, nor federal courts have any business compelling states to adopt uniform standards regarding mail-in ballots or IDs or voting machines or much of anything else.

 

A national mail vote is meant to federalize the election, leaving smaller states to the vagaries of a national ­majority. It’s exactly the kind of situation the Founders wanted us to avoid.

 

 

.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo, just like President Trump, has some issues with voting by mail and he’s a big fan of showing ID to vote.

 

From the NYT’s Thomas Kaplan:

 

 
 
Despite Cuomo's reference to "showing ID," New York generally does not require voters to show ID.
 
.
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1 minute ago, B-Man said:

 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, just like President Trump, has some issues with voting by mail and he’s a big fan of showing ID to vote.

 

From the NYT’s Thomas Kaplan:

 

I am stunned , although AC is also a big fan of giving ID to illegals. 

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"Mr. Trump, while criticizing mail voting, recently acknowledged that in March he voted absentee by mail in his adopted home state of Florida. In the 2018 midterm elections, Mr. Trump voted absentee by mail from New York.

Mr. Trump is hardly the only administration official to vote by mail. Vice President Mike Pence voted absentee by mail for both the primary and general election in 2018. Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary, also voted absentee in 2018 and Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, has voted absentee 15 times in the last 15 years, according to Florida’s voter file. Mr. Ross, like Mr. Trump, voted absentee for Florida’s primary last month."

If voting by mail is good enough for the top bananarepublican and his toadies, it should be good enough for all of us.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/article/mail-in-voting-explained.html

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6 hours ago, B-Man said:

Democrats trying to use coronavirus crisis to rewrite US election law

 By David Harsanyi

 

 

I’m sorry, but you have no constitutional “right” to vote by mail. You have no constitutional “right” to vote six days after an election is over. Nor do you have any “right” to censor information related to an election. Not even during a pandemic.

 

This week, the US Supreme Court ruled that a lower federal court couldn’t overwrite Wisconsin’s election laws and force the state to accept ballots without any postmark deadline nearly a week after the election. Likewise, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Gov. Tony Evers didn’t have the authority to arbitrarily suspend in-person voting.

 

If these dictates had been allowed to stand, they would have created destructive precedents, taking elections out of the hands of local legislatures. If we discard legal norms every time there’s a crisis, we no longer have a nation of laws.

 

The usual suspects, of course, lamented the alleged anti-democratic animus of Chief Justice John Roberts’ high court. Liberal pundits, apparently unable to differentiate between partisan policy preferences and the rule of law, launched into their customary hysterics, denouncing the Supreme Court for disenfranchising minorities and putting people’s lives at risk.

 

But the court doesn’t exist to fix your local government’s incompetence or make life safer. It exists to uphold the Constitution.

 

None of this is to say that the situation in Wisconsin is fair to voters, who had to risk standing in lines during a dangerous pandemic. Many states have contingencies in place for emergencies. Wisconsin — while it had plenty of time to pass new guidelines — does not. That’s a Wisconsin problem, not a Supreme Court problem, not a “democracy” problem and definitely not a federal problem.

 

If Wisconsinites don’t like their laws, if they’re disappointed in legislators, if they’re furious at the state’s high court and bothered by the governor’s ineptitude, then there will be plenty of future elections to right those wrongs. In no version of a healthy “democracy,” however, do we override existing laws, passed by previous elected officials, through fiat.

 

But make no mistake, the Wisconsin case will be used in the broader push to federalize and centralize elections to create a more direct democracy — even though such efforts are antithetical to US governance.

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has already proposed mandating automatic and same-day voter registration, ending ID requirements, compelling states to have 15 days of early voting and forcing states to adopt voting by mail, among other liberal pet projects. She wants the federal government to bribe states billions to adopt these standards.

 

{snip}

 

Then again, people of goodwill can disagree over the particulars of election policy.

 

It’s far more critical to note that neither the Senate, nor the House, nor the White House, nor federal courts have any business compelling states to adopt uniform standards regarding mail-in ballots or IDs or voting machines or much of anything else.

 

A national mail vote is meant to federalize the election, leaving smaller states to the vagaries of a national ­majority. It’s exactly the kind of situation the Founders wanted us to avoid.

 

 

.

 

 

 

Wisconsin is discovering problems with absentee ballots, including hundreds that were never delivered

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/04/08/wisconsin-election-3-tubs-ballots-found-mail-processing-center/2971078001/

 

 

.

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1 hour ago, notwoz said:

"Mr. Trump, while criticizing mail voting, recently acknowledged that in March he voted absentee by mail in his adopted home state of Florida. In the 2018 midterm elections, Mr. Trump voted absentee by mail from New York.

Mr. Trump is hardly the only administration official to vote by mail. Vice President Mike Pence voted absentee by mail for both the primary and general election in 2018. Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary, also voted absentee in 2018 and Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, has voted absentee 15 times in the last 15 years, according to Florida’s voter file. Mr. Ross, like Mr. Trump, voted absentee for Florida’s primary last month."

If voting by mail is good enough for the top bananarepublican and his toadies, it should be good enough for all of us.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/article/mail-in-voting-explained.html

 

Yeah, it's not like they're out of state doing their jobs or anything...

 

Totally the same thing as people voting by mail from home. Near their polling place. Where they can just go to vote.

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