Mail in Balloting

GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Ari Fleischer: In 2020 election, if states can't prove they can handle voting by mail, don't try it now

In 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 33 million absentee ballots were cast, of which less than one percent were rejected. That still amounted to 318,728 votes thrown out nationally. In Florida, 21,973 were rejected. Pennsylvania was 17,574, Georgia 13,677 and Ohio 10,189.

With vote by mail surging this year, many more votes will be thrown out.

With a disputed presidency on the line, what happens next is predictable. "Every vote counts,” the loser in that state will cry, hoping the rejected absentee ballots will put them over the top. The flip side is the rules.

Either rules matter and ballots get rejected (typically because they arrive too late, signatures don’t match or there is no signature) or the rules get made up on the fly, depending on which party is in power and whether disobeying the rules helps Trump or Biden.
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Why Voting By Mail Imperils Biden More Than Trump

The Democrats are obviously committed to using the COVID-19 pandemic as the latest pretext for achieving their longtime goal of widespread voting by mail. They may, however, end up outsmarting themselves. The Democrats are so invested in their revisionist history concerning Bush v. Gore that they have forgotten why SCOTUS actually stopped the Florida recounts on December 12, 2000. That was the “safe harbor” date after which the state’s electors may not have been counted. Federal law requires that states must resolve post-election disputes (e.g. recounts) within 35 days after Election Day or risk disfranchising their voters. In 2000, that would have changed the outcome of the presidential election.

What does this have to do with mail-in voting? Acting on the assumption that Congress is unlikely to pass legislation requiring every state to send mail-in ballots to all registered voters, a number of Democrat-controlled states are moving to pass bills that will mandate vote-by-mail schemes within their own borders. Nevada just became the latest state to adopt such a plan. The obvious problem is that Election Day is only three months away and the logistical difficulties of expanding mail-in voting are legion. Five states, including Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, conduct elections exclusively by mail and still have serious problems after years of trying to get it right. Indeed, they have literally lost millions of ballots.

Why does this pose a greater risk for Biden than Trump? The states attempting to convert to all mail-in voting are controlled by Democrats. Consequently, they are far more likely to encounter general election problems comparable to the disarray that characterized recent primaries in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In both of those states, mail-in voting disfranchised tens of thousands due to postal delays, signature match problems, and voter errors. Such issues will inevitably recur in any state attempting to set up vote-by-mail before November. And the safe harbor deadline (12/8/2020) doesn’t afford them the luxury of endless squabbling with the GOP about the validity of ballots in a contested race:

Under 3 U.S.C. § 5, the so-called “safe harbor” provision of federal law, a state can be assured of having its chosen slate of electors recognized only if post-election disputes are resolved within thirty-five days of Election Day.… The federally prescribed Electoral College procedures put a premium on states resolving post-election disputes by the safe harbor date.… Key swing states would be hard-pressed to complete their post-election processes on the timetable contemplated by federal law.
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GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
In the 2016 Presidential race, four percent was more than the margin of victory in ten states representing 124 electoral votes.

Good enough for the post office isn’t good enough for the country.

If that wasn’t bad enough, don’t forget Thomas Cooper, a postman from Dry Fork, West Virginia. Cooper entered a guilty plea in federal court for altering mail ballots in his custody this summer. Credit goes to West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner for creating an environment in the Mountain State where election crime isn’t acceptable.

Mail voting also failed in the Wisconsin primaries. An inspector general report of the USPS noted:

  • Three tubs of absentee ballots from Appleton and Oshkosh were found at the Milwaukee Processing & Distribution Center (P&DC) after polls closed on April 7, 2020.
  • Absentee ballots requested on March 22 and 23, 2020, were not delivered to voters.
  • Three hundred ninety ballots that were mailed by voters did not receive postmarks. The election office was unable to determine whether they were received by the Postal Service in time to be included in the official count.
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New data shows that vote-by-mail also failed in Nevada. Clark County, home to Las Vegas, voted to go all-mail, just like the advocates wanted—over the objections of local election officials who knew better. Clark County mailed 1,325,934 ballots to registered voters, including voters who never asked for a mail ballot.

Roughly 310,000 mail ballots came back. Of those, about 7,000 were outright rejected by election officials. But here is the staggering statistic: 223,469 ballots bounced back as undeliverable. Forty-two percent of those bounced back from active registrant addresses, compared to inactive. That’s 93,585 ballots that bounced back as undeliverable to the address election officials show is a real, live location of a valid active voter.

In the District of Columbia and Maryland, election officials decided to conduct a mail election, except the mail didn’t arrive. Thousands of people never got ballots, then showed up in person to try to vote. Election officials, unfortunately, thought their mail-voting panacea made polling places obsolete, so many were closed. Chaos and long lines followed—in places where the voters could even find a polling place.




https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2020/08/05/the-rise-and-fail-of-vote-by-mail-n758082
 
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stgislander

stgislander

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
So far it sounds like Larry isn't caving into the Dems to go with shotgun mail-in ballots. Even though the head of MD Election Board wants to go that way. Larry appears to be holding with the "You want a mail-in ballot then apply for one" approach.
 
Hijinx

Hijinx

Well-Known Member
stgislander said:
So far it sounds like Larry isn't caving into the Dems to go with shotgun mail-in ballots. Even though the head of MD Election Board wants to go that way. Larry appears to be holding with the "You want a mail-in ballot then apply for one" approach.
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The head of the Maryland Election Board wouldn't happen to be a Democrat would he?
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Chicago Mail Carriers Threaten To Stop Delivering Mail If City Fails To Control Violence


“The 24-year-old woman, who works as a United States Postal Service mail carrier, was shot at 91st Street and Ellis Avenue just after 11:35 a.m. while on the job,” ABC 7 Chicago reported earlier in September. “Chicago Fire Department officials said she was critically hurt after being shot multiple times.”

The mail carrier was not the shooting’s intended target, Chicago police officials said, but her southside route put her in the middle of a neighborhood wracked by gun violence. She is, ABC 7 added, the second mail carrier wounded by gunfire while walking her route: “In March, another Chicago letter carrier was shot while delivering mail in Brighton Park. He was caught in gang crossfire and told ABC7 he feels fortunate he was not more seriously injured from a shot to the back of his head.”

Another postal worker was reportedly shot with a paintball in the same Burnside neighborhood.
 
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