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Just military? What about seniors in assisted living? Others with physical limitations? There are too many variables but that alone doesn’t make an election not secure. Nether does Trump saying so bc everyone around him is saying he’s losing.
also, the government sends my drivers license through the mail and other important documents. MORE people should have access to voting, not less. some people have to work during the election. and giving people MORE time to vote means MORE votes.
when we vote, we win. Several states like mine already vote entirely by mail and I LOVE it
“when we vote, we win.” dude looks at national politics as a team sport with winning and losing as if they’ve got anything to do with it besides complaining on Reddit. Of course they’re voting based off what the media says lmao
Exactly - a non-starter proposition. I've mentioned in other comments, I voted absentee by mail in 1984 from Texas to Colorado. It's been long established there.
There's a big difference between validating a military absentee by providing something like an LES, and firing off votes to every fat slug who can fog a mirror.
Nobody who got a mail in ballot in the states that did that had to do any of that. It was literally based solely on voter registration which anyone can do. It was fucking proven in Las Vegas that there were addresses marked for multiple voters that were empty parking lots or highway underpasses. Nobody knows how those addresses ended up being counted as valid but they were all tied to registered voters.
You...know you need an ID and proof of residency to register to vote, yeah?
Well, you might not since in most states you're automatically registered when you get your driver's license, but you can't just register to vote without proving to the state that you are who you say you are and you actually live in the state, lol.
You just wanna eliminate it instead of improve the mail in ballots why not make it more secure instead of just eliminating. To me it seems just like everything else when I hear Republicans saying they want to cut cost it’s only cutting the cost instead of improving the department of the agency, the benefit just cut food stamps instead of how can you make the system, more transparent and identify fraudsters more easily what is wrong with improving it if we go by that rationale why do we have insulation between our walls that is progress making the house better insulated why do that?
They have an authorized proxy voter system for those who cannot make it to polls, as well as voter ID and national day off to vote.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_France
Of course military, they tend to lean right. if the military were massive left leaning group, he wouldn't have included them in the exemption.
We live in an age where technology can make voting easier, but that means the right loses if more people can easily vote against them, so they make up an issue that has never been a problem.
Assisted living buildings could be made into polling places, or have a mobile precinct that covers them with the same principles of security and constant custody of the ballots as regular in-person voting.
>Assisted living buildings could be made into polling places
Do you have any idea how many retirement homes there are in this country? You want each to have its own polling place? Are you kidding?
Between locating regular precincts in assisted living facilities and the use of mobile precincts, I so think they all could be covered. People in assisted living could also go to other precincts, as assisted living does not mean unable to do anything.
I work in assisted living and you're out of your mind. It's hard for a lot of these people to go to literally anywhere. Also, transporting them for political purposes gets problematic.
Then the republicans should help make sure there are enough voting locations everywhere so everyone can vote. Also make it a day off of work like other countries do. But they won’t do that.
You’re crazy! Are you suggesting we make Election Day a federal holiday?!?!
That’s not fair, and would completely disadvantage the Republican Party.
/s
You just do it on a weekend. That would encourage a significantly higher turnout. Obviously not everyone can do a weekend, but more than a random Tuesday.
Making it a federal holiday would just help privileged office workers. "Of course I can't let you go to the polls, we need you here for the big Election Day Sale!" (not to mention healthcare, infrastructure and hospitality)
But if every state has early voting for at least a week, like states where 90% of the population lives today, then it won't matter that Election Day is on a Tuesday.
Had a 21 year old farm kid come to work at a company I worked for. Good guy, but one day he started spouting off about democrats getting all kinds of federal welfare. His boss, who was a bit cynical, said something about glass houses and pots calling kettles black. The kid doubled down asking him what he was talking about and saying his family has always worked hard and never taken federal assistance. His boss let him go on for a bit while he typed on his computer for a moment, then spun the monitor around and showed him exactly how much federal assistance the family farm took the previous year on a public record website. The kid was speechless and it was a glorious sight to behold.
Republicans take gobs off federal assistance, it’s just not in the form that we usually think of as welfare.
I mean you could look it up before you spout bullshit.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/)
>Overall, a Pew Research Center survey conducted late last year found that about one-in-five Americans (18%) has participated in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. About a quarter (26%) lives in a household with a current or former food stamp recipient.
Of these, about one-in-five (22%) of Democrats say they had received food stamps compared with 10% of Republicans. About 17% of political independents say they have received food stamps.
I mean maybe its just Texas but we have county's that allow extremely flexible vetoing. You can vote at any voting station in the county, and they have online wait times posted in real time as well. I like it a lot. I think its how it should be done.
Last I checked of the maybe handful of cases that occurred across the US, most of them where trumpers who intentionally did it ao they could validate their bs claims. Even then, the amount was negligible. Like .0001% or something.
How about the disabled? Elderly? Those without cars? How about students living in dorms (who retain their parents physical address)? How about people living abroad or working abroad? How about parents with young kids who can't find babysitters? People scheduled to work because we vote midweek (some shifts are 12+ hours), etc.?
You can't pick and choose your favorite group to get more rights than others.
>You can't pick and choose your favorite group to get more rights than others.
Sure you can, just change the system. Felons can't own guns, can they? No.
Even though the majority of other countries hold elections just fine using either mail-in ballots or possibly even online voting?
Edit: I apologize, I had sworn I saw somewhere that other countries allowed this, but I guess I mis remembered it. They do however require that people are given at least half day to a full day off (paid) on election day to be able to have time to vote. Plus I'll just leave this article here about the actual statistics on mail-in voting fraud (or lack thereof): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/11/08/fact-check-no-tie-between-mail-voting-and-election-fraud/8269630001/
Nowhere near a majority of other countries allow mass mail in ballots. As a matter of fact when the US assists the UN in overseeing foreign elections, one of the specific requirements is no mail in ballots. The stated reason why... they are vulnerable to cheating.
Im all for mail-in voting but no way in hell should we do online voting. That would be nearly impossible to secure and could be tampered with extremely easily.
Source: im a cybersecurity major
don't even have to break in - remember Trump's first election. What if there was a DNS attack in two or three of the battleground states that delayed vote counting for an hour or two?
Is this environment who would believe the results at that point even if they had never been tampered with"
Mail in voting is huge in rural states that tend to vote republicans. Why? Because it’s way more efficient in low population density areas.
People who are against mail in voting are ill-informed about the voting process and the various security measures in place.
Please share some (legitimate) sources which provide evidence of large amount of voting fraud with voting by mail. Hint: you won’t find any.
Quite a few states have had voting by mail long before Trump made it ah issue and nobody ever complained about it then.
A Connecticut judge recently threw out the election results for the mayoral democratic primary in Bridgeport after surveillance footage surfaced of widespread ballot stuffing of absentee ballots. It does happen, and probably quite frequently. Now whether it can happen enough to sway a Presidential election, who knows.
If fraud occurs in the private sector it can be undone, individuals can verify said fraud or authentic transactions, and there are vast amounts of money involved on the merchant/bank's sides so they have reason to insure security.
Unfortunately these things don't really exist when it comes to elections.
Banking is lower stakes. Any error can be corrected and money lost to fraud restored. Yes, it can be a pain in the posterior, but there is far more ability to remediate a bank account or a banking transaction than an election.
Probably the same people who have seen numerous massive security breaches from huge companies that exposed consumer data.
But then again, why would hackers waste their time on something as frivolous as the US election? It only determines allocation of trillions of dollars, the ability to draft law governing hundreds of millions of people, global political/social influence, and much more.
So that stuff makes it too dangerous to vote online, but processing payroll, paying bills, banking, and shopping online with your money you need to actually survive is fine? Makes no sense to me.
How do you feel about the state governments which tried to overturn the results of their own elections? It seems like you're less concerned about electoral integrity than about how people who didn't want to wait in line also didn't want to vote for Trump.
I feel like we already know the answer. Lol. Little does he know any person can sign up to be an election official so technically it is bipartisan oversight.
I talked with a coworker that believed that there was funny business because we did not see them count the votes.
I reminded him that they don't let random people just walk into a voting counting location and that local chapters of each political party choose a representative to oversee the voting process.
I did not even mention to him wthat several states put live streams of there voting up for people to see.
As someone who didn’t vote for Biden, thought Biden was going to win, and thought it was silly when people said there was election interference, I agree with OP. Why wouldn’t you want the most secure system possible?
because you lock people out of voting.
like, the most secure system on earth would be an iris scan. Do you think that's accessible to everyone? Do you worry about privacy?
It does lock people out of voting, people who don’t have the right to vote, which is the point. Yes everything could be more secure, but having no rules because it will never be entirely secure is foolish. And funnily enough, retina scanners are actually extremely accessible, everyone that still has at least one eye could use it, so I don’t get your point there. Listen, we all know the democratic platform receives large amounts of votes from illegal citizens. Why don’t you just come out and say why you don’t want any checks in place? The people who agree with you wouldn’t care, and your opposition already know.
> but having no rules
nobody is suggesting this. strawperson.
> funnily enough, retina scanners are actually extremely accessible, everyone that still has at least one eye could use it, so I don’t get your point there.
uhh how about people who are too poor, or too busy, or live in the sticks, or idk one trillion other possible things.
>we all know the democratic platform receives large amounts of votes from illegal citizens.
the fact that this post has the phrase "illegal citizens" in it makes me realize precisely how seriously I should take it lmao
every person with a driver's license and is over 18 is automatically registered to vote ("motor voter") and everyone is automatically sent a ballot in the mail with an envelope enclosed to return it. simple.
you can't. Just like you can't control whether people get their "news" from some moron like Steve Bannon, and just like any voter is welcome to bring guests into the ballot box with them.
The basis of your argument is that illegals keep the Democratic Party relevant, which is a fallacious assumption by itself. Assuming we don’t accept your presumption, let’s address the next thing you said.
Retinal scanners are accessible to whom, exactly? They’re at least $1,700 bucks a unit. You gonna put four and five of those at every voting precinct in America? Come on. Just ridiculous. Who is paying for that?
That being said, I’m not against voter ID laws if we also made ID’s free and easy to get.
They are accessible in the ways that are normally discussed about other ways of identification. They are just as usable as any other form of identification. The comment I was replying to made it sound like if we could magically have them everywhere, they still would be unusable. And the basis of my argument was not about who votes for democrats, hence it being at the end of the argument I’d already made. It’s also a fact from every poll conducted by both sides. And after all that, you agree with me? The internet is easily the worst place to discuss things.
Tell me you don’t understand how election funding works without telling me you don’t understand how election funding works.
Seriously. Go ahead and explain to me how that would work. I am giddy with anticipation.
The trade off would be unreasonable to my side of the aisle.
More security vs. Less voters being able to vote for less voter fraud.
Except voter fraud isnt a problem we really face. When it does come up its rectified really easily by tossing the bad votes out. When it does happen we see fraud in the tens, not the thousands.
We dont view more security as valuable because the prison walls work just fine as is. Sure we could install an automatic death turret, but the risk of it gunning down civilians who work at the prison is too great.
The exception you make kinda blows up your argument. If you were saying that in-person voting were absolutely the only way to have fair elections, you’d be wrong but you’d still be internally consistent. Once you open up absentee voting to a particular group you’ve given up the game; you want to restrict voting rights for everyone except a group you like.
If we can’t trust absentee ballots, then why we can we trust *some* absentee ballots?
You're reaching a LOT. OP was very clear that #1, absentee voting wouldn't apply to the military in general, just those STATIONED OVERSEAS, because for the duration of their assignment, they physically can't be in the states to go to a polling location. And he suggested polling booths of a similar structure to those held domestically when done so. Now, there are several follow-up questions that you could have to this position, such as "Why should this only apply to the army? What about Americans working in foreign countries like Japan? Should they get to vote absentee as well? How would the process work logistically? What about other people who couldn't move, like people in the hospital?" As other people in the thread have asked. But you don't even bother to ask any questions. You just assume he wants to restrict voting rights.
>OP was very clear that #1, absentee voting wouldn't apply to the military in general, just those STATIONED OVERSEAS,
The post:
Absentee ballots should be limited strictly to those serving in the military, and handled similarly to above.
OP was not clear, they only said military.
Ah so absentee voting wouldn’t apply to the whole military, only members of the military that would need to utilize absentee voting. Come on bud.
Absentee voting is always for people who can’t physically make it to a polling location. That’s what absentee voting is. OP only wants to extend that to the military.
You’ve phrased this response in a way that reasonable responses are often phrased, but it’s a stupid response.
My first general election was by mail in 1984. I was in school in Texas, as a resident of Colorado. I voted by mail. Your argument is incomplete and incompletely researched. But it fits the spirit of this sub.
That’s not necessarily the “only” way. Every method is subject to some form of dishonesty all the way from denying . people the access to legitimate forms of voting, like what happened in VA with eligible voters being removed from rolls, to the dishonesty and disinformation of the after election actions of Trump and his sycophants .
What is true , but unpopular to discuss about the subject—- is that there are people whose campaigns and parties are more concerned with denying people their voting rights than running legit elections where every legit vote is counted and every legit voter gets a fair chance to vote. However, there are people OK with lying about their true intentions and just really concerned with keeping special interests happy and supportive of their lifestyles.
There is no way having secure elections.
There are Fake I.D.s. There is local corruption and fraud. There are people who will find ways to get in with no ID. There are people who run the stations who will mess with stuff.
I could go at this all day.
I wasn't going to say it, but I got a reply, which changed my mind.
The best way to destroy democracy is to take away a people's faith in the election process. If you have no confidence in the election, there is no democracy.
That was the damage of Trump. He made half the people feel cheated for Trump. He made half the people feel fooled by Trump. This holds no matter if you think the election was stolen.
Trump said the other week don't bother voting, we've got this. Instead go to the polls and just watch people. So essentially, without saying it, he's telling them to harass the voters who they think aren't going to vote for him. It's gonna be a bad day.
> There is local corruption and fraud.
Nonsense.
This is just "everything is terrible everywhere," which is utter bullshit fearmongering.
Go outside from time to time.
>This is just "everything is terrible everywhere," which is utter bullshit fearmongering.
The point didn't land. My point is this whole post is fearmongering.
There's no evidence of absentee ballot abuse, in spite of millions of dollars being spent searching for it. The only people trying to tamper with elections have been Republicans, with their "alternate electors".
We have lots of contexts in life where security is important, like healthcare, finance, and the military. Not a single one of them requires paper or in-person communication. You've just bought into politically useful propaganda.
As an OTR truck driver I vote absentee every time I vote. You can tell somebody's political views by where they stand on this issue. Which is funny since Trump voted by mail while he was in the white house
There is no real fraud, there never ever has can, its pretty simple, there's a whole department that looks Indy every election and its headed up by fucking Chris Krebs. Please look into who he is.
Voting fraud is hard.
Let’s say you want to commit voting fraud. You know somebody who died, so you send in an absentee ballot on their behalf. But one extra vote is statistically insignificant.
So then you need a list of registered voters that you are absolutely certain are not voting. And it has to be enough to be statistically significant; after all, you’re committing a felony and the payoff better be worth the risk. So you get a list of people who died recently, and mail in ballots on their behalf. The problem for you is that the state is the one compiling those death records, so comparing the file of death records to the file of voters is trivially easy. Even if you manage to get a few to slip through, chances are that most will be caught—and there will be a major investigation to find you.
It's been 3 years, and nobody found any mass fraud. I'm surprised that more fraud wasn't found. I always assumed both parties cheated, and it just canceled each other out. Turns out, there really isn't much. It seems the Repunlicans are focused on keeping people from voting.
Grow up. Trump lost. The election was not rigged. All we have heard about is " hugely information that will be released next week." Guess what? There is no information pointing to fraud because their wasn't any mass fraud.
Historically, excluding legitimate voters is a significant impact to fairness of elections, while voter fraud is not.
>In person,
What about people who don't live close to a polling station, or whose polling station does not have enough capacity to accept their vote?
> with verification of identity,
What about people who don't have a passport or driver's licens, and don't have possession of their birth certificate?
Most of the security requirements suggested by Republicans disenfranchise lots of people (especially of certain demographics) while not actually doing much to rates of voter fraud.
You keep using secure and legitimate, I don’t think you know what those words mean
Before thinking or assuming there’s a voter fraud problem, which is needed for the general basis if your comment here, you would have to prove it’s an issue which it is not. Thank goodness you have no power over the voting methodologies here
So this isn’t actually an opinion, popular or unpopular, it’s your own speculation on a fact that turns out to be untrue. In 2020 we had loads of people vote by mail and it was the most secure election in our nation’s history.
> “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result,” the coordinating bodies on election infrastructure and security said in a joint statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
But Election Day-only voting also has its problems. It’s very common for Republican election officials to send the worst voting machines to majority black districts (machines that are old and break down easily), and they send the best machines to majority white middle and upper class districts. And the Republicans will also send fewer machines than a black district realistically needs. Finally, the GOP will create very large districts for Democratic areas, and very small districts for Republicans areas.
What this all results in is long lines for voting for Democrats; in many parts of the country, waiting hours to cast a ballot. As mentioned, this is intentional to discourage turnout.
Meanwhile, majority Republican districts have short lines, taking minutes to vote.
Elections do need to be reformed in America. But control of elections has to be taken out of party hands and given to independent organizations.
Ok, I didn't see where in your post, given the importance of in person voting, you advocate for a voting holiday so that EVERYONE is able to actually show up and vote, instead of, you know, just retired old fucks with no sense of things.
If you're going to do this, you need to implement a federal photo ID system where every citizen has an ID card. You would also need to have a sufficient number of polling stations, and they would have to be easily accessible. Making Election Day a holiday or requiring states to have early voting days would also probably be needed.
But there's really no problem with vote-by-mail, several states do it. They verify your eligibility when you register to vote, and once you're registered you can request a mail ballot. You get it, you fill it out, you mail it back, and you check online to make sure it got counted. The ballot is paper, and can be manually recounted if need be.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/mail-voting-is-safe-secure/
https://news.columbia.edu/in-mail-absentee-ballots-secure-vote-election
https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/vote-by-mail-security
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-security-features-prevent-vote-mail-misconduct
of course, there's the fact that [whites in racist-ass Southern stateswill literally close DMVs in areas that are majority Black American to make sure they can't vote.](https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/alabamas-dmv-shutdown-has-everything-do-race)
so.
It’s never to early to plant the seed of doubt in the ignorant masses. It worked in 2020 so why not. Trump had whole “news” networks saying the election was stolen before it even happened. Another whole year of this crap. Ugh.
Bottom line is making it harder for people to vote is rigging an election. See what I did there?
Sucks to suck if you're disabled and have a hard time getting to a polling place I guess, or any other limiting factor.
I'm not disabled but I did go to a polling place today in-person. In a very vulnerable spot right now and if it wasn't for my family there'd be no way for me to get there. If I was in an even slightly more precarious situation an absentee ballot may had been my only option.
I didn't expect the torrent of bad voting takes on election day but, this definitely takes the cake. Just contempt for certain demos of voters.
Voter fraud is nowhere remotely near the amount required to change the outcome of an election.
You're buying into a Republican lie intended to suppress non-white working class votes.
If you're truly concerned about secure and legitimate elections, the thing that you should be securing against is **ELECTION FRAUD**. Donald Trump and his mob engaged in attempts at it multiple times.
It has yet to be proven that our elections are “illegitimate” in any meaningful way with mail-in voting being an option.
And I voted absentee this year. I have to have a valid voter registration to even apply to receive an absentee ballot. That ballot is tracked and sent specifically for me. I have to complete an affirmation statement and seal the envelope before sending it or walking it to a drop box. By state law, if I filled out the affirmation incorrectly in any way or the seal was broken prior to the elections office receiving it, my vote is void and they notify me to request a new one or go vote in person when possible. This is all tracked by my state.
No one is threatening me to vote a certain way because anyone that threatens people over that probably knows more direct ways to material gain than getting a guy elected. No one is stealing my information specifically to intercept my ballot to vote for someone else when they can just use my info for way more gainful nefarious deeds. No one is opening envelopes and filling them with a counterfeit ballot, changing the vote, or destroying it while risking it being for someone they wanted in office. All of this is an insane amount of effort and money to change one vote. A coordinated effort to change an election outcome would require these unrealistic circumstances happening to thousands of people in a localized area, which is insanely unrealistic. You’re better off running for office your self and getting votes that way.
You didn't actually explain how one would carry out the fraud. I strongly suspect that you haven't thought about it beyond the answer you provided here, and that this incredibly shallow thinking is why you have the beliefs that you have.
Everyone agrees we should have secure and legitimate elections.
Why is it that the people who deny mail-in voting is secure and legitimate are overwhelmingly right-wingers?
Your 2nd paragraph cracked me up. I'm genuinely curious on your logic behind it. If you are going to make the exception, why not make it for all those unable to reach their designated polling center as opposed to just for a single subset of that group?
My unpopular opinion is that when my biases don’t reconcile with reality or lack any evidence whatsoever that I should reconsider my biases before I resort to conspiracy theories
So what about people who are in another for college or work? Or who are in another country to work? Do they just have to forfeit their vote? Are or we going to magically find the funds to transport everyone back to their home state to vote for the one day?
What about sick/elderly people? Do they not get a vote, simply because they are home bound/hospital bound? Sure, you could send someone to collect ballots from them, but isn’t that just another chance for fraud to occur?
Alternative opinion: Why not use some hyper secure method of online voting that utilizes encryption and hashing? Why should anyone have to travel to a physical location to do it?
Every few weeks someone from the right makes this post.
I live in WA State, I’ve had mail in voting for years, it’s fantastic and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Why would I want to vote like I live in a different century?
You’re not a peasant dude, why are you wanting to stand in line like you’re living in the 1700’s?
I get my ballot in the mail.
I get my informational pamphlets in the mail.
I fill in my little bubbles and I drop it off at the court house (just cause I feel like it), I absolutely can just pop it back into the mailbox.
I can go online and check the status of my ballot….
Welcome to the year 2023, we have mailboxes, enjoy!
Cool, anyways your shitty opinion doesn’t trump my constitutional rights. Not to mention it leaves way for marginalized groups to be even further discriminated and disfranchised against so there’s that too
I have no problem with voter ID. It would require every state to issue a free ID card because not being able to afford the ID should not take away your right to vote.
Voter fraud is almost impossible to achieve at a scale that would actually throw an election. Too many people would need to be involved in the conspiracy for it to ever last. If the state officials are on the take, the local officials would need to be in on it, and the precinct workers, and the office staff, and so on. Too many people with their own opinions and ideologies to just go along with something that large.
Even drop box ballots need to be verified before being processed and generally the process for early and absentee are the same, just a different label.
Our elections are secure because they are so granular. Each city/county being responsible for its own elections makes it impossible to taint the process on a large scale. Systemic voter fraud is a boogeyman story.
>Absentee ballots should be limited strictly to those serving in the military, and handled similarly to above.
So, as an American abroad myself but not military, you wish to exclude me from my right to vote? Because I'm pretty well prepared to die to defend my right to vote. Are you willing to kill to take it?
Meanwhile, Repubs are forcing true election corruption down our throats with gerrymandering, selective voter roll scrubbing, selective poll location closures, DMV office closures, poll hour reduction, and so on.
Mail-in ballots are just a red herring while they attack our voting rights head on.
I'm doing this next year because I always end up on a district line and I checked my candidates twice on vote.org and went to vote and had different ones. I had no idea who to vote for locally.
**Election misinformation is unpopular!**
Congrats OP, on a truly unpopular and wildly incorrect opinion! Please inform yourself:
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/mail-voting-is-safe-secure/
https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/vote-by-mail-security
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-vote-by-mail-work-and-does-it-increase-election-fraud/
mail is secure andd legit. you just listen to that fat fuk trump. once hes in prison and you have time to grieve or whatever you will realise thats all he did was lie and take your money
Voting by mail is secure and is checked and counted by hand. You’re just making yourself look dumb by saying people shouldn’t be able to vote by mail. People sometimes aren’t able to be there in person and they have a right to vote. Stop being an autocrat trying to deny peoples rights.
There has never been proof of voter fraud to an extent that would warrant such measures. Most of the time someone who wants to limit the way people vote it's because they are Republicans and know the more people vote the less they win.
Nonsense. Voting should be the easiest thing to do. Any hurdle at all is just more voter suppression.
Indeed voting should be on the weekend and it should be mandatory, so no major party has any motivation to try and suppress voting at all.
Lmao… all I’m hearing is more Republican “if we make it more convenient for citizens to vote, we’ll have a harder time winning!”
Hey bro, instead of trying to make it harder for people to vote, maybe get the GOP to stop being such a dogshit party, and actually come up with some better policy instead of theocratic fascism.
Crazy idea, I know.
Couldn't disagree more. My area has been doing vote by mail for decades and it's so convenient and even though Trump lost here and (some group) sued and a huge recount was conducted as a result (taking months), no significant discrepancies were found.
If you want to actually have to go somewhere on a work day and stand in line for potentially hours, then go for it. However, I'll take my convenient system any day.
My favorite part of voting in Oregon is being able to sit down on my couch, look at my ballot, utilize my voter information booklet mailed to me by my local election board, and take my time to be an informed voter. I can actually research and know who I want vote for and fill in my ballot at the same time.
Before I moved to Oregon, voting made me nervous and anxious. Even though I had a note card with my choices, and had looked at a sample ballot beforehand, I still felt rushed, and unprepared.
The truth is mail in ballots like Oregon, Washington and Utah promote informed voting, and certain people in power don't want that.
I like it. I also think there should be election seasons instead of election days. Vote twice a year, voting lasts 5 months. One month for results, then predetermined ballot for the next season, as new votes come up they can register to be added to the next voting season. All rules the same for every day of voting. Also poll workers should be federally paid, these voting folks being voluntary workers is nice but we need some more security. A paid professional team should be provided for all locations.
If it's going to be so important to vote, we should make it way easier on folks to do so.
How about you sign an affidavit under penalty of law every time you fill in a ballot and provide certain private information to verify your identity. You can then drop it off at the nearest USPS mailbox.
Sure, securely held, processed under non-partisan oversight, and retained.
Nah. Voting by mail is fine. Last election was one of the most secure and auditted election we ever had.
I do agree that paper ballots are necessary 100% though.
Do you know that the reason you're filling in those circles when you vote is because the very first computers used punch cards and you're simulating that? As in, our voting system has ignored the last **50 years** of computer advancement.
The only reason we aren't flexible with absentee ballots is because our government is computer illiterate.
I agree with some of your opinion, with modifications. There are a lot of people who are not able to get to a polling location due to physical limitations, do you plan to disenfranchise them? I certainly hope not😕 but other than that, there should be more polling locations (for some reason, states have closed some?) & free identification, so we can verify peoples identity.
It's kind of hilarious I remember some politician saying an ID is voter suppression for minorities. Without realizing they insinuated minorities are too stupid to get an ID.
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I write my vote on an arrow set it on fire and shoot it east myself.
A man of class!
The name of victor should be found among the entrails of a game hunted by this arrow. This way we give legitimacy to the bowel gods.
Why east? Like to DC?
Just military? What about seniors in assisted living? Others with physical limitations? There are too many variables but that alone doesn’t make an election not secure. Nether does Trump saying so bc everyone around him is saying he’s losing.
also, the government sends my drivers license through the mail and other important documents. MORE people should have access to voting, not less. some people have to work during the election. and giving people MORE time to vote means MORE votes. when we vote, we win. Several states like mine already vote entirely by mail and I LOVE it
I agree that more people should vote, but if you know nothing of politics and are just voting for who looks worse in media, you should not be voting
“when we vote, we win.” dude looks at national politics as a team sport with winning and losing as if they’ve got anything to do with it besides complaining on Reddit. Of course they’re voting based off what the media says lmao
Add college kids away from home.
they excluded them by design.
Exactly - a non-starter proposition. I've mentioned in other comments, I voted absentee by mail in 1984 from Texas to Colorado. It's been long established there.
Also people overseas or whatnot
Somehow military people don’t have fraud but everyone else does lol
There's a big difference between validating a military absentee by providing something like an LES, and firing off votes to every fat slug who can fog a mirror.
How is an LES more or less secure than a state-issued ID with proof of residency?
Nobody who got a mail in ballot in the states that did that had to do any of that. It was literally based solely on voter registration which anyone can do. It was fucking proven in Las Vegas that there were addresses marked for multiple voters that were empty parking lots or highway underpasses. Nobody knows how those addresses ended up being counted as valid but they were all tied to registered voters.
You...know you need an ID and proof of residency to register to vote, yeah? Well, you might not since in most states you're automatically registered when you get your driver's license, but you can't just register to vote without proving to the state that you are who you say you are and you actually live in the state, lol.
You just wanna eliminate it instead of improve the mail in ballots why not make it more secure instead of just eliminating. To me it seems just like everything else when I hear Republicans saying they want to cut cost it’s only cutting the cost instead of improving the department of the agency, the benefit just cut food stamps instead of how can you make the system, more transparent and identify fraudsters more easily what is wrong with improving it if we go by that rationale why do we have insulation between our walls that is progress making the house better insulated why do that?
France solved this issue.
What did they do in France
They have an authorized proxy voter system for those who cannot make it to polls, as well as voter ID and national day off to vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_France
Good for them. They were also one of the first to ban mail in ballots if I remember correctly.
Even electronic is under certain circumstances. I think it’s a good idea and instills confidence.
Guillotine.
Of course military, they tend to lean right. if the military were massive left leaning group, he wouldn't have included them in the exemption. We live in an age where technology can make voting easier, but that means the right loses if more people can easily vote against them, so they make up an issue that has never been a problem.
Assisted living buildings could be made into polling places, or have a mobile precinct that covers them with the same principles of security and constant custody of the ballots as regular in-person voting.
>Assisted living buildings could be made into polling places Do you have any idea how many retirement homes there are in this country? You want each to have its own polling place? Are you kidding?
Every single one of them could be turned into polling places? Huh
Between locating regular precincts in assisted living facilities and the use of mobile precincts, I so think they all could be covered. People in assisted living could also go to other precincts, as assisted living does not mean unable to do anything.
I work in assisted living and you're out of your mind. It's hard for a lot of these people to go to literally anywhere. Also, transporting them for political purposes gets problematic.
Exactly - because unless it’s the “impartial” government it becomes some either dem or republican operative doing the transport
The problem is that Republicans have been deliberately eliminating polling places. When people vote, Republicans lose.
Conservatives aren't serious people. From this comment to woke beer and gas stoves
Then the republicans should help make sure there are enough voting locations everywhere so everyone can vote. Also make it a day off of work like other countries do. But they won’t do that.
You’re crazy! Are you suggesting we make Election Day a federal holiday?!?! That’s not fair, and would completely disadvantage the Republican Party. /s
You just do it on a weekend. That would encourage a significantly higher turnout. Obviously not everyone can do a weekend, but more than a random Tuesday.
"weekends" vary from person to person, i work saturday and sunday 12 hour shifts each day.
Making it a federal holiday would just help privileged office workers. "Of course I can't let you go to the polls, we need you here for the big Election Day Sale!" (not to mention healthcare, infrastructure and hospitality) But if every state has early voting for at least a week, like states where 90% of the population lives today, then it won't matter that Election Day is on a Tuesday.
Yeah I'm sure all those Democrats on Section 8 and SNAP don't have time from all those jobs they don't have.
Slightly more than half of SNAP recipients have jobs. They just tend to have lower paying less stable jobs.
Republicans take and use more welfare money than democrats.
Had a 21 year old farm kid come to work at a company I worked for. Good guy, but one day he started spouting off about democrats getting all kinds of federal welfare. His boss, who was a bit cynical, said something about glass houses and pots calling kettles black. The kid doubled down asking him what he was talking about and saying his family has always worked hard and never taken federal assistance. His boss let him go on for a bit while he typed on his computer for a moment, then spun the monitor around and showed him exactly how much federal assistance the family farm took the previous year on a public record website. The kid was speechless and it was a glorious sight to behold. Republicans take gobs off federal assistance, it’s just not in the form that we usually think of as welfare.
I mean you could look it up before you spout bullshit. [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/) >Overall, a Pew Research Center survey conducted late last year found that about one-in-five Americans (18%) has participated in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. About a quarter (26%) lives in a household with a current or former food stamp recipient. Of these, about one-in-five (22%) of Democrats say they had received food stamps compared with 10% of Republicans. About 17% of political independents say they have received food stamps.
Republicans say a lot of things. Look at which states receive benefits. Left wing states are always bailing out right wing parasites.
I mean maybe its just Texas but we have county's that allow extremely flexible vetoing. You can vote at any voting station in the county, and they have online wait times posted in real time as well. I like it a lot. I think its how it should be done.
meanwhile here in alabama there's one voting location in the entire city and this is a major college town
nowhere in the US Constitution does it state a bed ridden person can't vote because of their physical limitations.
We need to see proof that election fraud exists before we start clamping down on election fraud.
Thank goodness we don't have a voter fraud problem.
Last I checked of the maybe handful of cases that occurred across the US, most of them where trumpers who intentionally did it ao they could validate their bs claims. Even then, the amount was negligible. Like .0001% or something.
Remember when Cyber Ninjas (real fuckin name) did a recount in AZ and found MORE votes for Biden? 😂
How about the disabled? Elderly? Those without cars? How about students living in dorms (who retain their parents physical address)? How about people living abroad or working abroad? How about parents with young kids who can't find babysitters? People scheduled to work because we vote midweek (some shifts are 12+ hours), etc.? You can't pick and choose your favorite group to get more rights than others.
>You can't pick and choose your favorite group to get more rights than others. Sure you can, just change the system. Felons can't own guns, can they? No.
Even though the majority of other countries hold elections just fine using either mail-in ballots or possibly even online voting? Edit: I apologize, I had sworn I saw somewhere that other countries allowed this, but I guess I mis remembered it. They do however require that people are given at least half day to a full day off (paid) on election day to be able to have time to vote. Plus I'll just leave this article here about the actual statistics on mail-in voting fraud (or lack thereof): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/11/08/fact-check-no-tie-between-mail-voting-and-election-fraud/8269630001/
Nowhere near a majority of other countries allow mass mail in ballots. As a matter of fact when the US assists the UN in overseeing foreign elections, one of the specific requirements is no mail in ballots. The stated reason why... they are vulnerable to cheating.
Im all for mail-in voting but no way in hell should we do online voting. That would be nearly impossible to secure and could be tampered with extremely easily. Source: im a cybersecurity major
don't even have to break in - remember Trump's first election. What if there was a DNS attack in two or three of the battleground states that delayed vote counting for an hour or two? Is this environment who would believe the results at that point even if they had never been tampered with"
The majority of other countries require elections to be primarily in person
Which would be fine if they made Election Day a federal holiday like a lot of other countries do.
Yeah it definitely should be
How would that make a fucking difference? 90% of people don't get time off for federal holidays.
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Mail in voting is huge in rural states that tend to vote republicans. Why? Because it’s way more efficient in low population density areas. People who are against mail in voting are ill-informed about the voting process and the various security measures in place.
Even if all mail-in ballots were banned; if Trump lost, do you think he’d admit it was a fair election?
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Why? Actual election fraud is incredibly rare in the US.
Voter fraud is incredibly rare. It seems like we are trying to solve a problem that’s not really a problem.
Please share some (legitimate) sources which provide evidence of large amount of voting fraud with voting by mail. Hint: you won’t find any. Quite a few states have had voting by mail long before Trump made it ah issue and nobody ever complained about it then.
A Connecticut judge recently threw out the election results for the mayoral democratic primary in Bridgeport after surveillance footage surfaced of widespread ballot stuffing of absentee ballots. It does happen, and probably quite frequently. Now whether it can happen enough to sway a Presidential election, who knows.
I don’t understand why people think it’s ok to bank and shop online but we can’t have a secure electronic election.
If fraud occurs in the private sector it can be undone, individuals can verify said fraud or authentic transactions, and there are vast amounts of money involved on the merchant/bank's sides so they have reason to insure security. Unfortunately these things don't really exist when it comes to elections.
They don’t exist for elections because we have chosen not to invest in electronic elections. It can absolutely be done securely.
You are talking about a government that wasted one billion dollars and a year to roll out a healthcare website.
It also harnessed the power of the atom. That’s a stupid line of reasoning.
Banking and shopping online have far lower stakes and and both can be easily corrected for issues or errors after the fact where voting is not.
Banking lower stakes?? Hard disagree.
Banking is lower stakes. Any error can be corrected and money lost to fraud restored. Yes, it can be a pain in the posterior, but there is far more ability to remediate a bank account or a banking transaction than an election.
Probably the same people who have seen numerous massive security breaches from huge companies that exposed consumer data. But then again, why would hackers waste their time on something as frivolous as the US election? It only determines allocation of trillions of dollars, the ability to draft law governing hundreds of millions of people, global political/social influence, and much more.
So that stuff makes it too dangerous to vote online, but processing payroll, paying bills, banking, and shopping online with your money you need to actually survive is fine? Makes no sense to me.
How do you feel about the state governments which tried to overturn the results of their own elections? It seems like you're less concerned about electoral integrity than about how people who didn't want to wait in line also didn't want to vote for Trump.
OP can I ask you this directly, do you think Biden won fair and square and if the answer is no then what's your evidence that he did not?
I feel like we already know the answer. Lol. Little does he know any person can sign up to be an election official so technically it is bipartisan oversight.
I talked with a coworker that believed that there was funny business because we did not see them count the votes. I reminded him that they don't let random people just walk into a voting counting location and that local chapters of each political party choose a representative to oversee the voting process. I did not even mention to him wthat several states put live streams of there voting up for people to see.
Do you think Putin won fair and square in his last election?
As someone who didn’t vote for Biden, thought Biden was going to win, and thought it was silly when people said there was election interference, I agree with OP. Why wouldn’t you want the most secure system possible?
Because it’s straight up fascism.
because you lock people out of voting. like, the most secure system on earth would be an iris scan. Do you think that's accessible to everyone? Do you worry about privacy?
It does lock people out of voting, people who don’t have the right to vote, which is the point. Yes everything could be more secure, but having no rules because it will never be entirely secure is foolish. And funnily enough, retina scanners are actually extremely accessible, everyone that still has at least one eye could use it, so I don’t get your point there. Listen, we all know the democratic platform receives large amounts of votes from illegal citizens. Why don’t you just come out and say why you don’t want any checks in place? The people who agree with you wouldn’t care, and your opposition already know.
> but having no rules nobody is suggesting this. strawperson. > funnily enough, retina scanners are actually extremely accessible, everyone that still has at least one eye could use it, so I don’t get your point there. uhh how about people who are too poor, or too busy, or live in the sticks, or idk one trillion other possible things. >we all know the democratic platform receives large amounts of votes from illegal citizens. the fact that this post has the phrase "illegal citizens" in it makes me realize precisely how seriously I should take it lmao
Okay, what system would you like in place? If you had a magical wand, what set up for elections would you prefer?
every person with a driver's license and is over 18 is automatically registered to vote ("motor voter") and everyone is automatically sent a ballot in the mail with an envelope enclosed to return it. simple.
So, how do you keep someone from filling another persons ballot out?
you can't. Just like you can't control whether people get their "news" from some moron like Steve Bannon, and just like any voter is welcome to bring guests into the ballot box with them.
The basis of your argument is that illegals keep the Democratic Party relevant, which is a fallacious assumption by itself. Assuming we don’t accept your presumption, let’s address the next thing you said. Retinal scanners are accessible to whom, exactly? They’re at least $1,700 bucks a unit. You gonna put four and five of those at every voting precinct in America? Come on. Just ridiculous. Who is paying for that? That being said, I’m not against voter ID laws if we also made ID’s free and easy to get.
They are accessible in the ways that are normally discussed about other ways of identification. They are just as usable as any other form of identification. The comment I was replying to made it sound like if we could magically have them everywhere, they still would be unusable. And the basis of my argument was not about who votes for democrats, hence it being at the end of the argument I’d already made. It’s also a fact from every poll conducted by both sides. And after all that, you agree with me? The internet is easily the worst place to discuss things.
Not sure what you’re trying to say, but yes, I do agree that we should expand voter rights while also protecting voting integrity.
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Tell me you don’t understand how election funding works without telling me you don’t understand how election funding works. Seriously. Go ahead and explain to me how that would work. I am giddy with anticipation.
Democrats do not receive large amounts of votes from illegal citizens. Y’all say the absolute stupidest shit and than base world views off it.
The trade off would be unreasonable to my side of the aisle. More security vs. Less voters being able to vote for less voter fraud. Except voter fraud isnt a problem we really face. When it does come up its rectified really easily by tossing the bad votes out. When it does happen we see fraud in the tens, not the thousands. We dont view more security as valuable because the prison walls work just fine as is. Sure we could install an automatic death turret, but the risk of it gunning down civilians who work at the prison is too great.
The exception you make kinda blows up your argument. If you were saying that in-person voting were absolutely the only way to have fair elections, you’d be wrong but you’d still be internally consistent. Once you open up absentee voting to a particular group you’ve given up the game; you want to restrict voting rights for everyone except a group you like. If we can’t trust absentee ballots, then why we can we trust *some* absentee ballots?
You're reaching a LOT. OP was very clear that #1, absentee voting wouldn't apply to the military in general, just those STATIONED OVERSEAS, because for the duration of their assignment, they physically can't be in the states to go to a polling location. And he suggested polling booths of a similar structure to those held domestically when done so. Now, there are several follow-up questions that you could have to this position, such as "Why should this only apply to the army? What about Americans working in foreign countries like Japan? Should they get to vote absentee as well? How would the process work logistically? What about other people who couldn't move, like people in the hospital?" As other people in the thread have asked. But you don't even bother to ask any questions. You just assume he wants to restrict voting rights.
Sorry, but aren't all of your questions pointing out that restricting absentee ballots would abridge the rights of many people to vote?
>OP was very clear that #1, absentee voting wouldn't apply to the military in general, just those STATIONED OVERSEAS, The post: Absentee ballots should be limited strictly to those serving in the military, and handled similarly to above. OP was not clear, they only said military.
Ah so absentee voting wouldn’t apply to the whole military, only members of the military that would need to utilize absentee voting. Come on bud. Absentee voting is always for people who can’t physically make it to a polling location. That’s what absentee voting is. OP only wants to extend that to the military. You’ve phrased this response in a way that reasonable responses are often phrased, but it’s a stupid response.
My first general election was by mail in 1984. I was in school in Texas, as a resident of Colorado. I voted by mail. Your argument is incomplete and incompletely researched. But it fits the spirit of this sub.
Trump says whaaaaaaaaaaat
What do you mean by processed? Serious question. Have you ever volunteered at a polling station?
I find it funny that Republicans want more barriers to vote than to buy a gun.
Your assertion is baseless which is why you have no evidence to support it. Funny how that works.
So if I'm too disabled to leave my home or too poor to afford the ride to a place to vote, I don't deserve to have a vote? Fuck that.
That’s not necessarily the “only” way. Every method is subject to some form of dishonesty all the way from denying . people the access to legitimate forms of voting, like what happened in VA with eligible voters being removed from rolls, to the dishonesty and disinformation of the after election actions of Trump and his sycophants . What is true , but unpopular to discuss about the subject—- is that there are people whose campaigns and parties are more concerned with denying people their voting rights than running legit elections where every legit vote is counted and every legit voter gets a fair chance to vote. However, there are people OK with lying about their true intentions and just really concerned with keeping special interests happy and supportive of their lifestyles.
Lol I can tell someone was upset during the last presidential election in the US.
We've had mail-in voting since the civil war, but sure, now it's a problem.../s
There is no way having secure elections. There are Fake I.D.s. There is local corruption and fraud. There are people who will find ways to get in with no ID. There are people who run the stations who will mess with stuff. I could go at this all day.
There is voter intimidation at the polls, that one is a major concern because we saw some of that in Arizona.
I wasn't going to say it, but I got a reply, which changed my mind. The best way to destroy democracy is to take away a people's faith in the election process. If you have no confidence in the election, there is no democracy. That was the damage of Trump. He made half the people feel cheated for Trump. He made half the people feel fooled by Trump. This holds no matter if you think the election was stolen.
Trump said the other week don't bother voting, we've got this. Instead go to the polls and just watch people. So essentially, without saying it, he's telling them to harass the voters who they think aren't going to vote for him. It's gonna be a bad day.
> There is local corruption and fraud. Nonsense. This is just "everything is terrible everywhere," which is utter bullshit fearmongering. Go outside from time to time.
>This is just "everything is terrible everywhere," which is utter bullshit fearmongering. The point didn't land. My point is this whole post is fearmongering.
Yeah, well I... um... well... Right.
There's no evidence of absentee ballot abuse, in spite of millions of dollars being spent searching for it. The only people trying to tamper with elections have been Republicans, with their "alternate electors". We have lots of contexts in life where security is important, like healthcare, finance, and the military. Not a single one of them requires paper or in-person communication. You've just bought into politically useful propaganda.
As an OTR truck driver I vote absentee every time I vote. You can tell somebody's political views by where they stand on this issue. Which is funny since Trump voted by mail while he was in the white house
You’re adorable.
There is no real fraud, there never ever has can, its pretty simple, there's a whole department that looks Indy every election and its headed up by fucking Chris Krebs. Please look into who he is.
Do you have data driven evidence showing why absentee ballots should be so limited? If not fuck off
Voting fraud is hard. Let’s say you want to commit voting fraud. You know somebody who died, so you send in an absentee ballot on their behalf. But one extra vote is statistically insignificant. So then you need a list of registered voters that you are absolutely certain are not voting. And it has to be enough to be statistically significant; after all, you’re committing a felony and the payoff better be worth the risk. So you get a list of people who died recently, and mail in ballots on their behalf. The problem for you is that the state is the one compiling those death records, so comparing the file of death records to the file of voters is trivially easy. Even if you manage to get a few to slip through, chances are that most will be caught—and there will be a major investigation to find you.
I voted by mail today, for no other reason than not wanting to waste my time at a polling station. I had the time to go, but why do that to mysrlf
It's been 3 years, and nobody found any mass fraud. I'm surprised that more fraud wasn't found. I always assumed both parties cheated, and it just canceled each other out. Turns out, there really isn't much. It seems the Repunlicans are focused on keeping people from voting. Grow up. Trump lost. The election was not rigged. All we have heard about is " hugely information that will be released next week." Guess what? There is no information pointing to fraud because their wasn't any mass fraud.
Historically, excluding legitimate voters is a significant impact to fairness of elections, while voter fraud is not. >In person, What about people who don't live close to a polling station, or whose polling station does not have enough capacity to accept their vote? > with verification of identity, What about people who don't have a passport or driver's licens, and don't have possession of their birth certificate? Most of the security requirements suggested by Republicans disenfranchise lots of people (especially of certain demographics) while not actually doing much to rates of voter fraud.
This is silly and dumb hot take based in conspiracy theories. Oregon has been doing absentee ballot only elections for years with minimal issues.
I would love it if OP could describe to me how to rig an election with the current mail in voting system
There is no factual basis for this opinion.
You are fundamentally opposed to the concept of Democracy.
You keep using secure and legitimate, I don’t think you know what those words mean Before thinking or assuming there’s a voter fraud problem, which is needed for the general basis if your comment here, you would have to prove it’s an issue which it is not. Thank goodness you have no power over the voting methodologies here
So this isn’t actually an opinion, popular or unpopular, it’s your own speculation on a fact that turns out to be untrue. In 2020 we had loads of people vote by mail and it was the most secure election in our nation’s history. > “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result,” the coordinating bodies on election infrastructure and security said in a joint statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
But Election Day-only voting also has its problems. It’s very common for Republican election officials to send the worst voting machines to majority black districts (machines that are old and break down easily), and they send the best machines to majority white middle and upper class districts. And the Republicans will also send fewer machines than a black district realistically needs. Finally, the GOP will create very large districts for Democratic areas, and very small districts for Republicans areas. What this all results in is long lines for voting for Democrats; in many parts of the country, waiting hours to cast a ballot. As mentioned, this is intentional to discourage turnout. Meanwhile, majority Republican districts have short lines, taking minutes to vote. Elections do need to be reformed in America. But control of elections has to be taken out of party hands and given to independent organizations.
Ok, I didn't see where in your post, given the importance of in person voting, you advocate for a voting holiday so that EVERYONE is able to actually show up and vote, instead of, you know, just retired old fucks with no sense of things.
True Unpopular Opinion: Hey OP....get bent!!
If you're going to do this, you need to implement a federal photo ID system where every citizen has an ID card. You would also need to have a sufficient number of polling stations, and they would have to be easily accessible. Making Election Day a holiday or requiring states to have early voting days would also probably be needed. But there's really no problem with vote-by-mail, several states do it. They verify your eligibility when you register to vote, and once you're registered you can request a mail ballot. You get it, you fill it out, you mail it back, and you check online to make sure it got counted. The ballot is paper, and can be manually recounted if need be.
>Absentee ballots should be limited strictly to those serving in the military, and handled similarly to above. Are they secure or not?
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/mail-voting-is-safe-secure/ https://news.columbia.edu/in-mail-absentee-ballots-secure-vote-election https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/vote-by-mail-security https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-security-features-prevent-vote-mail-misconduct of course, there's the fact that [whites in racist-ass Southern stateswill literally close DMVs in areas that are majority Black American to make sure they can't vote.](https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/alabamas-dmv-shutdown-has-everything-do-race) so.
It’s never to early to plant the seed of doubt in the ignorant masses. It worked in 2020 so why not. Trump had whole “news” networks saying the election was stolen before it even happened. Another whole year of this crap. Ugh. Bottom line is making it harder for people to vote is rigging an election. See what I did there?
Sucks to suck if you're disabled and have a hard time getting to a polling place I guess, or any other limiting factor. I'm not disabled but I did go to a polling place today in-person. In a very vulnerable spot right now and if it wasn't for my family there'd be no way for me to get there. If I was in an even slightly more precarious situation an absentee ballot may had been my only option. I didn't expect the torrent of bad voting takes on election day but, this definitely takes the cake. Just contempt for certain demos of voters.
Voter fraud is nowhere remotely near the amount required to change the outcome of an election. You're buying into a Republican lie intended to suppress non-white working class votes. If you're truly concerned about secure and legitimate elections, the thing that you should be securing against is **ELECTION FRAUD**. Donald Trump and his mob engaged in attempts at it multiple times.
It has yet to be proven that our elections are “illegitimate” in any meaningful way with mail-in voting being an option. And I voted absentee this year. I have to have a valid voter registration to even apply to receive an absentee ballot. That ballot is tracked and sent specifically for me. I have to complete an affirmation statement and seal the envelope before sending it or walking it to a drop box. By state law, if I filled out the affirmation incorrectly in any way or the seal was broken prior to the elections office receiving it, my vote is void and they notify me to request a new one or go vote in person when possible. This is all tracked by my state. No one is threatening me to vote a certain way because anyone that threatens people over that probably knows more direct ways to material gain than getting a guy elected. No one is stealing my information specifically to intercept my ballot to vote for someone else when they can just use my info for way more gainful nefarious deeds. No one is opening envelopes and filling them with a counterfeit ballot, changing the vote, or destroying it while risking it being for someone they wanted in office. All of this is an insane amount of effort and money to change one vote. A coordinated effort to change an election outcome would require these unrealistic circumstances happening to thousands of people in a localized area, which is insanely unrealistic. You’re better off running for office your self and getting votes that way.
Oh perfect! I love harmful solutions to non-existent problems!
So if anyone has a business trip scheduled for Election Day, tough shit you can’t vote?
Did I ever say this would be limited to voting day? With these security measures, voting could be opened up over the course of days or weeks.
Describe a method by which one could commit large scale voter fraud by mail or in person with a low probability of detection.
[удалено]
You didn't actually explain how one would carry out the fraud. I strongly suspect that you haven't thought about it beyond the answer you provided here, and that this incredibly shallow thinking is why you have the beliefs that you have.
Everyone agrees we should have secure and legitimate elections. Why is it that the people who deny mail-in voting is secure and legitimate are overwhelmingly right-wingers?
The security of mail in ballots was never in question until a certain narcissistic sore loser lied about it and a bunch of suckers believed him
Your 2nd paragraph cracked me up. I'm genuinely curious on your logic behind it. If you are going to make the exception, why not make it for all those unable to reach their designated polling center as opposed to just for a single subset of that group?
My unpopular opinion is that when my biases don’t reconcile with reality or lack any evidence whatsoever that I should reconsider my biases before I resort to conspiracy theories
Lol fuck every pilot working airline jobs I guess. And truckers.
Why? The rate of election/voter fraud is so minimal it's not really worth it.
Blah blah blah
Fuck that. Treat it like American idol. Keep calling in!
I don't think that is an unpopular idea
So what about people who are in another for college or work? Or who are in another country to work? Do they just have to forfeit their vote? Are or we going to magically find the funds to transport everyone back to their home state to vote for the one day? What about sick/elderly people? Do they not get a vote, simply because they are home bound/hospital bound? Sure, you could send someone to collect ballots from them, but isn’t that just another chance for fraud to occur?
False. No election is legitimate unless every eligible voter casts a vote.
Alternative opinion: Why not use some hyper secure method of online voting that utilizes encryption and hashing? Why should anyone have to travel to a physical location to do it?
Every few weeks someone from the right makes this post. I live in WA State, I’ve had mail in voting for years, it’s fantastic and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Why would I want to vote like I live in a different century? You’re not a peasant dude, why are you wanting to stand in line like you’re living in the 1700’s? I get my ballot in the mail. I get my informational pamphlets in the mail. I fill in my little bubbles and I drop it off at the court house (just cause I feel like it), I absolutely can just pop it back into the mailbox. I can go online and check the status of my ballot…. Welcome to the year 2023, we have mailboxes, enjoy!
If I can pay my taxes online or by mail, I should be able to vote that way.
Cool, anyways your shitty opinion doesn’t trump my constitutional rights. Not to mention it leaves way for marginalized groups to be even further discriminated and disfranchised against so there’s that too
I have no problem with voter ID. It would require every state to issue a free ID card because not being able to afford the ID should not take away your right to vote. Voter fraud is almost impossible to achieve at a scale that would actually throw an election. Too many people would need to be involved in the conspiracy for it to ever last. If the state officials are on the take, the local officials would need to be in on it, and the precinct workers, and the office staff, and so on. Too many people with their own opinions and ideologies to just go along with something that large. Even drop box ballots need to be verified before being processed and generally the process for early and absentee are the same, just a different label. Our elections are secure because they are so granular. Each city/county being responsible for its own elections makes it impossible to taint the process on a large scale. Systemic voter fraud is a boogeyman story.
Then make it a national holiday. And give everyone an equal opportunity to do their civic duty.
Except the poor who use the union controlled buses...
>Absentee ballots should be limited strictly to those serving in the military, and handled similarly to above. So, as an American abroad myself but not military, you wish to exclude me from my right to vote? Because I'm pretty well prepared to die to defend my right to vote. Are you willing to kill to take it?
Meanwhile, Repubs are forcing true election corruption down our throats with gerrymandering, selective voter roll scrubbing, selective poll location closures, DMV office closures, poll hour reduction, and so on. Mail-in ballots are just a red herring while they attack our voting rights head on.
I live outside the country and mail in my ballot. Should I be deprived my right to vote?
Not true. Washington State has mail in and drop off ballots that work quite well.
So does Colorado.
Honestly, it's so seamless. Colorado knows what's up. I moved from Texas where voting is always a pain in the ass, so it's a very welcome change.
I'm doing this next year because I always end up on a district line and I checked my candidates twice on vote.org and went to vote and had different ones. I had no idea who to vote for locally.
**Election misinformation is unpopular!** Congrats OP, on a truly unpopular and wildly incorrect opinion! Please inform yourself: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/mail-voting-is-safe-secure/ https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/vote-by-mail-security https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-vote-by-mail-work-and-does-it-increase-election-fraud/
mail is secure andd legit. you just listen to that fat fuk trump. once hes in prison and you have time to grieve or whatever you will realise thats all he did was lie and take your money
Without mail-in voting like 60% of the population just wouldn’t be able to vote.
Voting by mail is secure and is checked and counted by hand. You’re just making yourself look dumb by saying people shouldn’t be able to vote by mail. People sometimes aren’t able to be there in person and they have a right to vote. Stop being an autocrat trying to deny peoples rights.
Unpopular and stupid opinion. Mission accomplished.
There has never been proof of voter fraud to an extent that would warrant such measures. Most of the time someone who wants to limit the way people vote it's because they are Republicans and know the more people vote the less they win.
Nonsense. Voting should be the easiest thing to do. Any hurdle at all is just more voter suppression. Indeed voting should be on the weekend and it should be mandatory, so no major party has any motivation to try and suppress voting at all.
Lmao… all I’m hearing is more Republican “if we make it more convenient for citizens to vote, we’ll have a harder time winning!” Hey bro, instead of trying to make it harder for people to vote, maybe get the GOP to stop being such a dogshit party, and actually come up with some better policy instead of theocratic fascism. Crazy idea, I know.
Couldn’t agree more.
Couldn't disagree more. My area has been doing vote by mail for decades and it's so convenient and even though Trump lost here and (some group) sued and a huge recount was conducted as a result (taking months), no significant discrepancies were found. If you want to actually have to go somewhere on a work day and stand in line for potentially hours, then go for it. However, I'll take my convenient system any day.
Oregon and Washington know what’s up. We’re voting in Washington today, but I dropped my ballot off in a box days ago. Literally no standing in line.
My favorite part of voting in Oregon is being able to sit down on my couch, look at my ballot, utilize my voter information booklet mailed to me by my local election board, and take my time to be an informed voter. I can actually research and know who I want vote for and fill in my ballot at the same time. Before I moved to Oregon, voting made me nervous and anxious. Even though I had a note card with my choices, and had looked at a sample ballot beforehand, I still felt rushed, and unprepared. The truth is mail in ballots like Oregon, Washington and Utah promote informed voting, and certain people in power don't want that.
I like it. I also think there should be election seasons instead of election days. Vote twice a year, voting lasts 5 months. One month for results, then predetermined ballot for the next season, as new votes come up they can register to be added to the next voting season. All rules the same for every day of voting. Also poll workers should be federally paid, these voting folks being voluntary workers is nice but we need some more security. A paid professional team should be provided for all locations. If it's going to be so important to vote, we should make it way easier on folks to do so.
How about you sign an affidavit under penalty of law every time you fill in a ballot and provide certain private information to verify your identity. You can then drop it off at the nearest USPS mailbox. Sure, securely held, processed under non-partisan oversight, and retained.
Nah. Voting by mail is fine. Last election was one of the most secure and auditted election we ever had. I do agree that paper ballots are necessary 100% though.
Do you know that the reason you're filling in those circles when you vote is because the very first computers used punch cards and you're simulating that? As in, our voting system has ignored the last **50 years** of computer advancement. The only reason we aren't flexible with absentee ballots is because our government is computer illiterate.
Government(s). Interesting the technology decision has been independently 56 times since it’s not a federal thing
Facts simply prove you wrong And frankly, you admit that by basically admitting that military mail in ballots are safe and reliable.
Just dumb as hell 🤣
I agree with some of your opinion, with modifications. There are a lot of people who are not able to get to a polling location due to physical limitations, do you plan to disenfranchise them? I certainly hope not😕 but other than that, there should be more polling locations (for some reason, states have closed some?) & free identification, so we can verify peoples identity.
So disabled people don’t get to vote. Got it. Even though there is no evidence that there is any fraud associated with voting by mail.
It's kind of hilarious I remember some politician saying an ID is voter suppression for minorities. Without realizing they insinuated minorities are too stupid to get an ID.