Ballots “lost” by the postal service in Butler county.
Butler county is adjacent to Allegheny county to the north. It’s a pretty red county. Do I suspect skullduggery and underhandedness? More like deliberate carelessness. Put that together with the right wing PACs sending texts to Democrats and it wouldn’t be at all surprising to me if someone knew exactly which addresses to target. Or just target a block of them to make it look unintentional.
Given that there were many many more Democrats requesting mail in ballots, do you even need a list of addresses of Democrats?
If the ballots show up before Election Day, it’s too late to mail them back. The voters who didn’t receive their requested ballots should go to the board of elections and report them missing. Or go to their regular polling place on Election Day and vote by provisional ballot. Protect your vote and report it missing.
Butler county has a population of about 187,000 people. Allegheny county has a population of 1,200,000. Every vote counts of course. But it’s not like the Trump voters in Butler are going to outvote us in western PA.
I had a feeling that the mail would be an obstacle course for getting ballots in on time. So, I delivered mine to the election services site in North Park almost three weeks ago. I’m glad I did. The online site says my ballot was received.
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But wait! There’s more:
https://twitter.com/burrite/status/1321573728598265862?s=21
Mine will count but others may not if they’re a few minutes late.
So, slow down the mail, lose an untold number of mail in ballots, then put extra pressure on working people to take a day off of work and travel to the board of elections in their county, report it missing, or vote provisionally, hoping that it won’t miraculously show up all signed and filled in by who knows who.
This feels so personal even if my ballot is safe right now.
Trump and his allies really are despicable.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
This is all very unsettling. It is apparent that the Republicans are counting on the supreme court to give them the election. And that long ago august body has lost any pretension to jurisprudence. The are controlled by political hacks who managed to pass the Bar at some point. Now their narrative is that if ballots postmarked before election day which are counted after election day, change who is ahead, they will throw them out? Or i guess only if it works against the Republican. What a fine judicial decision that is. Most states allow them to be counted, because otherwise whether you mail-in vote counts is up to the postal service. Which Trump figured out, so hired a guy who would make sure that in selected areas, the mail would not get there in time. Brilliant gamemanship! Except that it is illegal, awful, and completely violative of democracy, which of course Republicans have no interest in.
I am getting to the point of trying to think what could be done if the election is handed to Trump in this way, and even by the appointing of Trump voting Electors in states where Biden won. They have no bottom, no line, of “well, this is going too far.” They are lawless, amoral, brutal men and women. Surely in PA their plays are as follows; 1. win the popular vote. 2. if that is impossible, try to have the lead on election night, and get the supreme court to throw out all the rest of the ballots. 3. say they won, anyway, and will count it as a win, because Trump and Tucker Carlson say so. 4 assassinate somebody, and then declare martial law. Many ways to win when you are the mafia, and you’ve bought all the courts. ‘Who’s going to stop us, copper?”
Our Fascists need to remember the fate of the OG Fascists.
I hope this year they are prepared with plenty of provisional ballots. I was a poll watcher for John Kerry and it was a complete nightmare. At our location they ran out of provisional ballots quite early. Hundreds of people were showing up and not finding their names on the roster. We kept calling and calling for more provisional ballots and more help and nobody was picking up the phones because the whole county was overwhelmed.
I received an odd email this afternoon. It came from Pittsburgh’s Jewish Chronicle (I am a subscriber) and it was looking for people to serve as paid “constables” in the 14th ward (which is largely Squirrel Hill, the biggest Jewish community). I have never heard of this before. It said that you have to be a registered voter, you would be paid $100 from 7Am to 8PM, get frequent breaks and be able to go home for lunch. That was all the information it gave, except for a person’s name and phone number for responding.
From “Bobbert” on Wonkette:
Finally here in GA after being embarrassed a number of times and having the entire country laugh at us they finally relented and have just let people vote instead of trying to keep them from voting. There were some long lines at first but that seems to have been worked out.
A classic missive from TBogg to Purity Ponies:
😈
Here is what my online status says:
They really don’t make this easy. IF PA votes cannot be counted until 0700 on Election day, how can my vote be recorded? They have shown on the local TV station ballots sitting unopened in trays ready for counting. There are no explanations on any of the colums listed in the online site. We really need to get this right; someone needs to work on this for future elections.
I think they mean that your one vote has been satisfied. You can’t vote again because you signed the declaration statement, verified that the signature was yours, and handed it in personally. Well, that’s what I did anyway. So, vote recorded, to me, sounds like you can’t vote again and it’s ready to be counted.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
So I take it this means that my vote has not been rejected for some reason? Again, in PA if they cannot open the envelopes until 0700 on Election day, I don’t see how they can make that claim, since if my ballot is not enclosed in the secrecy envelope it will be rejected.
Just saying they need to do a much better job on this. Look to WA and OR even AZ to see how they have been handling significant mail in voting for years. IMO, the proper solution would be to count the votes as they are received, then you can look at the online site on election day and see Vote Counted, or Vote Rejected and get your butt to the polls.
They definitely need to do some iterative improvement. If we can break the stranglehold that republicans have on the legislature, maybe we can get that done next time.
In the meantime, I’m very relieved that I don’t have to stumble out into the coronasphere on Tuesday to vote. There’s absolutely no reason why my vote would have been rejected. AND during the primary test run, Allegheny county overperformed in getting the votes counted completely and quickly. Maybe it’s because all the robotics R&D is here in Pittsburgh. We probably have an excess of talented troubleshooters.
If you have $1000 and your balance goes down 33.3%, you then have $667. If your balance goes up 33.3% from there, you have $8890. You are down $110, 11% of your original $1000/
The psychological mistake is projecting one result to the next anticipated one. There is a much greater chance that GDP will drop as a percentage in the fourth quarter, than that it will rise. But people running the wheel will always try to convince the suckers that if they won one roll or spin, the are sure to keep winning, so put some more money out there on the table.
So glad that I reluctantly decided not to work the polls this year. They just announced that “no one will be denied the opportunity to cast their ballot” on Tuesday for not wearing a mask. I hope a lot of young healthy people have volunteered to work the polls.