Printer-friendly version
Author:
Blog About:
I know that there are presidential elections...
But everybody I know is keeping "radio silence".
People who had so much to say about Belorussian elections - just disappeared...
News media... the same.
Are there anyone still alive in the US?
I cannot just outright believe Kremlin-controlled news media that US of A is still there...
Are you OK? Is the US still there as the United States of America?
Comments
assumptions and questions
I guess you all don't realize I've been here almost 10 years as well. Maybe I don't post enough? Who knows. I usually stay out of politics in general. I actually steer away from most of the topics that fill up the front page. You say one wrong thing and you instantly regret it ten fold.
So why am I here? I don't know. Maybe hoping one day it will all change. Still waiting...
And no politician is ever a good and honest anything. That should be the basis of all political discussion.
~Taylor Ryan
My muse suffers from insomnia, and it keeps me up at night.
Facts
The objections I was referring to had to do with my second post. Those are not mine, and others were claiming they were.
I'll admit I could be wrong about the math. It still seems off, but I'll wait and see on the official numbers. The corruption statement had more to do with the mail-in aspect of my initial post. I was talking about the unrequested ballots sent out in some states. A lot of those have been sequestered already, and they're looking into more. So seeing such a huge spike in the overall turnout the day after, and hearing about those ballots. Yeah... call me skeptical. That looked hella suspicious.
Doesn't mean I'm for Trump. Read the rest of that post. I even stated no matter who won, the voting process won't sit well with a lot of people. (Paraphrasing here, so don't claim I'm changing my statement.) Delaying the count by days, weeks, did not help at all to alleviate peoples' suspicions or concerns. And I'm sure watching each state turn one-by-one each day did not help either. It was a horrible compound shitstorm, that should have been handled Tuesday.
My other post was a rundown of what Trump is claiming, or rather his objections. That's it. They are not my own. That's why I don't care to cite them. Let the lawyers play with that. I'm surprised nobody here has even looked at what the other side is saying.
At any rate, yes, I'm still skeptical of how the process was handled this cycle. I was skeptical last cycle. I was skeptical when Bush beat Gore. I'll be skeptical next time. Doesn't mean I'm QAnon. Hell, I don't even know 100% what that even is.
The only barrow I'm pushing is for the Chiefs. So I'm gonna go watch the game now.
~Taylor Ryan
My muse suffers from insomnia, and it keeps me up at night.
There's nothing wrong with a little healthy skepticism
But when that skepticism aligns with the rantings of an ethical black hole of a man who lies about everything and anything, it sounds to the ears of those baffled by those who take his every word as gospel like an endorsement of not just his most recent lie (which he's been laying the groundwork for since at least January with repeated predictions that nefarious forces were out to steal the election) but his whole schtick.
Anything's possible, and someone who lies like most people breathe (and just ignores it when his obviously false statements are refuted by facts) might unwittingly get one right just by accident. But unlike fake moon landings voter fraud is something that can be proven---there will either be records of these thousands of dead people voting (ZOMBIE RIGHTS NOW!) or a huge chunk of missing records---so a month from now if his lawyers have produced nothing concrete to back up this conspiracy BS then I think it's safe to assume it's just the man doing what the man does, because to him trying your best + coming in 2nd is not just life as you or I understand it and a chance to show some maturity but an utter humiliation that is so intolerable he'd rather destroy the country than accept it.
~hugs, Veronica
,
This will be my only comment on the matter, or you can call me a liar.
"Government will only recognize 2 genders, male + female,
as assigned at birth-" (In his own words:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1lugbpMKDU
Avoiding jinx
I think the reason that no one was commenting was to avoid jinxing the result. This is the same impulse that stops people from talking about how well a pitcher is doing in the eighth inning of a no-hitter.
Of course whether or not a person comments will have no influence on the election, but it certainly does not feel as though that is true. And this feeling is why people don't comment. After all, what if what we know is wrong, and commenting will affect the results? Better to be safe.
Even FOX NEWS
Has called it. That means Rupert Murdoch has withdrawn his support from Trump!
As for the law suits and recounts, Well, good luck with all that.
Personally, I would rather see the lamest of all ducks using his time on those rather than turning your country into a wasteland between now and January 20th.
absentee ballots
Having gone through the process I see very little opportunity for significant fraud. I did find that the ability to research candidates for the more obscure offices on line while voting was helpful. In the past all I have known about candidates for offices like drain commissioner was party affiliation. I think that since it is now legal here without any reason I'll continue to do it. What is needed is a change in the law about when ballots can be counted. What works in our rural district with about a thousand voters to a precinct is a nightmare in urban counties with hundreds of thousands of voters.
state rules vary
Some states allowed absentee (mailed or dropped-off) ballots to be counted as they arrived. Some allowed them to be processed (checked for validity) as they arrived, but not counted until election day. And some didn't allow them to be even looked at until election day. As long as the voter was properly registered and voted on or before election day, why shouldn't the vote be counted? Our postal service has declined to the point that mail delays are common. I used to work on Market Street in San Francisco. We once got a letter (first class mail) that was mailed from a business on the other side of Market Street and which took seven days to reach us! When I was young, we could mail a letter to Los Angeles (400 miles away), not airmail, and have it delivered the next day.
~
Colorado has been sending out a mail in ballot to every single registered voter, automatically, for over 20 years. Denver/Metro has a population of close to three million. There are no problems.
PA's county clerks begged the Secretary of State (a Republican) and then the courts (rejected on a Republican majority), to let them open ballots and get them ready to count before election day. They were denied at every turn.
The GOP dove into a sewage reservoir and came out complaining that everyone stinks. The law is not the problem.
Let me see if I got this straight-
You want all mail-in ballots removed from the envelopes- the only thing that has an independent mark of time on it-, bundle them into stacks and boxes, store them in a storage facility that any amateur thief can get into without an instruction book, leave them alone for a few days to weeks until they're needed, and you don't see any problem?
If you're going to manage the votes, you do it before they're counted, or after.
The worst place to steal an election is in the counting, with at least theoretical watchers from both sides watching for something that LOOKS bad. That would be like a strong-arm robber holding you up at gunpoint in the middle of the day in the busy shopping mall- at least back when malls HAD busy.
The best way to steal is as a cat burglar- sneak in, sneak out, no one knows you got the loot. If possible, swap out the box for prepared ballots, but if they have serial marks they're easy to copy and alter.
It gets even better. Most copy machines these days have (or are available with) computer interfaces. It's SMOP to develop a program to remove the unwanted marks before printing the copy. You should re-mark it manually or with the same marking machine the precinct uses.
Any computer security guy is smarter than most (all?) election services vendors, and local officials know little or nothing at all. An associate expressed comfort at being able to take the numbered slip he got at the poll, visit a website, put in the number, and readback the votes as recorded for his number. He became less so when I told him how easy it would be for a programmer to duplicate the database, and show him the true version of his vote, and give the crocked version to the election officials.
There's no credible evidence of election fraud being a problem in the United States. That's a policy, not a fact. Politicos of all types from judges to precinct walkers fear most the loss of apparent credibility that would ensue from an honest investigation, much less prosecutions. That's why it never happens.
Btw, the secret ballot, like the anonymous Internet, is a thing of the past. If they want to know what you think or do, they can find out. You don't have a right to know.
*Response Baised on Colorado Mail in Ballots All Other Offers Vo
Great plan for the steal!
Only the boxes themselves are locked, they're stored inside the country courthouse you would have to be an idiot to try to break into, surrounded by cops and cameras; and there are 3 tons of them. I guess you just sneak into the courthouse with a 3 ton sack of 80,000 prepared ballots? Well why don't you use the copy machine in the courthouse! Easy! Only the ballots are blue, legal size, card stock. Guess you just sneak in a flatbed there with you. Pretty sure someone at the paper mill is going to notice the 100 crates of blue cardstock they shipped. Oh hey, how much toner do you think they take? You might be able to print 200 before you run out. Not that it matters, because the "marking machine" is the closest blue or black ballpoint pen to the voter's hand. Gonna be really obvious that's a photocopy when it doesn't score the card stock. Your best bet is to have hundreds of orphans fill out the ballots and somehow keep them from talking.
All of this is has predicated on knowing which states the election will come down to. Maybe you set up the steal in PA, but suddenly GA and AZ are in play, and if your opponent wins both you've done all that work for nothing.
You're plan is foolproof though, as long as the person pulling it off is a pre-cog with a bag of holding and a victorian orphanage.
Every computer security guy thinks they are smarter than [fill in blank]. It's not only not true, it's usually hilariously so.
Edit: Ran the math. 80,000 ballots would weight 3,920 lbs. That's only 2 tons. Eleven regrets the error.
>Always< vote on paper ballot ...
Vote on the paper ballot. Always,
Punching buttons on some touch-screen or similar - The machines >cannot< be audited. Without even an attempt at any kind of fraud or bias, there are always computer glitches, software errors, setup-up errors by election judges or similar, and they are the devils own problem to find ... and even if the glitch is found, there may be no way to correct it. If the machine simply drops, say the first or last vote (and "off by one" is embarrassingly common) - what was the lost vote(s)? Machine crashes? Power outage?
At least with paper ballots, they can be (and yes, ten million or more ballots is a nightmare) manually re-counted, or run thru a counting machine designed, built and programmed by a different company,
---
How often have you punched the wrong button on a vending machine, or had to restart an ATM transaction ... A few times a grocery store self-checkout register messed up so badly, that I just walked out, leaving all my groceries at the register (without paying, of course).
Elections are much more important then getting Coke when I punched Pepsi, or going home with/without potatoes and and pasta sauce.
Pages