OT: long voting lines reported at UofM
No matter your political stance, we should be proud of our young people committing to participate in the sacred right to vote.
https://twitter.com/victorshi2020/status/1590054202008817664?s=46&t=Uipw6t6LoLJ0UNnkd45N7Q
November 8th, 2022 at 7:01 PM ^
Because old folks are generally pretty short sighted in political decisions. When death is staring you in the face and you have made all the money you're ever going to make, your world view tends to get extremely narrow and self centered. Young people may not be universally more open minded than their elder peers, but their economic incentives are very different. If they don't vote to favor their interests, they'll inevitably get screwed over by others who are voting to support theirs.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:00 PM ^
if kindergarteners were allowed to vote on lunch, it would be skittles and m&ms.
November 8th, 2022 at 6:27 PM ^
Peanut M&Ms. Only maize and blue ones.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:29 PM ^
My polling place is a church.....what ever happened to the separation of church and state?
/jk.....
November 8th, 2022 at 2:45 PM ^
Mine too, and I had the same thought. Across Ann Arbor rd is another polling place for the next precinct over in the same Twp.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:01 PM ^
mine is a "church"
November 8th, 2022 at 3:02 PM ^
When I lived in Cincinnati, my polling station was a bowling alley.
Even weirder --- I'd go in to vote at 7 AM and people would be bowling!
November 8th, 2022 at 3:48 PM ^
If I were them i would make sure that polling line rolled right past the bar
November 8th, 2022 at 4:26 PM ^
I would love to have the sound effect of the ball hitting the pins every time someone submitted a ballot.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:40 PM ^
LITTLE KNOWN FACT: Consideration once was given to having Election Day on a Saturday, but out of respect for Walter Sobchak, Election Day was kept on Tuesday.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:10 PM ^
Schools are used here in GA, so the kiddos have a day off.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:32 PM ^
Common misnomer, but the original intent was the state out of church, not vice versa.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:59 PM ^
So you don't realize that the Establishment Clause is part of the First Amendment. Huh.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:04 PM ^
not sure why you got neg'd (well, actually i am pretty sure I know why) because you're correct.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof........"
November 8th, 2022 at 4:17 PM ^
The original intent was that Black people would continue to be property too.
Sure, the Establishment Clause, very literally, says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The Founding Fathers' arguments revolved around the issue of taxation: basically, "it's not ok for citizens, through taxation, to support a faith they did not follow."
[Interestingly enough, this appears to be the result of an Anglican vs. Baptist vs. Presbyterian vs. Quaker conflict. Proving that once again, the most common conversation between Christians in history is: "Hi, I'm a Christian!"; "Hi! Actually I'm a Christian and you're not!"; "Can't we both be Christian?"; "No!"]
But...ever since, it sure as shit has been like the "Church" is INVITING the government in. And as of this year, state governments MUST support religious institutions via taxpayer/government money.
Church is as much poisonous to Government as Government is poisonous to Church. Fuck these theocrats.
November 8th, 2022 at 7:05 PM ^
Original intent of second amendment was to facilitate military service, but here we are.
November 9th, 2022 at 8:36 AM ^
no, it was absolutely not to facilitate military service.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:29 PM ^
The one tunnel thing could be a thing, again.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:32 PM ^
Praise people who wait in line, but don't praise long lines, because a long line means not enough resources were devoted to a polling place, or too many people were jammed into it.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:16 PM ^
agreed
I have never waited more than 10 minutes to vote
long lines reflect on the incompetence of those running the election
November 8th, 2022 at 3:48 PM ^
And lack of planning for those who could have voted earlier.
No real excuse to get stuck in a long line these days. Lots of ways to vote.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:30 PM ^
I voted yesterday in person at our civic center. It took me an hour from start to finish, 40 minutes of that waiting in line. One of the election workers said Sunday was the same. Then my husband voted today at our regular polling place and he was in and out in 10 minutes. So maybe everyone though today would be a zoo and showed up yesterday, which was just a miscalculation.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:07 PM ^
I feel fortunate to live in a small town for this very reason. Just went in, two people in front of me, done in less than 5 minutes.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:45 PM ^
or not enough people willing to get yelled at, threatened and be made scapegoats for an election not going the way they want...
November 8th, 2022 at 3:26 PM ^
Page out of Mitch McConnell’s play book
November 8th, 2022 at 5:23 PM ^
I live in Washington where everyone votes via mail or drop off at ballot boxes (technically each county has a couple of in person spots you could vote) and they send you a voter pamphlet alongside your ballot with every candidate and initiative, etc inside. It’s incredibly civilized and I have no idea why any state would choose to do it any other way.
November 8th, 2022 at 7:07 PM ^
Because a Venezuelan corporation is counting your votes, stuffing ballot boxes, and trying to replace white people with immigrants /s
November 8th, 2022 at 2:32 PM ^
I sent in 3 ballots over mail earlier this week, so I'm good.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:43 PM ^
I sent in 4. They are all dated for Christmas Day, 1922 and all signed Dude Perfect. I’m a bit concerned they won’t get through.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:48 PM ^
there is much to approve of in this comment.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:05 PM ^
user name checking out: chicago's famous, 'vote early, vote often' slogan.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:08 PM ^
Hey. They don't call it "Crook County" for nothing.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:33 PM ^
Good for the young people, for sure. That said, the “no politics” rule should firmly apply to the use of this linked source.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:49 PM ^
Yes, I realized after posting it that the tweeter is about as biased as Spartan Bob. Happy to have the link deleted.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:33 PM ^
Voting is fucked in this country. In Australia everyone gets mailed a ballot, and you get fined if you don’t vote. Here, we have groups/officials spending absurd resources to prevent people from voting.
November 8th, 2022 at 2:40 PM ^
OK, until the USPS can figure shit out, anything through our mail system is complete shite. I got 2 ballots through our mail for the previous tenants of our house last week. My BIL (a Hispanic immigrant who cannot vote), got a ballot for the previous tenant of his apartment.
I don't give a shit who you voted for, but if we let people exclusively use the mail system for voting, there will never be validated election in the US.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:01 PM ^
This seems.... unlikely.
I'm betting it's much more likely you got two APPLICATIONS for ballots.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:07 PM ^
In 2020 it could have been anything. Ballots, Applications, Applications for Applications, that was the Wild West. I haven’t gotten anything in the mail this year. Folks have been blowing my phone up like crazy though.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:13 PM ^
You could be right because I didn't look closely, I immediately put it into the paper shredder. I don't mess around with that stuff. And I told my BIL to not fuck around with it (if he values becoming an American citizen eventually).
November 8th, 2022 at 4:21 PM ^
Fixed it for you:
OK, until the USPS can figure shit out, anything through our mail system is complete shite. I got 2 absentee ballot applications (that will not inherently imply I can vote as someone else) through our mail for the previous tenants of our house last week. My BIL (a Hispanic immigrant who cannot vote), got a absentee ballot applications (that will not inherently imply he can vote as someone else) for the previous tenant of his apartment.
Many states and countries use mail in balloting with no evidence of any form of fraudulent voting.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:25 PM ^
“Many states and countries use mail in balloting with no evidence of any form of fraudulent voting.”
You’re kidding me, right?
also, if the previous tenants are from the area, why would it be an absentee ballot?
November 8th, 2022 at 4:41 PM ^
If you're suggesting that any form of mail-in voting in the US has been proven fraudulent, please provide sources.
November 9th, 2022 at 7:58 AM ^
The widespread use of the mail system for voting outside absentee ballots is very new here. The USPS itself says that sending mail via the blue box is not very reliable and say for any mail that is of value to drop it off at a USPS location.
https://bestlifeonline.com/usps-mail-size-mailbox-news/
We’ve had two elections in a row where one side did not trust the results of the election. Whether that’s real or perceived doesn’t matter. We have to shore this up and letting people have more widespread use of the mail system is not the way to go about it.
I’ll say it again, I don’t care who wins an election, but if it’s done so with widespread use of the mail system, I will likely never trust the results of that election.
November 9th, 2022 at 5:58 PM ^
I live in Oregon, where vote-by-mail has been exclusively used since 1995; you can vote in person, but very few people actually do this. Washington, Hawaii, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado also do this. Not one of these states has ever had any substantive finding of election fraud with the vote-by-mail system. Is it perfect? Maybe not for everyone, but until Election Day is a federal holiday with guaranteed poll access for everyone, it's significantly better than only being allowed to vote in person on one day in early November.
People who do not trust the results of elections are effectively claiming that there is election fraud happening. Distrust in the results is not a reason to think there's mail ballot fraud (or any other form of election fraud). We do not, in any way, have to shore up elections to appease people who do not trust the system; people who do not trust the outcome of elections only do so when their candidate loses.
Again, if you have actual verifiable sources of any type of election fraud happening, I'm all ears. At least 63 court cases from the 2020 election found nothing.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:17 PM ^
Certain media source says that is voter fraud. Two applications is obviously why ...
November 8th, 2022 at 3:02 PM ^
The system of identity verification and the system of ballot distribution/collection don't have to be the same thing. The fundamental infrastructure of data distribution over the internet, for example, is incredibly insecure and unreliable (packets get dropped or misdelivered all the time, basically anyone can view your traffic), and yet we've developed systems that produce enough trust within that infrastructure to facilitate online banking and other secure applications. There's no reason an insecure USPS can't be used to distribute ballots securely validated by another protocol. A well designed protocol, such as the HTTPS that carries your online banking transactions, can even be more or less invisible to the user. It's possible that such systems are already in use.
November 8th, 2022 at 3:50 PM ^
I'm in Washington. No in-person voting. Works really well, though it helps to have drop boxes everywhere if you don't want to put it in the mail.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:23 PM ^
None of that really happened, and even the barely-funded version of the USPS we've been dealing with for a decade is still the best service for delivering mail to a doorstep that has ever been created in America.
November 8th, 2022 at 4:48 PM ^
for some reason I seem to recall something happening to USPS mailing machines some two to two and a half years ago? Now why that was I couldn't possibly speculate...
November 8th, 2022 at 6:51 PM ^
Isn’t it most likely the case that those people requested ballots to their old addresses by mistake?
You think the state is just sending out random ballots all over the place? And even if they were, as long as they don’t count anyone’s vote twice why would it matter?