Voting by Mail
 

PA announced mail in ballots, not just for absentee voters but anyone.
I figured that the poll would be a zoo with long lines 6 ft apart so yes, by mail sounds good.

RA-voterregstatcert@state.pa.us May 6, 2020, 2:21 AM
Thank you for submitting your ballot application online. The Delaware County Election Office received your application on May 02, 2020 at 4:40:04 PM.
County: Delaware
Your application number is: 756693.
Your application is not complete until processed and accepted by your county election office. When your application is processed, you will receive an email status update.
If you have questions about your ballot application, please contact Delaware County at (610) 891-4659.

STSVCOMP001@pa.gov May 13, 2020, 8:12 PM
The DELAWARE County Election Office has processed your ballot application on 05/02/2020.
Your application status is: Approved.
If your application was approved, you will receive an email when your balloting materials are mailed.
If you have questions about your ballot application, please contact DELAWARE County at (610) 891-4659.

Department of State RA-STDepartmentofState@pa.gov Tue, May 19, 6:43 PM
Dear Pennsylvania Voter,
Thanks for applying to vote by mail or absentee - Return your ballot today to avoid any delays!
The Deadline for your county election office to receive your voted mail-in ballot is June 2nd at 8pm, but please don’t wait! Fill out your mail-in or absentee ballot and mail it today or return it in person to your county election office. Make sure to check the hours of operation on your county website or by calling to ensure there are staff on site to receive your completed ballot.
If you have already returned your ballot or have not yet received your mail-in or absentee ballot, you can easily check the status of your ballot online* or call your county election office for its status.
Thank you and stay safe!
Sincerely, Kathy Boockvar, Secretary of the Commonwealth

*I did, the site said my ballot was mailed on the 18th.

Department of State RA-STDepartmentofState@pa.gov May 25, 2020, 10:56 PM
Dear Pennsylvania Voter:
Make sure your voice is heard. Return your mail-in or absentee ballot today!
Only a few days left to deliver your ballot! To guarantee that your ballot gets in on time, call or email your county election office and ask about drop-off options where you can deliver it in person. The deadline for counties to receive your ballot is 8 p.m. on June 2, and the postmarked date does not count.
If you have already returned your ballot, you can easily check the status of your ballot here!
Sign up to receive updates from PA’s official source on election information.
Thank you and stay safe!
Sincerely, Kathy Boockvar, Secretary of the Commonwealth

Called the County office on the 27th, the guy took my info and said someone would call me back.
Surprise surprise, they didn’t.
Called again on the 28th, the woman said come pick it up between 1PM and 4PM on Friday May29th and tell her what time I would be there. When I got there on Friday the guard wouldn’t let me in the building and to wait outside and they would bring my ballot out. Sure enough she came out with the box of ballots for the three dozen people waiting.

RA-voterregstatcert@state.pa.us May 28, 2020, 10:19 PM
Your ballot is almost ready, and it's being prepared for mailing. If you do not receive your ballot in the next 5-7 days*, please contact your county election office.
If you have questions concerning your ballot, please contact DELAWARE County at (610) 891-4659.
Thank you ****Please do not reply to this email.****
*note this is 5 days before the election.

Department of State Fri, May 29, 11:45 AM
Dear Pennsylvania Voter:
Make sure your voice is heard in time! Return your mail-in or absentee ballot in person today!
Only a few days left to deliver your ballot! Many counties have recently implemented convenient drop-boxes and drop off locations for voters to deliver their mail-in or absentee ballots. For more information on locations and hours click HERE.
If you need more information, you can also call or email your county election office and ask about options where you can deliver the ballot in person. The deadline for counties to receive your ballot is 8 p.m. on June 2, and the postmarked date does not count. If you have already returned your ballot, you can easily check the status of your ballot here. If you don’t receive your ballot by Tuesday, you can still vote by provisional ballot in person at your polling place on June 2nd.
Sign up to receive updates from PA’s official source on election information.
Thank you and stay safe!
Sincerely, Kathy Boockvar, Secretary of the Commonwealth

The state clearly doesn’t have their shit together. What’s the point of a mail in ballot if I have to go to the Media office to get it, and then go back to return it? I asked how I could pick it up on the 29th if they mailed it on the 18th. She said they would just print me another one. The email from the state on the 29th said they were mailing a third one. Which one will be counted and who will fill it out?

OK, a ballot came in the mail on Friday the 29th, postmarked Tuesday the 26th. This must be the one they said was mailed on the 18th. The return address is the Media office but I doubt they mailed it, I’d guess after they approved it the state mailed it. That’s two accounted for.

RA-voterregstatcert@state.pa.us June 1st, 2:18 PM
Your ballot has been received by DELAWARE County on 06/01/2020.
Your ballot status has been updated to reflect your official ballot has been received timely and recorded.

Please note: You are no longer permitted to vote at your polling place location now that you have returned your ballot timely. If you have questions about your ballot, please contact DELAWARE County at (610) 891-4659.
Thank you
****Please do not reply to this email.****

This would apparently be the ballot I picked up in Media and mailed on Friday. I'm thinking the email from the state 5 days before the election saying one was was being mailed was probably generated by the Media office printing out the duplicate I picked up.

Good man!

Those difficulties are troublesome, but they're likely to diminish in time. The system gets better with experience. Here in Washington we've had voting by mail for everyone for years, and there have been continual improvements to the process. The most recent change has been to include a prepaid postage envelope for the return ballot. Previously each voter had to affix their own postage, (one stamp or two??) or find a drop box.

Now, the postage question is settled. Kaizen.

The most difficult and by far the most important aspect to achieve is trust in the system and the results it produces.

Be clear why some hate mail-in ballots. It means more people will vote. The more who vote, then the less influence those extremist have over the entire process.

We have Trump because so many moderates did not vote. By doing so, made every extremist vote more powerful. Extremists got the president they wanted.

Extremist invent mythical bogeymen (a right or left) to avoid a hard reality. Only moderates are patriots. Extremists, such as racists, will do anything necessary to minimize every option for moderates to vote. So they attack and obstruct mail-in voting.

Voter fraud is another over-hyped fable to drive moderates off voting rolls.

I've been told once I mail my ballot I have no clue what happens to it or if it's counted. My response is when I go it the booth and push the buttons, it's the same thing, no way of knowing where my vote went.
On the mail-in ballot for the primary I can pick some position where someone is running unopposed and vote for myself as a write-in.
I've always registered as independent so no primary, but I switched to Democrat so I could vote for Obama in the primary and hadn't bothered to switch back so it gave me a chance to try out the by mail system. They have a ways to go, but I realize it was a last minute decision to allow it after moving the primary from April, and hundreds of thousands in each county signed on. OK, they were jammed up and took a month to get it to me. I understand, I really do, however DO NOT SAY YOU'RE FUCKING MAILING IT ON MONDAY THE 18th AND NOT MAIL IT UNTIL THE TUESDAY THE 26th.

It appears they've closed the black polling stations in Georgia. Those folks need another system.

This is a feature, not a bug. /cynic

Just another reason why the system can only work electronically is if meets those requirements posted (what?) ten years ago?

And just another reason why the counting should also result in paper that can be consulted in a recount.

Previous discussion cited so many electronic voting machine manufacturers whose products were full of holes and security problems.

Got an email last evening...

Yeah, I went and checked, I'm pending. :thumb:

:thumb2:

Welp. They cheated their way to victory and... are not doing the damn job.

Confirmed cases, hospitalizations and deaths have ballooned sharply since early June, after the state, under Kemp’s direction, became one of the first in the nation to allow businesses to reopen in the spring.

https://apnews.com/7c220bed26f611dcf6ea57af94d516d9

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump declared, without offering any evidence, that the 2020 election "will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country,". He lies.

In Arizona he said, "There is tremendous evidence of fraud whenever you have mail-in ballots". Reality repeatedly reported by honest news services (that he called fake news): no such fraud has been found. He lies.

According to the NY Times, "Mr. Trump has made five dozen false claims about mail balloting since April". Notice that another honest publication defines the lies. "five dozen false claims". He lies.

More comments from someone who only wants to 'wreck things'; what anti-Americans wants.

He intends to deliver his convention speech from the White House lawn. That has always been considered illegal. But then Trump does not even pay his contractors. When, in his entire life, did he care what is legal? He could murder someone on Fifth Ave and still be elected president. That says much about anyone who does not routinely disparage the scumbag. Trump makes Nixon look like an honest man.

Trump says Kamala Harris, who was born in California, does not meet citizenship requirements. Same lies also about Obama that got him mocked by intelligent Americans. But then Trump needs support of the least intelligent - ie KKK, White Supremacist, and Nazis - who Trump praises. So he lies.

Trump publicly stated he wants to obstruct mail-in voting by withholding funding for the US Postal Service. Then later, talked back that comment on a right wing propaganda machine called Fox News. Because he advocated corruption.

Trump claimed five times that Democrats rigged elections through mail-in voting. Trump claimed four times that Republicans are at a disadvantage when mail-in ballots are used or are not sent mail-in ballots at all. Like his disciples, such as Urbane Guerrilla, he lies.

He lies a lot, but he has the power and inclination to make that sentence true. His justifications for it are lies, but he's already announced that he is trying to corrupt mail-in voting.

:::ahem:::

:::tap tap tap:::

WE'VE BEEN VOTING BY MAIL IN OREGON FOR DECADES, AND IT WORKS REALLY WELL, AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY ISSUES WITH IT, AND EVERYBODY LOVES IT. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE REST OF YOU.

We're trying to do it in a time of hyper-partisanship, that is what's wrong with us.

I hear what you're saying but it isn't a partisan issue. Except that everything is a partisan issue. Except that it isn't. Republicans and Democrats WHO USE MAIL-IN VOTING equally love it, and equally have no issues with it.

Wearing a mask isn't a partisan issue yet here we are.

That is not what so many polls are saying. This issue is this extreme. Something like 80% of Democrats approve of mail-in voting. Something like 70% of Republican disapprove.

Trump orders people what to think. The brainwashed automatically believe what they are told. Does not matter that he is lying. The commandment is ordered and automatically believed.

Eliminate mail-in voting so that the reduced numbers of polls in large cities mean everything must wait in line for hours. As already happened in some cities during primaries. It will only get worse in November.

What only matters are all voters. Since any one or all may need that voting option. All voters must have that option. Only opinions of all matters.

Even a scumbag and a wife he cheats on vote in Florida using mail-in ballots. Why should he have that right but not others? Because he is honest?

He says mail-in voting creates fraud and corruption. His entire adult life has been fraud and corruption. So he votes by mail. Double standard? Of course. Narcissistic personality disorder means his corruption is acceptable.

I hear ya, brother.

This just in from the hoist on one's own petard department :

Trump's words and actions designed to degrade postal service in the name of "preventing election fraud" are having an unexpected and unfortunate consequence. Many veterans who rely on the Postal Service for the delivery of their medicines and other benefits have reported serious delays.

Trump's oblivious disregard for such side effects of his evil actions *is* legendary, but I think this one has the potential to cause his plans to backfire.

TBH, they probably won't backfire on him, he'll just push some other poor bastard under the bus. But it may well catalyze some changes for the better.

posted this in a different thread cause it was the subject of discussion there too but cross-posting it here cause it really should belong here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...381_story.html:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...N36Q.jpg&w=916

With the caveat that obviously democratic voting strongholds tend to be population centers, so this is correlation but hypothetically not causation, people on twitter have overlaid that map with the pro-hillary margin in 2016:

Attachment 71215

as one of the authors of the article pointed out on twitter:


all of which, again, i would say serves fundamentally to erode public trust in the voting process and muddy the election waters. unless its an inarguable blowout landslide victory for either side, neither side is going to have faith in any result. that scares the shit outta me.

Cross post at will, friend

This is a free fire zone.


Or, in cellar lingo, thread drift is inevitable, all you can do is launch it and let it go.

From the bias newspaper that Amazon guy owns...

I believe this is standard operating procedure for both parties since Bush v Gore.

Ballots won't have postmarks. That goes on the envelope not the ballot.

ridiculous arguments are quickly dismissed in law

do you find it far-fetched that the trump campaign's overall objective might be to delay, obfuscate, muddle, and confuse more than it is to win in court? i'm personally far past the point of assuming good faith, after a lengthy and forceful push to portray mail-in voting as untrustable, unreliable, and undemocratic.

when it comes to the Presidency, you don't spend expensive lawyer money to not win

How sad for you.

True story:

I've long been signed up for the USPS Informed Delivery Daily Digest service (it's free). When mail addressed to me goes through the sorting scanners, an image is captured and I receive those images in an email announcing those items are on their way to me.

Just this past week I got an email showing detailed images of two official mail-in ballot application forms, with my exact address on them, sent by the County Clerk's office. The names on those two mail-in ballot application forms were of people who don't live at my address and that I've never heard of.

That means there there are two people who have managed to get fraudulently registered (deceived, bribed, hacked?) with the County as voters at my address who can apply for mail-in ballots with none of the challenges for establishing identification that an in-person voter would have to satisfy. All they'd have to do is check a box that says they still live here. There's also a provision on the application to have the mail-in ballot sent to another address... a write-in address.

The post office delivers based upon name, not address; so, those applications were never delivered to me and I won't have an opportunity to turn them in (I still have the email though). Anyone having IDs (genuine or fake) with those names can now claim those mailings, fill out the request for mail-in ballots, and have those ballots sent to an address of their choosing.

That's two votes by people who may not even be eligible to vote versus my one eligible vote thanks to mail-in ballots. There's always been corruption in the voting system. Mail-in ballots can exacerbate that. The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. - Scotty. They're best used when necessary to keep eligible voters from being disenfranchised rather than for mere convenience.


Of course, my address on those applications could have been just a typo; but, I wanted to tell my wonderful story on this Sunday afternoon.

There’s a good boy, sow doubt. *head pat*

Did Benny get his application for a mail-in ballot yet?

are they mail-in ballot application forms, or mail in ballots? because Burlington at least (possibly the whole state) mailed a ballot application form to the last known address of, as far as i can tell, every registered voter. Mine didn't even go to my current registered address; it went to my previous voting address, which was where i lived two addresses ago, and eventually found me through mail forwarding.

also,
what challenges does your state have? because i've never had to do anything other than give my name at my polling place.

anyway, clearly you are not at the point of assuming good faith here either. which is kind of my point; at this point, trust in the system is being attacked. When I see Trump attacking mail-in voting, of which there is little to no evidence of unreliability, and saying that he is actively preventing funding the post office because that will prevent mail-in voting, well, i have trouble ascribing good faith to his actions around mail-in voting and the post office. When you see that there was a piece of undelivered mail indicating that a voter with a name you dont recognize is or was once registered at your address, you have trouble ascribing good faith to that. and i think the fact that, again, we literally disagree about what the actual facts and realities of the situation are is a real bad sign, and an indicator that this election is not going to be like any other election in recent memory. Nobody is going to have faith in the results.

Benny doesn’t have a drivers license or a social security number, therefore he can’t request a mail-in ballot.

As I stated, application forms. No one by those names has lived at my address for at least 18 years.

Signature comparison (when one signs for the ballot, it's compared to one's signature in their records). That becomes cursory if the polling officer recognizes you from previous years. A new polling officer would check the signatures and many people wouldn't even notice that it was done. If there's a discrepancy with the signature, a supervisor takes over the authentication process.

Then Benny can't vouch for you. :p:

the USPS is funded by postage; what he would be holding up is additional funding

And therefore no more overtime meaning large amounts of mail may sit unprocessed for days (ie ballots). And removing mail processing machines from processing centers. And stopping maintenance on remaining machines (that process tens of millions of letters each day) to cut costs.

My local post office is already seeing this problem. Between number of new employees they cannot hire, the new employees who cannot be taught the routes (due to cost cutting), and Covid problems, my Post Office is already having serious delivery problems. On two days recently, the carrier never got to my neighborhood. All in the name of Trump's new Postmaster General who was put there to advance The Donald - at the expense of America.

The Donald is so corrupt that, if you cannot prove he is doing it for America, then a default and obvious answer is " To Get The Don Reelected".

He has been that corrupt his entire life. He never once created or ran a productive company. But he sure did enrich himself even at the expense of all contractors and every major bank.

You're making an assumption that it was intentional and it was their doing.
This is untrue, I get mail delivered to my address with other peoples names on it.
You're creating a story on false assumptions and a lie.

Yes I saw your size 1 white print, that makes it worse.

It means I recognized there was more than one possible assumption of which I chose one for the sake of argument. No one has demonstrated that the one I chose couldn't be the correct one.

I wasn't talking about all mail. I was talking about mail-in ballot applications. This is what I actually said:

This is evidenced by the fact that the post office did NOT deliver to me mail-in ballot applications with other people's names and my address.

The distinction is that the post office had a specific reason to the contrary. Delivering them could create a voting discrepancy. There are other items they deliver based upon name too.

[EMPHASIS MINE]

No, your critiquing what I wrote without reading comprehension and keeping things in context.

Bullshit.

You just to have to face the fact that you're in and out of it at times. You misread/misinterpret across the boards. You're polemical based upon whether or not you like someone at the moment. Memory is fading. You confuse discussions between similar threads. Often you're with it; but, sometimes you're not and you're too egotistical to recognize it and compensate for your declining mental capacity. You're becoming twtwtwBruce.

You're interpretation might have had application if my comments had been posted in the post office discussion that occurred in the thread "A Rural Area with Moderate Politics"; but, they were in the "Voting by Mail thread". Sometimes overlapping discussions are just too much for you to be able follow and differentiate.

Some might tell you "I'll get off your lawn right now." which is a nice way of blowing off folks who are losing it.

I'll just say: Double Bullshit on You.

Now he is plagiarizing Trump.

Meanwhile, a little more seriously: the wife and I just got an individually addressed postcard apiece about what to expect with our mail-in ballots, starting with expecting them to show up in our mailbox on or about 4 October, how many ballot dropoff locations will be scattered across the county (47 of them) and the encouraging feature of postal tracking of ballot envelopes. Sign up for that at WheresMyBallot.sos.ca.gov for it. Good idea if it works well and doesn't crash.

Ibby hasn't caught up on the USPS yet; the changes are all being held until appreciably after the third of November 2020. (His post does not show awareness of this.)

Her post (try to keep up please) was correct at the time it was posted. History doesn't "catch up", despite your attempts, like Trump, to rewrite it.

Still correct, as far as I can tell. He said he'd hold up further damage until after the election, but even if he holds to that, he's not undoing damage already done.

Damage apparently was done weeks ago. I first noticed this about six weeks ago. My magazine, that ALWAYS arrived on Saturday, started arriving on Mondays or Wednesdays. Only in the past six weeks. One issue never arrived.

I mailed a first class letter to Madison Ave NYC on 10 Aug. It just arrived on 23 Aug. Letters to NYC were delivered in two days. What changed in these last six weeks?

Postmaster General (a strong Trump supporter) said he will not make any changes until after November. He need not. Changes he would need to obstruct mail-in balloting (what Trump said he wants done) has apparently been mplemented. Postmaster General need not make any changes. It was already done.

One neighbor requested a mail in ballot weeks ago. It had not arrived. They told him to call back if it still had not arrived next week.

On two occasions this past six months, no mail delivery happened for anyone in my neighborhood.

He need not make any changes. Changes that may obstruct mail-in balloting apparently have been implemented.

And then this reality. Anything that does not prove Trump as innocent means he is guilty. Trump's entire life has been about corruption. Even his sister says so. Says Trump has no ethics and no morals. He had none even as a kid.

Says so much about the integrity of some here who still praise Trump.

Ooo! Ooo! Damage, damage -- some where there must surely be damage!! Because the Bad Orange Man is Bad! And, and, Orange!

Damage is distinctly unspecified, therefore indistinct as hell. Not impressed.

And really, DJT is more an Annoying Orange -- annoying to some; he certainly annoys the piggies in their starched white shirts, stirring up the dirt. He doesn't annoy me. But the piggies, yeah -- they get their collective tail in a twist.

Recall The Annoying Orange came through the Republican primary owing absolutely nothing to anyone. The money he spent was all his own. The piggies, it appears, can't stand it.

Can somebody translate that into English? Why is Anita Bryant relevant?

Let's see... tw is making a rather lame pun! -- lamed by its long stretch. And, tw being tw, he leaves an impression he can't distinguish between Anita Bryant and an eponym of a webcomic.

If it wasn't true, then UG would show us how. He cannot. So he attacks the messenger rather that address an ironic similarity.

What primary?

The current view from the right would seem to be:
Trump > Party > Country

I used to be a Republican, and I'm still very conservative. But I have disliked the Donald since I saw him on Dick Cavett or some such back in '79. The people that call themselves republican these days they are all rich guys that want to make things better for themselves instead for everyone. It started with the Tea Party and got worse, no compromise, very little dialog. I am personally tired of the political Bull Shit right now, and it's time we took action.

Term Limit the Bastards!!!

Guys like Rubio tried to start a conversation about how conservatives could help the economy serve everyone. Naturally the voters, who've been taught to hate intellectuals, chose the grifter and here we are.

Term limits? Sure just tell your congress critter to pass a law that would force him/her to go back to work.

Now they are supposed to know who lives at every address. :rolleyes:

Grossly incorrect perception, Griff. And what's worse, one too eagerly sought for by the anticapitalists and antipatriots. The Country, to borrow your capitalization, is the first concern -- there are people who don't want you to get that.

The era of a Trump Administration will last a maximum of eight years. After that time, civil rights and liberties must be defended by Trump's successors and supporters, since his detractors support neither. The Black, Living Marxists must be discredited, defunded, disemboweled and vigorously defamed in all quarters, particularly in academe, to finish off their threat to the economy, free speech, and all other liberties.

Funnily enough, in 2016, the vote rejected the Great Griftess, who has her entire adult life been in it for the money, from cattle futures on forward -- as much money as can be stuffed into the Clinton Foundation. That's the second bullet this free Republic has dodged in sixteen years, fired from the Democratic side of the aisle, as was the first.

xoxoxoBruce, I had reference to the 2016 Republican primary. Would there have been any other with the owes-nobody-anything property? Your uncertainty was puzzling.

I was checking to see if I had missed that claim this year.
Yes, he did gamble a small portion of the money he'd stolen on winning the primary.
However I've read that while technically true it isn't exactly honest because when he got the nomination he paid himself back for his investment out of donations.
But looking at the other 20,000 lies it's a minor point.

Can you try that again"? It was absolute gibberish.