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Post by c4ndlelight on Oct 7, 2020 14:45:04 GMT -5
I am just saying. If Texas was a 50/50 state - the distanced traveled for the average Trump voter would be farther than the average Biden voter. Only 27 of the 254 Texas Counties voted for Clinton over Trump. Those many smallish counties add up. Now this could be more about Trump voters are less likely to mail? But then Trump voters are more likely to be older and also lower income - so this works against him if we think the poor is at a disadvantage here? The rural Texas counties aren't that large, and the ones that are more even border counties. (Notice how those ruby red rural areas are in smaller counties than Harris?) And the pandemic-related risks for traditional in-person voting are much lower in sparsely populated areas, and in terms of raw voting numbers Harris County represented between 1/6th and 1/7th of all votes cast despite there being 254 counties. We all know what impact this is going to have. Why are you trying so hard to argue against it?
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Post by cindra on Oct 7, 2020 14:50:56 GMT -5
This goes back to what I kept saying in the other thread about voting rights a few days ago. These drop boxes are incredibly secure. Impossible to steal ballots out of. They're not just some post office box, they're designed to be incredibly damage and break in resistant. They don't invite any opportunity for fraud, or require any extra service besides picking ballots up every few days. They're often video monitored and there's a clear, bipartisan/nonpartisan chain of custody from the box to the tabulating machines.
Which, like most other measures allegedly preventing voter fraud, begs the question: Why are these rules being created to fix problems that don't exist, at the cost of preventing people from voting safely and easily?
Edit: Apparently these are for manned stations. Criticism still applies. These are very secure methods of dropping off ballots and it doesn't make any sense to get rid of them. Drop box argument still applies looking at states like PA.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 7, 2020 14:53:12 GMT -5
I am just saying. If Texas was a 50/50 state - the distanced traveled for the average Trump voter would be farther than the average Biden voter. Only 27 of the 254 Texas Counties voted for Clinton over Trump. Those many smallish counties add up. Now this could be more about Trump voters are less likely to mail? But then Trump voters are more likely to be older and also lower income - so this works against him if we think the poor is at a disadvantage here? It's not simply a matter of distance. Texas counties are relatively uniform in size and dimensions. Someone drew up the county map as a bunch of near rectangles of reasonably uniform size except for the west. The real deal is with urban counties where perhaps there's less access to one's own transportation as well as bad traffic. It's almost impossible to live in a rural area without reliable transportation. There's certainly no rational reason to claim potential for voter fraud as to why there can only be one per county. That's just ludicrous given that these are manned locations where only a single ballot can be delivered with an ID requirement.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 7, 2020 15:03:00 GMT -5
This goes back to what I kept saying in the other thread about voting rights a few days ago. These drop boxes are incredibly secure. Impossible to steal ballots out of. They're not just some post office box, they're designed to be incredibly damage and break in resistant. They don't invite any opportunity for fraud, or require any extra service besides picking ballots up every few days. They're often video monitored and there's a clear, bipartisan/nonpartisan chain of custody from the box to the tabulating machines. Which, like most other measures allegedly preventing voter fraud, begs the question: Why are these rules being created to fix problems that don't exist, at the cost of preventing people from voting safely and easily? They're not using "boxes" per se in Texas. Texas requires that an election worker be present to receive the ballot and check the ID of the voter. Not sure exactly if they might have the collected transported during the day or at the end of the day, but these are certainly not just left there. Certainly there's no need to transport them if the site is at the election office.
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 7, 2020 15:12:34 GMT -5
This goes back to what I kept saying in the other thread about voting rights a few days ago. These drop boxes are incredibly secure. Impossible to steal ballots out of. They're not just some post office box, they're designed to be incredibly damage and break in resistant. They don't invite any opportunity for fraud, or require any extra service besides picking ballots up every few days. They're often video monitored and there's a clear, bipartisan/nonpartisan chain of custody from the box to the tabulating machines. Which, like most other measures allegedly preventing voter fraud, begs the question: Why are these rules being created to fix problems that don't exist, at the cost of preventing people from voting safely and easily? They're not using "boxes" per se in Texas. Texas requires that an election worker be present to receive the ballot and check the ID of the voter. Not sure exactly if they might have the collected transported during the day or at the end of the day, but these are certainly not just left there. Certainly there's no need to transport them if the site is at the election office. That just makes it worse. Could they even physically process 4.6M ballot dropoffs at one single location in Harris County, even if they worked 24/7 from now until then?
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Post by hammer on Oct 7, 2020 15:22:21 GMT -5
Can't. Can't even ask IV and XVII. There's always old reliable ...
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Post by donut on Oct 7, 2020 15:44:00 GMT -5
This rule literally didn’t affect rural counties. 1 drop off location before the rule, 1 drop off location after the rule.
If blue wants to start a thread recommending that drop off locations be distributed evenly throughout the state (which would be incredibly ignorant of population density), then we can take this conversation there, but right now, it’s pretty clear he’s trying to squirm around criticizing a blatantly political and unnecessary move by Abbott.
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Oct 7, 2020 15:46:02 GMT -5
I am just saying. If Texas was a 50/50 state - the distanced traveled for the average Trump voter would be farther than the average Biden voter. Only 27 of the 254 Texas Counties voted for Clinton over Trump. Those many smallish counties add up. Now this could be more about Trump voters are less likely to mail? But then Trump voters are more likely to be older and also lower income - so this works against him if we think the poor is at a disadvantage here? The rural Texas counties aren't that large, and the ones that are more even border counties. (Notice how those ruby red rural areas are in smaller counties than Harris?) And the pandemic-related risks for traditional in-person voting are much lower in sparsely populated areas, and in terms of raw voting numbers Harris County represented between 1/6th and 1/7th of all votes cast despite there being 254 counties. We all know what impact this is going to have. Why are you trying so hard to argue against it? I am just not so easily jumping to 'voter suppression'. The article from the first post - only mentions 3 congress people (one from NY, CA, SD) that is complaining. Are Texas Democrats complaining about this? Is anyone in Harris county complaining? I know that Harris county originally set up for 12 locations, but is that what they really want or think is still best? Maybe there is something to this - but so far it looks like political grandstanding from people who don't know crap about Texas elections.
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Post by cindra on Oct 7, 2020 15:47:35 GMT -5
The rural Texas counties aren't that large, and the ones that are more even border counties. (Notice how those ruby red rural areas are in smaller counties than Harris?) And the pandemic-related risks for traditional in-person voting are much lower in sparsely populated areas, and in terms of raw voting numbers Harris County represented between 1/6th and 1/7th of all votes cast despite there being 254 counties. We all know what impact this is going to have. Why are you trying so hard to argue against it? I am just not so easily jumping to 'voter suppression'. The article from the first post - only mentions 3 congress people (one from NY, CA, SD) that is complaining. Are Texas Democrats complaining about this? Is anyone in Harris county complaining? I know that Harris county originally set up for 12 locations, but is that what they really want or think is still best? Maybe there is something to this - but so far it looks like political grandstanding from people who don't know crap about Texas elections. www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-democrats-greg-abbott-mail-in-ballotsYes. Texas Dems don't like this at all.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 7, 2020 15:47:42 GMT -5
They're not using "boxes" per se in Texas. Texas requires that an election worker be present to receive the ballot and check the ID of the voter. Not sure exactly if they might have the collected transported during the day or at the end of the day, but these are certainly not just left there. Certainly there's no need to transport them if the site is at the election office. That just makes it worse. Could they even physically process 4.6M ballot dropoffs at one single location in Harris County, even if they worked 24/7 from now until then? That's their total population. It's about 2.3 million registered voters. There also aren't that many mail-in ballots. You're talking eligible, registered voters, and even then they have restrictions on who can request a ballot since their Supreme Court ruled that there won't be any Covid-19 specific exception among their list of excuses. It's got to be age (at least 65, disability, or being out of town. They're still likely to get record numbers though. In the 2016 general election it was less than 70,000. They tend to have far more early, in-person voting than any other type of voting. Not sure about what it's going to look like this year. The primaries didn't have high absentee numbers. harrisvotes.com/HISTORY/20161108/cumulative/cumulative.pdfharrisvotes.com/HISTORY/20200303/DemocraticCumulative.pdfharrisvotes.com/HISTORY/20200303/RepublicanCumulative.pdfI think most are probably just going to send it in the mail early. The worries would be if one is cutting it really close to election day where a postmark isn't enough. Then there are some who just don't trust the mail these days.
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Post by c4ndlelight on Oct 7, 2020 15:53:00 GMT -5
The rural Texas counties aren't that large, and the ones that are more even border counties. (Notice how those ruby red rural areas are in smaller counties than Harris?) And the pandemic-related risks for traditional in-person voting are much lower in sparsely populated areas, and in terms of raw voting numbers Harris County represented between 1/6th and 1/7th of all votes cast despite there being 254 counties. We all know what impact this is going to have. Why are you trying so hard to argue against it? I am just not so easily jumping to 'voter suppression'. The article from the first post - only mentions 3 congress people (one from NY, CA, SD) that is complaining. Are Texas Democrats complaining about this? Is anyone in Harris county complaining? I know that Harris county originally set up for 12 locations, but is that what they really want or think is still best? Maybe there is something to this - but so far it looks like political grandstanding from people who don't know crap about Texas elections. The Texas Democratic Party is suing over this. Just really interesting assumptions you make, sir.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2020 15:53:07 GMT -5
The rural Texas counties aren't that large, and the ones that are more even border counties. (Notice how those ruby red rural areas are in smaller counties than Harris?) And the pandemic-related risks for traditional in-person voting are much lower in sparsely populated areas, and in terms of raw voting numbers Harris County represented between 1/6th and 1/7th of all votes cast despite there being 254 counties. We all know what impact this is going to have. Why are you trying so hard to argue against it? I am just not so easily jumping to 'voter suppression'. The article from the first post - only mentions 3 congress people (one from NY, CA, SD) that is complaining. Are Texas Democrats complaining about this? Is anyone in Harris county complaining? I know that Harris county originally set up for 12 locations, but is that what they really want or think is still best? Maybe there is something to this - but so far it looks like political grandstanding from people who don't know crap about Texas elections. Fair argument. I don’t live in Harris County or even Texas for that matter but I have some family that do. Some are R’s and some are D’s and to be fair neither of them are happy about the situation and both feel like taking it down to 1 drop off location is going to put people at risk. Just my two cents.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 7, 2020 16:09:37 GMT -5
The rural Texas counties aren't that large, and the ones that are more even border counties. (Notice how those ruby red rural areas are in smaller counties than Harris?) And the pandemic-related risks for traditional in-person voting are much lower in sparsely populated areas, and in terms of raw voting numbers Harris County represented between 1/6th and 1/7th of all votes cast despite there being 254 counties. We all know what impact this is going to have. Why are you trying so hard to argue against it? I am just not so easily jumping to 'voter suppression'. The article from the first post - only mentions 3 congress people (one from NY, CA, SD) that is complaining. Are Texas Democrats complaining about this? Is anyone in Harris county complaining? I know that Harris county originally set up for 12 locations, but is that what they really want or think is still best? Maybe there is something to this - but so far it looks like political grandstanding from people who don't know crap about Texas elections. Yeah they're complaining. There's a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn this. Part of it is that the Governor came up with the plan to allow multiple collection sites at the discretion of county elections. They weren't having multiple collection sites per county during the primaries. The large counties had already started doing it. Then the Governor pulled back on it citing claims that it would be open to "illegal voting" even though their procedures are the most stringent of any state. Only the actual voter is allowed to deliver a ballot, and must present ID that meets the same requirements as for in-person voting. Family members aren't even allowed to deliver ballots for a relative. There is no reasonable explanation for why he's doing this other than to depress turnout.
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 7, 2020 16:10:34 GMT -5
I am just not so easily jumping to 'voter suppression'. It has feathers and a bill. It swims and flies. It makes a quacking noise. It eats bread if I toss some to it. It has webbed feet. It waddles. It hangs around with ducks. But I am just not so easily jumping to 'it's a duck'.
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Post by keener on Oct 7, 2020 18:34:36 GMT -5
Hey bro-mensas I thought all those mail-in ballots come with free return postage?
Even if it doesn't. Stamps, bros.
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