The Many Methods of Voting

[Silver Raven]

Trump told people in Colorado yesterday that the election is rigged against them, so the people in charge of counting ballots just won't bother to count mail in votes, so if they've already voted by mail in, they should go to the polling place on election day and vote again.  So he literally is telling people to commit voter fraud.

[fastiller]

20 minutes ago, Silver Raven said:

Trump told people in Colorado yesterday that the election is rigged against them, so the people in charge of counting ballots just won't bother to count mail in votes, so if they've already voted by mail in, they should go to the polling place on election day and vote again.  So he literally is telling people to commit voter fraud.

Oh the irony!  (I think this would count as irony - ever since Ms. Morrisette's song, I'm always worried about getting that right!)

[Kitty Redstone]

Do these people realize he's asking them to commit a felony?  Do they think Donald will pay their legal fees and fines, or help them get a job with a criminal record, if they follow his advice?   

[ebk57]

Details, if anyone is interested - voted at the community center near my house.  There may have been about a dozen people in line, but the line went quickly.  The ballot was 4 pages.  I checked it 5 times (wanted to take a picture, but phones are banned).  Put it through the scanner.  Got my sticker.  Whole thing took 15 minutes.  

Yay!

[rcc]

15 hours ago, photo fox said:

Wow, I didn't know that was a thing! Where I live, it's illegal to do any electioneering in or in front of a polling place. That sounds incredibly awkward.

 

Huh, this is interesting. Here in Illinois, I know you're supposed to vote where you live, not where you get your mail,* but I don't know what they'd do if you actually don't have a permanent physical address.

*This actually caused trouble for me when I first registered when I was 18. My parents and I had a temporary home, while they were in the process of building a house. Rather than change their mail, and then change it again, they just put a mailbox at the build site. Well. we registered to vote where we lived, but when they mailed our cards to that address, USPS bounced them, and the county clerk canceled the registrations. My mom, who has served as an election judge forever, went round and round with them to get it sorted.

I moved to a different county this year, and I didn't get my registration switched in time, so I have to do "grace period" voting at the courthouse. I'm disappointed, in part because my cousin in now the county clerk and I can already him rolling his eyes at me for missing the deadline. But mostly because I really miss voting in person, on the day. There's just something so awesomely, purely, democratic about it, and it makes me feel so connected to my fellow Americans. (At least until the results start coming in!)

As for overall procedures, etc. here... we almost never have lines, but I get the feeling I'm in a much more rural area than most of you. Early voting and the aforementioned grace period voting can only be done at the courthouse, but there's a pretty long time period for it, and we're used to having to drive into "town" for everything. You don't need a reason for early or absentee voting, but with early voting so accessible, absentee voters are mostly just people who are homebound.

We have scan ballots, and have since 2000. Before that we had the butterfly punch "chad" ballots that were apparently so difficult? I have to laugh at that a bit, because I didn't think they were difficult at all, but whatever. I do remember signs in the booths specifically telling us to check our ballots for hanging chads, although they called them something different.

The bad thing about the scanners is that they're crazy expensive. So when the state mandated them, the county clerks had to close a lot of polling places. Generally speaking each rural township, which is 6 miles x 6 miles, has one polling place. But in the city, or maybe where there are two small towns in one township, there would be multiple precincts. When faced with paying for all those scanners, they just couldn't keep them all open anymore. So a lot of people before could walk to vote suddenly had to drive. Now, like I said, having a car or knowing someone who does is a way of life here, but it was still unfortunate. (And a prime example of how our statehouse forgets that a huge part of Illinois is rural and sparsely populated, and what works just fine in Chicago isn't always a good fit everywhere, but I digress.)

I find our election process somewhat fascinating, and I've been a judge of election several times. So I could go on and on, but this is already getting long! I love hearing how it's done in other parts of the country.

They can't go inside the polling place, but they are in front of the building.

[roughing it]

Quote

Trump told people in Colorado yesterday that the election is rigged against them, so the people in charge of counting ballots just won't bother to count mail in votes, so if they've already voted by mail in, they should go to the polling place on election day and vote again.  So he literally is telling people to commit voter fraud.

I'm in Colorado, and I just dropped off my completed ballot.  (You can mail it in early, drop it off at a polling place early, or vote in person on election day.)  I spoke to the two election officials who were overseeing the dropping off of ballots and I told them that I had heard rumors that after dropping off your ballot like I just did, a person could come back on election day and "void" their ballot and request a new one.  (I'm sure in 'Trump's' hopes that both votes would be counted.)  They said "absolutely not", once your ballot was submitted, you are done.  They said that two people, one from each party, are there at all times to oversee the dropoff process, to ensure that no funny business would take place.  So once again, our Republican nominee is a "liar, liar, pants on fire".

[StatisticalOutlier]

17 hours ago, photo fox said:

Here in Illinois, I know you're supposed to vote where you live, not where you get your mail,* but I don't know what they'd do if you actually don't have a permanent physical address.

The Escapees, who I referenced above, won a lawsuit that allows their customers to vote with the mail service address.

In my case (I'm not an Escapee), I had to give a physical address for voter registration, so I used a friend of mine's house, but the voter card gets mailed to my p.o. box.  So I do vote where I "live" and not where I get my mail.  Same with the driver's license--must have a physical address, and not one that gets flagged as a UPS store.

This just in from a friend in Texas, who works for Legal Aid and participated in the lawsuit over voter ID (in Texas, if you don't have a photo ID, you can use a voter registration card or utility bill or somesuch and sign a "Reasonable Impediment Declaration"):

"There was a small kerfuffle when I was voting last Monday morning--the precinct Nazi told everyone they must have a photo ID to vote and one old guy was clearly there waiting for someone to say just such a stupid thing. It was fun to watch."

[BookWoman56]

I did my early voting in person in TX today. It started last week but I was out of town on business and had to wait until I got back. I only had to wait a few minutes today, but it was around 3:45 pm and so most people would still be at work. The line was steady but brisk. My daughter voted last week at college and said they have lines there every day; she had to wait almost an hour. Even though I expect TX to once again go red, I am happy to report that my county has led the state in voter registration this cycle, and at this point, almost 25% of the registered voters have already voted. I live in a major city in TX, and the cities tend to go blue but the rural areas go red and generally flip the state over to red. At least here in the cities, we use the touchscreen voting machines that require you to make your selections and then review them before you can submit your vote. The election workers were quite helpful in explaining the logistics of the voting machines to people who had not used them before or who got confused at any point. In terms of ID, they had a big poster listing the types of ID that would be acceptable but also at the bottom the instructions for what to do if you did not have one of the preferred forms of ID. One positive thing for me was that I saw no Trump/Pence signs anywhere close to the site; there were some Clinton/Kaine signs and a few local signs attached to the fencing on a private home across the street.

[AuntiePam]

On 10/29/2016 at 11:59 AM, AuntiePam said:

In Iowa, we're not required to give a reason for voting by mail.  I downloaded the request form, which asked for very basic information.  The only "secure" info was the last four digits of the SSN.  I mailed the request to the county auditor and a few days later the ballot came in the mail.  There were simple instructions -- very clear -- a secrecy envelope -- which fit in the return envelope.  The return envelope already had a stamp, and it had a preprinted label with my name, address, and a bar code.  The info emphasized the importance of the return postmark -- it has to be postmarked no later than November 14. 

It's mind-boggling to me that any state asks for a reason for absentee voting. 

My confusion about November 14 is cleared up.  I found the instructions, which say that the ballot must be postmarked on or before November 7, followed by this:  "Even if postmarked on time, mailed ballots must also be received in the county auditor's office by the receipt deadline: November 14th.  Ballots received after the receipt deadline will not be counted."

Is mail that slow in some places that a postmarked envelope might not be received in 7 days?  Or is this to address the potential problem of a bag of mail being left in a truck?  Or an envelope stuck at the bottom of a mail bag?

[BookWoman56]

Although I've already voted, I was pleasantly surprised this morning that my company's intranet had a notice on it not only reminding employees when Election Day is, but informing them that they can take 2 hours of paid time off to go vote. I'm salaried so it doesn't matter to me, but for hourly workers, it's got to help that they don't have to lose an hour or two of paid time to go stand in line and vote.

[BW Manilowe]

41 minutes ago, BookWoman56 said:

Although I've already voted, I was pleasantly surprised this morning that my company's intranet had a notice on it not only reminding employees when Election Day is, but informing them that they can take 2 hours of paid time off to go vote. I'm salaried so it doesn't matter to me, but for hourly workers, it's got to help that they don't have to lose an hour or two of paid time to go stand in line and vote.

I think it's great. Hopefully they won't need more than the allotted 2 hours to vote (I'm guessing they lose pay, or something, if it takes longer?).

[MulletorHater]

46 minutes ago, BookWoman56 said:

Although I've already voted, I was pleasantly surprised this morning that my company's intranet had a notice on it not only reminding employees when Election Day is, but informing them that they can take 2 hours of paid time off to go vote. I'm salaried so it doesn't matter to me, but for hourly workers, it's got to help that they don't have to lose an hour or two of paid time to go stand in line and vote.

I think that's very wonderful of your company.  Our company's employee manual specifically lists Election Day as day when employees can get paid leave.  Although most of us live in D.C. and Maryland, we have a few employees who live in Northern Virginia.  They try to vote in the morning before coming to work, or they leave early.  We even get to do this in midterm elections.

[partofme]

54 minutes ago, BookWoman56 said:

Although I've already voted, I was pleasantly surprised this morning that my company's intranet had a notice on it not only reminding employees when Election Day is, but informing them that they can take 2 hours of paid time off to go vote. I'm salaried so it doesn't matter to me, but for hourly workers, it's got to help that they don't have to lose an hour or two of paid time to go stand in line and vote.

My manager mentioned during the primaries that this is the law in NY and NJ.  I never knew this previously, have never had another manager mention it.  I always go early in the morning before work though and have never had much of a wait.

[BookWoman56]

1 hour ago, BW Manilowe said:

I think it's great. Hopefully they won't need more than the allotted 2 hours to vote (I'm guessing they lose pay, or something, if it takes longer?).

There apparently are some states that mandate a longer time, in which case they will follow the state law. They do encourage employees to vote on their own time via early voting when possible, but recognize that some people can't.  Hence the two hours and a request to notify your manager ahead of time (for customer-facing positions) so as not to cause any business disruptions due to everybody taking the same block of time to go vote. I think that's reasonable, and while yes, some states require the paid time off for voting, most of them do not. From my perspective, anything that encourages people to go vote is a plus.

[Babalu]

I was a State of Hawai'i employee until recently, and election days for national office (so, even-numbered years) are paid State holidays. (Also, Prince Kuhio Day, King Kamehameha Day, and Statehood Day; we weren't paid much, but we got a lot of time off!)