2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

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The Pennsylvania secrecy ballot stuff is worrying.  The letter says 6% of ballots were rejected in previous elections for this reason alone, and that a higher share will be rejected this time around since there are more first-time voters.

If half of PA votes by mail and the VBM share is 70% D, 30% R, and 10% of ballots are rejected, that is a 2% swing in Trump's favor.  That could easily be enough to decide the election.

Hopefully the Biden campaign is ready to absolutely spam the airwaves with instructions on how to vote properly in Pennsylvania.  Get some hashtags going on social media as well.  Get celebrities to show the kiddies how to vote.  Send out physical media and put up billboards in the cities.

And make sure to not tell the rurals... they voted for these Republicans who actively want to disenfranchise voters, so it's only fair for them to be the first group disenfranchised.

I think we should keep some facts in mind before jumping to the conclusion that this is yet another nefarious Republican plot to steal the election:

• The PA Supreme Court is 5-2 Dem and upheld the secrecy envelope requirement.
• The secrecy envelope is included in the mail ballot materials (see https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/05/14/pennsylvania-mail-in-ballot-instructions/)
• Biden/the DNC/Mike Bloomberg/whoever is free to run ads reminding people that this is a requirement. Lisa Murkowski was able to get a plurality of Alaskan voters to write her in and spell her name correctly. It can't be that hard to get people to put a mail-in ballot in two envelopes.

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The Pennsylvania secrecy ballot stuff is worrying.  The letter says 6% of ballots were rejected in previous elections for this reason alone, and that a higher share will be rejected this time around since there are more first-time voters.

If half of PA votes by mail and the VBM share is 70% D, 30% R, and 10% of ballots are rejected, that is a 2% swing in Trump's favor.  That could easily be enough to decide the election.

Hopefully the Biden campaign is ready to absolutely spam the airwaves with instructions on how to vote properly in Pennsylvania.  Get some hashtags going on social media as well.  Get celebrities to show the kiddies how to vote.  Send out physical media and put up billboards in the cities.

And make sure to not tell the rurals... they voted for these Republicans who actively want to disenfranchise voters, so it's only fair for them to be the first group disenfranchised.

I think we should keep some facts in mind before jumping to the conclusion that this is yet another nefarious Republican plot to steal the election:

• The PA Supreme Court is 5-2 Dem and upheld the secrecy envelope requirement.
• The secrecy envelope is included in the mail ballot materials (see https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/05/14/pennsylvania-mail-in-ballot-instructions/)
• Biden/the DNC/Mike Bloomberg/whoever is free to run ads reminding people that this is a requirement. Lisa Murkowski was able to get a plurality of Alaskan voters to write her in and spell her name correctly. It can't be that hard to get people to put a mail-in ballot in two envelopes.

Why is there no fat "Put your ballot in here before you return it" on the secrecy envelope? Pennsylvania is setting up its voters to fail here. It just says "Official Election Ballot"

I think that would be a common-sense, easy to implement solution, and it should be non-controversial. PA Secretary of State is a Democrat. But knowing how R's roll, they might sue the PA election commission to stop that.

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So essentially OSR seems to be arguing a state legislature should be unchecked. Because when you think that the state Supreme Court reaffirming a executive order by a governor to extended absentee ballots on the reasonable grounds of we are in the middle of a pandemic that the legislature hasn’t done solely for partisan/undemocratic reasons are the ones out of line then you are essentially calling for the state legislature to be have the power to rig out democracy to their liking

Correct, he supports the dictatorship of the gerrymandered state legislature.

I think you're off base here. The law was passed last year by the legislature and signed by Gov. Wolf. This year, the Democratic governor/SoS would like to extend the deadline for receipt by 3 days, citing the pandemic and greatly increased demand for vote by mail. Naturally, the Republican legislature doesn't agree, and given the law of the land in PA says 8pm on Election Day, they have the law on their side. If Gov. Wolf and the PA legislature could come to a compromise and pass a new law, then it would be the new law of the land, but that's a political question.

The argument that Democrats are making is that the pandemic is a strong enough reason to override the law, and that's a disputable issue with plausible arguments for both sides, and a court is the natural place to make that decision. This is not about "dictatorship of the legislature," and the law was perfectly reasonable when it was passed last year. I don't see any theoretical distinction between this and Republican attempts to sabotage the ACA through regulatory maneuvering or Trump's executive orders, and the resolution of that would go through the courts also.

I understand most of us want Biden to win but we should at least keep our logical arguments straight.

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What do people make of the Colorado turnout numbers?  They look horrendous for Republicans so far.  Cory Garner is definitely losing.

Democrats 380,589
Republicans 207,086
No Party Affiliation 311,269

Yeah, Colorado is probably one of the few places where this year is pretty much like every other year, correct? These #s look horrific for the GOP.

Yeah.  Republicans keep saying "ground game" over and over again but in states that are basically all mail ballots like CO, NJ, etc., their numbers are horrible.  And Colorado has what was supposed to be a battleground senate seat, at least it was when Republicans were building this allegedly amazing voter turnout operation.  

I'm starting to think the red wave ground game talk is just yet another con from the party of pathological liars.

The fact that the Republicans are now talking "ground game" is flat out hilarious when in 2016 the Democrats were proclaiming that Trump couldn't overcome Hillary's ground game and that didn't work out at all, and at that time the Republicans were crowing that persuasion >>> ground game.

That's not even taking into account that this year many people might even take offense to someone knocking on their door due to the pandemic.

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Let’s hope that the weekend bump culminates, but the GOP is currently over performing in Florida. Let’s not ignore that.

I for one, am saddened and unsurprised by the re-election of idiocrat, Donald J Trump.
I won’t comment on here anymore since it’s clear the Atlas bubble effect is really strong and nothing will change your mind.
I guess watching the complete shock of everyone here when the f**ker gets re-elected will be a bit of entertainment in the otherwise horrible night that is coming.

Did you forget that Biden still has a ~50% (FiveThirtyEight says 56%) chance to win even conditional on losing Florida?

This kind of hand wringing is only justified if bad numbers were coming out of PA, MI, or WI, which truly are essential for Biden.