Looking at the 'Mail it in' experience. I can't help but see it as a sad sign of the times where the human mind has been numbed by too many years of intense partisanship that now leads to an erosion of Democracy on many different levels. From the Media, the 4th Estate, for crissakes, supposed to be the people's avenue to making sense of the 3 branches of government. Now however the grip on the steering wheel has a spin that has this old work in progress, would have you veering off into the left hand ditch. Listening to KCBS radio the dominant all radio source for the average human 'lemmings in their little shiny boxes' of the bay-area. The newscaster routinely informs the public that the President 'without evidence' is opposed to mail in ballots. How about looking at the issues KCBS or as I was thinking would you please straighten out the wheel, your job is the news, we want to get home safely. Investigate before you join the chorus.
The potential for ' intimidation and pressure' with the "mail it in' style of democracy to be very real. Standing up to someone who declares you are a racist if you feel immigration maybe needs to reined in, may not be easy. I believe that indeed we should march on down to our local precincts say hello to the sweet altruistic poll workers and maybe even recognize your neighbors in line and in the privacy of your own booth .. let yourself cast your vote to the winds. (How do we ever know?) And like the fellow says in the interview if you need to go the absentee ballot root that is fine but let's not make it the new rule.
This pro mail voting concludes with these two paragraphs. How does casting your vote a week early or a month early give you more time 'to learn about all the candidates and measures..' ? Again the next paragraph reasserts this same wisdom. 'They cast a more informed vote on their time schedule and on their terms' Yet I just can't figure out how you get more informed by being early unless you are part of the cynical herd that knows my Color right or wrong. I recommend looking at these articles and check into some of the real concerns about 'Mail it in' voting. The video interview at the end is very important.
Besides the huge perk of not having to wait in long lines on Election Day, another major (and some could argue the most significant) advantage of vote-by-mail is that voters can simply take the time to learn about all the candidates and measures on the ballot.
“When I asked people what they like best about it, almost all of them [say] they feel they cast a more informed vote on their time schedule and on their terms,” Keisling said.
While Walden's criticism of a national mail-in voting program was largely logistical, President Donald Trump has claimed the practice is "corrupt" and that “a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting.” Trump has also suggested that widespread mail-in voting would pose a threat to Republicans' electoral success.
When people go to vote, “you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself,” the president said. The Trump campaign is also launching a multimillion-dollar legal campaign to block Democrats from changing voting rules.
Regardless, U.S. Census data confirms that 11% of Americans move every year, and voters on the lower end of the economic scale are especially transient. Without implementing some extensive, and likely problematic, government surveillance program, there’s no way for election administrators to reliably get ballots to tens of millions of Americans every election cycle without a large percentage of ballots going to the wrong address. This problem is compounded by states that mail ballots automatically. (The author of this piece is from Oregon, where ballots with his name on them were sent to his parents’ address for years after he graduated from college and moved out of state -- despite repeated contacts with the county clerk telling them he had moved.)
The inherent problems of mail-in voting are being widely ignored, however. Use of mail-in ballots more than doubled from 24.9 million in 2004 to 57.2 million in 2016, and around 40% of U.S. votes are now done by mail. Along with this dramatic increase there have been virtually no new safeguards, scrutiny, or additional research on the risks of vote by mail. If the current pandemic is going to force the issue during a presidential election, proponents of voting by mail may have to address obvious risks that come with proposing that more than 200 million ballots be mailed out this fall.
“I really think the only reason vote-by-mail problems are not getting more attention on a regular basis, is that it's kind of an embarrassing problem and people just aren’t paying attention,” says Churchwell. “These numbers of missing ballots demonstrate large voter list maintenance failures and security gaps within the broader mail voting process.”
The term 'Mail it in' is a sports phrase for an athlete who gives a half-hearted effort. I urge every one to hold onto your Trump card. If you on the last day can't bear him them vote against him, if on the last day you can hear the language against him as a language that really doesn't want you to think but wants to keep you in fear then maybe you need to think very deeply about that.
Where is my Party said John Lewis at the 1963 March on Washington? I still think about that and I want my Tree Party.
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