How does this approach work with poll watchers? Do poll watchers get to do anything with VBM? Do they confirm signature checking?
What does this mean? They’re going door to door collecting mail in ballots from voters and promising to mail them on their behalf?
Correct, but not every door. We have security cameras, and when they left our house, they crossed the street and headed down a different street (we are at the junction of a T in our neighborhood) and skipped a couple houses before knocking again.
Jeezus. That’s a wide open doorway to election tampering. I’m surprised it’s legal. Also surprised that anyone would hand over a ballot.
I just looked it up because I wasn’t sure. In Colorado with VBM a bipartisan team of election judges review each signature to determine acceptance. A poll watcher may be present at this process and can elevate a signature decision to a second team of bipartisan election judges. They can’t physically handle the mail ballots or make the decision themselves though.
Depends on the state if it’s legal
I just checked. It is not legal in my state because of a 2016 law restricting it to family, friends, caregivers, but the Supreme Court is going to review it (after however many appeals it went through) sometime after the election. Apart from it still being illegal due to a stay until Supreme Court hears and decides, I dislike the skipping houses piece of it.
I also recognize that there should be some allowance for ballot harvesting that recognizes that not every person has the same easy access to voting as every other person. Making it illegal to have a neighbor drop off your ballot as a favor feels restrictive (I know several of my neighbors, but I don’t classify them as friends, even though we do favors for each other). I don’t know where the appropriate line is. Somewhere between “don’t disenfranchise wide swathes of voters because they don’t have easy access”, and “targeted harvesting based on party registration is allowed” (feels very undemocratic and susceptible to fraud).
Based on my methodology.
…which is based on PredictIt state-by-state markets. It failed spectacularly last time. This time for sure!
Huh, I picked up my mom’s ballot for her and took it to the drop box. Do you think that was wrong?
Okay, I guess I’m in a different legal category.
I agree that what was described sounds creepy. And I wouldn’t hand my ballot to a stranger.
No that’s fine and not what I consider “ballot harvesting”. I dropped my wife’s ballot in the drop box as well. Something allowing people to take up to 5-10 ballots for family, friends, and neighbors would be fine, as long as direct solicitation from strangers of ballots is not allowed. The door-to-door targeted campaigns are what I dislike.
Yeah, I actually took four ballots to the box. Mine, my husband’s, one from my adult daughter who lives with us, and my mom’s. I offered to pick up the household ones, my mom asked me take hers. All of them were sealed in their privacy envelopes before I saw them. I didn’t think what I did was particularly dicey.
Saw news today that Texas has taken in more early ballots than they had votes in the 2016 election. If Biden wins Texas it’s over right? The article also said that Ted Cruz and Beto have both been telling Trump and Biden that Texas is in play but neither has campaigned there at all.
Yes, a Biden win in Texas is not something Trump could make up for in other states.
Kamala is in Texas today.
Yes, but that is probably one of the least likely of all the swings to vote for him (IMO). Biden’s path to victory are to win (in order of likelihood as thought by me):
Plan A: Pennsylvania
Plan B: Arizona
Plan C: Florida
Plan D: North Carolina
Plan E: Georgia
Plan F: Texas
Plan G: Ohio
Trump’s lone path is to win all of those states.
Plan A is most likely to win, but will also look like a Trump win Tuesday night as they are one of the states that takes the longest to count their ballots- (not even starting counting mail ballots until Wednesday in some counties) so I suspect one of states B-F, which count quickly, will be called for him on election night giving Biden the win.
The state that takes the actual longest to count - New York. Seriously, they are a mess at counting but thankfully they are not close to being a swing state.
From a Forbes article:
“As of Oct. 29, NBC News has analyzed Texas’ early and by mail voting through Oct. 26, finding that 54% of those voting early are Republican vs. 36% Democrat and 10% other or unknown.”
I’m taking Texas off my list of hopeful surprises. This stat is subject to change and a bit dicey to start with (Texas apparently does not have official party registration so these numbers are based on primary voting?). But it would take a big portion of non-Trump Republicans for this to play out in favor of the Dems. OR post-10/26 turnout to differ greatly from the early results.
I hope it doesn’t come down to Pennsylvania. Based on how they report votes (absentee reported last and bulk of counting likely not done till Friday), early results are going to be more Republican leaning than the final. If it hinges on Penn and votes swing from red to blue over the course of the counting, you sure as shit know that’s going to raise calls of voter fraud.
Best if it’s already in the books and Penn only impacts the margin
Yeah, Penn has stupid vote counting rules. And that might be a problem this year.
FYI this is based off of TargetSmart modeling, which is absolutely terrible. Their latest numbers are 51-39-10. In 2018 they predicted 53-39-8 for the Beto Vs Cruz race, which Cruz won by 2.5%. As you’ll notice Biden is 2% better right now than that race.
I just saw the weirdest damn ad for the Susan Collins vs. Sara Gideon Maine US Senate race…
It argued that by voting against Barrett’s confirmation Collins had been unforgivably disloyal to Trump, and so had to be voted out of office on principle. I mean, that’s some hard-core “loyalty to the Don is everything” reasoning.
I suppose it could have been a pro-Gideon PAC with ad money to burn going “what the hell, there are some really dumb Trump supporters, it might work”. (Mainers did elect Paul LePage as governor twice, so such a cynical view of the Maine electorate isn’t exactly unreasonable.) Though I’m not sure that would make me feel any better about the current state of American politics.