Not until they find out how many Republican ballots were tossed out as well.
Agree with everything here. This is why I vote in person. If you want to know your vote was placed and counted then you need to vote in person, even during a pandemic.
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There’s a code on my mail in ballot that allows me to track it.
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Also, not sure if it’s been mentioned here, but the biggest problem with this law is that the ballot doesn’t tell you which ID you need.
It needs to match what’s on file, but they don’t tell you what they have on file.
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For the PA 2021 primary I received this by e-mail
We also have a way to check stats online (but only for the “current” election, so now it only tells me I’ve requested a mail-in ballot for spring 2022, but nothing about 2022 elections) As I recall, the ballot status after the ballot is received becomes “ACCEPTED”. It does leave me wondering about whether the ballot is completely OK. I don’t think it ever explicitly says that everything is OK with it.
That’s a different problem. A problem, to be sure, but a different one with a different solution.
It’s like saying you shouldn’t replace your brakes when they go bad because the old windshield wipers will still do an inadequate job of clearing the windshield.
It’s pretty much agreed that more democrats wanted to use mail-in voting than republicans (I’m referring to the general election situation, where more is at stake), so if you suppress mail-in voting you are going to hurt democrats more. (Sure, result will further depend on how many of those you inconvenience will still vote in person.) If you just don’t count some mail-in votes, without any way to let those people know they need to vote in person, you are going to hurt democrats more.
It wasn’t democrats who wanted to stop counting votes before all the mail-in votes were counted.
I would add the word “easily” to that. If they have to wait on hold for an hour or show up in person to get a printout then that shouldn’t count.
Getting a printout of everyone who hadn’t voted yet, or people who hadn’t voted in recent elections was how I became aware of this issue. But I was a campaign volunteer, and a precinct committee person, so my level of involvement in the process was unusually high.
In my case, I’ve been concerned because I wasn’t sure which signature to use. In some official documents, I use my middle name. In other, my middle initial. For my mail in ballot, I signed with my middle initial since that matches the name on my ballot application. I hope it worked. Am I positive? No. I decided it would be anal to worry about that, since I hope they’re trying to count legimate votes.
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Would you get this sort of feedback if you voted in person? I know that I generally don’t.
Seems like very fixable things. Why isn’t there a push to fix this sort of thing?
It could turn out that they are desperately trying to fix this horrible mess, while not admitting they made a mistake.
But given it’s only been 2 years since the insurrection, I’m not very optimistic.
I do wonder how many of these democrats were notified that their mail-in ballot was not “up to snuff” and they refused to do anything about it (either because they think the law is stupid and isn’t worth following or that they were confused as to how to go about fixing it)?
Per the linked article, people were notified and people apparently responded to fix their situation, but it didn’t provide clarity as to which counties had “fixes” done.
I wonder why democrats like “mail-in voting” more?
Also, this is a primary; so the greatest impact is which democratic candidate is going to run. Seems to me that the better solution in the present situation is to fix what’s off. I agree that there appears to be problems with the current system regarding mail-in ballots; but it’s unclear just how many were actually democratic ballots. I know that they gave illustrations of a couple of counties; but that doesn’t answer what the overall situation might be.
~150k mail-in ballots were accepted. ~5% of total votes; so I can see that some impact from mail-in ballots can be realized–especially in a close race. But will less than 1% of the total votes change the primaries outcomes? Some other democratic candidate would’ve bee selected instead? (Note these numbers are extracted from info provided in the OP’s linked article.)
Democrats don’t help their own cause by fighting against fixing something that is in place and appears to be feasible.
Rather than mobilize their own base to beat the system from within that system, there is a push to continue divisive narratives. Everything I’ve seen here is not only “fixable,” but has laid clear what path to take to get these “rejected” mail-in ballots counted for the general elections in TX.
I don’t know what this means.
What do you think Democrats should do that they aren’t doing?
What does “mobilize base” and “beat the system” mean with respect to this problem? I agree the problem is fixable, but it’s largely in the hands of the government, so the average person can’t fix it.
I agree that the people of Texas should reject the government for not fixing this issue, but you generally can’t just make people vote more. Statically speaking, making people vote less is more effective. Part of the problem, of course, is the extreme partisanship in the US in general right now. If all Texans agree this is a monumental cluster****, it will get fixed. If it’s viewed as a “democrat problem”, then it won’t get fixed.
Interesting question. I think the voting machine does prevent me from voting for too many candidates in a race (though possibly only by deleting the earliest selections or some other algorithm). I don’t recall whether it alerts me I have not voted in some race. Still, my concern with “completely OK” was “will my ballot be counted?” and I have never had any doubts about that with in person voting.
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Yeah but…
Democrats mail in balloting is generally done with someone hand holding the voter through the process. Republicans are the ones that vote by mail by themselves. Thus IMO they are more likely to make errors.
There has been politicization of voting procedures for each side to rouse their base.
The legislatures tend to be more political about it, and the SoS (or equivalent) has to work out the pragmatic approach. In my red state, the SoS has been actively working on improving access to photo IDs since that requirement was added.
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Is there implied red here? If not, WTF?
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I doubt there have been many studies of the process or reason for various errors. Regardless of the reason, I suspect we could agree that far more Republicans than Democrats voted for Trump. Fortunately that didn’t change the overall result. Some such errors may be inevitable, and the government should not restrict voting to prevent them. Education about democracy and civics might help.
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