Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

A consequence of cucumbers

Republicans don’t trust women.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

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Reader Interactions

165Comments

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: smirks, at least, makes his thumbs-up or pumps his wee fist

    trying to remember if I had any strong opinion on the thumps-up in between the second or third season of Happy Days (I thought The Fonz was cool) and 2016, but it grates on me now.

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    Has this been discussed?

    Breaking: New NYT Trump taxes report.Trump's tax records show that Trump maintains a previously unknown bank account in China. The foreign accounts do not show up on Trump's public financial disclosures because they are held under corporate names. https://t.co/kU18ggxrDs— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 20, 2020

  8. 8.

    James E Powell

    I don’t know if this is the place to remark upon it, but I just saw the best Biden ad of the year in the middle of the 2nd inning of Game 1 of the World Series. Are any of you guys watching?

    If it weren’t for the fact that I am utterly devoid of normal human feelings, I’d be crying right now. I have to find the video of this and post it everywhere.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    As of (checks timepiece) 8:49 p.m. blog time, yes. 8:00 – 9:30 Thursday evening.

    Also, the commission behind the debates has announced that anyone in the limited audience given entry without a mask will be summarily ejected.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @James E Powell: two trump ads aired during the Hayes program, and they look like they’re made for that infamous Audience of One

    I hope we’ll have lost the need for the German word for that before we get it

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    @NotMax:

    Also, the commission behind the debates has announced that anyone in the limited audience given entry without a mask will be summarily ejected.

    Large cartoon springs underneath each chair, I hope? Or perhaps a vaudeville-esque cane coming from stage right.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev:  Both candidates and all debate-related staff should have to take independent COVID tests.

    I read that Biden thinks Trump “should have to take one”, but that’s bullshit.  The debate commission should require it.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Biden will listen to scientists

    Biden will listen to Fauci.
    and now….

    Josh Campbell @joshscampbell · 37m
    Trump tells a rally in Pennsylvania that politics will be boring if Joe Biden is elected President

    I’ve been skeptical of the “he wants to lose!” argument, but maybe….

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: He also said he’d have to leave the country if he lost, and that “you’ll never hear from me again”.

    I think after one or another of those, the Biden campaign retweeted the clip along with “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message”…

  23. 23.

    jackmac

    Just finished with the Biden-Harris fundraiser featuring the cast of the Avengers movies plus the Russo brothers. The star of the show was Kamala, who  is a big fan and really knows her Avengers movies and cast.

    Other recent fundraising gatherings included the cast of Hamilton and a sprawling Star Trek event. Biden-Harris people really know what buttons to push (at least to get me and people like me interested).

    Two minutes to the Wisconsin comedy jam. Gotta go!

  25. 25.

    PPCLI

    @WaterGirl: They should absolutely have physicians there to do the test themselves. Then they should cut the swab in half, and test it for COVID-19.

    And then they should turn the other half over to Jean Carroll’s lawyers as a sample of Trump’s DNA.

  28. 28.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I doubt one person in the throng picked up on the dismissive contempt he has for them, but maybe a few people watching the local news reports will

    Peter Nicholas @PeterAtlantic · 26m
    Pres. Trump, speaking in Erie, Pa at a rally tonight, says he wouldn’t have come to Erie if the pandemic hadn’t hit. “Before the plague came in, I had it made. I wasn’t coming to Erie. I have to be honest. There was no way I was coming. I didn’t have to…. We had this thing won

  29. 29.

    thalarctosMaritimus

    @Elizabelle:

    I did, too. I guess I should have been prepared for a play about fascism coming to American being that dark, but I did not foresee that ending. (Can we talk about it, or is that bad form because of spoilers?)

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    @thalarctosMaritimus: 

    I’d be up for that. But not tonight. Watching the WisDems.

    We should find an online source for the Sinclair Lewis play. I was amazed how much some of it tracked Trump. Wondered if they’d updated the dialogue.

  31. 31.

    PPCLI

    I hope Biden finds a way to press Trump on this latest bit of horrifying inhumanity:

    The Feds are acknowledging that they have no idea how to find the parents of 545 children they separated at the border.

    Before a judge ordered them to stop, they had deported the parents without the children.

    This was an intentional policy, not an accident. That is what Trump is all about.

    Since Trump is sure to bring up Hunter over and over, the topic of parental love for children will be salient. A good moment to go on the attack, perhaps. Though I don’t understand the dynamics of this sort of debate, of what will and what won’t work in practice.

  33. 33.

    CaseyL

    @thalarctosMaritimus: Well, I won’t mind if people want to discuss it. The play’s been around quite a long time, hasn’t it? – so I’m not sure spoilers are a thing. Like spoiling “Rebecca” or something :)

  38. 38.

    Elizabelle

    The Sklar Brothers.  They were great.

    Asking people to donate cuz if Trump wins again, we won’t have an economy.  True.  Judd Apatow up now.

  39. 39.

    mrmoshpotato

    @PPCLI:

    The Feds are acknowledging that they have no idea how to find the parents of 545 children they separated at the border.

    Fucking oops!  G’damn monsters!

  41. 41.

    James E Powell

    @WaterGirl:

    Hard to describe. I think Sam Elliot is narrating. It’s the about the America that most of us struggle to believe can be real, but that people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, & Joe Biden insist we must work to make real. It’s cheese, but it’s the kind of cheese you serve cherished guests.

  43. 43.

    James E Powell

    @dmsilev:

    14 days to go.  An estimated 14,000 emails asking for money.

    For some reason, Gary Peters stopped sending me four panicky emails a day asking for more money. I hope that is good news.

  44. 44.

    Karen

    I’m really scared. Can Barrett rule along with the Conservatives that no ballots should be counted after Election Day?

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @CaseyL: The play’s been around quite a long time, hasn’t it? – so I’m not sure spoilers are a thing. Like spoiling “Rebecca” or something :)

    I try to be careful, based on this principle.  For example, I’ve never read Rebecca or seen any of the movies.

  50. 50.

    M31

    @Ken:

    lol yeah my gf spoilered a 19th C novel I was reading saying “that’s the one with the crazy wife in the attic, right?”

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    Anyway, it was in-person, at Town Hall. No line, in-out in a flash. Voting is just like on Election Day – check in, get your ballot, go fill in the little bubbles, put it through the scan machine. I was voter #500 in my little town; voting began last Wednesday. So about 100/day. We usually have somewhat fewer than 3,000 voters in all.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @James E Powell:

    but that people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, & Joe Biden insist we must work to make real.

    Wait, they actually used Hillary’s name??? They must be feeling mighty confident.

  56. 56.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @James E Powell: found it, I think

    one of the trump ads I saw was titled, on screen, “Jobs vs Mobs”. You can imagine it makes for a quite a contrast. I can’t fathom what goes through “undecided” voters minds, how anyone could support trump for that matter, but I can’t imagine trump’s ad speaks to anyone who isn’t already on his side.

  61. 61.

    PPCLI

    @James E Powell:

    Was it this one?

    (Sounds like Sam Waterston doing the voice-over.

    ETA: I saw a couple great unity and decency themed ads last night during Monday Night Football. No Trump ads during the time I was watching. I like this new “Pissed-off decent folks opening their wallets to decent candidates” trend. Let’s hope it continues.

  63. 63.

    Kattails

    @zhena gogolia: I don’t see it here yet, but had stopped off at the Hoarse Whisperer’s twitter feed after watching that wonderful John Prine tribute video below–anyway, he’s got a thread up on it, dated 25m. ago.  Looks very interesting. Dammit I was going to get some work done tonight.

  68. 68.

    Kattails

    Unusual, huge revenue spikes followed immediately by large withdrawals.  Is this info coming from the subpoena’d tax records? From Hoarse “smells April fresh. Someone is doing laundry.”

  69. 69.

    Mary G

    @dmsilev: I have been deleting and unsubscribing for hours and hours. Giving to people in WV for Cole and Kansas Dems means I hear from what feels like every Dem in the state. I somehow got on the mailing list for a guy running for city council in a town in Indiana somewhere, not one of the big ones. And all the organizations that I’ve never heard of before that send three a day in the ugliest shades from that chart of 32 allowed for use on the Internet 185 years ago.

  75. 75.

    dmsilev

    NEWS: Trump's campaign committee expected to report only **~$63 million** entering Oct.That's about half of what it had entering Sept.RNC $78.1mTrump Victory $90.3mT-MAGA $20.1m.Total between 4 entities previously announced as $251.4 million.https://t.co/f6kESRNtmh— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) October 20, 2020

    Guess the looting of the campaign accounts has been going well.

  76. 76.

    lamh36

    SMH…do MAGA-ites even realize or care that they are being insulted…smh

    @PeterAtlantic

    Pres. Trump, speaking in Erie, Pa at a rally tonight, says he wouldn’t have come to Erie if the pandemic hadn’t hit. “Before the plague came in, I had it made. I wasn’t coming to Erie. I have to be honest. There was no way I was coming. I didn’t have to…. We had this thing won”

    https://twitter.com/PeterAtlantic/status/1318712168519553031?s=20

  77. 77.

    James E Powell

    @PPCLI:

    That’s it. “There is so much we can do if we choose to take on problems and not each other.”

    Not gonna lie. I struggle with doing that.

    ETA – Sam Elliot & the ad are now trending on twitter & I’m acting like one of the staff on VEEP.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    @James E Powell: I’ve been muting commercials during the game (so happy Kershaw is having a great big game), but I just watched it about five times. It is a weeper. The piano lesson version of the anthem is killer.

    Crap. Now the Rays get a homer. I jinxed you, sorry Clayton.

  80. 80.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @zhena gogolia: Rachel Maddow did a segment on it. She mentioned some 2017* cash flow that I didn’t see in a quick skim of the NYT story.

    * added for clarity

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    @PPCLI: @lamh36:  Heh. Us jackals are something eh?

    Jesu Christe! 11% of the ballots returned and 74% are from Democrats in Pennsylvania? What is bigger than a tsunami for $1000 Alex?

  89. 89.

    Lapassionara

    @Karen: I don’t see how. The Supreme Court is the court of last resort, with some exceptions that should not apply here. A case would have to start in a state, and make its way up the normal way, either through the state court or the federal courts. Most elections are governed by state law, which is why we saw the Florida election in 2000 go to the state Supreme Court first, then by some very tricky reasoning, to the federal Supreme Court.

    nothing is impossible with this group of Trumpkins, but I do not see how they get to the Supremes without going somewhere else first.

  93. 93.

    mad citizen

    @Yutsano: Not sure where Koracki gets his numbers from, but they appear to be behing this site I’ve been going to: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

    I haven’t read their details but it seems like they are tracking things pretty closely–updated all the time.  They now are showing 37 million early votes.  Their percentages for PA not as extreme as Kornacki’s

    Meanwhile 331,000 or so are watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a gaming platform called Twitch. (My first time typing her name out.  She told the gamers they could call her AOC.  Mike Pence cannot.)

  95. 95.

    Barbara

    @lamh36: A lot of people living in Erie also wish they were somewhere else, but I guess Trump was supposed to make things better. Oh well.

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    Can’t help but derisively snort at her complaint against having debates.

    “The President gets attacked and moderators interrupt, saying: let me tell you the facts of this,” McDaniel said.

    Oh, those pesky facts. How dare anyone bring those up?

  100. 100.

    mad citizen

    @Yutsano: Certainly Texas is heading for some HUGE numbers.  They have hit 50% or so of the 2016 numbers.  I know each state/county runs the elections, but it might be cool to have some national standards, and an election season that is the same 3-4 weeks everywhere.

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom ·31m
    Hilariously, the Trump campaign has been insisting that the last debate be focused only on foreign policy. Great. Joe Biden should begin with “explain why you paid more taxes in China than America,” and then let Trump talk for 90 minutes.

    My guess is Trump bails on this one.

    the fact that trump wants to debate foreign policy is just more evidence, to my admittedly biased-in-six-different-ways eyes, that he is only getting advice from his own dex-and-adderall addled brain

  103. 103.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @mad citizen: I’m not that familiar with Erica Greider, but I don’t believe she’s a wish-casting liberal

    EricaGrieder @EricaGrieder ·2h
    That would be…if it gets to that level, that’s not good for Trump!

    Keir Murray @houtopia · 2h
    Just read email from Derek Ryan, respected TX GOP data expert, who now believes TX turnout will exceed 12 million. #txlege

    I deleted the bug-eyes emoji this guy put in his tweet, but that’s a hashtag that would make Molly Ivins smile

  106. 106.

    Sebastian

    @WaterGirl:

    They have the kids.

    The issue is probably the parents are who-knows-where with no money and no way to contact them or for them to search for their kids.

  107. 107.

    Gin & Tonic

    @mad citizen: 3-4 week election season? Why can other countries run elections in one day and produce results in less than 24 hours?

    I’ve mentioned before, my son was an OSCE-accredited observer of elections in Ukraine twice. Voter turnout is typically over 60%, there is no early voting, in 2019 there were 30-something Presidential candidates. In no polling place he visited did he observe a wait of more than 10 minutes. Results were published within hours. They have 30 years’ experience with this, not 250, yet can run circles around the US. Why is that?

  109. 109.

    Quinerly

    Sounds like Trump was really nuts tonight at the PA rally tonight. Spent a portion of the rally babbling about the time John Kerry fell off his bike years ago. I took a peek at Daniel Dale’s Twitter feed.

  110. 110.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gin & Tonic: One thing that’s different in the United States from most countries is that we just have more things to vote for. Ballots can be extremely complex, especially in places with lots of elected judges or lots of ballot initatives. In many countries, especially if they’ve got parliamentary systems, in the general election you’re basically voting for a party and that’s it.

  111. 111.

    Mary G

    @Ken:

    @WaterGirl: Susie Collins pitched a fit when ActBlue took in $3+ million after her Kavanaugh vote for whoever her opponent turned out to be. Screamed about dark money, criminal bribery and all kinds of hinting at a sinister Soros conspiracy without saying his name. Republicans being bad at math, didn’t take into consideration billionaires are rare and there are a lot of us.

  112. 112.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WaterGirl: Where?  They are refugees.  Are they just across the border?  Were they forced to return to their countries of origin?  Are they in Canada?  We would have to go to where they are because it is very likely that they do not have the means to come to one or even a few places.

    That being said, this really is one of the first things that a Biden Admin should do.  We can’t erase the crimes, but we sure as fuck can try to make sure that we end them.

  114. 114.

    Kent

    @Gin & Tonic:

    @mad citizen: 3-4 week election season? Why can other countries run elections in one day and produce results in less than 24 hours?

    I’ve mentioned before, my son was an OSCE-accredited observer of elections in Ukraine twice. Voter turnout is typically over 60%, there is no early voting, in 2019 there were 30-something Presidential candidates. In no polling place he visited did he observe a wait of more than 10 minutes. Results were published within hours. They have 30 years’ experience with this, not 250, yet can run circles around the US. Why is that?

    Election chaos is a feature not a bug.  When you have one party that wants to obstruct free and fair voting, that’s what you get.  Every bit of election chaos you see in the US is intentional.

    Here in WA, voting is ridiculously easy, as in OR.

  115. 115.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mary G:  did she, now?

    — Kenneth Griffin of Citadel and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group Inc. have written big checks to help Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine in her tough battle for re-election.
    The two billionaires each gave $500,000 to the 1820 PAC in the third quarter, according to its latest filing with the Federal Election Commission. The super PAC raised $4.4 million, spent $4.6 million and ended September with $1.4 million cash on hand.
    Other big donors include Las Vegas Golden Knights owner William Foley, investment banker Warren Stephens and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who each gave $250,000.

    this story is a couple weeks old, there’s a story on twitter that Schwarzman is up to $2M but I don’t see it from any outlet I recognize

  116. 116.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kent: No, Matt McIrvin is right.  We vote for everything.  It is a hangover from our past.  Didn’t like hereditary political positions?  Elect ’em.  Hell, some military units up into the Civil War elected their officers.  In a parliamentary system, you frequently only need to vote for your member of parliament.  It’s a lot easier.

  117. 117.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent:

    Every bit of election chaos you see in the US is intentional.

    I think New York State might be an exception–a lot of it there seems like honest incompetence.

  119. 119.

    mad citizen

    @Gin & Tonic: I see your points, but America is the greatest nation on this earth, so we must doing it the best way (just kidding, of course)

    Slightly on topic, I watched the start of our gubernatorial debate tonight–the one minute statements from the three candidates (Indiana–the R incumbent is cruising to his 2nd term).  The Libertarian guy said the government is not the solution to ANY of our problems; it only needs to give us the information to make decisions.  He invoked Reagan saying the government IS the problem.

  120. 120.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The reason why they want foreign policy is just so Trump can scream “Hunter Biden! Ukraine! Crime!” over and over again. It’s sad, because it’s like he doesn’t think Biden has thought of this and won’t have a plan.

  121. 121.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:I think New York State might be an exception–a lot of it there seems like honest incompetence.

    No, it’s intentional too.  The legislature has known for decades what the problems are.  But would rather deal with the devil they know than make things super easy and have to face unpredictable new voters.  New York has had many election reform measures in the legislature over the years and has chosen not to pass and implement them.  I call that intentional

    It’s not like New York has tried it’s very best and just wound up with chaos.  They haven’t actually tried.

  123. 123.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus:@Kent: No, Matt McIrvin is right.  We vote for everything.  It is a hangover from our past.  Didn’t like hereditary political positions?  Elect ’em.  Hell, some military units up into the Civil War elected their officers.  In a parliamentary system, you frequently only need to vote for your member of parliament.  It’s a lot easier.

    Yes, but election chaos isn’t caused by long ballots.  It’s caused by other things.

    Take Texas which I know intimately having lived there for over a decade.  You have polling places in minority precincts that only have a small handful of voting machines and hence, long long multi-hour lines.  This is intentional because they have chosen to use touch screen machines that are not scalable.

    They could easily use optical scan ballots and pass them out as fast as people can walk into the precinct and sign the register.  And then just scan them into the machine as they leave.  People could pack in, sit on the floors, sit in the halls, do what ever to fill out their ballot if the booths are full.   Instead of 3 voters at a time monopolizing touch screen machines, they could have 50 people voting at a time and handle 25x more traffic.

    They know this and still do it in the most fucked up and un-scalable way because they know it makes things harder.

    By contrast, the rural and white suburban precincts always have plenty of machines so no lines.

    Most of the country has very ordinary voting with no hassles despite long ballots.  The fuckery you see with 10 hour lines and such is not due to long ballots.  It’s intentional.

  124. 124.

    Redshift

    @MisterForkbeard: And China, too! The wingnut-o-sphere is all over the idea that Biden will sell us out to China in some way they can’t explain, probably because his preference for diplomacy over racial slurs means he’s not “tough” on them.

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kent: Every place isn’t Texas.  The nature of US elections make it so that even places that want to be effective and efficient will take longer to vote than places with a parliamentary system.  Not everything comes down to malice.

  127. 127.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kent:

    They could easily use optical scan ballots

    And to be even more complete, those optical-scan ballots don’t need to be “fill in the tiny oval” ballots.  Here in California, we do it with “complete the middle of the big-ass arrow” (like, 3in long).  It’s hard to fuck up.  And sure, b/c we have a massive number of initiatives and offices to vote for, the ballot can be long. But it’s every 2 years, and it’s only paper.  And yeah, it’s much, much more scalable than voting machines.

  129. 129.

    RedDirtGirl

    The Wisconsin Democratic Party has had the best fundraising events. I watched their Parks & Rec reunion, and their VEEP reunion. Does anyone know how it is that this particular state party has access to such great talent? Is WI a super important state in the presidential election?

  134. 134.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @RedDirtGirl: Ben Wikler is doing a great job.  WI got the Princess Bride thing because Cary Elwes had a friend in WI who casually threw the idea out there and he more or less ran with it.

  136. 136.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus:@Kent: Every place isn’t Texas.  The nature of US elections make it so that even places that want to be effective and efficient will take longer to vote than places with a parliamentary system.  Not everything comes down to malice.

    Go ahead, show me an example of one of those 6-hour long voting lines that happen every year across the country that doesn’t have some element of GOP malice to it. Either in the design of the voting system, deliberate limits on number of hours and days of early voting, deliberate consolidation of precincts, deliberate restriction on absentee ballots, and so forth.

    I’m not talking about ordinary 20 minute lines when it is crowded.  I’m talking about the true fuckery where it takes hours and hours.

  138. 138.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: Another thing that hurts the US is the fact the we have been doing this for a while.  Our system has grown out of the various colonies’ systems with new territories experimenting with new things and then a layer of federal standardization on top.  If we tried to impose a new logical system from the top down, every state would shit a brick.  WA and OR would explain how failing to adopt their exact vote by mail systems was dooming the system from the get go and TX would argue that too many illegal Mexicans could vote under the new lax system.

    By contrast, a new democracy has a good chance of getting the system to work because no one is attached to an old one.

  140. 140.

    LurkerNoLonger

    @Kent: What are some of the reforms that could make voting easier in New York? I live in New York, so I’m curious.

  141. 141.

    Redshift

    @Kent:

    They could easily use optical scan ballots and pass them out as fast as people can walk into the precinct and sign the register. 

    We had a terrible time here in Virginia convincing our Democrats to switch to paper ballots from touch screen machines (and mechanical machines before that, I think.) Part of it was just people not wanting change when the familiar seemed to be working okay. We were advocating based on verifiability, we didn’t realize until we won that it would be so much faster, or we would have made that argument. Since then we’ve hardly ever had a line even out the front door of the school where my polling place is.

    But the places that have persistent hours-long lines? Yeah, that’s all deliberate voter suppression.

  142. 142.

    Kattails

    New Meidas Touch quick video “tune in this Sunday for a special edition of 45 minutes”. Snicker.

  143. 143.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kent:  And it seemed to me that G&T was asking the question I was answering.  Our shit takes a long time and a lot of work at the back end by election workers and that’s why official results take a long time to come out.

    I agree that fuckery is quite likely to be in the mix when there are long lines.  I voted in Ohio in 2004; I’ve seen it happen.

  144. 144.

    Patricia Kayden

    GLAAD pushed back against Tiffany Trump's assertion that her father has been a friend to the LGBTQ community by sharing a link to its Trump Accountability Project. According to the project, the Trump admin. has made 181 "attacks" on LGBTQ people so far. https://t.co/XPgbYzfAL3— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 21, 2020

  145. 145.

    Kent

    @LurkerNoLonger:

    @Kent: What are some of the reforms that could make voting easier in New York? I live in New York, so I’m curious.

    1.  Early voting.   NY finally passed early voting in 2019 which is ridiculous that it took them that long.  But 8 days is still inadequate.  And so are the hours.  Look at the hours for NYC https://vote.nyc/page/early-voting-information They cut off in early afternoon on many days and only have the early voting locations open for 6-7 hours per day.  Even TX does better than that.  Waco has early voting locations 12 hours a day for 3 whole weeks basically 8 am to 8 pm every weekday with slightly shorter hours on weekends.   Many states have early voting precinct locations available for 3 weeks more.  I think in NJ you can start in late Sept.
    2. Same day voter registration.  NY cuts of voter registration 4 weeks before the election.  Here in WA we can register online up until the week before the election.  21 states have same-day voter registration.

    But it is a lot better than it used to be.  It was ridiculous that NY didn’t have early voting before last year.  And stuck with those old machines for so long.

  146. 146.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Redshift: The first election I ever voted in was the 1988 Virginia Democratic primary, which happened while I was at home on spring break. I remember that one actually used an electronic voting machine–it was a predecessor of touchscreen machines, which had a membrane touch panel with the candidates’ names printed on a paper cover, and red LEDs next to the names that lit up when you pressed them. Very 1980s technology.

    (I’d missed the previous couple of years’ elections despite being eligible, because I was at college, didn’t think I could register locally, and hadn’t bothered to figure out how to request an absentee ballot. To be fair, this was slightly harder to manage before the Internet; there was probably a request form you could pick up at the post office or something; I don’t remember.)

  147. 147.

    Kent

    @Redshift:

    We had a terrible time here in Virginia convincing our Democrats to switch to paper ballots from touch screen machines (and mechanical machines before that, I think.) Part of it was just people not wanting change when the familiar seemed to be working okay. We were advocating based on verifiability, we didn’t realize until we won that it would be so much faster, or we would have made that argument. Since then we’ve hardly ever had a line even out the front door of the school where my polling place is.

    But the places that have persistent hours-long lines? Yeah, that’s all deliberate voter suppression.

    One advantage of touch screen machines over optical scan paper ballots is that you can load many multiple ballots into the machine.  So, for example, when I voted in Waco TX I could go to the main central county early voting location at the convention center and based on my address and registration it would pull up the appropriate ballot for me with all my local school board and levies and correct county commissioners and such.  With 15 different school districts in the county and a bazillion overlapping county and city boundaries you would have a blizzard of different paper ballots to keep track of at one central location.   So you would probably have to have early voting precinct by precinct and wouldn’t be able to have so many early voting hours.   If you do paper ballot early voting at centralized locations you need to be really fussy about ballot management to make sure people get the correct ballot and that you have all of them.  But those problems are manageable.

  148. 148.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Gin & Tonic: Maybe they only had to check one box.

    In many parliamentary systems, votes are cast not for a specific candidate but for a party, which is assigned a specific line on the ballot. The party fills whatever seats it is awarded (based on its proportion of the total vote) from a previously issued list of candidates, in descending order from the top.

    I brought home a poster from the Czech parliamentary elections of July 1990**, promoting the candidates of Civic Forum (Občanské fórum or OF) in the Prague region (kraj Praha). It shows all 25 OF candidates in descending order, each with a small mugshot, name and occupation. And more prominently, the number 7, which was OF’s ballot line: You checked line 7, you were voting for that list, in descending order. (No ticket-splitting allowed!)

    That’s all the voter needed to know, or do. Not like the Baltimore City mail-in ballot I filled out on Sunday, with separate lines for President & Vice President, U.S. Representative, Mayor, President of the City Council, Comptroller, City Councilperson, Judges, and roughly a dozen Statewide and City-specific questions. Even after I’d done the research on the questions, it took me about 15 minutes to very carefully fill it out, sign & seal it for drop-off.

    **I also have a button from that visit, with a white background with a black “10” & a red circle & cross through it & one word: Níkdy! (“Never!”) As it happened, ballot line 10 was allotted to the Communist party (now calling themselves Socialists). Hah. It had been only 9 months since the Velvet Revolution, & passions still ran high…)

    I blew into town on Monday, the election was Friday, & the whole city was celebrating the first free elections in 47 years. Helluva time to be there.

    ETA: What Matt McIrvin said much more succinctly (but without the historical details) at #110 supra.

  149. 149.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Judd Apatow @JuddApatow
    Rep . @AdamSchiff  attempts humor in this video we made for http://Iwillvote.com. They have all tools and information you need to register and vote. Link in bio.

  151. 151.

    NotMax

    @Matt McIrvin

    Yet there was something viscerally satisfying upon hearing that affirmative thunk when one slid the lever over to simultaneously close the curtain and activate the levers on the old behemoth mechanical units.

  153. 153.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kattails: New Meidas Touch quick video “tune in this Sunday for a special edition of 45 minutes”. Snicker.

    Brutally brilliant or brilliantly brutal? Opinions differ… :^D

  154. 154.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: Return with us now to those thrilling days of yestervote, with the Running Count and the Protected Count. (And all the No-Counts on the Republican row…)

  158. 158.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: I only ever used a mechanical lever machine once, in a student government election in high school–they brought in a couple of them, I think with the intention of getting us accustomed to using them. But they were already getting obsolete.

    A lot of people seem to have an an affection for them, but it’s worth noting that they didn’t work very well and just failed to register a lot of votes.

  159. 159.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax:  (Since I voted in the 1988 primary, I’ve never found a single reference to the screenless electronic machine I used then; they seem to be a forgotten footnote in history. Using it was a little like dialing in the cooking time on a microwave oven.)

  163. 163.

    WaterGirl

    @Mikki Senn: A person’s first comment has to be manually approved before any of their comments will show up.  So your comments didn’t show up until I approved them.  Future comments should go through right away.

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