He'll act presidential they said, he'll uphold our democracy, its institutions and the constitution they said
The rules vary widely from state to state. I just read up on it on wiki. Everything you say I agree with... my only point is I see a big mess coming. We'll see. Here's an interesting read from MIT. Voting by mail and absentee voting Americans have traditionally voted in neighborhood polling places, but beginning in the 1980s, many states have eased rules on issuing absentee ballots, allowed voters to cast ballots in person before Election Day, or even begun mailing ballots to all voters. Introduction Absentee voting and balloting by mail have generally been viewed as synonymous in the United States because historically, absentee ballots were distributed by mail to voters temporarily away from their homes, and no one else was typically allowed to use this mode of voting. For this reason, both topics are considered together in this explainer. Figure 1 shows the percentage of voters who cast their ballots since 1992 through the three major modes of voting—in person on Election Day, in person before Election Day, and by mail/absentee. The statistics are based on self-reports by respondents to the Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). The rise in voting by mail (VBM) raises a number of important academic and policy issues. Do liberal vote-by-mail policies increase turnout? Does an increased rate of voting by mail decrease civic engagement, or decrease the impact of an “October surprise,” that is an event at the end of a political campaign intended to affect the outcome? History and expansion The idea that ballots could be cast anywhere other than a physical precinct close to a voter’s home hasn’t always been embraced in the United States (and still isn’t in many other countries). What we in the U.S. now call absentee voting first arose during the Civil War, when both Union and Confederate soldiers were given the opportunity to cast ballots from their battlefield units and have them be counted back home. The issue of absentee voting next became a major issue during World War II, when Congress passed laws in 1942 and 1944 related to soldiers stationed overseas. Both laws became embroiled in controversies over states’ rights and the voting rights of African Americans in southern states, so their effectiveness was muted. Subsequent laws, particularly the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, have been more effective in encouraging voting by service members through absentee voting. States began passing absentee ballot laws for civilians in the late 1800s. The first laws were intended to accommodate voters who were away from home or seriously ill on Election Day. The number of absentee ballots distributed was relatively small, and the administrative apparatus was not designed to distribute a significant number. In the 1980s, California became the first state to allow eligible voters to request absentee ballots for any reasons at all, including their own convenience. By 2018, 27 states had adopted no-excuse absentee laws. Figure 2 classifies states according to their absentee/mail ballot regimes. According to respondents to the 2018 EAVS, 26% of voters in no-excuse states cast their ballots by mail, compared to 9% in states that still required an excuse. Since California instituted no-excuse absentee voting, ten states have taken the next step and allowed all residents to request an absentee ballot for every election. These permanent absentee states now have even greater use of absentee ballots. In 2018, the EAVS reported that 68% of voters in states with permanent absentee laws voted with an absentee ballot. VBM: the Oregon system In a referendum that passed in 1998, Oregon went a step further by agreeing to issue all its ballots by mail. Washington followed suit in 2011 and Colorado in 2013. It's important to note that although Colorado, Oregon, and Washington now distribute all their ballots by mail, voters do not return them all by mail. According to responses to the 2016 Survey of the Performance of American Elections, 73% of voters in Colorado, 59% in Oregon and 65% in Washington returned their ballots to some physical location such as a drop box or local election office. Even among those who returned their ballots by mail in these states, 47% dropped off their ballot at a U.S. Post Office or neighborhood mailbox rather than having their own postal worker pick it up at home. Thus, it's more accurate to describe these states as “distribute ballots by mail” states. Administrative issues The expanding opportunities to cast an absentee ballot or to vote by mail have not been uncontroversial. Perhaps the most important issue has been whether expanding VBM opportunities increases voter turnout. Facilitating VBM presumably reduces the costs of voting for most citizens, so one would expect it to increase turnout. The scientific literature on this empirical question about turnout has been mixed. An early study of the effects of VBM on turnout in Oregon argued that its implementation had caused turnout to increase by 10%. However, subsequent research has had difficulty replicating these initial findings. The safest conclusion to draw is that extending VBM options increases turnout modestly in midterm and presidential elections but may increase turnout more in primaries, local elections, and special elections. This modest increase likely comes in two ways: by bringing marginal voters into the electorate and by retaining voters who might otherwise drop out of the electorate. Another question surrounding VBM is whether it increases voter fraud. There are two major features of VBM that raise these concerns. First, the ballot is cast outside the public eye, and thus the opportunities for coercion and voter impersonation are greater. Second, the transmission path for VBM ballots is not as secure as traditional in-person ballots. These concerns relate both to ballots being intercepted and ballots being requested without the voter’s permission. As with all forms of voter fraud, documented instances of fraud related to VBM are rare. However, even many scholars who argue that fraud is generally rare agree that fraud with VBM voting seems to be more frequent than with in-person voting. Two of the best-known cases of voter fraud involving absentee voting occurred in 1997 in Georgia and Miami. More recently, a political campaign manager within North Carolina’s ninth Congressional district defrauded voters by collecting unfilled ballots and then filled in the rest of it to favor the campaign’s candidate, leading to a new election. Finally, skeptics of convenience voting methods such as VBM argue that they encourage voters to cast their ballots before all the information from the campaign is revealed, thus putting early voters at a civic disadvantage. In response, it can be argued that as more voters cast early ballots by mail or in person, campaigns have less incentive to hold onto negative information about their opponents in the hope of gaining an advantage through an October surprise. Empirically, it's important to note that the earliest voters tend to be the strongest partisans, and thus are less likely to be swayed by last-minute information.
Interesting and informative post. I just don't see a "big mess" coming as you do. If Trump loses, he will make a mess regardless of the means of voting; he will home in on some irrelevant detail and blow it out of proportion. He has always done this. He will do it again. As for VBM voters casting their ballots before all campaign information is revealed, I don't think much new information is revealed right before election day. I think we pretty much know where the 2 candidates stand on the important issues. And I would argue that anyone who voted for Trump the first time, by whatever means, was a low-information voter anyway.
MAGA is to freedom of speech as Al-Qeda was to Charlie Hebdo https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...remove-satirical-cartoon-from-online-retailer Trump campaign attempts to remove satirical cartoon from online retailer Cartoonist Nick Anderson calls president ‘adolescent’ after work parodying bleach-injection claim sparked a legal manoeuvre The Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson has described Donald Trump as an “adolescent wannabe authoritarian”, after the US president’s re-election campaign failed to pull one of Anderson’s cartoons mocking Trump’s inaccurate suggestion that injecting disinfectant could protect against Covid-19. Anderson put his cartoon The Trump Cult up for sale on the online retailer Redbubble this month. The illustration shows Trump with supporters in Maga hats, serving them a drink that has been labeled “Kool-Aid”, then “Chloroquine” and finally “Clorox”, a US bleach brand. The cartoon is a reference to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where more than 900 people died after drinking cyanide-laced punch at the order of cult leader Jim Jones, and to Trump’s widely denounced idea of injecting bleach to protect against coronavirus. Trump has also been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a protection against Covid-19, despite a study showing it has been linked to increased deaths in patients. But Redbubble pulled Anderson’s illustration from sale following a trademark infringement claim made by Trump’s campaign organisation, Donald J Trump for President Inc. Writing on the Daily Kos, Anderson said that he believed the claim was made due to his depiction of Maga hats, and described the situation as “absurd”. “We live in a strange time when the #POTUS can falsely accuse someone of murder with impunity (violating @Twitter’s terms of service), while at the same time bully a private business into removing content it doesn’t like,” Anderson added on Twitter. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) and other free speech organisations subsequently got involved, sending a group letter to Redbubble that accused Trump’s campaign of having “misused Redbubble’s reporting mechanism to suppress protected political expression in the form of parody, critique, and satire”, and arguing that the work and those who publish it are protected by the first amendment. Redbubble reinstated Anderson’s cartoon this week, saying that it strives “to respect IP rights and freedom of speech, but we sometimes make mistakes, as we did here … We’re sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.” In a statement, Anderson praised Redbubble for recognising the error, but said there were some “troubling issues” raised by the affair, including that the cartoon was removed less than 24 hours after he posted it, before he had received a single order. “I doubt anyone had even seen it yet on the site,” he said. “This reveals that the Trump campaign has a system in place, trawling for material they find objectionable. If it happened to me so quickly, it likely has happened to others. How much other content has been removed this way on Redbubble and other sites?” He added: “It must be pointed out: the president of the United States is a hypocrite who complains about the ‘violation’ of his free speech on Twitter, then tries to actively suppress the free speech of others. These are actions of an adolescent wannabe-authoritarian.” Trump criticised Twitter this week for “completely stifling FREE SPEECH”, after the social media platform put a warning label on two of his tweets spreading lies about mail-in voting. CBLDF executive director Charles Brownstein said the organisation was “sensitive to the issues companies like Redbubble face in balancing competing rights owner issues, and were alarmed to see the president’s re-election campaign exploiting those issues to suppress protected speech”. “We’re pleased that Redbubble has done the right thing in this case,” he said. “We hope that they will continue to assert the First Amendment rights they and their sellers are guaranteed by rejecting any similar censorship attempts.”