Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[LesPalenik]

This is why the Democrats were so much in favor of sending out ballots automatically to so many voters.  Even if fraud wasn't being done, their main hope was to capture the young voters who tend to vote democratic but who usually don't vote.  I believe what happened is that many who would not have stood in line to vote in person, found it easy to check the votes and mail it in.  So Democrats captured a lot of votes they would not have gotten otherwise.  This is going to happen in Georgia as well for the senate vote.

If it is indeed so, then the ballot mail-outs achieved a higher voting participation. Nothing wrong with that.

[Alan Klein]

Thanks for the link Alan, while the theory you mention could indeed lead to fraud I was surprized to see this statement in the article:So if "avoiding fraud" is not the real reason to oppose mail-in voting what's the real reason Trump and his allies are making over this method, both Biden and Trump repeatedly yelled "Vote-Vote-Vote" because they wanted a large turnout, which they got.

Mailing out ballots automatically to everyone is open to fraud as I mentioned above.  It should be requested by the person voting.  There won't be confusion if voters moved or are dead.  By the way, Trump approves of mail-in voting if the voter requests it.  Trump voted by mail as did my wife and I.  Trump is a Florida resident so it was really convenient for him. 

[Alan Klein]

Never heard of ”the young Republicans”?
One side does want to make voting easier for everyone (remember everyone? You speak for them often). In this case it is everyone eligible to vote.
The other side has tried to make it harder. Their fear is exactly as you wrote above; fear of some voters who have the right to vote. How Un-American. Want to ask them how many marbles in the jar first?
Those are indisputable facts. Which means you probably will disagree with them.

Too many people vote who know nothing or don't really care.  I think we should have a poll tax. 

[faberryman]

Dead people voting by mail.

I suppose you could have dead people voting by mail. According to the website Alan linked to, 9 states (5 of which were already doing so, and 4 of which did so because of COVID) sent out ballots to registered voters without first receiving a ballot request form. So someone received the dead person's ballot, and was able to successfully forge the dead person's signature, and vote in the dead person's name. For the other 41 states, they would have had to successfully forge the dead person's signature twice, once on the ballot request form, and once on the ballot. It could happen. So who does that favor? The Republicans or the Democrats? The other interesting thing is dead people were voting long before the advent of mail-in ballots.

I think Trump may have alleged that dead people voted by mail-in ballots, but if he did, he wasn't able to provide any evidence that that occurred. By my last count, he is 2-38, and the two cases he prevailed on didn't have anything to do with dead people voting.

The 5 states that sent out ballots to registered voters without first receiving a ballot request form even before COVID have said voter fraud hasn't been a problem. But maybe this year was different because it involved Trump.

Of the 9 states that sent out ballots to registered voters without first receiving a ballot request form, only Nevada was a close race. If I am not mistaken, Trump filed at least one lawsuit in Nevada claiming, among other things, dead people voted, but was unable to prove it.

[Craig Lamson]

It leads to nowhere. Look at the map. It's just north of baseless assertions.

Once again you assert something you don't know.  I learned something about you today Claude.

[TechTalk]

I learned something about you today Claude.

Possible, but highly doubtful.

[chez]

If it is indeed so, then the ballot mail-outs achieved a higher voting participation. Nothing wrong with that.

Isn't that what democracy is all about...everyone who's eligible has the right to vote. It sure isn't about making it hard for some people to vote.

[Alan Klein]

Saying that the "incidents of voter fraud are 'very, very low'" means very little. First, it is a backward-looking statement, because mail voting was not that wide-spread in the past as is in this election. Second, judging the amount of fraud by the caught cases is like saying the amount of illegal drugs crossing the border equals the amount seized by authorities.

In other words, the potential for fraud is higher with mail-in voting. Such a conclusion is not new, it was repeatedly made by both parties and the media in the past, unrelated to this election.

Having said that, it is not enough to just suspect fraud, even if theoretically it seems possible, but you have to prove it.

Here's the election fraud case I mentioned above that used mail-in votes for the fraud.  It happened in Paterson NJ earlier this year.  Paterson has a population of 145,000.  There were 3000 fraudulent votes in a local election.  The guy who lost by 240 sued and the judge threw out the election results because of the fraud charges.  People were arrested by the NJ Attorney General.  Of course, the Democrat Governor Murphy said it was no big deal relating to the presidential election.  Well, what do you expect him to say.

Arizona just gave it to Biden by 10,000 votes in a state with millions.  If you can come up with 3000 fraudulent votes in our little town of 145K, how hard to do it in a huge state like Arizona?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/nyregion/nj-election-mail-voting-fraud.html

[chez]

Too many people vote who know nothing or don't really care.  I think we should have a poll tax.

That sounds very democratic of you. I think everyone needs to pass a test before they can put their X on the paper.

[faberryman]

Here's the election fraud case I mentioned above that used mail-in votes for the fraud.  It happened in Paterson NJ earlier this year.  Paterson has a population of 145,000.  There were 3000 fraudulent votes in a local election.  The guy who lost by 240 sued and the judge threw out the election results because of the fraud charges.  People were arrested by the NJ Attorney General.  Of course, the Democrat Governor Murphy said it was no big deal relating to the presidential election.  Well, what do you expect him to say.

Arizona just gave it to Biden by 10,000 votes in a state with millions.  If you can come up with 3000 fraudulent votes in our little town of 145K, how hard to do it in a huge state like Arizona?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/nyregion/nj-election-mail-voting-fraud.html

I don't know. I will note that the candidates running for the Paterson city council did such a poor job of voter fraud they got caught, so maybe it is not as easy to do as it sounds.

[digitaldog]

Too many people vote who know nothing or don't really care.  I think we should have a poll tax.

One you could pass?

[Alan Klein]

Following Alan's link I found another interesting piece on mail-in voting:

Here is the full article

The issue isn't mail-in vs. absentee.  It's requested or non-requested.  Requested is fine.  The voter doesn't want to vote in person or can't.  The election district mails him a ballot to return.  Non-requested is open for fraud as dead people and people who moved to other election districts get ballots sent out.  These are floating around where other people can vote in their place.  Also, these can fraudulently be prepared in advance but never mailed out.  Just filled out and filed or mailed by the fraudster.  That's what happened in Patterson NJ, my post above.

Reminds me of the Covid checks that went out by the Federal government to dead people.  No one in the government checked beforehand. 

[Alan Klein]

If it is indeed so, then the ballot mail-outs achieved a higher voting participation. Nothing wrong with that.

Unless there's fraud.

[digitaldog]

Again Alan doesn't understand what he has posted, stating there were 3000 fraudulent votes:

The Passaic County Board of Elections rejected 3,190 ballots, about 19% of the mail-in ballots submitted, for the May 12 election in Paterson, but it is unclear how many were connected to the fraud allegations.

In fact, there are many more common reasons for a ballot to be thrown out, such as a signature that doesn't match election records or if the ballot was received after the deadline.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885074932/n-j-election-fraud-case-draws-a-trump-tweet-but-suggests-safeguards-are-working

[Alan Klein]

I suppose you could have dead people voting by mail. According to the website Alan linked to, 9 states (5 of which were already doing so, and 4 of which did so because of COVID) sent out ballots to registered voters without first receiving a ballot request form. So someone received the dead person's ballot, and was able to successfully forge their signature, and vote in the dead person's name. For the other 41 states, they would have had to successfully forge the dead person's signature twice, once on the ballot request form, and once on the ballot. It could happen. So who does that favor? The Republicans or the Democrats? The other interesting thing is dead people were voting long before the advent of mail-in ballots.

I think Trump may have alleged that dead people voted by mail-in ballots, but if he did, he wasn't able to provide any evidence that that occurred. By my last count, he is 2-38, and the two cases he prevailed on didn't have anything to do with dead people voting.

The 5 states that sent out ballots to registered voters without first receiving a ballot request form even before COVID have said voter fraud hasn't been a problem. But maybe this year was different because it involved Trump.

Of the 9 states that sent out ballots to registered voters without first receiving a ballot request form, only Nevada was a close race.

How did 3000 fraudulent votes occur in Paterson NJ, a tiny community of 145,000?  The only reason they got caught was the dopes bundled hundreds of the votes together and dropped them in the mail box on the street.  The carrier who was picking up the mail thought it was strange and reported it to the Post Office Inspectors.  They knew something was wrong and started an investigation.  No one would have known otherwise.

[Alan Klein]

I don't know. I will note that the candidates running for the Paterson city council did such a poor job of voter fraud they got caught, so maybe it is not as easy to do as it sounds.

Well, this is New Joisey.

[faberryman]

How did 3000 fraudulent votes occur in Paterson NJ, a tiny community of 145,000?  The only reason they got caught was the dopes bundled hundreds of the votes together and dropped them in the mail box on the street.  The carrier who was picking up the mail thought it was strange and reported it to the Post Office Inspectors.  They knew something was wrong and started an investigation.  No one would have known otherwise.

I don't know. It happened in your back yard. Perhaps you could tell us. How do you know the only reason they got caught was they were bundled together? It seems like some or all of them could have gotten caught at the signature matching stage, for example. How did they ultimately determine they were fraudulent? Seems like they would have had to do something more than just say they were bundled so they are fake and throw them out. And exactly how many of the ballots were determined to be fraudulent?

[Alan Klein]

Again Alan doesn't understand what he has posted, stating there were 3000 fraudulent votes:

The Passaic County Board of Elections rejected 3,190 ballots, about 19% of the mail-in ballots submitted, for the May 12 election in Paterson, but it is unclear how many were connected to the fraud allegations.

In fact, there are many more common reasons for a ballot to be thrown out, such as a signature that doesn't match election records or if the ballot was received after the deadline.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885074932/n-j-election-fraud-case-draws-a-trump-tweet-but-suggests-safeguards-are-working

Well, 900 of the votes were definitely fraudulent.  Those are the ones they know about.  The guy who lost, lost by 240 votes.

Evidence of massive voter fraud in Paterson election, court records show
Salmon: ‘is impossible to tell with any reasonable certainty who actually won this election’
Nearly 900 votes that appear to have been mailed in bulk from three individual mailboxes, including more than 300 rubber-banded together from a mailbox in neighboring Haledon, have not yet been counted.
https://newjerseyglobe.com/local/evidence-of-massive-voter-fraud-in-paterson-election-court-records-show/

[TechTalk]

Texas counties will be allowed only one drop-off location

Regarding drop-off, you bolded " only one drop off" then went on to confuse the readers with more than one,  but it's really one for each county of which there are a couple of hundred or so in Texas.

The post you replied to stated "Texas counties will be allowed only one drop-off location". It didn't say that the state will be allowed only one drop-off location nor did it say that all counties combined will be allowed only one drop-off location.

So your statement was incorrect or confusing at a minimum.

I do believe that you were confused, but I don't know why. My reading from the statement's context of "Texas counties" clearly implied each county within the State of Texas and did NOT refer to all counties in the state combined. If you received a mailing from your state that said "New Jersey voters will be allowed only one ballot", would you believe that meant there was only one ballot that all of the voters had to share as a group? Or, would you understand, through your reading comprehension skills, that the statement clearly implied each voter will be allowed only one ballot?

[Alan Klein]

I don't know. It happened in your back yard. Perhaps you could tell us. How do you know the only reason they got caught was they were bundled together? It seems like some or all of them could have gotten caught at the signature matching stage, for example. How did they ultimately determine they were fraudulent? Seems like they would have had to do something more than just say they were bundled so they are fake and throw them out. And exactly how many of the ballots were determined to be fraudulent?

See my last post.  If the dopes had mailed them all individually, instead of bundling them up with rubber bands, no one would have been the wiser.  There could have been a lot more than the 900 that were not picked up and were counted.  That's why the judge threw out the entire election even though the 900 were not counted.  Maybe they're not so many dopes in other states.  They'll mail them individually.  How's anyone going to know?