So who do we elect this year?

Politics
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In late May, employees at a bank in Kannapolis, N.C., called the local police to report an abandoned white Ford van in the bank’s parking lot.

When officers arrived, they looked into the van’s windows and saw an array of items: an AR-15 rifle, the box for a handgun, a canister of explosive material, and a box of ammunition, according to a court document. Police say they towed and searched the van, finding more than $500,000 in cash, drawings of swastikas and planes crashing into buildings, books on survival and bomb-making, and a half-dozen firearms.

Later that day, Alexander Hillel Treisman, 19, reportedly walked into the bank and asked after the towed van – and was promptly arrested.

And the story just keeps getting better from there.

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Nineteen years old? That’s barely a man.

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Another highly respected publication that has (almost) never endorsed a political candidate lays it on the line:

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And yet, this is still a close race. What can you do when half a country enjoys cruelty and lies?

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Man, the barefoot thing and not going to bed with wet hair, pervasive abuelita criticisms. My extended family thought I was off my rocker for going barefoot. “Porque andas asi sin zapatos” (why are you going without shoes?) all the damn time. Though they mostly gave me a pass because I was the offspring of the crazy black sheep brother, and a white lady, not even catholic, I was basically a heathen, pobrecita. (poor thing)

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Someone has a Kickstarter.

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So many bon mots in this piece, but one thing that immediately stood out to me:

VOTING IS A CHESS MOVE, NOT A VALENTINE.

  • Rebecca Solnit
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Okay, USA. Want to know how a real democracy functions?

Today is election day. Due to COVID, they reassigned my polling place. It was now all the way down the block instead of next door. No line-up, handed in my voter card, showed ID (driver’s license) verbally affirmed my eligibility, marked my ballot, put it in the box and went to get pho.

It took longer to get pho than to vote.

  1. No line up, because there were a) multiple polling places for the riding and b) plenty of advance polling dates.

  2. ID – if you’re registered (which you can do when you get or renew your DL) you get a voter card in the mail that tells you where and when the advance polls are and your day of polling station. If you don’t get a card, but you know where your polling place is (you can look it up, if you know your riding) you need two pieces of ID. No DL, or passport or other address bearing ID? Well, grab a utility bill. No utility bills in your name? Find someone who lives in your riding willing to vouch for you. It doesn’t need to be an official someone – it can be your next door neighbor, your priest or even your old weed dealer.

  3. Paper ballots. I can’t stress this enough. Hand marked paper ballots are way more secure than anything machine marked or digital. And they’re easy to understand.

  4. An independent elections commission. None of this “ruling party decides on the fly what the rules are going to be.” Remember how I said that my polling place got moved? It’s not because of partisan fuckery, but because my old one was a seniors’ center and that’s a bad fucking idea in the middle of a pandemic. Again, this was decided before the voter cards were even printed.

Oh yeah, and this was all put together in a matter of weeks because the government called an early election. With a set voting schedule, the US has no excuse.

Sorry guys, but this is the hard truth. The rest of the world looks at your system and the only takeaway we’ve got is that it’s seriously messed up.

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Oregon vote-by-mail is comparable. Hence the terror among the GOP about its spread.

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Of course, we still have the tribalism. My dad personally cannot stand the Liberal candidate, actually thinks the NDP candidate would do a better job, and still voted Liberal on the grounds that he doesn’t want to vote NDP. He literally wouldn’t vote for the best candidate because he doesn’t like the party. :roll_eyes:

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In that case you are all very perceptive.

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Broke my after-travel isolation today, and went ahead and got voting taken care of. I hadn’t gotten around to requesting a mail-in ballot, but it’s probably good to have people voting in person too. I did note a drop-box for mail-in ballots outside the door, though someone made the unfortunate decision to route the outside line such that anyone wanting to drop off a ballot would have to cut through the line of people waiting to go in.

Voting went pretty quickly, only a handful of people in line outside when I got there, and things were moving fast enough that I barely had enough time to fill out the advance voting paperwork. Granted, it was a grey Sunday morning with random showers, but I was still pleasantly surprised. Everyone wearing masks, which made it a little tough to hear instructions, but that’s to be expected.

I did see one older couple walk up to the line after me wearing Trump masks and hats. Ick.

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10 will get you 20 that was deliberate. They know poll workers will make them take off the hats as electioneering. But the masks? Oh, the games they can play over the masks.

If asked to remove them, it’s “See? Masks aren’t real, it’s just a liberal ploy.” If turned away (whether because they remove them or because they’re electioneering) and it becomes “I was denied my right to vote just because I am a proud conservative!”

You will see more fuckery this election than in any other election you’ve had in your lifetimes. It’s already happening.

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If anyone sees this happening, make sure to remind the scofflaw that they can turn the mask inside out to wear, instead.

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Oh, I forgot to mention: figuring out your riding is fairly easy unless you’re in an edge case like me, where the border literally runs down the middle of the street, and you aren’t sure of that: look around at the signs then look up the candidate names on the Elections website. Boom. Done.

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this, and i also know at our local polling places we have disposable masks to offer people, so they could be asked to just replace their electioneering mask with a disposable one.

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To be fair, I was wearing a “Science: Like Magic… But Real” shirt. Some people* might see that as electioneering too.

* i.e., Idiots

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Journal of the Corona Year

10/25

Today I went to vote. There was bit of waiting, but it all went smoothly.

Yesterday was the first day of early voting. The weather was beautiful. I walked by the location to see where everything was. The voting is being done at Fort Hamilton High School. It’s about a 20 – 30 minute walk from where I live. There are only a few location available early voting.

I decided to go back today, hoping the cooler weather and chance of rain would reduce the turnout. Before I left I grabbed a pen and the voter information mailed to me by the city.

As I and other voters walked west toward the school on 83rd Street, an older woman stopped to reassure us “the line is really moving.”

When I got there the line was slightly shorter then it was yesterday, but not by much. It started on 83rd Street between the back of the school and the athletic field. The line took us along the back of the school to 85th Street. From there the line turned west and then ultimately into the school through a side entrance facing 85th Street. Then we proceeded down a couple halls into what I assume was the cafeteria.

Waiting in line took about 45 minutes. Everyone stood their own interpretation of 6 feet apart.

When I was next to enter the cafeteria, a poll worker was handing out pens from a small white box. I asked her if these were being reused. No, everyone got their own pen to keep.

From there I was directed to one of the reception tables. The poll workers there sat at tables, as is usual, but now had plexiglas barriers. The woman sitting behind the barrier was happy to see I had my pamphlet from the city with me. At this point I noticed the poll workers behind the desks didn’t have usual large paper ledgers for voters to sign. They each had an iPad on a stand in front of them. She demonstrated how she could scan a bar code in my pamphlet and all my information would come up. She asked me to verify my address, which I did. Then she turned he iPad towards me and asked me to sign. The free pens we were given had those foam tips that work on capacitive touch screens. And so I signed the iPad, explaining my hand was cold and the signature might look a little stiff.

From there everything went normally. I got the paper ballot, filled in the appropriate ovals fed it into the scanner. The only public item I had to touch was the folder for discretely walking the ballot to the scanner.

All the poll workers were well-organized and friendly.

On the way out I made sure to get one of the “I voted” stickers. I’ve never taken one of those before. I usually seems to me that whether I vote or not is no one else’s business. But this year is different. I took it home and wrote “him out” under the “I voted.” I’ll wear this Monday and see who attacks me.

All-in-all the voting process was not bad for Bay Ridge, which is after-all the Alabama of New York City.

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