Here's how it became a hot topic: Trump has been shouting about it for weeks now. That's it. That's how. That's where it comes from and that's why it's in the media cycle. There is literally no other reason. Before that it was assumed, by everyone, that voting-by-mail was the most reasonable response to voting during a pandemic. Before the pandemic Trump never said boo about voting-by-mail.
trump celebrating this... Little does the ignoramus-in-chief know... https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/27/texas-vote-by-mail-coronavirus/
I just read the Texas Supreme Court Article. Noted that they shot down Paxton’s request to not allow voters who request to mail in their votes are not denied.
In other news, why can nobody seem to spell "constitution" anymore? Sad world where my first reaction to a high ranking general calling the President a danger to the country is that.
Not at all! I haven't perceived anything personal from you in this thread. Story time: Way back in the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003, I was actually in favor of invasion, although I hid that from my (numerous) liberal friends. This was before I was political- it was actually following the debates about the war in 03 and 04 here in D&D that made me into a political junkie. The one time I did start debating the issue with my best friend, I felt like you do now: why post sources? For every article you post, I can post another. So what? Why bother? I feel differently now. It's not just a bunch of different opinions. Rational debate including the use of history, science, reason, morality, pragmatism is the foundation of the amazingly prosperous, comfortable world we've enjoyed for so long. Our founding fathers disagreed strongly on a lot of things, sometimes to the point of murdering each other, but they did agree on the above, on the basis of how they disagreed. We shouldn't give up on the pursuit of objective truth, and we should have to defend our beliefs with moral reasoning, science, statistics, studies, evidence, logic. And so should our opponents. The process of debating makes most people cling harder to their biases, but there is a population of intellectuals who engage in high-level good-faith debate and it's a wonderful thing to behold.
Sorry, I've been trying to avoid news and D&D lately to keep my sanity - what's the reasoning behind this? If there are more senate pick-ups, Warren's the better choice? Is that because she's a senator, or something else? Who's the better choice if we're looking at fewer pickups?
hy·poc·ri·sy /həˈpäkrəsē/ noun the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense. "his target was the hypocrisy of suburban life" White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who has promoted conspiracy theories about mail-in-voting fraud, voted by mail 11 times over the past 10 years. https://www.businessinsider.com/whi...ary-votes-by-mail-florida-fraud-claims-2020-5 Hypocrisy is what Trump and his Trumpateers are all about. This do as I say not as I do type of leadership can't end soon enough!! I can't wait to see Trump kicking and fighting as they escort him out of the White House once and for all. Only then can we make America great again.
Rational discussion or debate was/is the main reason I come to the D&D but I’ve found there are only a handful that will engage in good faith. It’s refreshing to hear that from you. And next time I’ll certainly engage on something I’m interested in. This topic was something I had a casual observation or opinion about and is not a topic I know enough about to defend or if it’s even a defensible position. I’m still caught off guard that I didn’t know the right was waging a war against mail in voting Yesterday. Without reading what their exact beef is my opinion remains I kind of don’t want to read anything about it because I want to hold on to MY opinion and not have it influenced by politics. But I guess it’s something I probably can’t avoid. I started coming to the D&D around 911. It’s been bookmarked and visited after anything significant happened in the news. I’d come here to check the pulse. My interest in politics renewed about the time of the Mueller Report release. I came here to check the pulse and was shocked there were so many people who saw the world differently than me...lol! I’m in a huge minority here, but in my real world, business and social, my politics are similar. But what I’ve found is that I can’t really have good political discussions with them because they haven’t taken a deeper dive. They don’t have an interest and only know what the news (probably Fox) has told them. I was going to post a response to a couple of posters who I respect. They asked why I aligned with the right and what values draw me there. Great questions. I went so far to put my thoughts down in one note and was going to sit down and write a response but something happened in between and I told myself it wasn’t worth the effort I’d put into it. I got jaded. Maybe I’ll find an opportunity to come back to that and have that discussion. I’m just glad to find another reasonable poster who hasn’t resorted to insulting me. Not that I can’t handle it. I’m jaded...lol. No actually I’m B@ffled
Here's a breakdown of how mail-in voting and fraud prevention is done in California. The source is a random comment on Arstechnica, so apologies that this isn't thoroughly vetted, but it squares with what a lot of states have done for a long time: Even if you had the means and technology to generate new ballots out of thin air, you'd also have to have access to the voter rolls to get the names right, and even then in many states that won't fly because you'd have to fake their signature as well. And even if you pull that off, if the real voter votes and the scammer also sends in a fraudulent vote in that person's name, the committee calls and asks what's up. Also keep in mind that most ballots have bar codes for quick scanning, and you'd have to know how to fake those, too. If many ballots were stolen from a neighborhood, and it were reported to the committee, then they could follow up with those voters. I think there's good reason why there's been negligible documented fraudulent voting in mail-in ballots.
Damn dude, you've been here as long as I have! Yeah, some posters may have unfairly made assumptions about your motivations in here. This place is often such a dumpster fire, but my world is so overwhelmingly liberal I need to keep checking in here to get the conservative angles that I won't catch in the headlines. And every now and then you'll catch some rare gems and have your eyes opened. The D&D was way more left/right balanced back before 2005, but it seems that after the fallout of the Iraq war, a lot of conservatives stopped visiting or come here less often. You'd think a sports BBS of a Texas-based team wouldn't have a majority of lefty posters, but here we are.
They aren't completely fighting it - they are trying to help their supporters have an easier time with main in votes: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...il-voting-his-campaign-tries-make-it-n1215791 Basically, this is about making voting easier for their supporters, but harder for people who will vote against him.
So as I said, I was not interested enough to move past my original opinion. However, this explanation has value. I'm would say my opinion was not informed (which we all knew in the first place) and I'll take your assessment of it ...and @Batman Jones who provided some information in a previous post and form a new opinion (a little more informed thanks) and casually remark. "Looks like mail in balloting isn't such a big deal as I previously thought" Hey, you're winning the hearts and minds one step at a time. I'd actually been coming to the Clutch City board around the Pippen trade time frame. Popeye or Ollepiere (sp?) was the insider back then. I still recall somebody getting the scoop on Steve Francis after an airport encounter. I didn't delve into D&D until 9/11. And I was on the wrong side of that one, looking back. But there is common theme that pervades our Country and both political parties. 1.) Cronyism by our long term Senators/politicians. 2.) The intelligence community has their hand in too much of our politics. This applies to both parties. Anyhoo, I'm sure we'll find another chance to discuss and debate. Also, I can totally see why people would question my motives, looking back on it. I was pretty busy w/ work and really wasn't following the news cycle And so all of the tit-tat was going on and my statement would appear to be echoing the republican establishment's propaganda they are carrying on with. It would make sense that folks would assume I'm just carrying the torch.
Not saying you are. Sorry if I sounded like I was accusing you of something. Something you said about your expectation of the future course of the virus ("unless there is another surge...") made me think of a trend I otherwise see of conservatives thinking of the virus as something "out there" instead of a thing "among us" and how that expectation influences how one might think about election day. I am indeed concerned about a massive mail-in vote for the 2020 election, but I also don't want to be blind to the pandemic implications of showing up in person. The virus ebbs and flows on interactions. Whatever the prevalence of the virus the day before the election, it'll be higher the day after. Yeah, in some states it's not new. And voters will probably avail themselves of it and the states are going to have to be ready to take the volume. Other states, like Texas, don't have no-excuse vote-by-mail. They do have vote-by-mail, so some capability is there, but it's built for the smaller population that is eligible for it. A rapid expansion can push these systems beyond their limits. To expand it, you want to have some run way to look at each part of the customer journey and make sure it has the capacity to expand, and you want to be able to test it to make sure the whole system doesn't have a breakdown in a real-time high-stakes election. The states that have already made their no-excuse policies have no choice but to gird themselves for high usage of mail-in voting. But I think it is risky for states that haven't already made these promises to just jump into with just a couple of months to go. And again, just for the politics of it, you don't want the state to be perceived as changing the rules of the game on the eve of the election. Just keep everything steady. That will mean I have to go vote in person and hope for the best. If on that day Trump wins and I get sick, I'll come back and curse this post. So I guess my TLDR position on this is simply don't change the rules. If you're allowed to vote by mail, vote by mail. If you're not, go in and vote. But in all cases vote against Trump. Then we can have a real recovery in 2021. To steal an election, you can't just mail in 5 fake ballots and hope the checkers miss one or two of them. You need to be able to mail in thousands upon thousands and know that the checkers won't detect it. There was the recent example of ballot harvesting, but it was detected. So how do you do it at volume and not get caught? Too many damn letters. And when you have to write it all the time about the various ways it's violated, those letters add up.
