That's a lot of back and forth but @Os Trigonum I think your points are 1- oversight is not a bad thing 2- we shouldn't assume the local board is corrupted I don't have time to go back and forth and in detail... but wanted to provide a quick response to these two points. Agree with #1. In fact, I think oversight is a good thing. We need that. I fear that we lose oversight here. The oversight was spread among multiple parties from the independent local country commissioner to the SoS. Pretty much all of that oversight has now been centralized to the legislative body and governor. You can argue that voters still have oversight over them. I would agree to an extend - the problem is when you manage the voting process and result, you now have more power to ignore voters. Agree with #2. We absolutely shouldn't assume local boards or personnel that run the nitty-gritty of the election are corrupt. They likely aren't and they do have to follow rules and laws. The concern is they can be removed to the liking of the new centralized and concentrated power of new "oversight" that is essentially controlled by the legislative and gov. The changes concentrate power to a political party that IS in current power. The process has become more partisan and was an obvious power grab by the GA politicians who are still in power and were not happy with the 2020 result. That power could flip to the other side but the calculation is the curve can now be bent to suppress that likelihood. But if and when it does, don't assume that the left does not have an authoritarian side just because we see it on the right today.
The potential for abuse alone makes it questionable as making a case for it from a policy perspective. There was a reason election officials are appointed a certain way and can not be removed easily. This is meant to protect elections.
good post, to which I would add the corollary that we shouldn't assume the state legislature is corrupt in intent or motive either. They may genuinely believe (and have evidence for, who knows) that the local elections boards are "poorly performing." I haven't followed the Fulton County situation described earlier in the thread which I take it is the main cause of the friction between state-level legislators (Republicans anyway) and the Fulton County locals. a corollary to that corollary is that I'm also mindful that the loudest voice in the "Georgia elections are corrupt!!" camp has been Stacey Abrams. Last time I checked her party affiliation was not Republican. So again, from a policy perspective I don't start with an assumption that this is all political shenanigans being foisted by one party on the other. A third corollary, this one about evidence or at least circumstantial evidence, for example in Georgia and/or Fulton County. There's always the possibility that Fulton County elections officials are corrupt--or simply inept. Just looking at the surface of the Arizona election audit numbers (and again, I have not followed that state's issues closely either), but my understanding is that the election was won by Biden by some ~10,000+ votes. Good for Biden, I'm glad he won Arizona (just to get that out of the way). On the other hand, there were some ~40,000+ votes/ballots that had some kind of questions raised about them. Presumably the audit figured all that stuff out. But in a nation that is so evenly-split along partisan lines, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that these kinds of close calls are going to be increasingly the norm, not the exception. Sweeping all questions about 40,000+ ballots under the rug is not the right response. And in an era that is increasingly leaning toward absentee ballots, mail-in ballots, electronic voting, etc etc etc, legislators are in fact trying to bring some order to what has been an ad hoc process, mostly coming out of covid and lockdowns last year. So of course some of this is going to be messy. Some of this is going to appear over-the-top in terms of partisanship. Of course the party that is not in power at the state level will accuse the party that is in power at the state level of operating in bad faith. That's just political rhetoric though, mostly. I don't get worked up over it. I live in a state that is so permanently blue from downstate influence that I as an upstater simply am resigned to having little to no political influence on either party's downstate shenanigans. New York is like Texas in reverse. anyway.
You very well know those "40,000" discrepancies we're nearly simple mistakes like someone misspelling their address in their registration. Out of millions of votes casted it's well within the normal range for around 40,000 honest mistakes. This happens every election cycle. There literally is not a solution to this because voters are human and when they register, a small percentage of them will always make honest mistakes. To jump from people misspelling or forgetting to update their address or some other trivial mistake to fraud is severe.
no, we don't know that the night of or week of the election. After an audit, sure, you can identify what problems occurred in a sample of that size. The point wasn't the specifics of those 40,000+ ballots, the point is that in any election with non-standard (i.e., non- in person) voting, there will be discrepancies that need to be examined and evaluated. again, the point is not whether they are "honest mistakes" or "fraudulent ballots." The point is that they are simply discrepancies until someone takes a closer look to see what is going on. And this issue will only occur with more frequency, in greater numbers, and with more significance in the future. I disagree that "there literally is not a solution to this" but I am in the middle of bunch of stuff today, so that's a topic I'll have to leave off until a future thread. nobody is jumping from anything to anywhere. again, I am quite consciously trying to limit my language to the term "discrepancies."
But we can assume that centralized, concentrated power that has weak checks or oversights do corrupt. We have a long history of that. Catholic Church is one such shiny example. The founding of the US is another example - a democracy that was created with a check and balance system instead of just relying on voters. GA law trend toward centralized, concentrated power that has only essentially one check left - the voters. History teaches us that this will increase corruption. Past events tell us about the motivation but as you hinted, what does it have to do with the actual risk of today. That's where I'm staying for now with this discussion with you. I do want to point out that the Ga 40k problematic ballots is false. You can do a google search on it. I think it was 3k ballots statewide that had problems (and were subjected to a curing process).
the 40k ballots were in Arizona, I was just using that as a comparison because I knew those numbers, I have no idea what the Georgia numbers are. sorry that may have been a bit unclear.
For all of those "conservatives" who claim that Democrats move in lockstep and are out to drag the country into some sort of Socialist work camp this past week shows that this isn't and never was the case. Even if Democrats really were Commie Apartchaks they couldn't agree on what key to sing the "Internationale" in let alone leading the Worker's Revolution.
While I'm venting Kristen Sinema is someone I donated to and certainly prefer her over a Trumpist like Martha McSally. In general I don't mind that she is more in the mold of John McCain than Paul Wellstone but I'm getting really tired of her shtick. I don't fault her for having objections towards the Build Back Better bill but if so she needs to come back with a legitimate counter offer and stake her terms. I've said this about many in Congress including my own Representative, these people were elected to govern and take their jobs seriously. Sinema often seems more interested in how cool it is to be in Congress than seriously working for her constituents.
The pandemic caused supply issues, don't see why you decided to put that in this thread. The chaos started under the previous administration. If this continues deep into 2022 then we have a problem.
