Coup in the USA?

[WolfEyes]

I'm sorry but I am not putting any trust into machines that I know can be rigged. I am poor, I am an (UGH) person of color and I am not a Repug.

Did anyone even read the part where I said OREGON HAS BEEN DOING MAIL IN ONLY VOTING FOR OVER 20 YEARS

Never mind. SSDD. I'm too stupid to know what I'm talking about. Fuck it.

 

[Romana]

I'm sorry but I am not putting any trust into machines that I know can be rigged. I am poor, I am an (UGH) person of color and I am not a Repug.

Did anyone even read the part where I said OREGON HAS BEEN DOING MAIL IN ONLY VOTING FOR OVER 20 YEARS

Never mind. SSDD. I'm too stupid to know what I'm talking about. Fuck it.

Who's saying you should use a machine, if you have the choice not to? Oregon isn't one of the states with the new voter restriction laws, and I hope it stays that way.
And, like yousaid a while back, it's hard but to know what terminology to use without stepping on toes. I know you are Oglala.
I've changed it to non-white ; is that better? If not, tell me what would be.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

He's baaaack!


Class action lawsuit on behalf of the voices in his head?

That man is nuttier than squirrel shit!

 

[Vance]

I'm sorry but I am not putting any trust into machines that I know can be rigged.

No one is asking you to put trust in machines. That is entirely a fallacious argument.

See, the kicker is that it doesn't matter whether it's paper ballots or machines. What matters is whether you trust the people who are responsible for operating either. The whole pro/anti-machine vitriol being put forward by the usual suspects isn't actually about voting security.

It's really about:

• eroding trust in the electoral process
• convincing people not to vote when a machine is involved
• setting up conditions to contest outcomes

Because you're right. Machines aren't failsafe. But neither is every other method. In the end, it's not about the method used for voting, but about control of it, through the people who are responsible for the orderly conduct of voting and counting. It should not come as a surprise that the anti-voting-machine movement is so strongly associated with the right and the far-right .. the same people who love to harass polling stations, introduce voting restrictions, and engage in voter suppression anywhere they can.

The key point is that widening democracy is not about using mail-in voting OR paper ballots OR machines .. but of using one AND the others simultaneously, so that more people can vote in whatever way is practical and sensible for them, because different voters live in wildly differing circumstances, and what is practical for one is not so for another. One method being slightly less or more reliable over another is dramatically unimportant compared to there being a way to vote at all.

Anti-democracy forces know this too, and seek to use it to their advantage. By repeating machine-hysteria, you are empowering them to contest and even remove important democratic tools from the board. They want you to take their challenges against the outcomes of the democratic process at face value, by conditioning bias against vote machines and thus by proxy against the people who are tasked with running them come election day. They want your knee-jerk reaction to be "oh, a machine is involved, so their claim of fraud probably has some merit to it".

It's insidious, it's real, it's on purpose, and it's hurting democracy everywhere.

 

[danielravennest]

Because you're right. Machines aren't failsafe. But neither is every other method. In the end, it's not about the method used for voting, but about control of it, through the people who are responsible for the orderly conduct of voting and counting.

After our current governor in Georgia stole his last election (He was Secretary of State, and thus overseeing his own election), Georgia has reached a reasonable compromise. We have a hybrid paper *and* electronic system. If you vote in person, you do it on a screen, but then it prints a completed paper ballot for you to review. The paper ballot then gets machine-scanned for the counting.

If you vote by mail, you fill in circles on a paper ballot, and again it gets counted by machine. So in both cases, there is a paper ballot for every vote. That's how we were able to do the recounts when Trump contested the results (three times). Fulton County, GA, which includes the city of Atlanta, has 800,000 registered voters. That's way too many to count by hand and get a timely result on election night.

 

[WolfEyes]

I wasn't talking about the machines that count the votes.

Like I said. Never mind! I'm not making myself clear nor am I in any kind of mood to read through lectures I don't need.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

After our current governor in Georgia stole his last election (He was Secretary of State, and thus overseeing his own election), Georgia has reached a reasonable compromise. We have a hybrid paper *and* electronic system. If you vote in person, you do it on a screen, but then it prints a completed paper ballot for you to review. The paper ballot then gets machine-scanned for the counting.

This is actually sensible. I'm shocked.

That's way too many to count by hand and get a timely result on election night.

I think the "timely result on election night" thing is anti-democratic. So what if it takes a week to count the ballots? Look at how it works in Australia. Paper ballots *and* transferable votes with dozens of names below the line. It can take more than a week to count, so what?

 

[Vance]

I think the "timely result on election night" thing is anti-democratic. So what if it takes a week to count the ballots? Look at how it works in Australia. Paper ballots *and* transferable votes with dozens of names below the line. It can take more than a week to count, so what?

In a stable political situation, sure. But when you've got dangerous factionalism in play, you absolutely want speedy results to minimize the opportunity for bad faith actors to claim victory, mobilize their mobs, and attack polling stations while the counting is still ongoing. The speedier the process, the more irregularities are going to stand out like a sore thumb. Election fraud is easier to commit and/or hide when the process takes longer or has more moving parts.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

If anything, accelerating the process by using devices that people don't trust is more likely to result in accusations of fraud and mob attacks.

 

[WolfEyes]

Who's saying you should use a machine, if you have the choice not to? Oregon isn't one of the states with the new voter restriction laws, and I hope it stays that way.
And, like yousaid a while back, it's hard but to know what terminology to use without stepping on toes. I know you are Oglala.
I've changed it to non-white ; is that better? If not, tell me what would be.

Oh no. I didn't mean for you to change your post.

Now we both feel bad about it and that isn't what I'd intended.

Let's change perspective here. I'm a non-native (lol) Oregonian tooting Oregon's horn for successfully using the mail in ballot method without any voter fraud to speak of for more than 20 years (2 decades) thus proving the jackasses who claim mail ins are a huge failure, incorrect.

If Oregon can do it, every state in the union can. The Repugs don't want that because that is when they will lose power, for a very long time if not forever.

 

[danielravennest]

This is actually sensible. I'm shocked.


I think the "timely result on election night" thing is anti-democratic. So what if it takes a week to count the ballots? Look at how it works in Australia. Paper ballots *and* transferable votes with dozens of names below the line. It can take more than a week to count, so what?

* It required going to court to get it implemented.

* Americans have the attention span of a squirrel on crack. If the vote counting takes longer than a football game, they can't deal with it. Also, we pay our election workers, so counting by hand costs more. All those recounts from the 2020 election cost millions to do, just for Georgia.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Australia pays election workers too, though apparently they tend to shortchange the ones working on election day because they get a fixed rate for the day rather than hourly and may end up getting less than the $18 minimum wage.

 

[Free]

MSN

Texts messages show Virginia Thomas, conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, used her connections to urge a key Trump administration official to block Joe Biden from taking the White House, according to The Washington Post.

The texts, obtained by the Post and CBS News, were among over 2,000 that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows provided the House committee investigating the January 6 attack. The 29 messages show Meadows was receptive to appeals from Thomas, who repeated conspiracy theories circulating in conservative circles following the election.

"Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! ... You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice," Thomas wrote in a text on November 10, 2020, after media organizations projected Biden the winner of the race, according to the Post. "The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History."

The article notes that in a later text, she alludes to Trump being the "King of Kings". Ugh.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

It's always projection with these people.

 

[bubblesort]

Looks like Clarence Thomas is a Jan 6 terrorist sympathizer. I think we all know he won't resign, and the government won't do anything about him, but you know, it's good to know where he stands on the issue of publicly lynching people with the American flag.

Also, he texts things like, "release the kraken" unironically. Old people text funny.

Watchdogs Say If Clarence Thomas Won't Resign, 'Congress Must Move to Impeach' | Common Dreams

"Democrats should be loudly drawing attention to the fact that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice supported Trump's coup attempt."

www.commondreams.org

Side note: Since this article published, Thomas has been released from the hospital.

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

Thread by @SethAbramson on Thread Reader App

@SethAbramson: THREAD/ BREAKING NEWS: With a federal judge now finding that Trump likely committed federal felonies related to January 6, America is now on a collision course with a constitutional crisis. This isn’t...…

threadreaderapp.com

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Across several tweets just now, I've noticed that the DOJ is hiring 131 more lawyers just to deal with Jan 6 cases.

I feel a bit vindicated in thinking that Garland was just waiting for something like the most recent revelations.

 

[Free]