#Ballot discrepancies

[usavotey]

US Democrats Challenge Georgia Election Rules in Trial

Georgia Judge to Review New Election Rules Amid Controversy A legal battle is brewing in Georgia over newly implemented election rules, as a state judge prepares to review a challenge from the Democratic Party. The dispute centers on changes made by the Republican-controlled Georgia Election Board, which Democrats argue were designed to undermine public trust in the upcoming presidential election…

[jayblanc]

Further news on the Chengdu 2023 Worldcon Scandal

The more we know, the less honest the Hugo results look. And there's some questions about how the Chendgu 2023 Worldcon was organised.

First of all, the Numbers Don't Add Up. Literally.

Second, it appears that the Chendgu 2023 Worldcon might have been coopted by Chinese Publishing companies. And that their corporate promotion lists might have been used as voting slates. This comes after a game of musical chairs, relocation and alterations from the original winning bid organisation to a new holding company. I have asked Kevin Standlee, chair of the WSFS Marks Protecttion Committee, to clarify what due diligence was taken to protect the Worldcon and Hugo trademarks. (Information via Arthur Lia and other commenters.)

Third, Chinese fandom is also upset over this. Using carefully selected phrasing to express their displeasure at "unspeakable factors". (Via Ersatz Culture at File 770)

Finally Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty categorically declares that the Ballot was conducted properly. He also declines to explain any of the discrepancies, or explain the precise reason for the unexplained disqualifications. He also stated that those who had any further questions "can't understand plain English" and "are slow".

This all strengthens my concerns, and widens them to the possibility that the name of the Hugo Awards and the Worldcon was deliberately coopted by a publishing business group in China. There's the strong possibility that this means that an unfettered licence to the trademarks that protect the Hugo Awards might have slipped into the hands of people willing to abuse them.

I note that Saudi Arabia, Tel Aviv, and Uganda all have bids for future Worldcons.

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

The Hugo Awards nominating statistics don't add up

tl;dr Along with works arbitrarily being deemed ineligible for the Hugo Awards the underlying numbers for the nominating data don't add up. The nominating statistics are junk.

Yesterday the Hugo nominating statistics for 2023 were released. Initial discussion focused on several nominees including R.F. Kuang's Babel being deemed ineligible for seemingly no reason.

After people started looking at the actual statistics a number of oddities were apparent. Heather Rose Jones has released a blog post with some graphs neatly illustrating this.

She suggests a number of hypothesis for what's going on: bloc voting, certain nominees below the cut-off being omitted or the one I now think must be true "The math is bogus. That is, the reported nomination statistics include large numbers of nominations attributed to the "top group" that do not arise from an actual nomination process."

In a previous post I discussed Peter Wilkinson's comment that showed that there are mathematical impossibilities in the statistics:

As (I think) a quite separate final remark for now, I think I have found a small mathematical impossibility in the Best Novel nomination statistics as given. Because of the way EPH works, every valid ballot gets counted in the first round of an EPH count, but ballots get eliminated as and when the last nominee on the ballot gets eliminated. It is therefore quite impressive that, of the 1,637 ballots received for Best Novel, 1,652 remained after all but the final 15 candidates had been eliminated.

To elaborate on this each nominators is given a single point divided equally between the works they nominate. In the first round the number of points equals the number of nominators.

In subsequent rounds if a work is eliminated the point is redistributed between the nominators remaining nominees. If no nominees remain it isn't redistributed. In essence the number of points represents the number of nominators who have nominees remaining on the ballot.

The number of points should never be higher than the number of nominators.

The only explanation I can see is that the statistics are made up.

Following on from Peter Wilkinson's comment Marshall Ryan Maresca ran the numbers for all categories:

His results match the ones I have previously checked. I posted about novel and fanwriter in the previous linked post and had checked novella as well.

I've now checked the other two categories where he showed the result is over 100% and my numbers add up to the same as what he has shown.

I've posted my workings below for reference.

First lets look at best novel which had 1637 nominating ballots:

My calculation matches what Peter and Marshall found.

Best novella had 1393 ballots:

This again matches Marshall's result and is the only category I checked where the points sum to less than 100% of the ballots.

Best short story has 1500 ballots but 1568.96 nominating points, again matching Marshall's results:

Best fan writer which I discussed yesterday has the largest relative difference with only 241 people nominating but 364.01 nominating points (again matching Marshall's results).

Finally let's look at the Lodestar which had 280 nominating ballots:

Again my result matches what Marshall found.

Heather Rose Jones has illustrated why the nominating statistics are anomalous. Peter Wilkinson showed that the numbers for best novel reflected a mathematically impossibility.

Yesterday after seeing Wilkinson's comment I ran the numbers and got the same result and found the even larger discrepancy in the fan writer category.

Marshall Ryan Maresca separately saw Peter Wilkinson’s comment and went through the categories much more systematically and has shown several are unusually high and that four have impossible numbers based on the reported number of ballots.

I've double checked the categories where Marshall demonstrated that there were over 100% of votes being reported and got the same results.

I do not see how the above is possible without extra votes being added to the totals. The math doesn't add up.

[bluejay73ffs]

What we can still do

So, back in 2020, Trump did everything he could to contest the results of the election when he had zero real evidence, so what's to stop us from doing so when we have actual better evidence?

Here's the link where you can contact the president & vice president and share your concerns: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

If you're not good at figuring out what to say, you can simply copy/pasted what I put into the box:

I urge you to recount the election and investigate election interference. Bomb threats have been called into multiple polling locations. Domestic terrorists have burned ballot boxes. Ballots are being discarded. An investigation and recount for this election is urgently needed. As a concerned citizen, I believe that ensuring the accuracy and integrity of our electoral process is paramount to maintaining public trust in our democratic institutions. Given the close margin of the results and reports of potential discrepancies, I respectfully urge you to authorize a thorough and transparent recount.

We can stand our ground. We can still choose to fight against fascism. Never give up, not without a fight.

[catboybiologist]

Voting post for Californians, but let's not talk about the president.

Alright. California people. I'd love to hear opinions and discussion about whatever else is on the ballot, other than just the presidency. I have some quick takes about each of them as I'm prepping my ballot, and I'd love to hear further discussion of each one. But here's me just casually rattling stuff off:

Prop 33: If you rent in California, passing prop 33 is fucking essential. It's one of those fairly confusing "repeal of a ban of a restriction" type laws, and landlords are using that to their advantage. But the tl;dr: passing this proposition is beneficial to renters or anyone else in need of housing. It allows local city governments to establish more rent control, allowing them to create more affordable rent opportunities. This would be a huge relief to the California housing crisis.

The ONLY possible logic that I've heard for it supporting renters is a bullshit "trickledown" adjacent one: that more restrictions on rent means that less wealthy people are "motivated" to build housing. Of course that's bullshit- we have enough empty housing now to get people homed, we just need to get people to afford them. And prop 33 does that.

Prop 3: a no-brainer yes, but honestly seems mostly for show. California still technically has a ban on gay marriage on the books, its just invalidated by Obergefell. This rectifies that discrepancy.

Prop 4: land protection and environmental bond proposition. Honestly kind of a no brainer. We get a lot of these on the ballot, and each of them is massively impactful. I've seen the effect of these measures within the course of my lifetime- bleak areas restored to amazing health, and oftentimes opened as gorgeous recreational third spaces.

There's an education bond initiative as well, seems fairly straightforward on both.

Prop 32: minimum wage increase. In California? Necessary.

Prop 36: ho boy, this one is a mess. It's a "tough on crime" prop that SEEMS straightforward to vote No on. But, this is a fucking classic "unseen interactions with past propositions in an intentionally confusing way" thing. It's an amendment to a past proposition that reduces sentencing.

So yeah. No from me. I'm comfortable being aligned with the ACLU on this kind of thing.

Prop 6: no brainer Yes. Ending slavery in our state should not be controversial.

5, 34, and 35 I haven't looked at aside from my initial read and don't really wanna comment on, but would love to hear any opinions in that regard.

[1americanconservative]

@AtlRey

Here’s a quick recap of what just happened in AZ in case you missed it:

- Trump won Arizona by 6 points

- Gallego had 127k more votes than there are registered Democrats in AZ.

- Lake had 200k fewer votes than there are registered Republicans in AZ.

- Gallego received more votes than Kamala Harris did in AZ.

- Lake received 140k fewer votes than Trump did in AZ.

- Uncounted ballots increased days after the deadline.

-Mitch McConnell withheld campaign funds from Lake.

- No GOP members are speaking out about these discrepancies.

Overall, something about this election between Lake and Gallego doesn’t add up.

Thoughts?

[eugenedebs1920]

Politicians have always bent the truth, spun their views, even exaggerated stories. There has never, & I mean NEVER been the amount of falsehoods & flat out lies like there are today. When Vance and Trump stipulate in their agreements to get interviews that they don’t want fact checking, that tells you they want to broadcast lies and deception internationally. It’s absurd! Both sides of the aisle have their moments, don’t get me wrong, but. In a recent book by the owner of Politifact, established in 2007, he states a huge rise in falsities over the years. From 2022 to mid 2024 he found that Democrats lied, or weren’t telling the whole truth 17% of the time. On the Republican side it is a whopping 63%! That means over HALF of what you hear from the GOP is not true. Trump plays a significant roll in this seeing that he lies as he breathes, but still. It’s time for the American people to show the GOP that this is not acceptable. That we demand a higher level of honesty & integrity. To show these politicians who seem to forget who they work for. They don’t work for corporations and the most wealthy individuals. THEY WORK FOR US! The American people. When someone lies to you over & over again , it shows the lack of respect they have for you. If you had an employee who disrespected over half the time would you keep them in your employ? Get out there & Vote, make your voice heard! Get your friend’s, family, neighbors, colleagues, that weird guy who always sits at the end of the bar by himself (me 😆) people you meet, people you hardly know, to get out there and make a difference for good! So please, this November 5th (or earlier, I prefer early or mail in voting, less of a crowd. Plus, if you forget anything or there’s any discrepancies, you can hopefully get them wrapped & fixedUp before Election Day)go out and Vote! Vote blue down ballot. Vote like women’s rights depend on it. Vote like the environments health and protection depends on it. Vote like the continuation of democracy as we know it depends on it. Vote like equal rights for all, LGBTQ rights, not living in fear of a mass shooting, voting rights, social security, Medicare, Medicaid & the ACA, public education, freedom of religion, labor rights & collective bargaining, antitrust & predatory lending, fair housing, and your personal freedom depends on it. Because it does.

[tanadrin]

Regarding supposed election interference conspiracy theories: I highly recommend checking out this thread over on threads. https://www.threads. .net/@billt801/post/DCIIRcrRhmD?xmt=AQGzlJnE3HBQjvsKoquyz4nfjpFtc0aTm2Ph5PwnIRCznQ

Sorry, same anon, but this spoutible post by the same guy. https://spoutible(dot) com/thread/37937176 from today is analyzing discrepancies between the exit polls and the final results. and the disproportionately large number of trump voters who voted nothing down ballot. And these counties were ones that had bomb threats called in on election day. No, it's probably not going to make a difference. But it's worth doing due diligence by investigating and doing hand counts, right?

"Low information voters vote for president and leave other ballot lines blank" is not a new phenomenon! Look, a lot of election security advocates say the gold standard is paper ballots and hand counting, and I'm not gonna dispute that necessarily as a general policy prescription, but this is still plainly cope. Referencing 2004 conspiracy theories about Ohio (which were based on inaccurate exit polls that dropped right after the election) convinces me this guy is an idiot.

And, once again, why would they hack the race for president and not give themselves more wiggle room in House races? "People did not vote the way I expected them to" is not good evidence of a conspiracy. Especially since voting behavior was largely in line with polls. What, were they rigging every poll in the country besides Anne Selzer for the last twelve months, too?

[mariacallous]

Tom O’Donnell had never really been that interested in how elections worked until former president Donald Trump lost in 2020. Then, everything changed.

Like hundreds of thousands of people across the US, O’Donnell joined so-called election integrity groups that posted baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election. His group was called Idaho First Audit, and members flooded election offices across the state with requests for voting data. They weren’t alone: Other organizations like right-wing activist group True the Vote inundated election offices across the country as part of a broader effort they believed would uncover systemic fraud within the election process.

Election workers in Ada County, Idaho, home to the state capital of Boise, were pretty amenable to questions about the election process from O’Donnell’s group. O’Donnell even organized a tour of the Ada County election offices “to learn more about the process of voting,” and struck up a relationship with Trent Tripple, then the deputy county clerk.

But Tripple, who became county clerk last year, was one of the officials struggling to cope with the barrage of records requests and threats that the majority of election offices were receiving at the time. After the records requests overwhelmed the election office’s employees, Tripple and Ada County’s director of election, Saul Seyler, decided they needed to change things up.

So after years of work, they’ve now given election deniers exactly what they’ve been asking for: Last week, Tripple and Seyler launched Ballot Verifier, a first-of-its-kind tool that gives anyone with an internet connection direct access to every single ballot that has been cast in all Ada County elections since 2022, meaning that those in the election denial movement can no longer say that they don’t have access to the information they want.

“We just decided there’s got to be a way that we can push back against this a little bit but also achieve that perfect marriage between technology and government records so that citizens, candidates, parties, everybody has access to all the information that we have,” says Tripple.

The tool provides sleek graphics of all election races, and allows users to filter by type of ballot and even drill right down to precinct level to see an image of every single one of the ballots counted. Crucially, the ballot images are presented alongside what is known as the cast vote record, which is the record of how the ballot tallying machine counted the vote on election day. By showing these side-by-side, anyone can instantly see whether there are any discrepancies.

“I can’t even dream up how we can be more transparent than this,” says Tripple. “There isn’t anything else that we have that the public cannot see.”

Ballot images and cast vote records, both details about elections barely ever mentioned prior to 2020, have become a focus for election conspiracists trying to prove widespread voter fraud conspiracies.

In some cases, election conspiracists have even built programs to look at ballot images. Well-funded groups like True the Vote have built online tools based on voter rolls, previously reported on by WIRED, which they are urging their tens of thousands of supporters to use and then erroneously claim voters should be struck off the voter rolls.

“It's very different if [an online tool] is coming from an independent group, like True the Vote, that obviously has certain political leanings, and information that they're providing is through a lens,” says Seyler, as opposed to “something like [Ballot Verifier], which is available to everybody and truly transparent.” The data, the team says, is also private. “There is nothing that is printed on this ballot other than the individual markings, [nothing] that would tie it to a particular voter,” says Tripple. “The ballot is completely private.”

Still, some election experts have voiced concerns about the potential for systems like Ballot Verifier to pose privacy risks for voters, particularly in small precincts or in cases where voters leave notes on the ballots that could identify them.

“Despite the clear benefits to transparency of releasing cast vote records and ballot images, making these records public comes with trade-offs,” researchers from the Bipartisan Policy Center wrote in August. “Voters’ privacy might be compromised, and vote buying becomes feasible when ballot secrecy is violated—an extreme, if less likely, potential ramification of making ballot images public.”

There have also been some prior efforts to give voters access to ballot images, such as in Pueblo County in Colorado in 2021, but these efforts were not as comprehensive or technically proficient as Ballot Verifier.

At the same time that Tripple and Seyler were trying to think about a better solution, Idaho had been using a tool called ElectionStats to give voters access to statistics around election results. That tool was created by Civera Software, a civic technology company that ended up working alongside Ada County election officials to build out the new Ballot Verifier tool.

And even before the system went live, Tripple invited O’Donnell and other skeptics to be among the first to test it out.

“I think it's really good. It's more than I thought would have happened, because when we request our images now, we just get a data dump of files,” O’Donnell tells WIRED, adding that the Telegram group has responded positively to the launch of Ballot Verifier.

WIRED also tested the Ballot Verifier tool, looking at specific precincts and races, filtering votes by type (mail-in ballot, absentee ballot, etc.) and found that the system worked smoothly and instantly displayed images of every ballot cast.

US elections have never been safer, and the 2020 election was declared the “most secure” by Trump’s own officials. But a lot of people still believe unfounded conspiracies about elections, and the roll out of this tool in one county in one state is not necessarily going to change that overnight. Indeed, a review of O’Donnell’s 400-person Telegram channel by WIRED this week shows that many within the election integrity group are still regularly sharing widely debunked conspiracies about voting.

Adam Friedman, Civera’s founder, believes part of the reason for this is a lack of transparency, something which Ballot Verifier can address.

“A lot of the conspiracy theories and divisiveness and toxic rhetoric and mistrust around elections in America goes hand-in-hand with people not being able to see enough and people perceiving voting as being a black box experience,” says Friedman. “Ballot Verifier is really a way to turn a black box into a glass box.”

Friedman says that Civera had already signed a contract with several counties in Texas to provide the tool to them, and was in discussions with counties in multiple other states. The tool is also of interest to academics, and Friedman says the company is in preliminary conversations with two prominent universities and a number of political scientists who study cast vote records.

But Ballot Verifier is not cheap. Friedman and Civera provided a “large discount” on the research and development costs for this tool, but it still cost Ada County $40,000. While there are no current plans to roll the tool out nationally, Seyler says that while every county could benefit from using a system like it, election budgets have been historically underfunded. While all the backend work to upload new election data is handled by the company’s employees, the company is also currently building tools to allow local election officials to do this themselves, and go even faster.

The next big test for the Ballot Verifier tool comes later this month with the statewide primaries in Idaho on May 21. This will be the first time the officials will be working with recent election data rather than historical data, and they know there will be pressure to get that information online as soon as possible. Seyler says the current projection for getting the data uploaded is four to six weeks, though it could be quicker if Civera can finish some additional tools they are working on to improve efficiencies.

Looking further ahead, Tripple even foresees a point when data is available in Ballot Verifier so quickly after a vote that it could be used by candidates or parties to decide whether a recount is necessary, potentially avoiding the expensive and drawn-out recount process.

“That's not going to be possible now because of the speed at which we're uploading this data, but I think that's something that could be happening in the future,” says Tripple.

[sawkinator]

I'm gonna be honest kitten I do not think nearly enough people here on Tumblr are talking about shit like gerrymandering and voter suppression wrt the election. I've seen like two popular posts about 'missing' ballots and election interference but that's kind of it?

Like yes there were multiple factors at play here but Republicans have been attacking basic voting rights for fucking forever especially in red and swing states, and they have absolutely ramped up their efforts over the last 4 years. It can't explain all of the discrepancy between the raw numbers but surely it is not an insignificant amount??

[darkmaga-returns]

We should be so thankful for vigilant election officials that are trying to do a great job of protecting the integrity of our system.  The incidents that I am about to share with you are deeply disturbing, but it is also encouraging that these crimes are being caught.  We should all be able to agree that the American people should be able to choose who they want in 2024.  No matter which side wins or which side loses, the will of the American people should be respected.  Sadly, there are those that wish to interfere in that process, and those people are committing crimes against all of us.

In Colorado, some ballots that were “intercepted” before reaching voters were filled out and mailed in.  The following comes from the Colorado Secretary of State’s official website…

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office is monitoring a developing situation in Mesa County, Colorado regarding intercepted ballots. On Tuesday, October 23, the Department of State learned that at least 12 ballots appear to have been intercepted before reaching voters. Those ballots were voted and then returned to the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder via USPS mailboxes. This issue was flagged during Colorado’s secure signature verification process. Several of the affected voters contacted the Mesa County Clerk’s office after receiving communication that their ballot required curing due to a discrepant signature. One affected voter notified the Mesa County Clerk after they received notification through BallotTrax that their ballots had been received for processing by the Mesa County Clerk. BallotTrax is Colorado’s statewide tracking and notification system that lets voters who’ve signed up know where their ballot is.

If 12 of these ballots were caught, how many others slipped through without notice?

Colorado is a state that could play a significant role in the outcome of this election.  In early voting, Democrats have a lead of less than 3 percent in votes cast so far, and so the state could still go either way.

On Friday, I shared a story with my core supporters about a crime that is far, far worse than what is being reported in Colorado.

Pennsylvania is the most important swing state in this election, and the Lancaster Board of Elections has announced that “thousands of suspected fraudulent voter registrations” have been caught in that county alone…

A criminal investigation has been launched after thousands of suspected fraudulent voter registrations were discovered in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. The Lancaster County Board of Elections announced Friday that staff members identified 2,500 suspected fraudulent voter registration applications, which had been dropped off at the election office. Some had false names, suspicious handwriting, questionable signatures, incorrect addresses or other problematic details.

Whoever is behind this scheme should be put in prison for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, it appears that this isn’t just happening in Lancaster County.

In fact, it is being reported that “similar applications” have been received by two other counties in Pennsylvania…

[rotationalsymmetry]

So, responding to the least bad "vote blue" post I've seen in a while:

None of those are my issues with this genre of post. My issues with this genre of post are that this is not how get out the vote works. Telling people they have to do a thing tends to irritate the shit out of them. Assuming some percentage of your audience wants to vote Democrat and focusing on those who want to but might have life get in the way WORKS. Do that. PLEASE.

And optionally throw in some information that will help address barriers. For instance, you don't have to vote for every position and issue on the ballot, you can just vote for the things you care about and leave the rest blank and your votes will be counted. (Confirmed by ballotpedia.) Rules around Vote By Mail vary by state but it's generally an option for at least some people IF you ask for it soon enough. Where I live and I believe generally in the US, you can check online at your state's department of elections website to make sure you're registered to vote (at your current address!) -- every time you move even if it's just next door, you need to register again, but if you applied for a new driver's license you probably registered to vote at the same time. You can also check your state's department of elections website to learn about voting registration deadlines, whether you'll need to bring ID to the polls, where your polling place is, and when you can expect to receive your vote by mail ballot if applicable.

(Side note, do look that up if you're voting by mail. I didn't get my vote by mail ballot when I was supposed to because there was some confusion around apartment number, but I was able to call and get a new one in time for the last local election.)

There are groups that offer rides to the polls for people who have trouble getting their on their own (if you're not sure where to ask, try your local Democratic Party -- ie "town/city name Democratic Party.") There are a considerable number of disability accommodations legally required to be provided at every polling place, from wheelchair access to voting machines that read the ballot out loud to you to it being OK to get someone else to fill out your ballot for you (as long as you state that you gave them permission). There is a federal law guaranteeing this, so it does not vary by state. But, speaking as a former poll worker, when something goes wrong during set-up the accessibility stuff is the first thing back burnered, so even though these are legal requirements there may be discrepancies in practice. So if you require accommodations to vote, allow a lot of time, consider bringing a friend for support, and be prepared to have to advocate for your rights. Sorry. I know that's messed up. (Or vote by mail if that works better for you.)

Voting basics for new or uncertain voters: The best way to research, like the best way to study for a test, is to learn a little bit at a time over time by reading news (including local news), talking to people you know, etc. But, often life gets in the way of that or it's not enough, so that's where cramming comes in, and fortunately there are cliffs notes. What your best cliffs notes are is going to vary by location and political bias, but there's theoretically unbiased* sites like Ballotpedia (good but tend to not be useful for very local issues like school board) sites with a political leaning like https://progressivevotersguide.com/, and endorsements from advocacy organizations (advocacy groups like the League of Women Voters (a feminist group) often endorse candidates who share their priorities) and, importantly, newspapers. Also, people running for office generally have a campaign website: obviously these are very biased so you need to have a sense of which issues you care about and look for spin and what's not being said. For instance, a candidate who take a lot about public safety means they want to give cops more money/power. A candidate who wants to make environmental regulations weaker might not say anything about the environment at all, or might say something about being pro business. It can take a while to get used to how politicians talk about their political stances if you're not used to analyzing political speech this way, which is one reason endorsements are so useful, but it's also very much worth developing that skill so if you're kind of confused hang in there, you'll get it eventually. And talk to people you know who have similar politics, so you can learn together.

Actual voting: as mentioned above, there's two main ways of voting, at a polling place and by mail. Voting by mail means your ballot has to be postmarked by the end of Election Day, or dropped off at a polling place or election drop box. I don't like keeping track of things like when mail gets picked up from my corner mail box, so I recommend either mailing it out before Election Day or using the polling place/drop box approach.

You are allowed to bring a cheat sheet in with you to vote, or check your phone. What you can't do is tell people who to vote for in the polling place or ask them who you should vote for (even with things like buttons or slogans on t-shirts) -- do all of that outside of/before getting to the polling place. If you make a mistake at a polling place, you can ask for a new ballot, it's not a big deal. If you asked for a vote by mail ballot but want to vote in person after all, the best approach is to bring your vote by mail ballot so they know you're not voting twice; I think failing that it is possible to vote provisionally, which means they won't count your ballot until after the regular ballots and only after they check to make sure you didn't also vote by mail. It is also possible to vote provisionally at a polling place that isn't the one you were assigned to, for instance if the one near your job is more convenient. Normally your assigned polling place will be the closest one to where you live.

And you legally cannot post a photo of your ballot on social media (or eg a personal blog -- play it safe and don't take a photo of your ballot at all.) There is a good reason for this, it's to prevent coercion, so that eg your boss, or an abusive partner or parent, can't go "you have to vote for this candidate OR ELSE." Or rather, it means if they do that even though it's super not legal, you can lie to them and they won't have a way to check.

On that note, one of the biggest reasons that attempting to use social pressure on social media to force people to vote blue is never going to work, is...you can't check. It's relatively easy for people to just say they will, but actually voting is hard and inconvenient and none of us have any way of checking whether a mutual is saying "vote blue, you gotta!" and then quietly not voting. I don't think it's good anyways, but fear of social rejection tends to increase people's tendency towards dishonesty and hypocracy, and on social media between people using fake names who do not know each other off line, it is completely impossible to actually enforce conformity. All that can be enforced is saying the right thing, not doing the right thing. And sometimes the saying is the doing, but... saying you're going to vote is not the same as actually filling out a ballot.

If you like the election guide stuff and want to share it but don't like part of what I'm saying, feel free to copy/paste and make your own post.

*bias tends to be a relative thing not an absolute thing, and people motivated to get more people to vote are almost never conservative (the conservatives generally benefit from voter suppression, which is why they're always going off about the realistically trivial amounts of voter fraud), but less biased is a very real thing.

[priceforrottenjudgement]

Not to sound like a 2020 trumpie but uh, is there an actual possibility that something was ~up~ with this election? Bc im seeing a lot of talk about vanished ballots and votes and weird discrepancies between wins for trump and wins for progressive candidates coming from the same constituencies. That and musk apparently 'joking' about hacked polling stations.

Is this another 2016 dem desperation or is actually something wrong?

[darkeagleruins]

BREAKING: Arizona Republican Candidate Abe Hamadeh has filed a MASSIVE petition to the Arizona Supreme Court to correct the 2022 Attorney General election that was stolen by 280 votes

"There are still 9,000 uncounted ballots in the 2022 election, and my legal team believes at least 1,100+ ballots should be counted. The closest race in Arizona history deserves its day in court, a margin of 280 votes out of 2.5 million with all of the discrepancies on Election Day, and what we’ve discovered since has clouded the legitimacy of Kris Mayes. We received more votes than her, she knows it, and so does nearly every Arizonan who is paying attention."

Abe is leading by example and needs the support of all Arizonans

[klbmsw]

A political earthquake in Tennessee

April 7, 2023

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

Protestors yell and wave signs in the gallery after Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives expelled Rep. Justin Jones on Thursday. (WTVF)

Republicans in the Tennessee state House of Representatives have made a choice: They decided Thursday that protecting decorum in their chamber was more important than limiting access to high powered weapons like the ones that killed three nine-year-olds and three staff at a private school in Nashville last week.

The state's GOP super majority has voted to expel two young Black male Democratic lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, for leading a protest on the House floor last week calling for gun control. A third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, a White woman, survived by one vote and was not expelled -- a discrepancy that raises obvious and ugly questions.

“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

The expelled lawmakers had committed no crimes; they were accused simply of behaving inappropriately in the House. They admit that they broke the rules by entering the well of the chamber without permission and interrupting debate. But lawmakers break the rules all the time and are not expelled. The House in Tennessee has has only expelled members on the rarest of occasions — for bribery and for sexual offenses, for example.

The expulsions -- which effectively cancelled out the ballots of tens of thousands of Tennesseans who had elected Jones and Pearson -- came across as a disproportionate abuse of power that crushed freedom of expression for the two members and their constituents.

One Republican, Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones, who accused the House of acting dishonorably during his dramatic and eloquent defense, had made the case for his own exclusion. “He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. Absurdly, the Republican House speaker last week said the protest by the lawmakers was equivalent or worse than the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the US Capitol.

Given Tennessee’s overwhelming conservative tint, there was never any chance that the Nashville shooting would lead to local gun reforms. But the legislature’s power play came across as an attempt to silence a debate the GOP doesn’t want to have, at a time when the state was still reeling with grief.

But now the eyes of America and the world are on Tennessee.

China’s banks and insurers have become the latest focus of a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown.

Israel launched strikes in Gaza after a barrage of rockets was fired from Lebanon.

And protesters stormed the Paris offices of money manager BlackRock.

Meanwhile in America, JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon says the banking crisis has increased odds of recession.

The Supreme Court denied West Virginia’s request to enforce a ban on transgender women and girls playing on public school sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

And the former Michigan House speaker said he took bribes as head of state’s medical marijuana licensing board.

'We are losing our democracy'

One of the expelled Democrats spoke to CNN's Ryan Young and warned that American democracy is under threat from Republicans seeking to hold back a young, rising tide of diversity.

“Six people died in Nashville at the Covenant School. Three were nine-years-old but instead of focusing on that, Representative Jones, Representative Johnson and myself are being expelled from the state house because we said we cannot do business as usual,” Pearson said. “No one should be wanting to operate as though this is not happening, as though we are not living in a gun violent epidemic in the state of Tennessee.”

“We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people."