Recent absentee ballot rejection rates according to Ballotpedia are lower than expected

 

Recent absentee ballot rejection rates according to Ballotpedia: 

2024: 1.2%

2022: 1.5%

2020: 0.8%

2018: 1.4%

2016: 1.0%.

Discussed here and here.

The New York Times indicated in October 2012 that rejection rates for absentee ballots are typically closer to 2.0%, double what they are for in-person voting. The closest we recently got to 2.0% was in 2022, but still lower than 2.0% by half a point, and the massive mail-in vote in 2020 arguably should have produced a rejection rate higher than 2.0%. Instead we got the lowest rejection rate yet, 0.8%.

That doesn't make any sense.

 

Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises 

... Nationwide, the use of absentee ballots and other forms of voting by mail has more than tripled since 1980 and now accounts for almost 20 percent of all votes.

Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

“The more people you force to vote by mail,” Mr. Sancho said, “the more invalid ballots you will generate.” ...

 

Trump moves forward with U.S. Postal Service plan to interdict mail-in ballots and prevent voting by mail in states which won't give him voter data

This is not a joke. 

Postmaster general confirms plan to hold back mail ballots in states that won’t share voter data 

Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service will no longer deliver mail-in ballots in states that refuse to provide sensitive voter data to the federal government, in line with a proposed rule from the Trump administration. ... 

 

 

The magats like Steve Bannon are trying as hard as they can to provoke violence to justify invocation of the insurrection act and martial law

I just signed up to become a permanent mail-in voter after seeing this today.

Was the 2024 election stolen, Steve, you moron?

 

 

75+ million votes already cast

 Nearly half of 2020's electorate have already cast ballots in 2024

Around 100 million people voted early, either in person or via mail, in 2020. ... Of those who have cast their vote so far in states that report party registration data, Democrats hold a slight lead — 37.9% to 36.2% — per [University of Florida Election Lab's] count.

Trump strongholds in North Carolina and Georgia were hit hard by Hurricane Helene

 

Politico reports here:

Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina — a fact that could work to Donald Trump’s disadvantage in the two swing states. ...

The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican. In 2020, he won 61 percent of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene. He won 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s disaster counties. ...

State records show that nearly 40,000 absentee ballots were mailed to voters in the 25 North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster following Helene. Fewer than 1,000 have been returned.

Just a reminder that the average absentee ballot rejection rate in twenty-three states in 2020 was 0.73% vs 1.46% in 2016, which is 100% suspect

 FiveThirtyEight here.

Two days after the May 14th primaries Democrats are way behind Republicans counting all the votes because they're counting mail-in votes

Even Maryland Republicans are ahead of Democrats.

It's a recipe for fraud in November.

 

Rasmussen: 17% of mail-in voters in 2020 admit voting in a state in which they were no longer a permanent resident

 Election officials report that of 159 million ballots cast in 2020, more than 68 million were submitted by mail, about 43 percent of the total. In addition, as the MIT Election Data and Science Lab noted, “the dramatic increase in the raw number of absentee ballots cast was accompanied by a significant decrease in the overall absentee rejection rate for the country: from 0.96 percent in 2016 to 0.79 percent in 2020.”

If the recent Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey is accurate and one in five ballots were, in fact, fraudulent, that would suggest greater than 13 million ballots should not have been counted nationwide in 2020. That’s far more than the margin of victory for President Biden in the popular vote, about 7 million. ...

Another survey conducted in March and April by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen shows that 28 percent of likely voters now say they would commit at least one form of illegal voting during the 2024 election, “if given the opportunity.” Interestingly, respondents’ willingness to commit fraud was similar among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

More.

OMG California still not done counting Super Tuesday vote nine days later

 

California is the poster child of failed democracy

 The primary was yesterday.

The UK, with a population more than twice the size of California, would have had the entire vote for any race counted within hours.

But California has made no progress since this morning.

In the crucial race for US Senate, California has made almost ZERO progress after twelve hours.

This is how you create the conditions to tamper with the vote. You get people accustomed to delays like today time after time so that people tire of raising any objections. And then boom! you steal the election when you need to because it took forever last time, why not THIS time?

At 8:34am, the New York Times reported 48% of the vote counted in the US Senate race:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight, at 8:53pm, they've made it up 1 point to 49% counted:

 

That's so California right there lol: Adam Shifty Schiff is unflappable and polite, also the man who regularly insulted Trump on social media

 From the LA Times here:

Instead [disgruntled Porter supporter Katie Loss, 69] is supporting Schiff, who she said she has long admired for his intelligence, his more than 20 years of experience in Washington and his willingness to stand up to Trump. And, she said, his polite, unflappable demeanor is "badly needed in the Senate."

Three paragraphs later:

Still, Schiff — through his role as a House impeachment manager and regular appearances on cable news — was the most visible and forceful foil to Trump, who regularly called him out at rallies and insulted him on social media.     

 

Meanwhile, just 48% of the vote in California, tech capital of the world, is counted this morning:

 

 

 

 

My candidate in the Michigan GOP presidential primary finished in the top 1.2% of the field lol

Yes, I'm well aware he dropped out and endorsed Trump.

Turn out was pretty pathetic in Michigan, despite mail-in voting and early in person voting up to 29 days in advance.

Combined turnout for the two parties was less than 23% of the 8.275 million registered voters.

The Hamas vote racked up a big protest vote against Joe Biden of more than 100k.

Uncommitted Republican votes of 33k+ must be the small L libertarians? Social conservatives could vote happily for Ron DeSantis.

Meanwhile Nikki Haley attracted 293k of the AWFLs, most of whom were Democrat voters.

The primary is well nigh useless as an indicator of much of anything since all you have to do is check the Republican box or the Democrat box when you appear and you are given the appropriate ballot. There is no party "registration". You are what you say you are, but every man is a liar (Romans 3:4).

 

How much enthusiasm does it take to fill out a mail-in ballot and mail it in, +28F or -18F?

Asking for a friend.

November 5, 2024: Groundhog Day all over again

 

Democrats' 2024 Magic Bullet: Mass Mail-In Voting

Kristin Tate, The Messenger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2020, only about a third of Americans voted at a physical polling location on Election Day. The 2020 election represented the first time in American history that more than half of the electorate voted on a day that was not Election Day. The expansion of Election Day to “Election Month” brought out a number of lower-propensity, and arguably lower-information, voters who cast their ballots by the millions. Young people increased their voting share sharply in the last election.

In some states, the changes were even more dramatic. Between 2016 and 2020, New Jersey saw its share of mail ballots increase from just 7% to an astounding 86%. The partisan lean should be no more surprising. Among voters in Pennsylvania who voted by mail, 76% went for Joe Biden. In Maryland, it was 81%. In the crucial state of Georgia, Trump received just 34% of the mail-in ballots.

The 2020 trampling of precedent under the guise of an “emergency” was especially pronounced in critical states such as Pennsylvania, where officials were ordered to count mail-in ballots that arrived within three days after the election toward the final result — even those that did not have a postmark. The move undoubtedly had a massive impact on the swing state’s outcome. ...

By codifying mail-in balloting, it is likely that Republicans will be at a constant disadvantage in voter turnout. GOP voters tend to show up at the polls on Election Day. Democrats effectively harvested millions of votes in 2020 for their candidates.

 

Through March 2023 the dollar buys 13.8% less than it did when Biden was first elected by mail-in balloting in November 2020

 

How one voter beat Clark County, Nevada's mail-in ballot signature verification system in 2020 by 89% and again in 2022 by 55%

 

Clark County Accepted My Signature on 6 Mail Ballots

 

Victor Joecks, LV Review-Jrnl

Salena Zito is obviously channeling Peggy Noonan: The women recommend just giving up on secure chain of custody voting

The weaker sex recommends you give in. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

That right there is the whole history of conservatism, from the advent of the Progressive Era 130 years ago until now.

Currently, Democrats are miles ahead of Republicans at targeting specific races and voters. Through mail balloting, they put those voters in the bank early. ... Republicans can complain about the current rules all they want, but what they need to do is wake up and start competing with the Democrats where they are. Otherwise, they're just leaving winnable races on the table.

Florida Republicans certainly have figured it out. In 2018 and 2020, the Democrats went into Election Day with more ballots cast than Republicans in early voting. This year, Florida Republicans flipped that on its head. Republicans in other states should take note.

-- Salena Zito, in her conclusion here

It is rude of Arizona and Nevada to keep the country waiting to know the composition of its Senate. Why, days after the election, don’t we know which party controls the House? Why can’t the late-reporting states get their act together on vote counting? It’s the increase in mail-in ballots? So what? You roll with life and adapt. Florida, which spans two time zones, reports its tallies with professionalism and dispatch. 

-- Peggy Noonan, from her lede here

 

Four true words

 Trump lacked the discipline.      

Stated here.

That's still the fundamental problem, but that's been the case from the beginning.

Character counts. Trump has never had it and never will. I cut my losses with Trump in 2018 when he exposed himself as a phony on his chief plank, illegal immigration. He already did that in August 2016, so fool me once, shame on Trump. I am not ashamed to state it over and over again.

The rest of the party still hasn't come around, however, with so-called conservatives still yammering on about stuff like pOPuLiSm. But that's because opposition to illegal immigration was never a GOP value. The GOP would never be upset because he lied about that.

It's hard to imagine the GOP pointing to anything in particular which was a line too far. 121 voted in the House to object to the 2020 Arizona vote, 138 to the Pennsylvania vote. Not even three horrible elections in a row is proving to be decisive.

Meanwhile Democrats have exploited Trump's weakness, and therefore the GOP's, to consolidate power with extraordinary new depth. The new regime of mail-in voting everywhere changes everything. The chain of custody of ballots in voting precincts is broken forever.

It's the end run around representative government we only imagined the National Popular Vote Compact would be. It's the path to pure democracy. It's the end of legislatures, the end of republicanism, and makes the tyranny of the majority and the repression of the minority the new, terrible future.

A Supreme Court in principle deferring to the states on everything from election law to drugs, marriage, abortion, gender, etc. is no bulwark against what's coming, indeed, what's already here.

The people will decide by referendum.

The people be damned.

Michigan House, Senate, Governor's mansion, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Supreme Court all under Democrat control for first time since 1980s

This is what happens when you get 1.8 million votes by mail: a record turnout to surpass the 2018 record turnout.

For the first time in four decades, Democrats are waking up to a state in which their party controls the House and Senate – a feat not done since the early 1980s.

More.

It takes a special kind of stupid Republicanism to screw things up this bad: libertarian Republicanism, for which Michigan is famous.

The key: legislation by referendum of the people instead of by representative government; which yielded 1) easy voting by mail, instead of on election day, for which libertarians are all-in, as they are for abortion, immigration, and free-trade, same as Democrats; and 2) "nonpartisan" redistricting.

Michigan was never a conservative state, and is finished as a Republican state.

Michigan has been irretrievably Californicated in the span of four years.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just lies right out of the box about "longstanding" use of ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin

Isn't that what Election 2020 was all about? Lying? Lying absentee ballots and the lying voters who cast them? And lying media?

It used to be a good newspaper, but those days are long over:

The 4-3 ruling, coming four weeks before statewide primaries Aug. 9, is a win for Republicans who now oppose the longstanding use of ballot drop boxes after their use proliferated during the coronavirus pandemic and was heavily criticized by former President Donald Trump, who alleged with no evidence that absentee voting was rife with fraud and led to his reelection loss in 2020.

Here.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court found that there was no evidence of longstanding use, presented by the Wisconsin Election Commission, or otherwise:

¶65 The record evidence WEC cited does not support its argument that ballot drop boxes have been in common and longstanding use in this state. 

Read the whole thing here.