Voting Rights

[Typical Lax Dad]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

[old salt]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

In MD, it is incredibly ez to register & then to vote by mail.

You can register, via motor voter, via the MVA website or DSS if you register for public assistance.

Once registered, you can request a mail in ballot online.
Your address needs to be the same as the one in the MVA or for your EBT card if on public assistance.
You need to enter drivers lic # (if you have one) & last 4 ssn# digits

If you don't have internet access or if this is too complicated, you can go to a library, community center or DSS for internet access & someone to help,

or you can vote early in person, or vote in person at your polling place on election day(s).

How does it work in your state(s) ?

[Typical Lax Dad]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

In MD, it is incredibly ez to register & then to vote by mail.

You can register, via motor voter, via the MVA website or DSS if you register for public assistance.

Once registered, you can request a mail in ballot online.
Your address needs to be the same as the one in the MVA or for your EBT card if on public assistance.
You need to enter drivers lic # (if you have one) & last 4 ssn# digits

If you don't have internet access or if this is too complicated, you can go to a library, community center or DSS for internet access & someone to help,

or you can vote early in person, or vote in person at your polling place on election day(s).

How does it work in your state(s) ?

I walk around the corner…vote and buy baked good from some of the HS clubs…walk back home and then head to the office….last time I saw the parent of one of my son’s soccer teammates checking IDs. Her husband was our architect for home project.

[MDlaxfan76]

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... me-threats

The sky is falling – that's what you may believe about a rash of new election laws being introduced, largely by the GOP, in statehouses across the country. Alternatively, you may think these laws are absolutely crucial to ensure election integrity.

The Conversation's Senior Politics Editor Naomi Schalit interviewed election law scholar Derek Muller about how he sees these new laws. Muller provides a surprisingly sanguine interpretation of what's going on. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

One group has said that “Americans’ access to the vote is in unprecedented peril.” What do you think?

I would not say that. These election bills marginally increase the difficulty for some voters by reducing some of the options, whether it's voting by mail or early voting. But many of these bills also expand voting opportunities, and many of them are tinkering at the margins of expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In some circumstances, voters are no worse off than they were in 2018, and in some circumstances, they are better off. So, while there's a lot of heated rhetoric, I would say the changes to election law so far have been fairly modest.

So, if you compare the new laws to what the status of the laws was before those pandemic era expansions, it’s not that dramatic?

In many states, voting in 2022 and 2024 will not look very much different than it did in 2016. In some cases, there are bigger changes, but many times they're marginal things not obvious to the vast majority of voters.

Critics say these laws make it harder to vote. Are you seeing any evidence of that?

It depends on how we define "harder." Let's pick a law in Iowa. You could request absentee ballots up until 10 or 11 days before the election, and now it's up until 15 days before the election. Is that harder? You can still show up and vote on Election Day, you can still vote early. It's just that the window of opportunity to request an absentee ballot has narrowed.

On the flip side, does it really discourage many voters or prevent them from being able to vote? I think those are the open empirical questions that will have to be asked in the future.

Anything that limits or constrains voting days where they used to exist before does make it marginally harder. But the question is how significant the marginal cost is.

Do these laws have measurable effects on turnout?

I'm not a political scientist, so I'm careful about these kinds of questions. But a lot of the empirical literature is quite mixed. There's some evidence that some kinds of voter identification laws reduce turnout by a point or two. There are others that suggest they have no discernible impact on turnout.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the Department of Justice will scrutinize the wave of new laws and take action on any violations of federal law. What does it mean to have the attorney general say this?

The attorney general can investigate and scrutinize those laws. That's principally the attorney general's power under the Voting Rights Act, to think about initiating claims alleging that the political process is not equally open to participation on the basis of race.

But scrutinizing laws is very different from bringing a lawsuit, and bringing a lawsuit is very different from a court agreeing that the law does have that effect. Complicating matters is the Supreme Court is considering a case about how the Voting Rights Act should be construed – Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. The court might make it actually harder for the Department of Justice to bring those claims in the future. But undoubtedly the department investigating what states are doing will put legislators on their toes to think about how to tailor laws in a way that will not subject them to the department's wrath.

Do we know whether these laws affect election outcomes in terms of partisan politics? The criticism is that "the Republicans are putting measures into law that will help them win elections."

One question is whether it even affects turnout in the first place. Then the next question is, even if it does affect turnout, does it benefit one political party over another?

So it's political parties fighting over this, whether or not it actually has the effects that people think.

Do moves like this actually backfire by upsetting people who feel targeted?

Undoubtedly, actions in North Carolina and Georgia over the last several years significantly mobilized Democratic voters and voters of color to turn out as a kind of backlash. There were significant Democratic victories in North Carolina and Georgia shortly after controversies over voting laws came to the surface. How you measure that backlash is another political science question, but it remains a viable tool for those who oppose the laws to simply mobilize, get out the vote and elect their preferred candidates.

How do these laws comport with the general democratic standard of everyone who is eligible can cast a vote?

We have dramatically expanded opportunities to vote in the last several decades. Early voting was basically nonexistent 20 years ago, no-excuse absentee voting is now the default in many states, several states mail every eligible voter a ballot.

There are benefits to having so many opportunities, but those come with costs: The systems they create are sprawling, they are unwieldy at times, providing many more opportunities for things to go wrong or for people to be skeptical of the outcome. And stretching an election out over six or eight weeks means we're all voting with different kinds of information at the beginning of an election season versus at the end.

In some of these laws, state legislatures' involvement in elections has been increased – although I think the public is not necessarily aware of the involvement of partisans in election administration already. Is that a concern?

Most of our elections are run by partisan officials. Secretaries of state have a Republican or Democratic affiliation, and their role in certifying election results has typically been a pro forma task.

At the same time, especially before the election, there were changes being made by county or state officials, things executive branch officials were doing, that didn't necessarily comport with what the legislature had expressly provided in non-emergency situations, that caused a lot of friction between the legislature and those officials.

So, some of the proposed or enacted laws try to rein in local officials' discretion. In Georgia, the legislature will choose one of the members of the Board of Elections to certify elections, instead of allowing the secretary of state to serve on that board. These tweaks happening in states reduce the amount of discretion that election officials have, or allow the legislature to have some say – not a total say – in that election process. ...

Jeff Davis & Bull Connor = stoking the backlash in GA.

interview of Federalist Society professor with plenty of prior track record.

Here's a dismantling of his prior bogus claims re objections, from a mere law student:

https://dailyiowan.com/2021/01/07/guest ... -the-same/

I think this a case of a smart guy, an expert, who wants to be reasonable and balanced, but doesn't realize that he's being overly generous about the motivations of the right wing. It's not as if he doesn't know...

Here's a very good, very detailed discussion of the voting rights efforts by both sides, including a discussion of the efforts in Congress, which it's clear he would actually find perfectly acceptable...but he then fails to admit that the GOP is entirely opposed to those reasonable, national level standards.

There's a bit of blindness associated with being so studiously "balanced". https://richardhelppie.com/derek_muller/

When you can't refute the facts, attack the source.
Is that law student the best you could do to discredit him ? He doesn't even address the voting laws addressed by the Prof Mueller.
He lamely disagrees with an opinion on an entirely different subject.

You dismiss the Prof as just one of millions of "smart, reasonable & balanced" citizens who don't see the constant sky is falling threats that you do.
First it was the Russian collusion hoax, then Trump as Putin's puppet -- given Ukraine, how's that conspiracy theory look ?

Now, returning to normal, non-emergency election rules is voter suppression. Can't wait to see what's next.

First, who says we can't refute the facts?

Second, the law student was refuting Prof. Muller's assertion that the objections being made on Jan 6 were akin to those made in prior eras by Dems. Not accurate by a long shot, as the student quite correctly pointed out and why. Not at all "lamely", the student nails it.

Muller, IMO, wants to come across as fair and balanced, always trying to equivocate. Sometimes things simply aren't equal and trying to present them as such is actually imbalanced from the truth.

No, I don't see him as someone to be dismissed, simply understood for the perspective he brings. As I said, he's very much an expert in this area, but as such he's definitely tilted to the right...he's not a member of the Federalist Society otherwise.

No, the "collusion" attempt with Russia was real, if largely inept, but the Russian meddling was quite serious, not remotely a "hoax". No matter how much you want to claim otherwise. And yes, "Trump as Putin's puppet" only looks more real now. Not sure how you think otherwise, though I'm certainly willing to listen to your view and explanation.

But here's the thing, you pooh poohed the threat of Putin from the get go, you pooh poohed Trump's fawning over him, Trump's attraction to the kleptocratic ways of Putin. I was very much on the other side of seeing Putin's game plan as serious business, only going to get worse with time. You can't hide behind your distaste for the "euroburghers" in addressing Putin, correct as you may be that Putin has effectively leveraged them and they need to be far more resolved...realpolitic is that Putin in masterful at using asymmetric aggressive tactics, while using all the strategic tools he has, which though limited, happen to mean quite a lot to Europeans' pocketbook interests. But none of that means that America's interests aren't in having a unified, strong NATO alliance and in not giving Putin any quarter to expand his influence outward.

But go ahead and pooh pooh it again...

[MDlaxfan76]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

Note that Salty ignored your question...it's easy in Md (a Democratic dominated state) so it must be easy everywhere I guess...

[Typical Lax Dad]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

Note that Salty ignored your question...it's easy in Md (a Democratic dominated state) so it must be easy everywhere I guess...

Bring back the literacy tests.

[Typical Lax Dad]

The Old Guard hopes to shank her next

[old salt]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

Note that Salty ignored your question...it's easy in Md (a Democratic dominated state) so it must be easy everywhere I guess...

I've answered afan's non-question several times. He just refuses to acknowledge the answer & continues to propose a false choice, equating requested absentee ballots with unsolicited mail in ballots.

I offered how it works in my state & asked others how it works in theirs.

I'm interested to hear how the "voter suppression" rules in GA & TX work in comparison to other states, like MD, DE & NY.

I don't see a big difference in very blue MD. If you don't vote in person, you can request a mail in ballot, verify your address, provide id #'s which replace signature verification. All done online & via your mail box. Sounds similar to TX & GA.

I note how TLD dodged my question. He only addressed voting in person at this polling place.

Regarding Prof Mueller, you dredged up an unrelated red herring article that has nothing to do with voting rights, in which he was accurate nonetheless. You can't refute anything Mueller says with facts, so just you just throw shade on him by condescendingly questioning his pedigree.
If he's not "fair & blanced" point out where & how. You offer no specifics, just innuendo.

[old salt]

No, the "collusion" attempt with Russia was real, if largely inept, but the Russian meddling was quite serious, not remotely a "hoax". No matter how much you want to claim otherwise. And yes, "Trump as Putin's puppet" only looks more real now. Not sure how you think otherwise, though I'm certainly willing to listen to your view and explanation.

But here's the thing, you pooh poohed the threat of Putin from the get go, you pooh poohed Trump's fawning over him, Trump's attraction to the kleptocratic ways of Putin. I was very much on the other side of seeing Putin's game plan as serious business, only going to get worse with time. You can't hide behind your distaste for the "euroburghers" in addressing Putin, correct as you may be that Putin has effectively leveraged them and they need to be far more resolved...realpolitic is that Putin in masterful at using asymmetric aggressive tactics, while using all the strategic tools he has, which though limited, happen to mean quite a lot to Europeans' pocketbook interests. But none of that means that America's interests aren't in having a unified, strong NATO alliance and in not giving Putin any quarter to expand his influence outward.

But go ahead and pooh pooh it again...

If Trump was Putin's puppet, why did Putin wait for Biden as CinC to move on Ukraine.
The EUroburghers have turned their back on Ukraine, after enticing them with the prospect of EU & NATO membership.
They ignored Trump's advice on Nordstream 2 & a switch to LNG, which our mutual E Euro NATO allies all supported.
Trump made NATO stronger. He shamed them into spending more, modernizing, doing more exercises, & joining increased US deployments on NATO's E flank.
What has Biden done ? Blindsided our NATO allies in abandoning Afghanistan, removed any strategic ambiguity about our willingness to defend Ukraine militarily, & negotiated directly with Putin, without NATO at the table. He even raised the possibility of pulling back US troops from NATO's E flank without NATO concurrence. Trump maintained the status quo for 5 years, made Ukraine stronger & beefed up our presence & capability on NATO's E flank. It's all unraveling in Biden's first year.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nation ... -rcna11080
The Biden administration is heading into next week’s talks with Russia still unsure whether Moscow is serious about negotiations, but if so U.S. officials are ready to propose discussions on scaling back U.S. and Russian troop deployments and military exercises in Eastern Europe, a current administration official and two former U.S. national security officials familiar with the planning told NBC News.

The discussions could potentially address the scope of military drills held by both powers, the number of U.S. troops stationed in the Baltic states and Poland, advance notice about the movement of forces, and Russia’s nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in the Russian territory of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania, the sources said.

Merely considering any changes to U.S. military exercises or the American military presence in Eastern Europe could alarm NATO allies in the region, particularly Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Those countries were once dominated by Russia and the former Soviet Union and fear renewed aggression without protection from the U.S. and NATO.

Any negotiations on troop deployments in Central and Eastern Europe would have to include all the countries affected, including NATO members on the alliance’s eastern flank, said William Taylor, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine during the Bush administration and as acting ambassador during the Trump administration.

“They should be at the table,” said Taylor, now with the U.S. Institute of Peace.

[MDlaxfan76]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

Note that Salty ignored your question...it's easy in Md (a Democratic dominated state) so it must be easy everywhere I guess...

I've answered afan's non-question several times. He just refuses to acknowledge the answer & continues to propose a false choice, equating requested absentee ballots with unsolicited mail in ballots.

I offered how it works in my state & asked others how it works in theirs.

I'm interested to hear how the "voter suppression" rules in GA & TX work in comparison to other states, like MD, DE & NY.

I don't see a big difference in very blue MD. If you don't vote in person, you can request a mail in ballot, verify your address, provide id #'s which replace signature verification. All done online & via your mail box. Sounds similar to TX & GA.

I note how TLD dodged my question. He only addressed voting in person at this polling place.

Regarding Prof Mueller, you dredged up an unrelated red herring article that has nothing to do with voting rights, in which he was accurate nonetheless. You can't refute anything Mueller says with facts, so just you just throw shade on him by condescendingly questioning his pedigree.
If he's not "fair & blanced" point out where & how. You offer no specifics, just innuendo.

I voted "by mail" at a drop box in MD.. Georgia has eliminated drop boxes at most locations. I've previously voted by touchscreen with paper generated for checking and audit trail. Georgia has eliminated touchscreen. Most importantly Georgia has set up a partisan controlled interference with the audit process, enabling them to over turn the actual count if they want...and they're going back for more. MD doesn't do that
BS and won't. We have quite reasonable laws and administration, without partisan interference. The GOP is running people in Georgia for various election positions and Sec of State who have explicitly said they'd have not certified Biden's win there...GOP Sec of State Raffensberger is battling that effort...while kowtowing to some of the nonsense...
https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-vo ... 3AO77NGJY/

re Muller, I'd also linked a very detailed discussion with Muller on election laws in specific and commented on my takeaways from that discussion in specific. Did you read that?

BTW, Texas is already far worse than Georgia.

The point that Muller tries to make is that voting rules vary all over the country, and have varied over the decades, though generally have gotten easier and easier to vote freely, yet more securely as technology and processes have improved. He admits that what is happening now is a GOP driven effort to undermine trust in elections, and to use that to roll back various provisions, in numerous states, such that voting is harder, having had an election that not only produced far more voting than any election in US history but which was also very secure and with very little fraud. He doesn't address the disparate impacts on lower income groups, and instead tries to equate this effort with Dem challenges to election integrity in past eras. As if the same. And is if this isn't a big deal.

Instead he focuses on trying to argue that the roll back in access in some states is relatively minimal, compared to the quite draconian parts in other states...in other words, don't get upset about State X, it's better than State Y...though both just made it harder to vote than before...and they're going to keep ratcheting it up in a race to the hard right...

That's why I say his efforts to appear 'fair and balanced' get in the way of calling out this effort as what it actually is, a serious assault on democracy, an attempt to reduce voting rather than increase access. He instead positions this as if if that's an entirely reasonable thing for the GOP to do...It's not...and he should be clear that it's not.

[MDlaxfan76]

No, the "collusion" attempt with Russia was real, if largely inept, but the Russian meddling was quite serious, not remotely a "hoax". No matter how much you want to claim otherwise. And yes, "Trump as Putin's puppet" only looks more real now. Not sure how you think otherwise, though I'm certainly willing to listen to your view and explanation.

But here's the thing, you pooh poohed the threat of Putin from the get go, you pooh poohed Trump's fawning over him, Trump's attraction to the kleptocratic ways of Putin. I was very much on the other side of seeing Putin's game plan as serious business, only going to get worse with time. You can't hide behind your distaste for the "euroburghers" in addressing Putin, correct as you may be that Putin has effectively leveraged them and they need to be far more resolved...realpolitic is that Putin in masterful at using asymmetric aggressive tactics, while using all the strategic tools he has, which though limited, happen to mean quite a lot to Europeans' pocketbook interests. But none of that means that America's interests aren't in having a unified, strong NATO alliance and in not giving Putin any quarter to expand his influence outward.

But go ahead and pooh pooh it again...

If Trump was Putin's puppet, why did Putin wait for Biden as CinC to move on Ukraine.
The EUroburghers have turned their back on Ukraine, after enticing them with the prospect of EU & NATO membership.
They ignored Trump's advice on Nordstream 2 & a switch to LNG, which our mutual E Euro NATO allies all supported.
Trump made NATO stronger. He shamed them into spending more, modernizing, doing more exercises, & joining increased US deployments on NATO's E flank.
What has Biden done ? Blindsided our NATO allies in abandoning Afghanistan, removed any strategic ambiguity about our willingness to defend Ukraine militarily, & negotiated directly with Putin, without NATO at the table. He even raised the possibility of pulling back US troops from NATO's E flank without NATO concurrence. Trump maintained the status quo for 5 years, made Ukraine stronger & beefed up our presence & capability on NATO's E flank. It's all unraveling in Biden's first year.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nation ... -rcna11080
The Biden administration is heading into next week’s talks with Russia still unsure whether Moscow is serious about negotiations, but if so U.S. officials are ready to propose discussions on scaling back U.S. and Russian troop deployments and military exercises in Eastern Europe, a current administration official and two former U.S. national security officials familiar with the planning told NBC News.

The discussions could potentially address the scope of military drills held by both powers, the number of U.S. troops stationed in the Baltic states and Poland, advance notice about the movement of forces, and Russia’s nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in the Russian territory of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania, the sources said.

Merely considering any changes to U.S. military exercises or the American military presence in Eastern Europe could alarm NATO allies in the region, particularly Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Those countries were once dominated by Russia and the former Soviet Union and fear renewed aggression without protection from the U.S. and NATO.

Any negotiations on troop deployments in Central and Eastern Europe would have to include all the countries affected, including NATO members on the alliance’s eastern flank, said William Taylor, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine during the Bush administration and as acting ambassador during the Trump administration.

“They should be at the table,” said Taylor, now with the U.S. Institute of Peace.

First, Putin is motivated by domestic politics, could give a darn about Ukraine for any other reason. He needs to bolster his position domestically, given an absolutely disastrous mismanagement of COVID and brutally bad economy...so he needs the bogeyman of the west/US again.

Timing wasn't right before, and he was already succeeding in a disoriented, dis-unified NATO, coming apart at the seams. Which is his primary intent beyond domestic politics, to weaken NATO, and Trump was helping him do so. And Trump was elevating Putin on the world stage, again to Putin's domestic benefit. Pre-Covid. Over the past year, he's seen NATO coming back together in a unified position and, so, this move became more likely to bear fruit sooner rather than later. He knows that the US domestic politics are such that no one wants another hot war, so he's likely to get what he wants with Ukraine in a cake walk...or at least that's the posture. Now, whether NATO really has its back up and unified, as some are claiming, and will act heavily on the economic front, we really don't know...

If I had to bet, Putin will take a big swath of Ukraine and effectively keep the Ukrainian government from ever really get a full footing...they'll attack with cyber, by air and likely roll forward on the ground (that latter needs to happen in next 60 days). It's possible they won't go the ground route and just batter from the air plus cyber.

I think that could end Nord 2, though...which is gonna hurt Europe a lot economically as well.

It's a mess for sure...blame Putin.

[Typical Lax Dad]

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?

Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.

Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.

A farce.

Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.

LOL….we need more participation not less. How did your Voter Fraud Commission work out? You can just say that you want less voter participation. It would be more truthful.

Note that Salty ignored your question...it's easy in Md (a Democratic dominated state) so it must be easy everywhere I guess...

I've answered afan's non-question several times. He just refuses to acknowledge the answer & continues to propose a false choice, equating requested absentee ballots with unsolicited mail in ballots.

I offered how it works in my state & asked others how it works in theirs.

I'm interested to hear how the "voter suppression" rules in GA & TX work in comparison to other states, like MD, DE & NY.

I don't see a big difference in very blue MD. If you don't vote in person, you can request a mail in ballot, verify your address, provide id #'s which replace signature verification. All done online & via your mail box. Sounds similar to TX & GA.

I note how TLD dodged my question. He only addressed voting in person at this polling place.

Regarding Prof Mueller, you dredged up an unrelated red herring article that has nothing to do with voting rights, in which he was accurate nonetheless. You can't refute anything Mueller says with facts, so just you just throw shade on him by condescendingly questioning his pedigree.
If he's not "fair & blanced" point out where & how. You offer no specifics, just innuendo.

I didn’t “dodge” anything. My point is that I favor any action that makes it easier to vote. What does that have to do with what my state allows?…..You favor more restrictive measures. Why? What did Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission find? What has every other study found regarding the incidence of voter fraud? Of all the issues we have in this country, voter fraud is your concern? What happened to illegal immigrants? There is hope that the 1950s return.

[old salt]

The point that Muller tries to make is that voting rules vary all over the country, and have varied over the decades, though generally have gotten easier and easier to vote freely, yet more securely as technology and processes have improved. He admits that what is happening now is a GOP driven effort to undermine trust in elections, and to use that to roll back various provisions, in numerous states, such that voting is harder, having had an election that not only produced far more voting than any election in US history but which was also very secure and with very little fraud. He doesn't address the disparate impacts on lower income groups, and instead tries to equate this effort with Dem challenges to election integrity in past eras. As if the same. And is if this isn't a big deal.

Instead he focuses on trying to argue that the roll back in access in some states is relatively minimal, compared to the quite draconian parts in other states...in other words, don't get upset about State X, it's better than State Y...though both just made it harder to vote than before...and they're going to keep ratcheting it up in a race to the hard right...

That's why I say his efforts to appear 'fair and balanced' get in the way of calling out this effort as what it actually is, a serious assault on democracy, an attempt to reduce voting rather than increase access. He instead positions this as if if that's an entirely reasonable thing for the GOP to do...It's not...and he should be clear that it's not.

I read both links to Mueller in their entirety. I do not recall --> " He admits that what is happening now is a GOP driven effort to undermine trust in elections, and to use that to roll back various provisions, in numerous states, such that voting is harder, "

He points out that rules were relaxed & changed for 2020 because of the pandemic & that some states are returning to some pre-pandemic rules.
He was not as negative as you. He pointed out that overall, they remain less restrictive than pre-pandemic & that voting is still easier than pre-pandemic.

He's accurate when says the roll back on access is minimal. You provide no specifics on how & where things are more restrictive than they were pre-pandemic.

You used a drop box in MD ? Do you not have access to a mail box or you don't trust the USPS ?

[old salt]

Of all the issues we have in this country, voter fraud is your concern? What happened to illegal immigrants?

Relax. Illegal immigrants are getting the vote.

[CU88]

January 16, 2022
Heather Cox Richardson

Republicans say they oppose the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act because it is an attempt on the part of Democrats to win elections in the future by “nationalizing” them, taking away the right of states to arrange their laws as they wish. Voting rights legislation is a “partisan power grab,” Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) insists.

In fact, there is no constitutional ground for opposing the idea of Congress weighing in on federal elections. The U.S. Constitution establishes that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”

There is no historical reason to oppose the idea of voting rights legislation, either. Indeed, Congress weighed in on voting pretty dramatically in 1870, when it amended the Constitution itself for the fifteenth time to guarantee that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In that same amendment, it provided that “[t]he Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

It did so, in 1965, with “an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution,” otherwise known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law designed to protect the right of every American adult to have a say in their government, that is, to vote. The Supreme Court gutted that law in 2013; the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act is designed to bring it back to life.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a response to conditions in the American South, conditions caused by the region’s descent into a one-party state in which white Democrats acted as the law, regardless of what was written on the statute books.

After World War II, that one-party system looked a great deal like that of the race-based fascist system America had been fighting in Europe, and when Black and Brown veterans, who had just put their lives on the line to fight for democracy, returned to their homes in the South, they called those similarities out.

Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York had been far too progressive on racial issues for most southern Democrats, and when Harry S. Truman took office after FDR’s death, they were thrilled that one of their own was taking over. Truman was a white Democrat from Missouri who had been a thorough racist as a younger man, quite in keeping with his era’s southern Democrats.

But by late 1946, Truman had come to embrace civil rights. In 1952, Truman told an audience in Harlem, New York, what had changed his mind.

"Right after World War II, religious and racial intolerance began to show up just as it did in 1919,” he said. ”There were a good many incidents of violence and friction, but two of them in particular made a very deep impression on me. One was when a Negro veteran, still wearing this country's uniform, was arrested, and beaten and blinded. Not long after that, two Negro veterans with their wives lost their lives at the hands of a mob.”

Truman was referring to decorated veteran Sergeant Isaac Woodard, who was on a bus on his way home from Georgia in February 1946, when he told a bus driver not to be rude to him because “I’m a man, just like you.” In South Carolina, the driver called the police, who pulled Woodard into an alley, beat him, then arrested him and threw him in jail, where that night the police chief plunged a nightstick into Woodard’s eyes, permanently blinding him. The next day, a local judge found Woodard guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him $50. The state declined to prosecute the police chief, and when the federal government did—it had jurisdiction because Woodard was in uniform—the people in the courtroom applauded when the jury acquitted him, even though he had admitted he had blinded the sergeant.

Two months after the attack on Woodard, the Supreme Court decided that all-white primaries were unconstitutional, and Black people prepared to vote in Georgia’s July primaries. Days before the election, a mob of 15 to 20 white men killed two young Black couples: George and Mae Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom. Malcom had been charged with stabbing a white man and was bailed out of jail by Loy Harrison, his white employer, who had with him in his car both Malcom’s wife, who was seven months pregnant, and the Dorseys, who also sharecropped on his property.

On the way home, Harrison took a back road. A waiting mob stopped the car, took the men and then their wives out of it, tied them to a tree, and shot them. The murders have never been solved, in large part because no one—white or Black—was willing to talk to the FBI inspectors Truman dispatched to the region. FBI inspectors said the whites were "extremely clannish, not well educated and highly sensitive to 'outside' criticism,” while the Blacks were terrified that if they talked, they, too, would be lynched.

The FBI did uncover enough to make the officers think that one of the virulently racist candidates running in the July primary had riled up the assassins in the hopes of winning the election. With all the usual racial slurs, he accused one of his opponents of being soft on racial issues and assured the white men in the district that if they took action against one of the Black men, who had been accused of stabbing a white man, he would make sure they were pardoned. He did win the primary, and the murders took place eight days later.

Songwriters, radio announcers, and news media covered the cases, showing Americans what it meant to live in states in which law enforcement and lawmakers could do as they pleased. When an old friend wrote to Truman to beg him to stop pushing a federal law to protect Black rights, Truman responded: “I know you haven’t thought this thing through and that you do not know the facts. I am happy, however, that you wrote me because it gives me a chance to tell you what the facts are.”

“When the mob gangs can take four people out and shoot them in the back, and everybody in the country is acquainted with who did the shooting and nothing is done about it, that country is in pretty bad fix from a law enforcement standpoint.”

“When a Mayor and City Marshal can take a…Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out…his eyes, and nothing is done about it by the State authorities, something is radically wrong with the system.”

In his speech in Harlem, Truman explained that “t is the duty of the State and local government to prevent such tragedies.” But, as he said in 1947, the federal government must “show the way.” We need not only “protection of the people against the Government, but protection of the people by the Government.”

Truman’s conversion came in the very early years of the Civil Rights Movement, which would soon become an intellectual, social, economic, and political movement conceived of and carried on by Black and Brown people and their allies in ways he could not have imagined in the 1940s.

But Truman laid a foundation for what came later. He recognized that a one-party state is not a democracy, that it enables the worst of us to torture and kill while the rest live in fear, and that “[t]he Constitutional guarantees of individual liberties and of equal protection under the laws clearly place on the Federal Government the duty to act when state or local authorities abridge or fail to protect these Constitutional rights.”

That was true in 1946, and it is just as true today.

—

Notes:

Congress also adopted the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919 and sent it off to the states for ratification, which it received in 1920. The 19th has the same language as the 15th but covers sex: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex,” an article Congress has power to enforce.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Of all the issues we have in this country, voter fraud is your concern? What happened to illegal immigrants?

Relax. Illegal immigrants are getting the vote.

LOL



Caller ID will get you every time.

[Typical Lax Dad]

January 16, 2022
Heather Cox Richardson

Republicans say they oppose the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act because it is an attempt on the part of Democrats to win elections in the future by “nationalizing” them, taking away the right of states to arrange their laws as they wish. Voting rights legislation is a “partisan power grab,” Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) insists.

In fact, there is no constitutional ground for opposing the idea of Congress weighing in on federal elections. The U.S. Constitution establishes that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”

There is no historical reason to oppose the idea of voting rights legislation, either. Indeed, Congress weighed in on voting pretty dramatically in 1870, when it amended the Constitution itself for the fifteenth time to guarantee that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In that same amendment, it provided that “[t]he Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

It did so, in 1965, with “an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution,” otherwise known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law designed to protect the right of every American adult to have a say in their government, that is, to vote. The Supreme Court gutted that law in 2013; the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act is designed to bring it back to life.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a response to conditions in the American South, conditions caused by the region’s descent into a one-party state in which white Democrats acted as the law, regardless of what was written on the statute books.

After World War II, that one-party system looked a great deal like that of the race-based fascist system America had been fighting in Europe, and when Black and Brown veterans, who had just put their lives on the line to fight for democracy, returned to their homes in the South, they called those similarities out.

Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York had been far too progressive on racial issues for most southern Democrats, and when Harry S. Truman took office after FDR’s death, they were thrilled that one of their own was taking over. Truman was a white Democrat from Missouri who had been a thorough racist as a younger man, quite in keeping with his era’s southern Democrats.

But by late 1946, Truman had come to embrace civil rights. In 1952, Truman told an audience in Harlem, New York, what had changed his mind.

"Right after World War II, religious and racial intolerance began to show up just as it did in 1919,” he said. ”There were a good many incidents of violence and friction, but two of them in particular made a very deep impression on me. One was when a Negro veteran, still wearing this country's uniform, was arrested, and beaten and blinded. Not long after that, two Negro veterans with their wives lost their lives at the hands of a mob.”

Truman was referring to decorated veteran Sergeant Isaac Woodard, who was on a bus on his way home from Georgia in February 1946, when he told a bus driver not to be rude to him because “I’m a man, just like you.” In South Carolina, the driver called the police, who pulled Woodard into an alley, beat him, then arrested him and threw him in jail, where that night the police chief plunged a nightstick into Woodard’s eyes, permanently blinding him. The next day, a local judge found Woodard guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him $50. The state declined to prosecute the police chief, and when the federal government did—it had jurisdiction because Woodard was in uniform—the people in the courtroom applauded when the jury acquitted him, even though he had admitted he had blinded the sergeant.

Two months after the attack on Woodard, the Supreme Court decided that all-white primaries were unconstitutional, and Black people prepared to vote in Georgia’s July primaries. Days before the election, a mob of 15 to 20 white men killed two young Black couples: George and Mae Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom. Malcom had been charged with stabbing a white man and was bailed out of jail by Loy Harrison, his white employer, who had with him in his car both Malcom’s wife, who was seven months pregnant, and the Dorseys, who also sharecropped on his property.

On the way home, Harrison took a back road. A waiting mob stopped the car, took the men and then their wives out of it, tied them to a tree, and shot them. The murders have never been solved, in large part because no one—white or Black—was willing to talk to the FBI inspectors Truman dispatched to the region. FBI inspectors said the whites were "extremely clannish, not well educated and highly sensitive to 'outside' criticism,” while the Blacks were terrified that if they talked, they, too, would be lynched.

The FBI did uncover enough to make the officers think that one of the virulently racist candidates running in the July primary had riled up the assassins in the hopes of winning the election. With all the usual racial slurs, he accused one of his opponents of being soft on racial issues and assured the white men in the district that if they took action against one of the Black men, who had been accused of stabbing a white man, he would make sure they were pardoned. He did win the primary, and the murders took place eight days later.

Songwriters, radio announcers, and news media covered the cases, showing Americans what it meant to live in states in which law enforcement and lawmakers could do as they pleased. When an old friend wrote to Truman to beg him to stop pushing a federal law to protect Black rights, Truman responded: “I know you haven’t thought this thing through and that you do not know the facts. I am happy, however, that you wrote me because it gives me a chance to tell you what the facts are.”

“When the mob gangs can take four people out and shoot them in the back, and everybody in the country is acquainted with who did the shooting and nothing is done about it, that country is in pretty bad fix from a law enforcement standpoint.”

“When a Mayor and City Marshal can take a…Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out…his eyes, and nothing is done about it by the State authorities, something is radically wrong with the system.”

In his speech in Harlem, Truman explained that “t is the duty of the State and local government to prevent such tragedies.” But, as he said in 1947, the federal government must “show the way.” We need not only “protection of the people against the Government, but protection of the people by the Government.”

Truman’s conversion came in the very early years of the Civil Rights Movement, which would soon become an intellectual, social, economic, and political movement conceived of and carried on by Black and Brown people and their allies in ways he could not have imagined in the 1940s.

But Truman laid a foundation for what came later. He recognized that a one-party state is not a democracy, that it enables the worst of us to torture and kill while the rest live in fear, and that “[t]he Constitutional guarantees of individual liberties and of equal protection under the laws clearly place on the Federal Government the duty to act when state or local authorities abridge or fail to protect these Constitutional rights.”

That was true in 1946, and it is just as true today.

—

Notes:

Congress also adopted the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919 and sent it off to the states for ratification, which it received in 1920. The 19th has the same language as the 15th but covers sex: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex,” an article Congress has power to enforce.

[a fan]

I've answered afan's non-question several times.

No you haven't. You haven't answered it even once.

If it's as easy as you claim to jump the hurdles to register to vote, and vote in person, ID in hand.

Why isn't there a single Republican run State that is voter in person only, excepting the military?


I've asked, oh, about a dozen times. And each time, you find a way to not answer a simple, direct question

[NattyBohChamps04]

A Florida Republican who was defeated by 59 percentage points in a congressional special election won't concede

The Republican candidate was a confederate-flag tattooed convicted felon running to protect the USA from "socialism, or worse, communism."

"Now they called the race — I did not win, so they say, but that does not mean that they lost either, it does not mean that we lost," the Republican told CBS after the race was called.

Before the polls closed for the special election, Mariner filed a lawsuit alleging ballot issues in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the two populous Democratic-leaning jurisdictions that anchor the district.

"We'll also have some stuff coming out that we've recently discovered," Mariner told the TV station without elaborating.

You had that crazy (R) Klacik lady in Maryland losing a congressional seat by 40 points and claiming fraud and the crazy (R) Culp guy in Washington losing the governorship by 13 points claiming fraud among others.

Welcome to the new normal. Thanks, guys!

[a fan]

Wrong -- I said it's as ez as speeding, did not comment on frequency. Like speeding, it's not possible to determine frequency with certainty.

You didn't comment on the frequency? What the F do you think "it's not possible to determine the frequency with certainty" is doing?

You're telling us that it's not possible to find fraud. Is the idea here to get more and more ridiculous, while at the same time, you think you're getting more reasonable?

You know that ballots are thrown out in every County in America, right? And every County has a post election audit.

You know, it's as if our democracy depended on it.


But please, by all means, keep telling America's nutjobs our elections are fake. It's working out sooper-awesome. You and your pals think this stupid game will only benefit Republicans.