03 June 2020

Voting by Mail

I've never missed an election — not even when I was in a longterm care facility. I know more than a little something about voting by mail; the first time I ever voted in person was when I was in law school, because I was away from my designated polling place either gettin' edicated or wearin' da uniform every election day before that. And for half a dozen electoral cycles in there, I served as a Voting Affairs Officer — I assisted military personnel and their dependents in registering to vote (after verifying their addresses), obtaining ballots, and returning ballots, all by mail. So I guess I'm one of Those People who "collected ballots for others" who are thereby presumed to have participated in voting fraud by A Certain Political Party.

Yeah. Right. Voting fraud; and voting suppression is just one variety thereof. Like the attempts following the 1988 election in Certain States with new Heffalump elected supervisors of elections (which is a problem, and source, of voting fraud right there, see Bush v. Gore, and gee that's one of the miscreant jurisdictions) to make it harder for "habitual absentees" like military personnel to even register to vote, let alone get a ballot in a timely manner, let alone get their votes counted. Fortunately, I'm now in an all-voting-by-mail jurisdiction. So at least those barriers won't be an issue.

I observed more voting fraud — both "positive" (as in "dubious eligibility" and "improper influence" and "unlawful electioneering in polling places and even in selection of polling places, let alone hours and personnel allocation") and "negative" (as in "unlawful suppression of legitimate voting rights") in the first two years of in-person voting in Central Illinois — Heffalump country outside the city I was actually in — than at any time up to then. Specifically including tolerance of racially selective purported "voting observers" by the elected (Heffalump) County Clerk… who never questioned the right to vote of certain rich white folk who had changed their legal residences to no-income-tax states years before, but still had business interests in town.

Maybe the arguments that voting fraud is "rampant" in mailed-in voting really concern having elected officials supervising elections, instead of sworn professionals. But that would be allowing reality to intrude upon ideology…