Plunderbund posts this video, by Joe Knapp, of the line for early voting yesterday in Columbus, Ohio, in Franklin County. The good news, such as it is, is that the lines in Ohio at least seem to have moved relatively quickly.
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Holy sheep@!$%#, look at that line! Thank Gawd for CA's mail-in ballot (my vote counts?).. I don't mind the community spirit but the barkers make it seem like a circus although I don't know if they in turn, actually take away from the civic responsibility of voting there. That did not look like an "Rmoney" polling place but then again, it is Ohio, I'll always be surprised! Nice folks I suppose (at least the black people) but I sure as HELL wouldn't want to live there EVER again..
Sounds like someone is not doing their job.
And the person not doing their job is Rick Scott, the Republican governer who is following his Party's pressure (or leading it!) by physically obstructing the voting rights of American citizens. It is criminal. The GOP has become synomomous with villainous corruption. The same thing was attempted in Ohio but GOP voting obstruction efforts were struck down in court. Americans should be made aware of this overt criminal trampling of rights by the Republicans and take action! IF you can physically get to a ballot!
Totally right, Jay. I don't even care if every person having to wait in line is going to vote against my own preferences. It should not be legal for a governor to do this. Everyone has a right to vote, and when thousands are showing us what they have to go through in a state where there is obstruction, it just seems wrong in every way.
Remember who it was that saved your bacon Ohioans, cause only one person wrote "Let Detroit Go Bankrupts" - and his initials aren't BO!
Zora...will you please provide all of us with proof of who the person is that said that? I would love to see a link to the actual quote when it was made. Oh...and BTW, please dont refer me to the editorial that Romney wrote where the headline was made up by one of the newspaper staff.
And also...Didnt GM go through a managed bankruptcy which is exactly what Romney called for in that editorial?
just saying...
We don't need to give you any proof of that. Romney himself wrote the op-ed, which was titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" and it was at the top of the NY Times "most viewed" list, so I'm pretty sure that if you want to see it, it's still easy to google it. However ... apparently Romney wasn't the person who chose that title. That may be true. Let's say it is. He did state that the auto industry should seek "privately financed managed bankruptcy". So it certainly doesn't seem as though that title was wrong. There may have been better choices. But to suggest we need to prove that Romney said it, is just silly.
Honestly, Romney made some good points about what could be done for the auto industry, and (hear this, coming out of the mouth of an Obama supporter) ... the ideas weren't bad ones. Also, Obama pointed out that Romney had said they should go bankrupt and then seek out government help. That wasn't well stated, imo. Romney had said that the government should guarantee private loans.
The difference between what Romney wanted and what Obama did ... is mainly that regardless of Romney's good idea, there WERE no private loans available at the time, because of the global economic problems.
I give Obama a C minus on this one. It was not a bad idea. It likely couldn't have been done, according to a lot of analysts, simply because of the poor timing. But it wasn't the horrible idea that the President tried to make it seem.
Don't pay any attention to stormtrooper, he has an ucanny knack for missing the obvious.
Except for Jim Crow (which was regional and done at the state level), we haven't seen anything to match this current voter suppression drive since the Alien & Sedition Acts in the late 1790s. Up to now, that was our most blatant attempt to use government power to rig the whole electorate. It only took a couple of hundred years for the shame to wear off, huh? And this by what used to call itself the party of Lincoln and now calls itself the party of small government.
Dip $#@> Romney said let the car companys file bankruptcy, then barrow from the banks and private sector. Well there was no money to be barrowed thus BO bailed them out so we would have the auto industry for centurys to come. So yes Obama did save the auto industries!! Not to mention the money circle of the resturants, retail stores and gas companies, who depend on the local paychecks comeing into their towns. Then there are the auto parts stores, steel mills, nuts and bolts comp. prefab materials etc.. the list just goes on and on...
So right, PAW. I don't actually fault what Romney suggested doing. It wasn't a bad plan .. it just simply couldn't have been implemented because at that time global economy was falling into the dumpster.
President Obama did what needed doing. If there had been anything else available, and he'd chosen that route, he'd still have been found "wrong" by TeaPublicans. If we'd been able to pull off what Romney suggested, it would have been derided as well.
I'm watching all these lines and wondering why other states don't do what Oregon does - Vote by Mail! Two weeks ago, I sat with a cup of tea, watching Rachel, and filling out my ballot (with my comprehensive voter manual (which explains all the measures) in the comfort of my couch.
Our local non-profit arranged for an address for the homeless in our town so they could vote easily as well.
Voting is a national right, not a state right. I can't even imagine a voting system like those I'm seeing. Time to change the mess and make it easier for every American to vote!
I've been wondering the same thing. What a pleasure to sit down at the kitchen table with the voter's pamphlet, the League of Women Voters pamphlet, and printouts from the League of Conservation Voters and Planned Parenthood (in honor of Mr. Romney) to make my decisions. I dropped my ballot off at the county courthouse on my way in to work and the phone stopped ringing almost immediately.
This is a sensible way to vote. Turnout was over 70% in 2010 in Oregon. The only voting fraud we've had here so far has come from a county election worker filling in Republican choices in slots voters left blank. (Funny how the ones who keep proclaiming fraud seem to be the party committing most of it...) I wish more Americans had this option.
How does Oregon prevent the wrong people from voting then?
Same way California does. The mail in ballot has a bar code. They run the bar code and it shows a signature. You get to keep a copy of the bar code to make sure your vote gets counted. It certainly beats the long lines in cold weather. Not that CA has cold weather.
That's right. Verification is by signature on a security envelope, which is compared with one on file in a computer. Fraud is always possible, but as our former Secretary of State Phil Keisling recently pointed out, there are more effective ways to steal an election than by risking multiple felony convictions.
I've seen all the lines in the early voting states, but nothing about the states in which the only way to vote early is to vote by absentee ballot. I live in a small town in Missouri, so we aren't likely to have 6-8 hour lines, but what about people who live in Kansas City or St. Louis? There is surely a story to be told about problems in the city. Our legislature started to change the laws to make it harder to vote, but when other states had legal problems, they decided to wait. It probably helped that although our legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, our governor is a Democrat who would probably veto voting laws similar to some that have passed.
Tomorrow, why not check out the lines in St. Louis and Kansas City, since Missouri has not early voting except to cast an absentee ballot. I haven't heard anything about the situation in states like ours.
Thank you Rachel for giving this issue the coverage it so desperately needs. An issue that will needs to be studied, researched, and discussed.
Why is our voting infrastructure outdated and ridden with spoiled gridlock, filth, and fraud? We champion our democracy all over the world at the same time we supress it at home...interesting.
And, in America, with some of the world's best universities, colleges, hospitals, farmlands, and, the most advanced military; furthermore, the technology to make human-face-transplants, artificial hearts, limbs, and just recently demonstrated its technological wizardry by developing, designing, building, and launching a roover to mars millions of miles away......yet, we can't even have a descent voting infrastructure...strange, very strange.
The efforts for earl voting must not stop even tomorrow. If the democrats in these states with voter suppression want to make sure that their voices are not gonna be silenced, they better make sure they break dawn, even camp overnight on the polling places if necessary. People do it all the time to get the latest iGadget, why not for something as important as your vote and the future of our nation? Filling these gigantic ballots will take time and others are counting on that to deter some voters to cast their vote. Turn out in huge numbers, earlier than the rest, know what's in the ballot beforehand, cast your vote quickly and decisively to let your fellow citizens vote... whoever does this will have an edge.
Very proud of Ohio voters to sticking it out. Get out the Vote!
Disgraceful that the Republican secretary of state is trying to steal the election by making it hard for his state to vote. Un-American!! Republicans can't win on their record they have to lie cheat and steal to try to win.