Re: Glenn V. Fell for Lies About Georgia Voting Law

On Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 9:49:57 AM UTC-4, Glenn V. wrote:
> On Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 4:05:11 AM UTC+2, ajohnstone wrote:
> > I've stayed out of this discussion mainly because in the run-up early 
> > voting i saw lines and lines of voters waiting for hours to cast their 
> > ballot. 
> > 
> > I assure you that in the UK, this commitment would not have happened. 
> > 
> > We are accustomed, due to the ample number of polling places, to walk-in 
> > and walk-out, having our names marked off by the temporary-employed 
> > electoral officials from the voters roll, updated by a mail-out to all 
> > households for those eligible to vote to register some months previous and 
> > also frequently and regularly amended, for the main reason that loan 
> > agencies use it to determine the addresses and length of residence of 
> > those applying for credit. As members of the EU, we did have the different 
> > rules for EU-born residents. They could vote in local city and county 
> > elections, the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and the European Parliament 
> > but not in the national General Election. The counting of the votes is 
> > centralized regionally and again it is by paid voluntary staff. 
> > 
> > There are some anomalies due to history. Irish Republican citizens and 
> > those from Malta and Cyprus can vote in the UK General Election if 
> > resident, regardless of their foreign passports. 
> > 
> > I was genuinely impressed by the average American voters determination to 
> > cast his or her ballot. 
> > 
> > But it is not rocket-science to devise an easily operated election process 
> > even under the most trying of circumstances such as faced by India, for 
> > example, which shares the feature of America being a federal union of 
> > individual states but with many additional difficulties complicating 
> > elections even more than any the USA face. 
> > 
> > Trying to solve it on a state-by-state basis i believe is merely a recipe 
> > for failure and will not bring any resolution to the problem of 
> > universality and uniformity. 
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_India
> Agreed. Part of that is what I've been hinting about. These long lines are 
> ridiculous to watch, absolutely embarrassing for the US, and it is, among 
> other things, a question of making the proper resources available in order 
> to have free and fair elections. Most of what you wrote applies also to 
> Scandinavia and I can guarantee that you will never, ever, find those long 
> lines anywhere in Scandinavia.

Long lines are the exception, not the rule. If there is one precinct that 
has a long line, the MSM will find it. If it is in a black neighborhood, 
they will present it as an example of how black people are being 
disenfranchised. If it occurs in a white affluent neighborhood, they will 
ignore it because they can't use it as evidence of the narrative they are 
trying to push. The neighborhood where I resided when I lived in Columbus 
was a mixed race neighborhood. It was majority white when I moved there in 
1979 and by 2001 when I moved out it had become split fairly equally 
between black and white. I suspect it has a black majority now. In the 22 
years I lived and voted there, I never once experienced a long line, even 
in heavy turnout years. My polling place was in a school gym and there 
were 6 voting precincts sharing that space. I never once saw long lines in 
any of them. I doubt I ever waited in line more than 10 minutes no matter 
how heavy the turnout was.

Black precincts are not discriminated against when allocating voting 
machines. In Ohio, each county board consists of two Democrats and two 
Republicans and the allocation of voting machines is done on a bipartisan 
basis. They make the decisions based on numbers of registered voters in a 
precinct and recent turnout at each precinct. Most precincts that use 
voting machines get two but a precinct with heavy turnout in recent 
elections might get a third. The counties will keep a number of voting 
machines in reserve because there is usually going to be some 
malfunctioning machines that will need to be replaced. When that happens, 
it takes some time for the reserve machine to be programmed for the 
location it is being sent to and then delivered and set up so it can be 
used. In the meantime, the lines back up. Voting machine malfunctions are 
rare but a few usually occur every election. They happen in rich, poor, 
black, and white neighborhoods. Malfunctioning machines do not 
discriminate.

My county went back to paper ballots several elections ago. That has 
eliminated the problem with malfunctioning machines. Instead our voting 
"booths" consist of tall pieces of cardboard tri-folded to form three 
sides where the voter can fill out his ballot in secret. Selections are 
made by filling in a circle next to the candidates name or the voters 
choice on issues. When the voter is done, they feed the ballot into a 
machine which reads and tabulates the votes. The ballots are retained in 
the event a manual recount is provided. The advantage of the paper ballots 
is we can have as many as six voters filling out their ballot at one time 
as opposed to when we had just two machines. Long lines are a thing of the 
past. There are pros and cons to using machines vs. paper ballots but I 
suspect that if all counties would return to using paper ballots that can 
be automatically counted, we wouldn't see any more of the long lines.