I just got the form to request an absentee ballot. It’s not hard, but I emailed the elections board to ask a question or two.
Part of this gap could be due to the fact that many Black voters and voters of color casting mail ballots are doing so for the first time, and first time vote-by-mail voters tend to make more mistakes because they’re less familiar with the requirements. That’s true in North Carolina, too. Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in North Carolina, compared historical voter records in the state and found that most voters who had their ballot rejected so far voted in person in 2016.
“We’re seeing already a lack of familiarity with the process, whether it’s signing the ballot or having the witness information completed,” Bitzer said. “There tends to be a greater number from voters who were previously in-person voters. If you look at the numbers [from Sept. 14], the ballots denied due to incomplete witness information, 55 percent of those voters had voted in person in 2016.”
That the barrier to entry is hitting voters of color harder than white voters is indicative of broader, systemic issues with enfranchisement.
“When there’s a barrier, it’s going to fall hardest on the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised in the community, which is very frequently going to be poor voters and voters of color,” said Myrna Pérez, the director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
There are many reasons why Trump is outperforming among Hispanic and Black likely voters compared with the typical Republican presidential candidate.
First, it’s hard to beat, prepandemic shutdown, historically low Hispanic and Black unemployment numbers. Trump supports school choice, enabling urban parents in communities of color to decide whether to send their kid to an often-underperforming government school versus taking the public dollars allocated for their kids to a better school option.
Yup.
Second, a lot of Hispanics do not like illegal immigration any more than do non-Hispanics.
Not just Hispanics. A lot of legal immigrants do not like illegal immigration, not when they spent tens of thousands of dollars to get here broke.
Third, the daily and nightly street protests and the protesters’ anti-cop rhetoric help make Trump’s “law and order” pitch look pretty appealing. As for the demand to “defund the police,” a Gallup poll performed June 23 to July 6, 2020, found that the percentage of whites who want police staffing to remain where it is or even increased is very close to the percentage of Blacks who want the staffing to remain where it is or to have it increased, at 88% and 81%, respectively.
People leave chaos and come here. They will vote against chaos.
Chanting protesters in Rochester made their goals clear: “If you don’t give us our s—, we’ll shut s— down.” A Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer defended looting in the city’s Magnificent Mile as “reparations.”
Yeah and some Hispanics come from places where this type of shit is done by paramilitary groups.
Well, buckle up. According to Mapping Police Violence, 30 unarmed Black men were killed in 2019, a monthly average of 2.5. So, we could easily see 2.5 “police brutality” protests per month. According to Statista, 7,407 Blacks were victims of homicide in 2018 – a monthly average of 617. And it is estimated that 90% of Black homicide victims are killed by other Blacks.
And while there is no need to say this again and again on TV, because we all know this. It’s a scandal of epic proportions. But it’s not as catchy as Trumpbaaaaaad.
A good way to alienate swing voters in purple states, as well as highlighting his failures there:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that if you excluded blue states, America’s Covid-19 death numbers would look much better. “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at,” he said at a White House press conference.
There are plenty of problems with this. It implies that the deaths of Americans who live in blue states don’t matter as much to Trump. It suggests that he doesn’t take any responsibility for deaths in the states that have a different political party in charge. And it’s generally absurd for Trump to act as though he’s not the president of the whole country.
But it’s also flatly false: When dividing states based on their 2016 votes for president, 11 of the top 20 states for Covid-19 deaths went for Trump. Overall, blue states fare worse with a death rate of 63 per 100,000 people, but red states still have a relatively high death rate, by global standards, of 40 per 100,000.
To put it another way: If you somehow “take the blue states out” and red states were their own country, they’d still be in the top 20 for Covid-19 deaths worldwide. Blue states would rank in the top 15. Among only developed countries, blue states would be in the top five and red states would be in the top 10.
So I just voted absentee. The guy says in my county, usually they send out about 4600 absentee ballots per Presidential election. Today is the first day they shipped them out. 11,000. On the first day.
Well, I’m guessing the elderly will be a big part of the absentee ballots.
My aunt in Florida has been in her condo for months now. Her sons (my cousins) come and bring her things.
Same with my sister-in-law and her parents in the NW. They’ve been in their (house) retirement community for months. She does all their shopping and delivers stuff to them.
So, not surprising if absentee ballots are up. The elderly are the biggest part of the U.S. population who are self-quarantining.
Four years ago, 279 Arlington voters cast ballots on the first day of early voting. This year, the county said 200 voters had cast early ballots by 9 a.m. Friday and 600 people had voted by noon.
