• AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    If you live in one of these 18 states, sign up for mail in voting and have your ballot for a month so that you can research every name on the ballot. I know what skeletons you have in your closet before I vote for you because of this.

    If you don’t, I would recommend calling your state legislature to get a mail in voting initiative on the ballot.

    https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-18-states-with-all-mail-elections

    Edit: being able to research the candidate’s full history has had me vote for the Republican candidate twice. I couldn’t, in good conscience, vote for the Democratic candidate for Warden last election, because she was the deputy warden of the guy that just got kicked out for having the highest percentage, and possibly raw number, of deaths in his jail for the entire US. The Republican candidate at least had only attempted to cheat on his taxes, so that was an easy choice. The other time was for city council, and the Democrat had run on a campaign of “helping the homeless,” and then voted in every single hostile architecture, and camping ban he could. The Republican was a newbie, so I gave him a shot.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Unpopular opinion: Mail in voting shouldn’t be a thing except in extraordinary circumstances like a pandemic.

      There’s a reason for having a secret ballot. People can vote their conscious without fear of any repercussions from members of their community that might disagree with them.

      Imagine a woman not really liking a party that wants to take away her rights. Her husband is a strong supporter of that party. That woman may vote differently if it’s done privately rather than having to fill out a mail in ballot at the kitchen table with her husband looking over her shoulder.

      Sure it’s a pain in the ass to have to go to polling station, but in that location it can be ensured that everyone is voting privately and how they vote is kept secret from everyone.

      • sandbox@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I get your point, but I think if you weigh up the pros and cons, it’s really not a strong enough justification.

        You could make the same justification to get rid of online banking, for example - and I’d say that a controlling partner can cause much more harm with control over finances than over voting - but hopefully the counter-argument comes clearer into focus from that example.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Thats incredibly dumb take. I have voted mail in for every election in my entire life, for 26 years. Never had an issue and I have only missed a single local election that was fairly inconsequential. Its nice having 2-3 weeks to figure out how you want to vote.

        My office does not allow people to take time off for voting. After seeing people on cnn who were in line at a poll for 16 hours waiting to vote 4 hours from their house, it seems absolutely insane not to do mail in. Unless the goal is to prevent people from voting, that is.