So yesterday we completed our city election which was conducted without any in-person voting. Being on the business end of a "mail-in" election I figured I'd do a debriefing, consider this an Ask Me Anything about mail-in voting.

First, mail-in voting and absentee voting are the same thing, the process is identical. For the benefit of folks that have never voted absentee that process is as follows:

Voters need to complete a form with their voter information and signature and that form serves as an oath swearing that you are who you say you are and that form and your completed ballot are sent in together. When we receive your ballot that oath is checked against the list of registered voters and we check off that the vote has been received and assuming that you are on the list the ballot is then opened and counted. In our county the actual counting is done via optical scanner and the paper ballots are saved in case a recount is needed. We have separate people doing the checking in of voters and doing the scanning, so the check-in people never see the completed ballots and the scanning people never see who the ballot came from in order to keep the votes anonymous.

The one difference between absentee ballots of the past and doing all all-mail election is the volume of ballots you have to process and that does create some logistical headaches. For our little city election we counted 2,077 ballots and split up the process over 4 days - it took us about 17 hours with a 7 person team to do that, that's processing about 122 ballots an hour. For November, if our county gets what it got in 2016 it's going to take 1,347 hours of processing to count them all - now they're obviously going to have more than the 1 team counting votes, but still, that's going to be a multi-day task no matter how you slice it.

Normally absentee ballots are counted after the in-person ballots, but I'm hoping the county is allowed to begin counting them early as we were in order to have timely results. By having 3 processing days before the actual election day we were able to complete the process and announce a result almost immediately after the deadline for receiving votes as we only had to count the last minute voters, the rest were already done.

Potential problems with mail-in voting:

One is user error, about 5% of the ballots we received we were not able to count because we didn't have an oath to go with the ballot and so had no way to check if the ballot actually came from a registered voter. Be sure to read the instructions that come with your absentee ballot and follow them.

The second is relying on the USPS for delivering and receiving votes. The Maryland primary election was plagued by voters not getting their ballots in time. This problem can be mitigated by having pick-up and drop-off locations independent of the postal service. We used 3 drop boxes for ballots so that voters did not need to depend on the mail to get their votes in on time and that seemed to work very well, but I'm sure the city will get a trickle of votes mailed too late for them to count. Do not wait until the last minute to send in your votes!

Despite those two potential problems, the turn-out was amazing, we got 38% and the highest previous in the history of the city was 29%, so having the election be mail-in only definitely did not discourage participation. I'll also say the actual processing of votes went very smoothly, no problems were encountered, but as mentioned above it is slower than in-person voting. Come election day in November there is a very good chance we will not have results the same day.

Things that are not a problem:

Voter fraud. There is very little opportunity for fraud in this process. I suppose someone might be able to try and impersonate another voter, but if that voter also sent in a vote or any of the poll workers know that person then you're going to get caught, and you better believe we'd send that on to the state police. Even if you had a crooked judge there isn't anything they could do as none of us are working independently at any time, plus there are poll watchers observing the process. We had exactly 2 ballots come in that weren't in our poll books - and those might very well be legitimate as we know our poll books were missing last minute registrations (those 2 are not thrown out, they're counted as provisional while the county double checks their registration rolls). We did not have any evidence of anyone trying to vote more than once.

Pandemic safety thoughts. That this is safer than an in-person election is without question. For the voters there is no risk at all as they can complete the process without coming into any physical contact with another person. For us poll workers there is still some danger, we are inside for a prolonged period with other people - but fortunately not many. Most of the time counting workers, poll watchers, and city employees there were 10 people spread out across 2 large rooms, and we were all masked the whole time. Compare that to an in-person polling place which is also inside and the poll workers come into contact with literally thousands of voters, the chance of Covid-19 transmission is obviously going to be higher in-person. Even places that are allowing in-person voting in November I'd encourage you to take advantage of absentee options for the sake of everyone's safety.

Any questions?

It's become pretty clear that the administration are making immigrants public enemy #1. I just want to state unequivocally that immigrants are not the enemy. The people that come are are those that are drawn to America's ideals, they have a more vested interest than anyone in "making America great". Repeated research has shown that the crime rate among immigrants is lower than among non-immigrants. We should be welcoming them, not blaming them for problems that they have nothing to do with.

While I'm at it a shout out to my own immigrant ancestors:
Gus Michul Sr. and Katherine who came from Lithuania in 1905
Frank and Christina Flachbarth who came from Austria-Hungary in 1881
Herbert and Hannah Broome who came from England in 1880
John and Ricky Reinke who came from Germany in 1871
Jacob and Mary Dauwalter who came from Germany in 1865
William and Elizabeth Smith who came from Germany in the 1860's
John Cravener who came from Ireland in the early 1800's
and the Musser, Davis, Waugaman, Learn, Dormeyer, Guyer, and Yockey families that came over from Germany, France, Netherlands, and Switzerland in the 1700's. I'm glad all of them made it and played their part in making America great.

This post inspired by the news that immigration enforcement sweeps have started: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-agents-conduct-sweeping-immigration-enforcement-raids-in-at-least-6-states/2017/02/10/4b9f443a-efc8-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html

So, as previously mentioned, we have primary elections. I'll be voting in the Frederick county Democratic primary. My thoughts on the contested races therein follow.

Governor

Heather Mizeur - is way too awesome to ever actually become our governor. Go check out her campaign site and/or her Wikipedia page. Vote for her.
Anthony Brown - is the establishment candidate and who I expect to win, I don't have anything against him, but don't expect him to do anything other than toe the party line.
Doug Gansler - is a complete asshole, don't vote for him.

( the rest of the candidate list is under the cut )

A few election related links. I'd like to join theferrett in his plea for Republicans to rejoin reality. See also here and here and here on how only listening to a single source of information does not help you, especially when that source repeatedly lies to you. The thing about facts is that they really don't care whether you believe in them or not. I'd really like the Democrats to have an opposition that isn't crazy, but that's just not going to happen as long as said opposition has their heads in the sand. Heck, I'd like there to be a viable opposition to the left of the Democrats, but I know that reality isn't going to support me in that so I'll take what I can get. scaleslea posted a similar sentiment here and minnesattva did here.

In other news, thanks to twitter we can map where the racists are.

Also, Nate Silver facts.

Just in case there was any doubt, Paul Ryan's speech was almost entirely lies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-30/paul-ryan-s-hypocritical-attack-on-barack-obama.html
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106730/ryan-most-dishonest-convention-speech-five-lies-gm-medicare-deficit-medicaid
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/paul_ryan_the_definitive_fact_check/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/aug/29/night-two-tampa-running-mate-and-more/
http://factcheck.org/2012/08/ryans-vp-spin/
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/30/13566768-paul-ryan-stands-on-a-foundation-of-lies

and in the interest of balance (and snark)

http://gawker.com/5939287/seven-inarguably-true-things-in-paul-ryans-speech

Early voting in Maryland starts tomorrow. This message is to registered Democrats in Maryland's 6th Congressional District. So Maryland's redistricting has made this congressional race competitive, there are 12! people running for a chance to defeat Roscoe Tea Party Bartlett. If you're a Democrat your mail box has been flooded by ads from two of those candidates, Robert Garagiola and John Delaney flinging poo at each other. One's a lobbyist, one's a banker, both professional politicians who are complete tools with way more money than they know what to do with. Fortunately they are not the only two in the race. I hereby endorse Milad Pooran for Congress. He's a actual progressive, and the only one in the race with a chance at beating the big money. Read about him on his site or ballotpedia and I'd encourage you to not only vote for him but to fling a few dollars his way to help him get his message out.

One more link, picked up from friends on FB, http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/10/independent-reporting-of.html?m=1 a report of what's actually going on with the protests, makes for quite the contrast to mainstream news reporting.

Just in case there is any doubt I want to say that I'm 100% in support. As a Discordian how could I not? It's the escalation of chaos in action. It is long past time that the right-wing's monopoly on incoherent rage has been broken.

Sadly I don't think it'll turn in to a left-wing counterweight to the Tea Party, the Tea Party has a huge advantage, namely funding. In a feeble attempt to correct that I'd encourage you to donate to OWS - at least order them a pizza or something.

Also awesome: Occupy Sesame Street - it's on!

I haven't posted much the last couple of weeks in part due to being captivated by Egypt. It's rare that non-violent protest and civil disobedience are so spectacularly successful. From the blog I linked to earlier, how Eygpt did it - a good look at factors leading to the protesters success including the groundwork laid and conditions specific to Egypt. A lot of what's discussed there is also probably a good indicator of whether the protests will be successful elsewhere. A similar look from Salon emphasizes the economic clout of the protesters.