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My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

portal.drewdevault.com

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Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#111

Post by mindslight »

rayiner wrote: post #101
mindslight wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting between candidates that all support ongoing military actions is not meaningful. It's similar to the treasonous NSA - discussing it is simply outside of the mainstream Overton window, primary candidates who dare touch it are branded "unelectable" etc. Speech gets swamped by mass propaganda. I don't see how it's possible to look at say the run up to the Iraq war and think that antiwar had a meaningful voice. Whe…

If there was any political support for changing the approach to the NSA one of the candidates would back it.

That's tautological. If one of the candidates backed it, there would be more political support for holding the NSA accountable.

Democracy is a closed feedback loop, and thus causality works in both directions. Given the very few bits of input a person has into decisions, it's likely that most influence flows the opposite direction.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#112

Post by giantg2 »

dx87 wrote: post #15

This part seems incorrect: > There are strict laws regulating police and poll workers while the polls are open. Police are not allowed within 100 feet of the polling location, unless they're actively voting or there on official business at the request of the election board. Additionally, anyone working at the polls in an official capacity is not allowed to wear any clothing with political messaging. One of the office…

The real question is, what department allows their on-duty officers to wear non-uniform clothing articles for routine public assignments?

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#114

Post by rodgerd »

dx87 wrote: post #45
sk5t wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously suggesting the "thin blue line" or "back the blue" flags are not political messaging? Lots of folks with different backgrounds and beliefs "support police and military"; however, the bootlick flags are closely tied to just one party.

It's definitely political messaging, but the linked PDF says that political messaging is only banned if it's associated with a specific campaign or candidate.

Only one candidate has had the "Blue lives" flags at their rallys.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#115

Post by jpttsn »

g00gler wrote: post #14
juanbyrge wrote: post #4

While reading this I got a sense that all of these anachronistic processes would not exist if voting would be moved online. So many of the contentious issues we see here (mail-in ballots arriving late, machines not printing receipts, etc..) would simply not exist. Online voting seems like such a simpler approach.

In Pennsylvania there was a web tool via the department of state to check if your mail in ballot was counted. I can picture several ways to do a hybrid (mail + online) election like getting a code in the mail, voting online, then being able to ensure your ballot was counted correctly by using your code. It seems to make a lot more sense than having states count for a week.

Randomizing would be even faster and easier, if you just want incorrect answers in record time.

Voting has a short list of maybe four easily stated requirements. Online voting “solutions” tend to solve one or two, forget about the others, and try to compensate on user experience.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#116

Post by jeffbee »

wnissen wrote: post #58
estebank wrote: post #13

As a non-citizen who had a chance to observe how the process works in California, I was struck by how little emphasis is put in the secrecy of the vote. The whole system looks reasonable except for how easy it can be for poll workers to know what you voted for. Beyond that, the system is clearly geared towards increasing participation and enfranchising as many people as possible (a good thing in a democratic system).

Based on my long experience in California, I have no idea what you could be referring to. I am given ballot(s) in an opaque folder, mark my choices in a booth enclosed on three sides, and feed the ballots into the machine myself. There's no way for a poll worker to observe me making the choices, or the marked ballot. I suppose in theory they could use the order in which people enter to locate a ballot after the fact,…

In my experience, if the machine beeps and spits your ballot out, which it will always do if you don't vote on some of the elections (and I never vote the stuff I don't know about, like school boards) then the poll worker will grab it and try to shove it back in. I don't think they are trying to invade your privacy, they just are trying to be helpful. But, in the end, they aren't respecting the secrecy of my ballot.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#117

Post by caseysoftware »

AGSYS wrote: post #76
Fellshard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what the Thin Blue Line represents.

That's probably what the "oath of enlistment" represents though.

No, the "military oath of enlistment" is LITERALLY the oath of enlistment for the military. As in the US military.

As in the oath that enlisted soliders/marines/sailors say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces_oat...

Anything else or other associations are in your head, not reality.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#118

Post by weed_lol »

sjs382 wrote: post #104
kev009 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it is less incendiary to discuss, what if someone was wearing a Rastafarian style hat in places marijuana bills were on the ballot, is this a conflict?

To avoid the religion argument, let's switch it to a shirt with a big marijuana leaf on it. In that case, yes. Unless the person is a voter in the act of voting.

That's stupid

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#119

Post by weed_lol »

thedream wrote: post #57
dx87 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "thin blue line" flag also doesn't fit any of the banned criteria. You guys are basically saying that supporting police and military is only done by republicans.

Imagine a group of programmers unable to tell the difference between "violates the rules" and "hurts my political feelings"... yikes.

Lol have you read the Contributor Covenant or postmeritocracy.org ?

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#120

Post by weed_lol »

benibela wrote: post #102
thedream wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a group of programmers unable to tell the difference between "violates the rules" and "hurts my political feelings"... yikes.

They just need to check whether the flag is on the whitelist or the blacklist

Careful, with that kind of comment people might think you're a Trump supporter
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