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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

#221

Post by thedream »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #150
thedream wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing a thing that's "not a good look (according to Spivak)" != a violation of the stated rules Being perceived as "an asshole (according to Spivak)" != a violation of the stated rules Thanks for demonstrating my point so clearly ;]

No, but if you're working at the polls , you shouldn't be trying to push that line absolutely as hard as you can, and then arguing that what you're doing doesn't technically cross it. That isn't the point. The point is, in your official capacity, you're supposed to be neutral . Not "not biased enough to be against the rules". Neutral.

The scenario you described didn't happen.

What did happen was that a poll worker made up their own version of the election guidelines and injected their personal biases related to "specific ballot measures" and the "police organization" into their conduct.

Does that sound neutral?

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#222

Post by newacct583 »

m0zg wrote: post #140
tgb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was literally predicted ahead of time based off the known demographics of the regions and the time it would take to count the ballots in different counties and the expected differences between in-person and mail-in ballots. It's absolutely misinformation to pretend that this is suspicious and should be investigated. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvanias-vote-...

Why is this not happening in non-swing states other than Virginia? And why does Biden's luck improve over time when _only_ mail in ballots are counted?

It is! It's happening right now in NY and CA, which (being big, lazy, and mostly single-party) count their ballots like mollases. Biden's lead there has been steadily and inexorably climbing. And this despite the fact that they are neither swing states nor Virginia.

Can I flip the question around: can you show me a state with late mail ballot counting that is not trending toward Biden? The only exception I can think of is AZ over the past few days, but they're processing primarily provisionals in red counties at this point. The blue counties are done.

Edit: or alternatively, why is Arizona not evidence of fraud by Trump, given that it counted up very rapidly to Biden, leveled off when the early vote was complete, and then began processing different ballots that skewed differently. CLEARLY Trump is cheating with those provisionals, right?

The whole thesis is just silly. Different counties count at different rates. Different populations vote by different mechanisms, and the reported vote over time is an essentially random walk within that space. There's no mechanism by which you'd expect a consistent rate of margin growth. It doesn't even make sense.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#223

Post by ineedasername »

m0zg wrote: post #125

Biden only gets lucky in PA a full day after that if you look at vote share per batch, well after in-person votes are counted, and the later you go, the luckier he gets. The pattern is the same in every swing state except Arizona, and in Virginia as well. If you plot out Edison data that has vote count updates, in "normal" states (both Biden and Trump dominant), things are chaotic initially (when in-person votes are…

In addition to my other comment: Mail votes increasing the Democrats' vote tallies is not unique to PA. If you track the overall popular vote from day to day, you will see it has increased drastically to a degree that far overshadows the late counts of mail votes in the few states that decided this election.

This is because many other states that were not swing states, "red" and "blue", simply aren't getting any attention. But the late counted mail votes in those states have followed the same pattern as PA. If you believe PA is somehow special in this phenomenon, you are wrong.

Finally, if you want to complain about your perception of a problem with late votes skewing things, the cause of that comes down to election laws in PA which prevent processing of such votes until election day, which was a law that PA sought to change so results would be known earlier, but they were blocked in this effort by GOP state legislature.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#224

Post by SuoDuanDao »

weed_lol wrote: post #119
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.

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

Good lord. At least the signatories have made themselves easy to identify.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#225

Post by maxerickson »

nostromo wrote: post #195
maxerickson wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the flag, it's a stylized flag blended with the oath. Which is much more political than a plain flag. A simpler example might be a flag with 52 stars. It's blatantly political, even though it would likely be harder to notice than the hoodie I looked up. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/119415827607659191/ (whether that's the exact same hoodie, who knows, but it matches the description close enough)

He was still wrong though. The ban isn't on anything that might seem vaguely political... gay pride flag, blue line flag, trans flag, UAW hat, etc. They just can't support a candidate or political party.

I'm fine drawing a line for an officer carrying out election duties that goes further than for other people.

They just shouldn't wear anything that puts the election workers in a position where they have to evaluate the political message. I guess that can be tricky if a uniform somehow became partisan though.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#226

Post by jcrawfordor »

giantg2 wrote: post #112
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?

In some jurisdictions --- I don't know how common this is, but it's the case in mine --- uniformed police officers are prohibited from the polling place unless requested by election judges because of the potential that it will create a voter intimidation situation (keep in mind that these law enforcement officers are under the command of one of the people on the ballot). So I would conjecture that some areas may ask police to appear in plainclothes, although here police are simply not present at all unless requested---the county did hire a private security firm to keep an eye on some locations though due to problems during early voting. This is basically because the right to eject someone from the polling place rests with the election judge, not police or security, but they're temporary employees and not trained in deescalation.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#227

Post by ineedasername »

m0zg wrote: post #143
DeRock wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not "lucky" at all, this was an orchestrated outcome. Theres 2 components to this: 1. Mail in ballots were heavily partisan. The president made a point to instruct Republican voters to vote in person, and not by mail. And many other correlated factors (eg. COVID and social distancing has also been heavily politicized, influencing whether a voter would vote in person vs mail in). 2. Mail in ballots were delayed. T…

Did this only happen in swing states and VA though? And why does drift happen _well after_ in-person vote is already counted? And do you have data to support your point #1? Because people claim that, but I don't really see any evidence to support the claim.

Track late vote tallies in other states. They shifted Democratic as well. This is why the popular vote count has shifted by about 2,000,000 votes from around election day, even though the counts in the states getting close attention have shifted only by a fraction of that amount. Data is there to fully support this trend, it is not just a PA, Georgia, etc thing. And point #1 is fully supported by the most trivial search to see what President Trump has been saying about mail voting for months, up to & including attempts to make it harder, leading supporters of President Trump to believe the best way to have their vote be counted was to vote in person.

https://apnews.com/article/14a2ceda724623604cc8d8e5ab9890ed

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#228

Post by thedream »

weed_lol wrote: post #119
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.

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

not a masochist

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#229

Post by Rebelgecko »

tathougies wrote: post #108
mmastrac wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem much different than a "thin blue line" flag. I'd feel the same way as Drew in this situation. If you want to wear a flag, wear a flag.

Thankfully though, in America, it's not up to you or Drew to decide what others can or cannot wear. That is subject only to law, which says you can wear slogans and insignia, but not names of candidates.

Where I live slogans like MAGA hats weren't allowed at polling places

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#230

Post by barumi »

thedream wrote: post #206
raisedbyninjas wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's clear from this thread is that there are a hundred ways to clearly support a candidate that don't break the rules. If you agree with the intention behind the rules don't try to undermine them. If you don't support the ban on electioneering, then be open about it and try to change the policy.

"The intention behind the rules" is a thing that lives in your imagination. It cannot be quantified. That's the point of having written rules. Expecting that poll workers will read and adhere to The Rules as stated isn't some wild fantasy. It's literally what they signed up to do. It's foundational to the idea of an election having any legitimacy at all. It does not require taking a position on "the ban on electionee…

> "The intention behind the rules" is a thing that lives in your imagination.

No, it's pretty straight-forward. There's no healthy democracy that believes that a blatantly partial and biased individual counting the votes generates confidence in the elections being fair and democratic. The whole idea that you can violate such a fundamental principle in such a blatant way is something that goes totally against basic democratic principles.

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