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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

#301

Post by weci2i »

moduspol wrote: post #178
ddevault wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the differences?

I voted in Allegheny County. We filled in bubbles on paper, and then at the end, put our ballots in what looked like a scantron machine. It had a screen with a simple confirmation message (something like "thank you for voting") that lit up after it scanned your ballot. I also wasn't asked my party affiliation.

I’m in PA - Lancaster county voter here. My experience matches yours with the scantron. We had no digital option this election, though we did in the last. Two people worked the books at our polling place.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#302

Post by u801e »

ebg13 wrote: post #245
u801e wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of things that people do online without really understanding how it works, but they still do it. Online voting could be done securely over the network and could be authenticated with a certificate associated with one's voter registration that's anonymized in a way that doesn't reveal any information about the voter other than whether they have already voted. Also, it can be an option in addition to v…

> Online voting could be done securely over the network and could be authenticated with a certificate associated with one's voter registration that's anonymized in a way that doesn't reveal any information about the voter other than whether they have already voted. There's a lot of handwaving in this sentence about what can be done. We can't even secure computers when the fate of the entire world _doesn't_ depend on…

> We can't even secure computers when the fate of the entire world _doesn't_ depend on it.

This is hyperbole at best. In most cases, international policy does not change all that much regardless of what major party member happens to be president of the US.

> I'm not terribly worried about the consequences of someone filing my taxes for me.

Unless you have taken the time to fine tune your payments such that you don't receive a refund or owe a significant tax payment, then someone else filing can effectively get your refund, or put information in there that can land you legal trouble or have you owe a significant payment when you actually do not. That said, we have been able to file taxes online for many years now. It would be nice if we could get with the times and do the same for voting.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#303

Post by weci2i »

sam36 wrote: post #213

I'm curious where everyone is getting their "news" at. For one, the "blue wave" of mail in ballots is a myth: https://i.imgur.com/LIX2cwQ.jpg Two: No one is really questioning the machines not "working right". It is clear that there is no validation with the mail in ballots. MIB's are some of the most rejected ballots there are, yet no one seems to have any stats on this, or the stats provided are very low. Then you…

My parents in PA received a mail in ballot for my grandfather. He has been dead over 7 years. Not only is he dead, he never lived with my parents at their address. I keep checking the status of his mail in ballot online to ensure that he hasn’t voted.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#304

Post by bigbizisverywyz »

andrewem wrote: post #258
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…

Speaking of not being allowed to enter a polling place wearing curtain clothes: "Since Tuesday, she has become known as the “Topless Voter.” The woman, who ripped off her T-shirt after objections that it was too political to wear inside the Exeter polls, said she has no regrets. “I said, ‘Well then, can I vote naked?’ He turned to me and said, ‘If you want to.’ So I took off my shirt,” she said. She said she kept on…

"The woman said she has always been supportive of efforts like New Hampshire’s “Free the Nipple” campaign, though she doesn’t actively participate in such movements."

Aha! Even more electioneering - where does it end with this woman? :)

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#305

Post by thedream »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #284
thedream wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. It cannot be quantified. That's the point of having written rules. The intention is important because not all rules can be quantified. Language is subjective and words are often ambiguous.

It's almost as if someone anticipated this phenomenon and created a section in the guidelines to further clarify and provide examples of disallowed behavior...

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#306

Post by jakelazaroff »

thedream wrote: post #305
jakelazaroff wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. The intention is important because not all rules can be quantified. Language is subjective and words are often ambiguous.

It's almost as if someone anticipated this phenomenon and created a section in the guidelines to further clarify and provide examples of disallowed behavior...

Clarification and examples do not make an inherently qualitative thing quantifiable.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#307

Post by jki275 »

giantg2 wrote: post #109
ddevault wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a universally held belief.

Perhaps those with a contrary belief should review the UMJC, which restricts political statements/actions for military members, even off duty.

You're talking about the Hatch Act I presume. The UCMJ doesn't get into that that I'm aware of.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#308

Post by thedream »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #306
thedream wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if someone anticipated this phenomenon and created a section in the guidelines to further clarify and provide examples of disallowed behavior...

Clarification and examples do not make an inherently qualitative thing quantifiable.

Indeed. So when a poll worker deviates from the stated rules, it necessitates investigating why that happened (and deciding if such a deviation was proper).

What an amazing coincidence it is that this poll worker just so happened to deviate from the guidelines in a way that aligns with their admitted personal opinions and biases!

If you believe (ab)using language to conflate "political party" with "political entity" is proper, does that belief extend to the other 51 cases of "political party" found in the guidelines? Or just the single case that aligns with your biases?

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#309

Post by radford-neal »

This account expresses the idea that voter fraud would be very difficult to carry out in Pennsylvania - at least with respect to in-person election day voting (it doesn't seem relevant to claims of fraud with mail-in voting).

However, this link describes a guilty plea of someone convicted of doing just that:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/us-attorney-william-m-m...

So it would be interesting to reconcile this. One possibility is that procedures vary across the state, as some other comments here might indicate. Another is that the system the author participated in isn't actually as immune to fraud as he thinks.

Re: My experience as a poll worker in Pennsylvania

#310

Post by newacct583 »

BrandonMarc wrote: post #244
newacct583 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems likely that if the national response to covid had tracked with, say, the NY State response, that yes: we'd have seen far fewer deaths. The first 60-100k, mostly in the northeast, probably couldn't have been saved. The initial outbreak happened too fast and too hard. But after that, NY has been flat. They controlled it. The same could have been true for the rest of the country, yet we collectively chose not t…

The NY state response included sending sick patients into nursing homes. Had other states done that uniformly we'd have even more deaths, not fewer.

That happened in March and April, and obviously it was a mistake. But they controlled it, is the point. Their response after the initial wave has been excellent.

But it's a silly digression anyway. If you don't think NY is a good example, then pick Oregon. Or Canada. Or Germany. The point is that lots of large-scale responses of the form a "typical" democratic administration would have taken have very clearly been effective. While the US response, nationally, has not.

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