I described the process; I'll guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Heck, Ricky I make little errors all the time typing comments on my I-phone. But you gotta admit that misspelling pedantic (even as a result of a typo) is kinda funny.

http://www.definition.com.co/pendantic.html

Not to be pedantic, but your incorrect spelling and then blaming the spell check on your poor usage is the a personal issue in this case.

I disagree that everyone having to provide ID is a problem, especially when it is a free card that can be received. It has been said that Texas is too large for everyone to be able to go to the DMV, or the County offices. How about Rhode Island? Do you think ID would be OK in that case if it were offered by the State? Connecticut? Delaware?

To return to the topic:

Votes for President are actually votes for a team of running mates, both for President and Vice President. So, if a party's presidential nominee were to die during the general election season, the votes would still count for the nominee for V.P., who would essentially be promoted to become the presidential nominee. At the least, this is the simplest way of dealing with the problem.

I believe that the closest we came to this in American history was in 1968, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated during the primary election season, while he was the front runner for the Democratic nomination. But that was before the convention, so he was not the official nominee.

Bob

king

Votes for President are actually votes for a team of running mates, both for President and Vice President. So, if a party's presidential nominee were to die during the general election season, the votes would still count for the nominee for V.P., who would essentially be promoted to become the presidential nominee. At the least, this is the simplest way of dealing with the problem

This is only true after the Electors have voted, and before the swearing in of the President.
Before the General Election:

Since the time of Andrew Jackson's run for the presidency in 1828, individual political parties have had the job of filling any vacancy on their national ticket, either that of their presidential or vice-presidential candidate. If one of their candidates vacates the ticket after they are nominated, either because of death or withdrawal, the party selects a replacement.

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have rules in their bylaws governing how to fill the vacancy. The Party Chair calls a meeting of the National Committee, and the Committee members at the meeting vote to fill the vacancy on the ticket. A candidate must receive a majority of the votes to win the party's nod.

The same process would happen if the vacancy were to occur after the general election but before the Electoral College voting. If a vacancy should occur on the winning ticket, it would then be the party's responsibility to fill it and provide a candidate for whom their electors could vote

.
source:
http://teachinghistory.org/history-cont ... rian/20431

bbauska

I disagree that everyone having to provide ID is a problem, especially when it is a free card that can be received. It has been said that Texas is too large for everyone to be able to go to the DMV, or the County offices.

And yet the courts in Texas and NC disagree and say it is a problem...
Thats also not exactly what the 5th circuit court of appeals said when they invalidated the law. In fact its not a fair characterization at all...

Texas Voter ID Law Violates Voting Rights Act, Court Rules
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/20 ... -voter-id/

Voter ID would be okay if it were free, fairly easy to obtain, and there was a national standard. And if there was a way to ensure those who show up without the specific ID could vote if they had qualified witnesses to vouch for them or sufficient alternative IDs...

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have rules in their bylaws governing how to fill the vacancy. The Party Chair calls a meeting of the National Committee, and the Committee members at the meeting vote to fill the vacancy on the ticket. A candidate must receive a majority of the votes to win the party's nod.

The same process would happen if the vacancy were to occur after the general election but before the Electoral College voting. If a vacancy should occur on the winning ticket, it would then be the party's responsibility to fill it and provide a candidate for whom their electors could vote

After a hiatus I've decided to pop my head back in.

A fictional book called The People's Choice discussed this. The president/VP won by a narrow margin, about 30 electoral votes, then three days later fell off his horse during a parade and died from complications. Everyone assumes "Oh ****, Teddy Block [the VP-elect] is going to be our president!" A special session of the Republican National Committee met to "elevate" Block to the Presidency-elect, nominated some ineffectual, oddball congressman from Rhode Island as VP-elect, and instructed the electors to vote for Theodore Pinckney Block for President and congressman Sherwood Phelps for Vice-President. Pretty straightforward.

Well, actually no. One of the delegates, a Michigan elector, says "point of order!" and explains to the assembly of party faithful that that's actually illegal. The election, she points out, is over; 538 electors have already been elected, a majority of them with instructions to vote for MacArthur Foyle for President and Theodore Block for Vice-President, not for President; and that the only obligation the RNC could put the electors under is to vote for Block for VP, as per those instructions.

Turns out that in that situation, the presidency was more or less up for grabs. (One chapter began with the sentence: "...the opening bell rang for what historians would come to call "The Great Turkish Bazaar"." The electors started openly buying and selling their votes by the middle of the book.) Remember, FEDERAL law doesn't matter. Nor do party regulations, because the constitution already has settled who has what authority when it comes to presidential elections, and the election of electors. Congress has the authority to COUNT the electoral votes--and thus, by extension, to collectively order a particular vote invalid--but the States (specifically the state legislatures alone) have the authority to pass laws governing the election of the electors. The states have an absolutely fercockta plethora of individual variations, apparently, on what would happen in the circumstance you mentioned.

And even if there are laws binding an elector to his/her pledge, says this book, it is doubtful that they are enforceable. The most the other electors can do is send in a statement along with their certificate that elector so-and-so's vote for Mickey Mouse, or whoever they decided to vote for improperly, was "not regularly given"--again, Congress has the authority to count (or refuse to count) said votes.

So says the book. It is of course fiction but it's based on fact, and the author claims to have researched the matter.

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Choice-Novel-Jeff-Greenfield/dp/0452277051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475665172&sr=8-1&keywords=the+people%27s+choice+jeff+greenfield

Pretty fun read.

But I digress, and so have the rest of you. Early voting: we decided this in Maryland a few years back. I was--and still am--against it wholeheartedly. The General Assembly proposed the amendment to the state constitution to allow early voting. I voted against it, but my fellow citizens were dumb enough to go for it.

Also:

Voter ID would be okay if it were free, fairly easy to obtain, and there was a national standard. And if there was a way to ensure those who show up without the specific ID could vote if they had qualified witnesses to vouch for them or sufficient alternative IDs...

Like what alternate ID, a B&N membership card? Their college student ID? Home Depot credit card? I heard of a congressman getting on a plane by showing his Sam's Club membership card since it required two id's, and he only had his license at the time. But I doubt that would fly with a Board of Elections. And how would the witnesses "vouch"? A signed affidavit? What if it is on short notice?

We don't have this kind of problem in MD, where you are required to show picture ID. Your voter registration card isn't enough, and you can, if you don't drive, get a Maryland State ID card, which is commensurate with an actual driver's license for any and all legal purposes, including proving who you are at a polling station. Maryland may not be as spread out as TX, but parts of it are.

Also also:

Its arcane....and I'm being pendantic
Because, yes, people think they are casting votes for the candidates... even if by the letter of the law they aren't.

Ricky, everybody knows there's an electoral college that elects the President they're voting for. And if they are that stupid that they don't know that, it's not the fault of everybody else, right? The law, with the exception I mentioned above, supports that the electors are to carry out their pledges to the People.

Yes, it is arcane. It's "fercockta" to re-use the word (anybody know if I'm spelling that right?) But it poses nowhere near the threat to democracy in the US that people go on about, and certainly not as big a threat as congressional gerrymandering. At least (with the exception of NE and ME, where 5 of those 9 electors are elected one from each congressional district) the presidency can't be gerrymandered. But that is a topic for a different day. For me, it's good enough "for now".

We don't have any form of voter ID in the UK. A few weeks before the vote every registered voter gets mailed a polling card which they then take along with them to the polling station and have their name crossed off a list before casting their vote. I suppose this might be open to fraud but it's honestly not a big deal. Postal voting is much more problematic because here you get patriarchs of big extended families sending in all the votes, dead people voting etc. Even this is not all that big of a problem in the grand scheme of things though.

Somehow it's a big deal in the US. Voter fraud would happen like that if it were allowed to.

sass

We don't have any form of voter ID in the UK. A few weeks before the vote every registered voter gets mailed a polling card which they then take along with them to the polling station and have their name crossed off a list before casting their vote. I suppose this might be open to fraud but it's honestly not a big deal.

Its going to change though. and already has in Northern Ireland.

Do I need to take ID to the polling station?
You do not need to show ID to vote in England, Scotland and Wales. You will need to tell polling staff your name and address. They will then cross your name off the list and give you a ballot paper.

The elections watchdog plans to introduce the need for photographic ID in time for the 2019 local government and European parliament elections.

If you’re voting in Northern Ireland, you must show photo ID.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ed-to-know

Voter fraud is not a threat to democracy. Its a myth propogated to alllow state governments to bring in laws that make it harder for poor people to vote. There's a long list of things that make voting more difficult for poor working people or the very poor .
Gerrymandering is no different, its the use of power by the state governments to limit democratic expression and responsiveness.
The solution is enumeration (with provision of ID) , rather than registering to vote. A professional, non-political election board enforcing univeral standards across the entire nation.
Its probably an unattainable solution in the short term.

Voter fraud is not a threat to democracy. Its a myth propogated to alllow state governments to bring in laws that make it harder for poor people to vote. There's a long list of things that make voting more difficult for poor working people or the very poor .

If you say so...

The solution is enumeration (with provision of ID) , rather than registering to vote. A professional, non-political election board enforcing univeral standards across the entire nation.

Um....wait a tic, you just said the solution is enumeration "with provision of ID". Isn't that what we're talking about? Requiring ID?

You might want to take a gander at this Wikipedia article, though it does kind of support both sides of the argument (in some ways) it's nonetheless interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Voter_Registration_Act_of_1993

Um....wait a tic, you just said the solution is enumeration "with provision of ID". Isn't that what we're talking about? Requiring ID

I mean that enumerators also provide the voters with ID. In the case of the UK and Canada its a voting card for the poll. But, it could well be a permanent voting card, even one with picture ID.

hacker

If you say so...

I don't say so without considerable evidence to support the claim.

Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud. But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or pled guilty to illegal registration or voting. Out of 197,056,035 votes cast in the two federal elections held during that period, the rate of voter fraud was a miniscule 0.00000132 percent!

No state considering or passing restrictive voter identification laws has documented an actual problem with voter fraud. In litigation over the new voter identification laws in Wisconsin, Indiana, Georgia and Pennsylvania, election officials testified they have never seen cases of voter impersonation at the polls. Indiana and Pennsylvania stipulated in court that they had experienced zero instances of voter fraud.

When federal authorities challenged voter identification laws in South Carolina and Texas, neither state provided any evidence of voter impersonation or any other type of fraud that could be deterred by requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls.

http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/ ... -elections

JimHackerMP wrote:Somehow it's a big deal in the US. Voter fraud would happen like that if it were allowed to.

It is a "big deal" because politicians are making it one. Doesn't mean it really is that big a problem.

Anyway, I wonder if any early Trump voters are already feeling buyer's remorse after the last few days?

Voter fraud is undoubtedly something that happens. Logically though it's going to be more significant the smaller the electorate is. In the UK our Parliamentary constituencies average about 80000 registered voters, some with more some with fewer. That means that to effect even a 1% difference in the eventual outcome of the vote you need 800 fraudulent ballots. You're not going to get 800 people to rock up at a polling station pretending to be somebody they're not. It's very unlikely that anything like this could occur without lots of these imposters getting caught because polling stations are usually within a few streets of where you live and they're staffed by local volunteers who live in the area. If that kind of fraud was taking place we'd be hearing stories about people getting busted for it, but we never do. Whenever we do hear stories about electoral fraud it's always about abuse of postal voting, either through registration of dead people or family patriarchs in the Asian community registering everybody in the extended family and then casting all the votes himself. The latter is certainly a potential problem, but it doesn't really impact many seats because, to put it bluntly, most seats which have a large community of 1st generation Asian families are rock-solid Labour bastions where a few hundred dodgy postal votes are an irrelevance.

That's in the UK of course, but the US is different right ? Well, sure. One difference is that the average number of voters in a Congressional district is approximately 600000. If you want to effect a 1% change in the outcome of that vote you'd need 6000 fraudulent ballots. And how many districts could change hands with a 1% swing ? I really struggle to comprehend how you'd set about trying to fix the outcome of a Congressional election through voter fraud. It would have to be a massive, well-organised effort involving a very large number of people. Frankly, if it were happening then we'd know about it by now. Somebody would have leaked the story to either the authorities or the press. If it's not an organised thing then it really doesn't matter, because a handful of individuals voting when they're not entitled to is a drop in the ocean.

Where it can be influential is at lower levels. Elections to local councils, school boards, etc where turnout is extremely low and so a few dozen votes one way or the other could swing it. I'm sure that kind of thing goes on, but even then I'm willing to bet that it's mostly done by postal voting.

Honestly, I just don't see how in-person voter fraud is a problem that needs to be solved.

What about dead people voting?

http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_e008ce00-0365-57a2-95c0-4d9aa70012f9.html

I'm sure some of you will find a way to rationalize this one, as most of us on Redscape are not easily swayed, even by silly things such as evidence...

I once volunteered for the re-election (just at the polls handing shit out 200 ft outside the door) of a local State delegate. We're not always talking about congressmen, here, who have a constituency of 750,000+ on average. There are more local and state offices, right? She won the primary by less than 40 votes if I remember correctly.

If you want to see how close it can be, you can look up some of the results in our state (if you feel like it) for primary and general elections. Don't forget: less people vote in the primary so there's a greater likelihood that it'll be close, depending on how popular a particular candidate is. Despite the power of the federal government, local and state governments in the US are still extremely important polities. Check it out:

http://ccgovernment.carr.org/ccg/electionboard/Results.aspx

Where it can be influential is at lower levels. Elections to local councils, school boards, etc where turnout is extremely low and so a few dozen votes one way or the other could swing it. I'm sure that kind of thing goes on, but even then I'm willing to bet that it's mostly done by postal voting.

No, you're incorrect about that. At least here you are.