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Comment by mangeletti | Hacker News Reader

I just had to vote "provisional" myself (Palm Beach County).

I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of fraud reports against the Florida Board of Elections. We registered almost 2 weeks before our Oct 11 deadline, yet neither my wife nor I were in their system - we received no mail or anything from the BoE.

My vote, I'm absolutely certain now, will be thrown in the trash. Even if it isn't, the election will be over by the time it's "counted".

Think I'm simply spreading FUD? Take a look at the 2004 Florida general election... this state's election board is wholly corrupted.

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Why isn't eligibility automatic? Whether state of federal, doesn't the government already know whether or not you qualify to vote?

That would make rational sense, but strangely no.

Unfortunately the US is setup in such a way so that individual states get to decide who is eligible to vote. This is a state right defined in the constitution[0].

In practice the vast majority of states have similar voting requirements. But because, in theory, they could all differ then no unified automated system is possible, it would have to be per-state.

Of course individual states could create an automatic voter registration system, and I believe some have/do. But a lot of other states are actively trying to disenfranchise the poor, young, or minorities who would benefit the most from automatic registration.

Ultimately voting and voter registration needs to be handled by a non-partisan organisation within states. But considering it would take partisan politicians to set up such a non-partisan organisation, it has little chance of happening.

[0] http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2014/08/constitution-chec...

In PA, when you change your address with PennDOT (who runs our DMV), there is a checkbox to update your voter registration. It's not the most obvious connection, but it seems to work pretty well.

The party machines play games to try and purge the other side's voters to bias the results in their favor. This gets woven into the 10 year redistricting cycle as they scheme to gerrymander districts to further dilute the opposing party's constituents. Everyone in office is a beneficiary of this system so they won't take measures to fix it.

I know it sucks but it's good that you at least voted provisionally. If you get any kind of receipt, etc, it can help if there's class actions following the election. Given the state of this election... there very well might be.

Definitely.

EDIT

I hrhmmm, hope there is some evidence of my ballot.

It is illegal to take a picture of your ballot in Florida FYI:

"(5) No photography is permitted in the polling room or early voting area."

http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/102.031

It's also illegal to place an undue burden on somebody's constitutional right[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undue_burden_standard

There is a good reason for this by the way. It is meant to prevent vote buying.

A lot of states have "track my ballot" systems in place for voters to ensure their votes were counted. Maybe try looking it up in your state.

Please rethink your characterization.

"Wholly corrupted" would mean 110% voted for the selected politician. "Wholly corrupted" would imply a completely bought and sold election board. This is absolutely not the case, and goes to feed apathy, violence, and adverse voting outcomes (Mussolini, Mugabe, etc.). Note that I am not implying any of the political candidates this year meet this qualification.

"Polling stations are engineered to underserve minorities", "voters are wrongfully being purged from the rolls", "districts are drawn for the advantage of a political party" are truthful statements that are more meaningful.

> 100% voted for the selected politician

Wrong.

This is not 1930s Dominican Republic. Politicians are not so stupid these days (at least not in terms of their political cleverness). Corruption is not so obvious when the public has become much more informed.

"Wholly corrupted" in election terms can be very correctly defined as "The politician selected is not the one who received the most intended actual votes", even if the vote disparity is a very small number. To extend it even further, you could include the fact that this can happen legally under the electoral college system, but what I am referring to is simply a situation where the lesser desired (by vote count) candidate wins, by means of the combined effects of a number of subtly and carefully corrupted systems.

Same thing happened to me in Ohio. I had moved nearly two months ago and changed my voting registration almost immediately. Still had my old address listed.

Hopefully, theres nothing that goes wrong with the provisional votes.

This is scary stuff.

Election "officials" could literally decide these "provisional" votes based on party, and they'd get away with it.

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