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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

We just had an election with widespread mail in voting with extended deadlines and historic turnout. And if anything Trump’s support among non-white voters went up. What does that suggest re: the scale of voter suppression?

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The GOP actively sought, across the country, to handicap or prevent mail and absentee voting to suppress votes that typically fall to Democrats. The president tweeted about unproven voter fraud and to stop counting votes. If that isn’t attempts at brazen voter suppression, I don’t know what is.

Democracy was stress tested, and it still worked.

Oregon and Colorado have successfully done mail in voting for years, with safeguards like ballots having to arrive by Election Day and signature verification. Democrats fought to get rid of rules like that all over the country, and succeeded in Pennsylvania.

Requiring ballots arrive by Election Day is unreasonable when the executive branch is handicapping the postal service for partisan reasons.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/2020-presidential-election-p... (Postal Service data shows poor mail-in ballot delivery rate in key swing states, judge suggests Postmaster General DeJoy might have to testify)

Requiring ballots to arrive by Election Day is the only reasonable thing to do. Otherwise you leave open the possibility of fraud as has been alleged in PA with multiple USPS workers coming forward and testifying that they witnessed backdating of mail in ballots.

In Washington state where I used to live has had universal mail in ballots for many years and they had ballot drop boxes that were swept on election day. There was extensive information that was put out informing people of the last day they could mail their ballots in.

Election law doesn’t agree with your assertion.

I was making a qualitative judgement. However, to your point election law differs form state to state so what you've said is nonsensical.

In PA this is under review by the state and US supreme court: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/110620zr_g31...

Welcome to a crash course in civics.

This is actually not under review by the PA state courts, and the case was rejected by the SCOTUS twice already. Moreover, the segregated votes were not included in this projection, so the result of the case is irrelevant to the outcome of the election.

Welcome to a crash course in reality.

No, there are allegations of USPS workers coming forward from conspiracy boards. In truth, there were no such USPS workers testifying, or even claiming, any of that. Even FOX News and One America couldn't find any evidence supporting the existence of these supposed USPS workers.

And on another note: military votes have been allowed to arrive after election day since at least WWII. Are you saying that most of the military votes cast in the past 6 decades are fraudulent?

And on a final note: it hasn't been possible to backdate postdates for at least a decade, as the USPS records when mail is received separately and in addition to the postdate, and it isn't possible to backdate that data unless you have access to the USPS database. Considering that the USPS is run by a Trump appointee, it is very unlikely that Democrats have that sort of access.

You're quite literally lying or severely misinformed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-D-2GOswwA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By7yNZsa8x0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS6xOuhsiJw

Ah, Project Veritas, an organization whose founder has been convicted of fraud and who has a history of falsying and modifying evidence.

Fox News and One America refused to air these videos because they couldn't track down any of these supposed whistleblowers and in fact, Fox News said they couldn't find any proof that these supposed postal workers even exist.

Also, you do know that the USPS Postmaster is a huge Trump Supporter so any allegations of backdating involving the Postmaster would relate to backdating Republican ballots, not Democratic ballots? And in such case, Project Veritas has provided evidence of voter fraud by the current sitting president of the USPS.

Next time, you may want to think before you link.

> Ah, Project Veritas, an organization whose founder has been convicted of fraud and who has a history of falsying and modifying evidence.

False on both counts.

Convicted of fraud. https://thehill.com/capital-living/in-the-know/100105-filmma...

Falsifying and modifying evidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approa...

Signatures are still required in Pennsylvania, and many states have allowed ballots to arrive after the election for decades, including 3 of the states still uncalled (NV, NC, and Georgia).

Moreover, military votes have been allowed to arrive after election day in nearly all states since at least WWII.

> Signatures are still required in Pennsylvania,

Requiring signatures yet refusing to reject ballots for mismatched signatures isn't much of a requirement: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-...

Signature-matching results in the rejection of more authentic ballots than invalid ones.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/signature-...

The point of requiring signatures was never about preventing fraud, since it was never an issue historically. The requirements were issued in the 20th century to reject black votes, as at the time the requirements were passed, many black voters couldn't write.

I’m not arguing that signature verification is particularly consistent.

I’m saying it being non-existent disqualifies claims that signatures on ballot envelopes prevent fraud.

States like Oregon and Colorado imposed signature requirements in mail in voting systems designed in the last few decades. Switzerland requires signatures for mail in votes too.

It’s one thing to allow a limited number of ballots to arrive for military or absentees. But states that conduct elections primarily by mail (Oregon, Colorado) require ballots to arrive by Election Day.

California, Utah, and Washington don't.

That is false. Washington and Utah also vote primarily by mail and both allow ballots to be received after the election.

Washington allows ballots to be postmarked the day of the election: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/dates-and-deadlines.aspx

Utah allows ballots to be postmarked the day before the election, so long as they are received before noon of the day of the county canvass (generally, the day after the election but as late as ten days after the election, depending on the county). https://www.vote.org/utah/

(I have participated in election litigation in multiple states. I know more about election law than you do. You will not win this battle.)

There have been serious irregularities that suggest voter fraud in Democrat controlled precincts within swing states.

If you are talking about the “fraud” donnie diaper keeps making up then I’d hate to tell you that they have been fact checked and proven wrong.

> Democracy was stress tested, and it still worked.

The fake allegations of voter fraud and the extensive efforts to suppress votes will damage future elections. And the presidential election survived attacks, but the senate could be impacted.

Here is an article from four years ago with various republicans openly admitting to votee suppression.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/07/re...

edit- spelling.

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