The Swamp

What do ye Swampers do?

I get absentee voting but early voting seems weird.

Washington is all Vote-by-mail. Got my ballot sitting on the kitchen table, ready to be dropped in the mail box.

DaveInSeattle wrote:Washington is all Vote-by-mail. Got my ballot sitting on the kitchen table, ready to be dropped in the mail box.

That seems terrible.

I've stopped playing Pokemon though.

I will vote on the 8th.

I'm a fan of early voting. Not a big fan of three week voting.

Best way to beat the lineups.

I voted by mail and sent it in earlier this week.

Put mine in the mail yesterday.

No - Not allowed

Ryan wrote:No - Not allowed

I am excited to stand in line on election day for this same reason.

I normally vote on Election Day but voted early since I'll be in NC Election Day. I don't understand why all states don't have some variation on early voting. It's hard for a lot of people (esp in cities like Las Vegas centered around tourism to vote on a specific day.

No early voting in Michigan. I'll likely be voting after 7pm on Election Day, since I'm stuck at work from 7am-7pm.

If I'm lucky, we'll have enough staffing for me to duck out and vote earlier in the day.

Voted last week. Fan of the practicality. Why not make it easier? If I didn't and lines were like in 2008 I would have bailed so good to get it done. Do miss the kids trailing along but if I really cared I could have done it.

Goodness that's aggravating. Why would you bail?

Moreta wrote:No early voting in Michigan. I'll likely be voting after 7pm on Election Day, since I'm stuck at work from 7am-7pm.

If I'm lucky, we'll have enough staffing for me to duck out and vote earlier in the day.

Arent there voting laws? In canada employers must give 3 hours to vote.

degenerasian wrote:

Moreta wrote:No early voting in Michigan. I'll likely be voting after 7pm on Election Day, since I'm stuck at work from 7am-7pm.

If I'm lucky, we'll have enough staffing for me to duck out and vote earlier in the day.

Arent there voting laws? In canada employers must give 3 hours to vote.

You Canadians are so cute. There's a major political party in the US that actively makes it harder to vote at every turn.

I will have time to vote regardless since I work across a parking lot from my polling place. If there had been any real concern, I could have voted absentee.

Voted on the first day it was allowed. Last Monday, IIRC.

Moreta wrote:No early voting in Michigan. I'll likely be voting after 7pm on Election Day, since I'm stuck at work from 7am-7pm.

If I'm lucky, we'll have enough staffing for me to duck out and vote earlier in the day.

That's odd.

Up here, you get a chance to vote on the two or three weekends preceding the election as well as a couple of weekdays in the weeks leading up to the election.

A great idea - make it easy for people top vote... but there really hasn't been much of an uptick in voter turnout.

Everyone has the option to vote by mail in CO beginning two weeks ago. Happy to get it out of the way so I can go hide in my secret bunker on Election Day while the world burns.

Y'all must just have more trustworthy mail carriers or something.

http://nbc4i.com/2016/10/21/us-postal-c ... o-a-ditch/

govmentchedda wrote:Voted on the first day it was allowed. Last Monday, IIRC.

Yep. And the reason I know this, several weeks ago my FB feed showed HDO responded to a friend posting an article from a RW website that Trump was destroying Hillary in the FL early voting. I was surprised FL could vote that early, so I looked. Fl early voting hadn't even started, and the article was several weeks earlier. I'm so sick of seeing posts about how horrible Hillary/Dems/the Liberal Media are, and the articles are so clearly fake or inaccurate, yet they are shared and believed without any thought. Pointing out the facts are useless, and makes them dig in deeper by throwing on other evil misdeeds, but Trump will fix it all.

HaulCitgo wrote:Voted last week. Fan of the practicality. Why not make it easier? If I didn't and lines were like in 2008 I would have bailed so good to get it done. Do miss the kids trailing along but if I really cared I could have done it.

Answered your own question right there. Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress votes. Closing voting stations in Dem areas, so the lines are longer, reducing the hours polling places are open, making it harder for workers to get out. Since this disproportionately hurts hourly workers, and they tend to vote D, gotta prevent them from voting!

Degen, employers have to allow employees time to vote in many states, but this isn't practical for hourly employees. The voting leave time is often unpaid for hourly employees, and many don't want to lose the pay. With limited hours, they may not be able to leave work to go back to their voting location and get back to their workplace. US employment laws are worse than most third world countries. Very few, if any states require employers give vacations. Until a couple years ago, no states had mandatory paid sick leave. Now, a handful of states do, and some cities, but very few. The US and Papua New Guinea are the only 2 countries in the world that don't require paid maternity leave. How fucking insane is that? Republicans have people convinced that requiring paid maternity leave is too oppressive to employers, yet 190+ other countries require it. Albania requires employers give up to a full year. Albania isn't exactly known as a bastion of human rights and freedoms. China requires 98 days of fully paid maternity leave. GIIIINAAA, FFS!

I don't understand. The RW media is reporting that govmentchedda voted?

Syb: yeah what you describe is sad. There is too much politics in US politics.

A lot of the laws we do have seem practically unenforceable anyway. Which lawyer is the fry chef at McDonald's going to hire? I wouldn't even know what I'm supposed to do, most likely.

The Sybian wrote:US employment laws are worse than most third world countries. Very few, if any states require employers give vacations. Until a couple years ago, no states had mandatory paid sick leave. Now, a handful of states do, and some cities, but very few. The US and Papua New Guinea are the only 2 countries in the world that don't require paid maternity leave. How fucking insane is that? Republicans have people convinced that requiring paid maternity leave is too oppressive to employers, yet 190+ other countries require it. Albania requires employers give up to a full year. Albania isn't exactly known as a bastion of human rights and freedoms. China requires 98 days of fully paid maternity leave. GIIIINAAA, FFS!

It is astounding.

A sizeable portion of the population in the States seems to believe that a $12 minimum wage and3-6 months of paid maternity leave (or even UNPAID!) will throw the country into an economic death spiral.

Nuts.

There seems to be a very American attitude that what works in other countries is to be feared, ridiculed and shunned as opposed to being fully considered and adopted.

Gunpowder wrote:A lot of the laws we do have seem practically unenforceable anyway. Which lawyer is the fry chef at McDonald's going to hire? I wouldn't even know what I'm supposed to do, most likely.

There are plenty of desperate lawyers who will actively seek out McD's fry cooks to file a class action suit if they got wind of McD's violating this law. No cost to the Plaintiffs, as the attorney will take 1/3 of the winnings.

Pruitt wrote:

The Sybian wrote:US employment laws are worse than most third world countries. Very few, if any states require employers give vacations. Until a couple years ago, no states had mandatory paid sick leave. Now, a handful of states do, and some cities, but very few. The US and Papua New Guinea are the only 2 countries in the world that don't require paid maternity leave. How fucking insane is that? Republicans have people convinced that requiring paid maternity leave is too oppressive to employers, yet 190+ other countries require it. Albania requires employers give up to a full year. Albania isn't exactly known as a bastion of human rights and freedoms. China requires 98 days of fully paid maternity leave. GIIIINAAA, FFS!

It is astounding.

A sizeable portion of the population in the States seems to believe that a $12 minimum wage and3-6 months of paid maternity leave (or even UNPAID!) will throw the country into an economic death spiral.

Nuts.

There seems to be a very American attitude that what works in other countries is to be feared, ridiculed and shunned as opposed to being fully considered and adopted.

It's the constant drumbeat of FoxNews and Republicans calling out the Socialistic bent of the Radical Democrats trying to turn us into a collapsing economy like Greece. There is also a strong pride in small business ownership in the US, which don't get me wrong, it is great and leads to the big innovations that come from the US. Mega-Corporate interests have been able to glom onto this by fighting regulations against them by citing the poor family owned businesses that can't cope with the oppressive regulations. This is why the Koch Brothers fight so hard to abolish the EPA. To help small business owners. But don't worry, they won't save billions of dollars by polluting, because the invisible hand of the Free Market will bring about the best results for society.

The Federal minimum wage is $7.25, which is $15,080 annually for a fulltime employee who doesn't take off a single hour the entire year. Take a single mother working fulltime, this puts her below the poverty level, not to mention daycare would eat a huge chunk of that. The Right blames Obama for the increase in people going on Welfare, but they are fighting raising the minimum wage. Adjusted for inflation, wages have gone down for lower wage jobs, and the minimum wage in 1950 would be more like $14 in today's value. People can't afford to work for minimum wage, plain and simple. Corporate profits are the highest they have ever been, and the top 1% are earning, on average, 138% higher in real wages than than they were in 1950, so why can't corps afford to pay a higher minimum wage? It's insanity.

But then you get 99c half-pound burritos!

I was basically forced into early voting this year because Utah decided to no longer have its neighborhood polling places.

This was always a tradition for me, inherited from my grandparents who fought for decades to be able to cast a ballot. They would get up early and be there when the polls opened, and so I did the same thing, walking down the street with the kids to the local school. But apparently democracy is too expensive, so Utah has decided to try to force everyone to vote by mail. That sounds horrible to me, so I went to early voting.

Which is too bad, I guess. If I had known that someone who knew Hillary Clinton had emails on a laptop that weren't from Hillary's server, I would have voted for the misogynistic racist con man who wants to torture people.

It's amazing to me how early voting results are broadcast (or leaking out) in the States. That's not allowed at all here. I can't even see Newfoundland results on election night until Alberta polls close.

degenerasian wrote:It's amazing to me how early voting results are broadcast (or leaking out) in the States. That's not allowed at all here. I can't even see Newfoundland results on election night until Alberta polls close.

Are results leaking out? Or just records of who has voted so far and what their party registrations are?

Facts about who has voted are public record, as are facts about whether a voter chooses to register as a member of a political party. So it isn't a leak if that stuff is reported.

Steve of phpBB wrote:

degenerasian wrote:It's amazing to me how early voting results are broadcast (or leaking out) in the States. That's not allowed at all here. I can't even see Newfoundland results on election night until Alberta polls close.

Are results leaking out? Or just records of who has voted so far and what their party registrations are?

Facts about who has voted are public record, as are facts about whether a voter chooses to register as a member of a political party. So it isn't a leak if that stuff is reported.

Right. Actual vote totals are not released. But the total number of votes cast and party affiliation of voters (if there is one) can be. Though it doesn't necessary mean that a Democrat voted for Clinton or a Republican for Trump, etc.

aha that's the big difference. We are not party affiliated. We just go to vote that day.

The Sybian wrote:

Gunpowder wrote:A lot of the laws we do have seem practically unenforceable anyway. Which lawyer is the fry chef at McDonald's going to hire? I wouldn't even know what I'm supposed to do, most likely.

There are plenty of desperate lawyers who will actively seek out McD's fry cooks to file a class action suit if they got wind of McD's violating this law. No cost to the Plaintiffs, as the attorney will take 1/3 of the winnings.

Ok, what about Creepy Todd's Shithole 'n Diner?

Gunpowder wrote:

The Sybian wrote:

Gunpowder wrote:A lot of the laws we do have seem practically unenforceable anyway. Which lawyer is the fry chef at McDonald's going to hire? I wouldn't even know what I'm supposed to do, most likely.

There are plenty of desperate lawyers who will actively seek out McD's fry cooks to file a class action suit if they got wind of McD's violating this law. No cost to the Plaintiffs, as the attorney will take 1/3 of the winnings.

Ok, what about Creepy Todd's Shithole 'n Diner?

Join the claim with one of the many sexual harassment suits against Creepy Todd? I get what you are saying. Usually claims like this don't require an attorney. Most states have an agency where you can file a one page questionnaire to file a claim against your employer. But I get it, most hourly employees aren't going to do this, and may would skip voting rather than fighting their employer or even trying to lose some work time to vote.

Steve of phpBB wrote:

degenerasian wrote:It's amazing to me how early voting results are broadcast (or leaking out) in the States. That's not allowed at all here. I can't even see Newfoundland results on election night until Alberta polls close.

Are results leaking out? Or just records of who has voted so far and what their party registrations are?

Facts about who has voted are public record, as are facts about whether a voter chooses to register as a member of a political party. So it isn't a leak if that stuff is reported.

They leak out. Although at the start of the internet age, they actually did a good job keeping a lid on things.

if you had to bet on either the Cubs winning both Games 6 and 7 or Trump winning the election which would you choose now?

Both are 5 to 2.

degenerasian wrote:if you had to bet on either the Cubs winning both Games 6 and 7 or Trump winning the election which would you choose now?

Both are 5 to 2.

I'd take the Cubs. I think 5/2 is pretty fair odds for them. Maybe a little over optimistic, but not by much. I don't think Trump's odds are that high. I'd say more like 4/1. Maybe lower.