Cloward-Piven Voting
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Will all mail-in ballots be counted beyond November 3rd if they are postmarked by Election Day?
What would prevent people from trying to game the system by intentionally delaying the mailing of a ballot until the last possible minute and then vote in-person while the mail-in ballot is in transit? On Election Day the voting register would show that they have not yet voted and would be allowed to do so. The mail-in ballot would then arrive later.
I do not place much faith in the ability of local election clerks to be able to verify the legitimacy of a delayed receipt mail-in ballot, particularly since simply verifying a signature has been stated to be beyond the capacity of many local clerk’s offices. The clerks could be inundated by large numbers of late-mailed ballots. Such an intentional abuse would be a form of the Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the process and break the system. At best it would cause lengthy delays in certifying the election. At worst, it could cause a Constitutional crisis over the results if significant duplication of votes is found and then disqualified. This would cause an uproar about voter suppression and potentially place the entire election results into question. The threat of criminal prosecution will be moot if various state AG’s (like Michigan’s Nessel or Minnesota’s Ellison) rule that these are “unintentional errors” and refuse to take action.
What safeguards are in place that will GUARANTEE that such a form of cheating CANNOT occur? There are already too many examples cited of errors involving mailed ballots to simply accept the unverifiable assumption that local clerks, with limited resources, can and will catch every duplication. Even if the vote count in a district exceeds the number of registered voters and is detected, how can it be corrected?
In the past, with the possible exception of military ballots, ALL absentee ballots had to be RECEIVED by the clerk’s office no later than election day to be counted. A generalized extension of this deadline beyond November 3rd could provide an entirely new way to rig an election.
