From "Harris accepts CNN debate invitation for October 23, again challenging Trump to another showdown" (CNN).
I assume he's negotiating. But it is getting late. And yet October 23 seems too late because too many people will have already voted. Don't we all need to be reacting to the same information? Maybe not. Why does it seem as though we should? Am I just nostalgic for the days when we all — except the overseas military and the truly housebound — trudged to the polls and waited in line together?
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Election Day- not election month of months. Counted that same day.
When the absentee ballots arrive we'll be destroying Dad's envelope. At the end he no longer cared about Trump or the AZ Cardinals, the two things that animated him the most when he was alive. Suggesting a debate in late October is idiotic. Get the votes early and get them while you can.
Single day, paper ballots only for all elections to national office, purple finger; photo ID, registered voters only, who have proved US citizenship. Only exception for deployed military and overseas diplomatic corps.
Don't we all need to be reacting to the same information?
And that is only ONE of the arguments for same-day voting.
What about expats? I live among many non-USA expats and some of our closest friends are American expats currently working and living overseas. They can vote by absentee ballot at present and they are VERY determined to do so.
It's not about nostalgia; it's about fraud. Same day, in person, picture ID, paper ballots, purple fingers. Absentee ballots for good reason upon presentation of ID. Maybe a nationwide 24-hour election day so that everyone can get to the polls. Clear chains of custody for ballots. National clearing house of voter registrations. Simple.
No, you’re not. Widespread mail-in and dropbox voting opens the door to ballot harvesting and ballot fraud for low-propensity voters. Single day voting may disenfranchise some, but those affected should be relatively evenly distributed across parties so it should have little effect on the overall outcome than to protect against fraud.
Voting started here yesterday.
How did we get to needing so much time to vote, anyway? 6-7 weeks is ridiculous. Were states trying to outdo each other on this front?
I think we all should be required to know what the October Surprise is, at the very least. (Lol)
Conservatives have traditionally voted on Election Day and tend to discourage mail in early voting. If Trump did well in the debate he may get more votes from people who have been on the fence about him, who knows? I seriously doubt those who had already voted early for Harris or Trump would have their minds changed. I’d love to see another debate just to see Harris spank him again.
He’s either negotiating or his internal polls are telling him it isn’t necessary. The notion that he wouldn’t debate again if he thought it was needed is absolutely laughable.
Why is kamala so afraid to go on Fox News? Why does she always get lapdog Media lapping up her lies?? If she can't handle going on Fox News, she can't handle Putin, Xi or any other world leader and should step down immediately.
As for early voting, there are more reasons for it than just being overseas, military or being housebound. “Trudging” to the polls may be doable for reasonably healthy people, but there are millions of people who are not housebound, who have chronic conditions that flare up causing severely increased pain, immobility and fatigue on those days. There are people undergoing therapies that cause severe side effects, a sick child, spouse, or parent who needs care and can’t be left alone for the person to leave to go stand in line to vote. Mail in voting gives millions more Americans the opportunity to vote.
Why has Trump already said he wouldn’t accept Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as moderators for a Fox debate? Who knows if Harris wouldn’t debate with these two moderators on Fox? But we’ll never know because Trump already said he wouldn’t accept them.
Everyone just dies for these stupid things as if they matter then can’t understand why we don’t get better candidates. It’s you, not them…
Everyone just dies for these stupid things as if they matter then can’t understand why we don’t get better candidates. It’s you, not them…
Tough for them. Amazingly our ancestors in days of horse drawn carriages could make it to polling places. But today it's too hard...
The notion that he wouldn’t debate again if he thought it was needed is absolutely laughable.
Correct. Politics 101. The person in the lead NEVER demands more debates.
Mail in voting gives millions more Americans the opportunity to vote.
It's amazing we were able to vote the way we did for all those years and nobody bitched about lacking the opportunity to vote.
It comes down to fraud. You know it. We know it. Everybody knows it. But you're the only ones who don't have a problem with it. Wonder why that is.
Neither party would allow this. Both sides believe they can game the current system better than the other side can.
CNN will let Harris go on by herself; it'll be like the lovefest "town hall" she had with Oprah the other day.
Except for the AZ Governor election in 2022.The D candidate was the Soros supported Secretary of State, who happened to be in charge of the election. Hobbs, the D candidate, was "elected" when the ballot printing machines in GOP districts all malfunctioned on Election Day.
Dollars to donuts, if the Kamel said let's do a Fox debate with Baier & McCallum he'd go for it.
Another reason to doubt the sanity of the person posting that fantasy.
Many of those D voters are dead, which makes it much harder.
Unless FOX News or some other unbiased moderators who would be willing to ask Kamala some hard questions (Megyn Kelly comes to mind) get tapped to moderate a debate, there is no point to Trump agreeing to do one. There is only liability for him, and no possibility that she has a similar risk of imploding under tough questioning. There are difficult questions that could be posed to her, but unless it is clear she is going to have to answer those kinds of questions (and she won’t under any circumstances) then it just seems like a waste of time that gives the media another opportunity to baselessly claim he lost.
Unless FOX News or some other unbiased moderators who would be willing to ask Kamala some hard questions (Megyn Kelly comes to mind) get tapped to moderate a debate, there is no point to Trump agreeing to do one. There is only liability for him, and no possibility that she has a similar risk of imploding under tough questioning. There are difficult questions that could be posed to her, but unless it is clear she is going to have to answer those kinds of questions (and she won’t under any circumstances) then it just seems like a waste of time that gives the media another opportunity to baselessly claim he lost.
That's what this has been about all along.
Wasn't it the "moderators" who "spanked" Trump?
The whole point of elections in a democracy is voided when people lose confidence in the honesty of our elections, which will happen if there is (alleged) widespread fraud (again).
But Inga, surely it's inarguable that if you can and do vote in your state today but next week or next month you learn something about your candidate (or the opposition) that would change your vote, you're at a disadvantage as a voter and your candidate benefits unfairly from that disadvantage.
Let's say, for example, that the Biden-Trump debate hadn't happened before early voting began - and that you wouldn't vote for the proverbial ham sandwich rather than Trump. Say, for instance, that both candidates were more or less acceptable to you but you decided to vote Democrat out of habit, then learned that the Democrat candidate was non compos mentis and the entire Democrat establishment had been lying to you about it for some unknown period of time - which is exactly what did happen, except for the part about both candidates' being acceptable to you.
Think beyond Trump for a moment. Don't you see the problem?
Inga, she didn't "spank" him in the first one. He got angry, she said nothing but platitudes and the mods only fact checked him.
You talk as if voting is a party game and not a serious charge we adult non-felonious citizens share. You care about voting? Make the effort - or make the case that you truly can't without an absentee ballot and hope that the authorities agree with you. Make the case to the political party of your choice or the non-partisan voter advocacy group in your community that you and others need respite care for your loved ones while you vote. Bring your bored children to stand in line with you the way Americans have done for generations.
Or hell, come up another way to vote in person on one day. People sit in drive-thru lines for inordinate amounts of time to get a coffee-adjacent drink at Starbucks or for Sticker Drop Day at Dutch Bros - why not drive-thru voting? Chick Fil A is very efficient at managing lots of customers without errors and with great courtesy.
If the only solution you can think of is, "Ballots need to trickle in over the course of more than a month, be separated from the envelopes that are supposed to demonstrate that their senders are legitimate voters, and never ever be matched to a living human being," then it's hard to escape the idea that your solution is intended to solve a different problem from the difficulty a small fraction of voters have in voting in person on Election Day.
If Harris wants one more debate so bad how about Fox News with Gutfeld and Waters as the moderators. Let's see what she's made of.
“Am I just nostalgic for the days when we all — except the overseas military and the truly housebound — trudged to the polls and waited in line together?”
Yes… the old days, before the cheating got more widespread and the malevolent intent of the Donkey Party became undeniably obvious.
it aint over till January 6 2025 - right?
do they need to kill just DJT or also JDV after election?
Jaime,
A party game? Excuse me? I take my voting privilege/responsibility very seriously. Do you think that the millions of disabled people who are not housebound don’t deserve to cast a vote? Mail in voting is legal and it allows millions of people to cast a vote. If you think the people voting by mail are not serious about their vote or are too lazy or unimaginative to go in person to vote that is damn insulting. I happen to have a serious autoimmune condition that knocks me down so hard during flare-ups that I can’t get out of bed those days due to intense pain. Your comment is elitist and insensitive besides being rude.
Let's change the rules - rules and laws that've been in place for decades - just for Inga. Everybody happy now?
For Inga and the millions of other Americans. Absentee voting by mail IS legal, if you don’t like it, work to have it changed. Good luck.
So, Kamala wants another three-on-one debate against Trump. No, don't think so. They can just set up an empty chair for where Trump would be and let her do her word salads.
Tell the cheat-to-won left / Democrat Media Industrial CompleXi - to pound sand.
wendybar wrote: "Why is kamala so afraid to go on Fox News?"
Because when you (Fox) are fined nearly a billion dollars for peddling information you know is false to parrot one particular candidate's narrative, you don't get to play impartial moderator.
Trump's advisors don't want him to debate for the same reason his lawyers don't want him to testify.
https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/document_library/files/Fact_sheet_on_disability_and_voter_turnout_in_2020_0.pdf
Fact sheet: Disability and Voter Turnout in the 2020 Elections
Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse1
Key points:
• Voter turnout surged among citizens with disabilities in 2020, as it did in 2018. Their turnout increased by 5.9 points relative to the 2016 general election, which was slightly more than the 5.3 point increase among citizens without disabilities.
• The turnout gap between people with and without disabilities decreased slightly in 2016-2020 from 6.3 to 5.7 points.
• 17.7 million people with disabilities reported voting in the November 2020 elections.
• Combined with a recent U.S. Election Assistance Commission study finding that 11% of voters with disabilities had some type of difficulty voting in 2020, this indicates a total of 1.95 million voters with disabilities experienced voting difficulties.
• The increased turnout among people with disabilities occurred across all disability types and demographic categories—gender, race/ethnicity, age group, and region.
• Employed people with disabilities were just as likely as employed people without
disabilities to vote in 2020—as in previous elections—suggesting that employment
helps bring people with disabilities into mainstream political life.
• Voting by mail increased during the pandemic for people both with and without disabilities, and voters with disabilities continued to be more likely to use this option.”
ANOTHER LIE FROM THE BOT.
Perhaps Michael K's medications are affecting his memory....
Fox News Settles Defamation Suit for $787.5 Million, Dominion Says
Fox News reached a last-minute settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which accused Fox News of pushing conspiracies that harmed the company.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/18/business/fox-news-dominion-trial-settlement
Fox News did avoid paying the most costly possible punishment: admitting to its viewers that it had spoon-fed them what they wanted to hear, rather than the truth.
Just the cost of doing business I guess. Now they can go back to lying and deceiving their audience.
"Think beyond Trump for a moment."
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. As if.
AA, you interpreted his prior refusal to debate again as negotiating. Those days are over. He just says stuff.
"“Trudging” to the polls may be doable for reasonably healthy people, but there are millions of people who are not housebound, who have chronic conditions that flare up causing severely increased pain, immobility and fatigue on those days. There are people undergoing therapies that cause severe side effects, a sick child, spouse, or parent who needs care and can’t be left alone for the person to leave to go stand in line to vote."
Okay. But the same thing can be said about the difficulty getting out of the house to obtain a gun (you know, one of the enumerated rights we all have). If we're going to be mailing ballots out, why shouldn't guns be included with them?
Like Puerto Rico, you mean?
Or at least like we used to be. This year? Absentee ballots, early voting, computers and all that shit.
And, I fully expect, massive fraud.
I'm sitting this one out. Will unregister if my fears pan out. Screw 'em. I'm not playing in a rigged game.
John Henry
Like Puerto Rico, you mean?
Or at least like we used to be. This year? Absentee ballots, early voting, computers and all that shit.
And, I fully expect, massive fraud.
I'm sitting this one out. Will unregister if my fears pan out. Screw 'em. I'm not playing in a rigged game.
John Henry
Fuck you, inga
John Henry
eat teh cat, eat teh ex-lax, eat eat teh cat, rich.
A party game? Excuse me? I take my voting privilege/responsibility very seriously. Do you think that the millions of disabled people who are not housebound don’t deserve to cast a vote? Mail in voting is legal and it allows millions of people to cast a vote. If you think the people voting by mail are not serious about their vote or are too lazy or unimaginative to go in person to vote that is damn insulting. I happen to have a serious autoimmune condition that knocks me down so hard during flare-ups that I can’t get out of bed those days due to intense pain. Your comment is elitist and insensitive besides being rude.
Just thought I'd reproduce the whole comment so I can't be misunderstood. Inga, I'm sorry for your autoimmune disorder. I have arthritis that can affect my ability to drive. My mother-in-law suffers from migraines. My father has COPD. My college roommate was unable to get out of bed during her period due to cramps (I've wondered if she had endometriosis). Other friends are a couple who, in one case, travels extensively out of the country and in the other case has to bring a toddler and a young child with her wherever she goes unless school is in session. Still other friends live out of the country for work but are determined to vote. And none of us is actually considered disabled (well, my dad does qualify for a handicapped placard). Things are tough all over. People face their quotidian challenges, small and large, for all sorts of reasons, and if voting is important to them, as I believe it is for many, then they can rise to that occasion just as they do for gassing up the car or church or their kids' competing games at separate fields.
My point - and you know this - is that if voting is important, if it's serious, we need to decide why it's important and serious: is it because it's a way for people to demonstrate their civic commitment (which is fine for them, but at what successful cost?), or is it because it decides important things about and for our country?
As I said, if the only solution one can think of for improving voter access involves destroying the ability to ensure that an election is as secure and accurate and legal as possible, then maybe one's focus is on the performative aspect of demonstrating civic commitment rather than on the practical aspect of deciding important civic questions. And that's putting the most positive spin on it.
The negative, but possibly realistic based on human nature, spin is that those in power want to hold onto power. And I'm not just talking politicians here.
John henry, how did this transpire? I thought PR had its own laws.
at what successful cost
SOCIETAL cost.
Boy, these days with Blogger you've really gotta want it.
Yup, her team found a format where the interviewers can legitimately cut her off when she starts up the salad shooter, and giving short quips in response to questions works. And Jim is also correct in a sense. I'm not sure I'd say Harris lost the debate but it appears that she didn't prove particularly convincing to anybody not already drinking the kool-aid, and it's becoming more obvious that she's not going to be able to do so in any kind of long-format interview or probably even a town hall (or debating an empty chair). So the play is goad Trump into another debate.
"Don't we all need to be reacting to the same information? Maybe not. Why does it seem as though we should?"
If anything, a longer voting period tends to reduce the impact of and the incentive for the "October surprise." I was going to point to Dan Rather's effort to hurt Bush II with faked up documents in 2004 here, but it turns out that was September. So it's not a good example. But those kinds of late breaking, explosive allegations, made with little time to respond or for the public to digest, just seem less likely to be effective if 50% of the population is done voting two weeks before election day. If you release the allegations even earlier, voters can just hold off voting until they've had a chance to think about it. They don't have the same time pressure to vote immediately.
Although to be sure, it also means those voting early are voting with less information than those voting late. I've thought all along that Trump's chances are harmed by the dynamic of early voting in this specific election because the more voters focus on Harris the more unappealing she is (cf. 2019) but on the whole, I think it's generally a positive development. Even the Harris problem isn't really created by early voting as such, but by the Democrats switching horses midstream long after all the primary votes had been cast and counted.
Jaime, I’m sorry that you and your family has aches and pains and friend has endometriosis. My auto immune condition is called Ankylosing Spondylitis, it IS considered a disability. When I say I can’t get out of bed during a flare up, it’s not because of pain that can be easily managed. I worked for 35 years and now in my older years the lifelong inflammation that happens with AS, DESTROYS joints. It doesn’t just make them sore to walk on, or inconvenient. There are millions of people with REAL disabilities that depend on absentee mail in voting. I’m not going to advocate for our/ their method of voting to be done away with because the right wing is paranoid about nonexistent voter fraud. No voter fraud has ever been found that has altered an election in any meaningful way.
There are millions of people with REAL disabilities that depend on absentee mail in voting.
And I have never said there weren't. And if your disability entitles you to an absentee ballot in your state, no one here is arguing you should be denied it. (Except whoever it is who claims, without evidence, that you're a Russian operative - I assume that commenter wants to deny you the vote on the basis of your not being a citizen. But I'd be surprised if even that person believes that.) We all - all - want every eligible voter to have the opportunity to cast a vote
But how does your AS, or anyone else's disability, justify universal mail-in balloting that lasts for a month or more and can't be audited? That is the question I've been asking and you've been dodging. And dodging, by the way, using the typical lefty tactic of high dudgeon at my rudeness, insensitive, elitism... anything but the substance of my question.
I get your point, Balfegor, but on principle I'd rather that everyone has access to the same information before voting. Of course, the while idea of an "October surprise" is well beyond the realm of a campaign strategy now and into "confirmed former conspiracy theory" territory now, with the whole laptop thing.
So in my best of all possible worlds, we would have one-day voting with necessary absentee ballots, one-day counting, and an honest press. But while we're dreaming, why not also a frozen turkey that defrosts in the refrigerator in the timeframe every single source says it will?
Jaimie,
Here is how we do our absentee mail in voting.
Vote Absentee in Wisconsin
Every ballot must be requested by a registered voter. Every ballot envelope requires a witness, their signature and address, as well as the signature of the voter. Each ballot has a number that corresponds with the registered voter. So that voter cannot vote twice, it’s not a generic ballot.
From your link, Inga: "You don't need a reason to be an absentee voter. Every Registered Wisconsin voter has the ability to request an absentee ballot."
What if, for instance, you request an absentee ballot in WI and also vote in another state? The safeguards against that reside in who is in charge of the voter rolls. Progressive friends of ours in WA tell us that they received, automatically because that's how WA does it, mail-in ballots for all their family members although their kids were then living, and voting, in CA. No problem as far as they were concerned; they just threw out their kids' ballots. (But didn't update the voter rolls. That's the government's job, right? Except WA has no state income tax, so maybe WA wouldn't find out about those two.) But do you still refuse to admit that that sort of system creates weaknesses that can be exploited?
Including by Republicans, if they were "better" at this? If "the Chicago Way" were a Republican thing, would that help you believe that creating the opportunity for corruption is a bad idea?
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