Iowa officials "can't" count absentee ballots that could flip election
26 replies, posted
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/iowa-democrat-loses-race-7-votes-officials-refuse-count-29-absentee-ballots-left-leaning-county/
Democratic state House candidate Kayla Koether lost her race by just seven votes. But according to Slate editor Kavin Senapathy there are still 29 outstanding absentee ballots that
officials are refusing to count.
“About 29 absentee ballots from left-leaning Winneshiek County weren’t counted. One of those was Liam’s, and he says his ballot was mailed ahead of deadline,” tweeted Senapathy.
While the ballots may have been mailed by the date, some post offices didn’t postmark the ballots, so there was no verification of when the ballot was received.
“Here’s where it gets disturbing. According to @52101news (Decorah Iowa News) Winneshiek County Auditor says the 29 ballots without a postmark will NOT be included in the vote
totals because of specific rules about how mailing dates may be verified,” Senapathy went on.
“Meanwhile, as Liam explained to me, in neighboring, right-leaning Fayette County, ballots that weren’t postmarked were “accidentally” counted. This is against policy, but the claim
is that it’s too late to do anything about it. This is some rank BS.”
The Courier reported that residents packed the county courthouse demanding action, but auditor Ben Steines said that they have no control over the rules or recount as those laws are
state regulated.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess (if the county had the barcode system). I think this falls at your feet. You are responsible for this. People are disenfranchised because of this situation,”
resident Cerrisa Snethen told Steines.
“It used to be all mail was postmarked. Today that’s not the case. It has been a fact of life knowing we cannot count certain ballots simply because they’re missing a postmark,” said
Ken Kline, Iowa deputy commissioner of elections.
Has it ever been this blatant before that the Republicans are outright stealing elections? The fact that their supporters don't care says a lot about what they think of democracy. (Hint: they don't give a shit about it: they want either a fascist state or a religious theocracy.)
She needs to sue asap.
Sorry but, 7 votes?
29 uncounted correctly filed votes?
Fayette counted incorrectly filed votes counted?
This should be a felony on literally everyone involved.
The postmarking debacle is a well-known phenomenon with our local elections that manages to upset someone somewhere every year without failure, but I've never seen it mess with a race this close before. Regardless of how the recount turns out, I would not be surprised if the Fayette county auditor winds up losing her job over the illegally ballots, what with all the fear over election fraud these days.
The number of people affected by this particular story doesn't even reach .0001% of the population. I'm not condoning what went on here but stuff like this happens every cycle in places you've never heard about and will likely never visit. Where is your outrage there? Should you really be condemning folks so harshly for not offering up a nuanced opinion on this forum for every minor problem that comes up in this country? I think you should channel your hyperactive imagination into a more important issue than one state-level representative from a single county in the Midwest.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/raw-story/
LEFT BIAS
Factual Reporting: MIXED
Can you find another source for this?
"Who cares about a series of bizarrely similar, yet isolated incidents of voter suppression, gerrymandering, ignored ballots and purged voter rolls! It's only one election!"
its pretty weird given that if they don't do business in the EU they dont need to follow whatever regulations that theyd somehow be breaking
People protested absentee ballots that weren't counted as they weren't postmarked. Whether a ballot is postmarked or not seems random. There's a surefire way to verify ballots with a barcode system but it's
not expanded to the smaller counties.
Anyone who gets in the way of the democratic process in this way should be charged with treason. Every. Single. Time.
It affects enough of the population that it may alter the outcome of the election. That's all that matters here.
Whoever is responsible for this deserves to be threatened with or even targeted for violence. This is fucking disgusting.
The saddest part is that if you go on Twitter you'll constantly see GOP supporters pushing Democrats as the ones committing fraud and stealing elections.
So because it affects few people it's not an issue? Are you a total moron or...?
@Chonch you wank, it doesn't "just affect .0001% of the population, it affects everyone who also voted for Koether. The results of this election may very well flip completely if those votes are counted.
Stop being so willfully dense, it's frustrating.
Nice to know @Chonch is perfectly okay with politicians having the power to decide his vote doesn't matter in the slightest.
It's not hating EU users, it's more just not being feasible to implement the technology required on the budget of the website.
He'll be fine with it right up until it's used against him at which point it'll be totally unjust and unfair.
You know, @Chonch , rating everyone bad reading and jumping ship every time someone opposes your views doesn't make you look any better, especially with your track record. Maybe try using your words to explain why they're wrong? Unless you're just refusing to admit when you're wrong and that's why you stop posting. Which again doesn't reflect well on you.
I'll humor you this once and go line-by-line with these replies as clearly as I can, only because you've asked so kindly and made yourself unavailable on every other medium on which we could normally hash this out without derailing the thread.
I genuinely do not know what you're talking about. I did not say this. You have made this up.
You have misread the post. The parts you snipped out elucidate this more. I am asking CyclonatorZ if it is right to get angry at Republicans across the nation for what goes on in a single county of a single state. In the US, the state-level party and the federal-level party are not the same, and often do not interact much with eachother aside from their shared ideology. A federal Congressional representative from New York, for instance (and by extension, their constituents and supporters), has nothing to do with an election in Johnson County, Iowa. This issue is primarily at the county level, since it was county auditor offices that encountered problems with the vote counts. It is clear misconduct by the aforementioned auditor offices, the employees of which are not subject to the whims of voters like elected officials are.
I think you have misread. The constituents of this elected office number about 30,000 people. This is a tiny fraction of the nation's population; I'll let you do the math. This is important in the context of the rest of the post because it sets up how little this election has to do with the rest of the nation.
Given that I live >5 counties away and thus do not have a vote in this election, I do not see how you came to this conclusion. I clearly did not say this. You have made this up.
See above. I do not understand how you came to this conclusion, but I am sure a thorough rereading of my original post will help clear up things for you.
@Alice I hope you are satisfied. I don't think this thread needs any more of me in it.
What kind of shit is this. If I disagree with a post someones made I gotta add them on Steam or Discord or Facebook to "has it out without derailing the thread"? What does that even mean? His responses were perfectly on topic.
I'm talking about how excusing events like this that happen across the USA, especially by Republicans, is stupid. Just saying that it's only affecting a few people, ignoring how this is clearly a nationwide Republican trend, doesn't make any sense to me. This is clearly an endemic problem with the Republican party, to be suppressing the opposition's vote any way they can, and you're just pettifogging by suggesting that they're disparate entities and are not being driven by a fundamentally undemocratic ideology.
Oh, I'm glad you asked me to do the math! I already did this when I saw your initial post. Just FYI, you were off by a factor of ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY. There are roughly 200m registered voters in the US and 0.0001% of 200m is 200. One thing I think you will probably agree with me on is that 200 and 30,000 are not the same number, but please clarify if you have an explanation for how they are? In fact, you were off by even more than 150x, because you said they have even less of an impact than 0.0001%. I think you just pulled this statistic out of your ass. If you mean constituents based on non-registered people too, then it's 0.0001% vs 0.009375%.
I appreciate you trying to explain yourself, but there's no need to get shitty with Alice because she questioned you. This sub-forum is for debate, and I'm totally happy to do it with anybody.
Finally, if you have to dole out bad reading ratings to everybody, the chances of you having explained yourself become pretty improbable indeed.
No sir, you acted like it was such a small percentage that it didn't matter. By that stretch, if it happened to your votes, it shouldn't be a big deal, right?
That's some bullshit spin-master shit right there, my dude.
Political corruption is political corruption is political corruption, no matter how you spin it. Just because it doesn't make or break the race doesn't mean it's kosher.
How would discussing the thread topic derail the thread? I don't understand why people such as yourself are so obsessed with discussing things privately when the discussion literally belongs here.
It doesn't matter if it's federal or not. The Republican party is, as a whole, guilty of pulling shit like this all across the country. So trying to state it's unfair to shit on the entire Republican party over this is missing the forest for the trees.
Uh... This was already on topic? What the hell else do you call discussing topics directly related to the article in the op?
