What's in your ballot?

[BigV]

Cuccinelli, right? That is the bullet you dodged? Here in WA I think the threshold for a manual recount is when the difference is less than half a percent of the vote cast.

Back to Cuccinelli. I just looked at the election page at Politico for Virginia. Wow, there are about 6 million voters in the state and almost that many counties! Look at this map!



That's what the victory for McAullife map looks like. I think it's also representative of where the population centers are. The difference between the top two candidates is about 50k votes, which seems quite close. I think this is good for VA, and good for the country because Cuccinelli and his Tea Party fellows are chock full of bad ideas; I'm happy to see them lose.

But I also think the race was close enough to give them hope, indeed, I've been listening to Rush Limbaugh this morning and the whining (today) has been about how the Republican party leadership doomed Cuccinelli's campaign by starving it for money. So, they're not disheartened, just mad. I think this will simply prolong the internal fighting on the conservative side of the country's party structure. This will not bode well for Rs in coming national elections. I think Christie (R) from NJ would be a much more competitve candidate for the Republican side, but the TP faction won't back him any more than the mainstream Rs will back Cuccinelli. Stalemate. D victory.

[chrisinhouston]

My wife and I voted against the bonds and future taxes to pay for the bonds to turn the Astrodome into some kind of convention space. The plans seemed to vague and I really think the dome is not condusive to the kind of venue they invisioned. We thought it is better to just let it go the way of the wrecking ball like mostly every other historic structure in Houston! Why stop now?

Also, we had to show photo ID under the new stupid law designed to stop non existent voter ID fraud! We chose to use our US Passports which say nothing about us living in Texas or anywhere for that matter. The volunteer ladies that run our little precinct were very nice and impressed and asked us if we travel a lot because none of them have ever had or seen a passport, and they explained that my county voter registration only has my middle initial and both my passport and data supplied to them from the Department of motor vehicles have my middle name as Brian. So technically my ID did not match but they checked the box that said they accepted me as the registered voter and I had to initial that it was incorrect. My wife also had an issue because when she registered to vote here 20 some years ago women were required to list their maiden name if they had one so her registration shows it as her middle name and she has no ID with that on it. Same story for her. So what the fuck did that solve? We used ID with no Texas address and slightly mismatching names and still voted. If we had voted absentee we would have not had to show anyone any ID! I am hopeful in a few years we will get a Democrat for a governor and a Democrat controlled legislature and they can scrap the stupid ID thing.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by chrisinhouston

So what the fuck did that solve? We used ID with no Texas address and slightly mismatching names and still voted. If we had voted absentee we would have not had to show anyone any ID! I am hopeful in a few years we will get a Democrat for a governor and a Democrat controlled legislature and they can scrap the stupid ID thing.

In a competitive district where the election worker had an agenda and thought you looked like you may oppose it, they could have stopped you.

That's what it solved.

[chrisinhouston]

Yes I think I heard Wendy Davis (Democrat running for Governor) had a problem.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by chrisinhouston

snip--

Also, we had to show photo ID under the new stupid law designed to stop non existent voter ID fraud! We chose to use our US Passports which say nothing about us living in Texas or anywhere for that matter. The volunteer ladies that run our little precinct were very nice and impressed and asked us if we travel a lot because none of them have ever had or seen a passport, and they explained that my county voter registration only has my middle initial and both my passport and data supplied to them from the Department of motor vehicles have my middle name as Brian. So technically my ID did not match but they checked the box that said they accepted me as the registered voter and I had to initial that it was incorrect. My wife also had an issue because when she registered to vote here 20 some years ago women were required to list their maiden name if they had one so her registration shows it as her middle name and she has no ID with that on it. Same story for her. So what the fuck did that solve? We used ID with no Texas address and slightly mismatching names and still voted. If we had voted absentee we would have not had to show anyone any ID! I am hopeful in a few years we will get a Democrat for a governor and a Democrat controlled legislature and they can scrap the stupid ID thing.

at the risk of asking you to incriminate yourself, would you say that you committed voter fraud by not having the proper ID and voting anyhow?

[chrisinhouston]

Originally Posted by BigV

at the risk of asking you to incriminate yourself, would you say that you committed voter fraud by not having the proper ID and voting anyhow?

No not at all, the US Passport is one of the allowable ID's such as a Texas DL or concealed gun permit (college IDs even if from a state college are no longer valid) so our ID was fine. And the poll worker accepted our ID as valid, she just had to indicate that it did not match perfectly and I initialed that I agreed but we were allowed to vote and have our ballot counted. It just saddens me that the GOP in power here and in other states keep trying to game the system to keep their party in power. The voter ID as an election security issue is as false making abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges is for the safety of women.

Oh and one other funny thing. My area's TX legislator kept saying the ID issue was no different than having ID to get past the TSA for a flight. Well at the airport I can use my Global Entry card and my wife can use her TWIC card which are both valid federally issued ID but Texas does not recognize them for voting!