Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
Maricopa County has been reporting a lot of trouble with tabulators. Maricopa County is famous for being the location of "Sharpiegate" in the 2020 election.
Sharpiegate was ultimately confirmed. Not all of the ballots were printed on bleed resistant paper, some Trump votes were found to have been lost to bleed through. Not a large number, but it was a real thing.
Problems are being reported at 26+ polling locations. Voters are being told to leave their votes in a locked box to be tabulated at a different location later. There are worries about chain of custody.
Arizona currently has tight races for both the Governor and Senator, so this is going to be a major source of contention going forward.
If this were in any other country, the UN's election monitors would cry foul. And not entirely unreasonably. Even assuming that the election is entirely legit and no one involved at all means badly, with a process like this, what reason does anyone have to believe that?
Ultimately, you can't have a functioning democracy if you can't convince the losers that they lost a fair game. In order to do that, it is imperative not to have procedural problems during the elections, let alone systematic procedural problems.
I'm trying to figure out
A) How this wasn't caught and prepared for way in advance?
B) Why there isn't an established backup protocol to handle this eventuality?
C) Why is this treated as normal an unavoidable by the respective authorities handling it?
There's no surprises here. The date is known well in advance, there's various tried 'n' true approaches to the process. The list of excuses for botching it is pretty short.
The only explanation that doesn't require incompetent and malfeasance is a basic shortage of labor or materials or something due to ongoing supply chain issues.
EVEN THEN, such an issue should have been noted in advance of the election.
You should probably add
D) Did this actually happen?
I don’t see a source, and ymeshkout seems to be questioning the conclusions on sharpiegate.
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