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.
In most jurisdictions, on-site tabulation wasn't done until relatively recently, unless you go back to the days of lever machines. My own precinct in Pennsylvania didn't have them until the 2020 primary. Before that, it was all electronic and all you got was a plastic card that you'd literally throw on a pile on a table when you were finished. At least then, I guess, you could make the argument that the poll worker didn't know what was on the card. Before that, though, we used punchcards, and you'd drop the ballot into a box and trust that it wouldn't be tampered with. Before that it was hand marking paper. Hand-delivering ballots to the local board of elections was the norm throughout most of American history, especially in more rural locations that didn't tend to have mechanical voting machines.
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