Chris Hayes Explains How 'Naked Ballots' Could Cost Biden The Pennsylvania Vote - All In - MSNBC

[Rhiannon12866]

Chris Hayes: “Philadelphia's top elections official warned there could be tens of thousands of votes being thrown out. So, we are trying to do our part to make sure everyone's vote counts.” Aired on 09/22/2020.

[Pachamama]

1. This....

The Democratic Party needs to be out there explaining this and educating...

[Maraya1969]

2. Buying ads in the local news shows should help. And in the local newspaper.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Here is something to keep in mind though, since this potential issue broke here in Philly

How many naked ballots will be thrown out in 2020?

It’s hard to say. The Pennsylvania Department of State advised counties to accept naked ballots as valid and count them in this year’s June primary. Most counties did so without tracking them. So there’s no statewide estimate for how many naked ballots there were.

And before this year, Pennsylvania had a more restrictive absentee voting system: Only about 5% of votes were even cast by mail in previous elections. It’s hard to extrapolate from those elections to this year, when mail ballots may make up about half of the total votes cast. And many counties in the past simply accepted naked ballots, so they don’t show up in rejected ballot tallies.

“It’s hard to say how big a problem this is, because Pennsylvania’s public accounting for rejected ballots is pretty limited,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who studies election administration and quantitative measures of election performance.

Pennsylvania’s overall rejection rate of mail ballots was less than 1% in 2016, “which is actually pretty low” for a state in which voters must provide a reason for voting by mail, Stewart said in an email. (No reason is needed starting this year). “Therefore, it’s hard to believe that this is the type of issue that would loom large in the vote count,” Stewart said. “But, of course, I could be wrong, since we just don’t have the data to tell for sure.”

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-naked-ballots-supreme-court-philadelphia-20200921.html

I.e., since the "no-excuse absentee ballot" process HAPPENED FOR THE FIRST TIME for this past June 2nd's (previously delayed) primary, and because no one kept track of how many actually came in like that, then any assertion (including by our local Election Board President Lisa Deely) is all speculative.

I think the "fear" of the potential removal of "tens of thousands of votes" is being generated to make people pay attention and is directly in response to the PA State Supreme Court's rejection of a suit requesting to allow counting any ballots not received within the "secrecy envelope", because these were previously being counted - both during the old "absentee ballot" process and now during the new "no excuse absentee ballot" process that again, was only implemented for the first time a few months ago.

This is what the setup looks like when you get your ballot in the mail -

Once you’ve received your mail-in ballot, open it up and check out the materials. Inside, you’ll find:

1. Instructions for voting by mail-in or absentee ballot
   
2. A pamphlet explaining the ballot questions (there are two in Philadelphia this year), provided in English and Spanish
   
3. Your ballot
   
4. An envelope in which to place your ballot
   
5. A larger mailing envelope (stay with me here) in which to place the smaller envelope that should hold your ballot — you’re going to fill the larger one out with your return address, signature and the date

Does your mail-in ballot envelope include all of those things? Great! If not, contact your county election office. (I’m going to say that a lot.)

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/05/14/pennsylvania-mail-in-ballot-instructions/

[markpkessinger]

6. It may seem overblown when considered in isolation fromTrump's broader strategy, BUT . . .

There is a very clear calculation at work here, that becomes fully apparent when you consider Trump's overall strategy, which has been (1) to downplay, especially to his supporters, the risks of the pandemic, (2) to cast doubt among his supporters on the reliability/validity/legitimacy of mail-in ballots, thereby encouraging, even if only indirectly, his voters to vote in person; and (3) to proceed to do anything and everything he can to bollix up the counting of mail-in ballots, figuring most of his voters will vote in person.

This is supported by something Philadelphia's elections commissioner said on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. If you fast-forward to the 4-minute mark,, the Commissioner explains that Philadelphia voters are roughly 7:1 Democrat to Republican. But when they polled interest in voting by mail,that ratio surges to 17:1!!! So Republicans are calculating, with good reason, that disqualifying mail-in ballots for any reason they can find will likely hurt Democrats more than Republicans!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-in-voting-rules-pennsylvania-2020-election-60-minutes-2020-09-20/

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Philly has an 8-1 Democratic vs Republican registration/voting advantage

and no one except for some people in a couple neighborhoods in Northeast Philly and South Philly are listening to anything coming out of the WH. Every chance he gets, our mayor (Jim Kenney) lets loose - in what I consider hilarious attempts at "biting-of-his-tongue" diatribes about the current administration.

Folks also have to keep in mind that as of 2018, all counties in PA were required to ensure their voting machines were compliant with a set of criteria set out by (D) Governor Tom Wolf - the primary focus being the requirement for a machine to have some kind of "paper trail" ("verified voting" ). That meant that many (like Philly) had to chuck their old machines and bought new ones. However when that happened, those neighboring counties opted to go with systems that ended up different from each other, which was a change from the previous circumstance.

For example, at least two or three neighbor counties to Philly (where my sisters live - Montgomery County and Delaware County and I think Bucks County too) originally had the same "membrane panel" system that Philly had - Danaher Controls Shouptronic 1242. However in 2018, both of my sisters' counties opted for a "come to a polling place, fill in the ovals on the ballot, and feed the completed ballot into a scanner system". Montgomery County bought the "Dominion Voting System" and Delaware County bought the "Hart Verity" system.

Meanwhile, Philly went backwards and bought the fucking ES&S bullshit "ExpressVote XL" touch screen machines where you feed a blank "ballot" into the machine and hope the damn QR code actually matches the printed selections on the ballot once you have completed voting (and you can't even touch the damn piece of paper once you feed the blank into the machine - you can only look at it through a plastic chute, which has no backlight and very little overhead light able to illuminate it).



This is why I am voting by mail. The very first time the ES&S machines were used here in Philly was for the 2019 general election. After the fiasco of me waiting in a line of only about 7 people, in the middle of the slowest time of the day, resulting in my taking 45 minutes to finally vote because the elderly were completely LOST trying to use the touch screen and move from screen to screen to get through all the candidate pages and ballot question pages), I had had enough.

After that, I signed up for vote by mail for both elections in 2020, where I successfully used it in the moved-to-June-2nd-April-28th-primary because that option had suddenly become available, it was in the middle of a pandemic, and I availed myself of the option (especially because there were only 2 "in person" polling locations open in my Ward thanks to COVID-19, where there are about 11,000 registered voters, and where we previously had 11 polling locations during previous years).

[markpkessinger]

8. Did you see Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes?

Here's a link. If you fast-forward to the 4-minute mark, you will hear Philly's elections commissioner explain that while the Philly electorate is roughly 7:1 Democrat to Republican, when they polled interest in voting by mail, that ratio surged to 17:1 Democrat-to-Republican. So clearly, Republicans are calculating -- and with good reason -- that if they can find any reason to disqualify mail-in ballots, that effort is likely to hurt Democrats more than Republicans.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-in-voting-rules-pennsylvania-2020-election-60-minutes-2020-09-20/

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Don't have to watch Lisa Deeley because she is very vocal here

But I suggest you check this out -

City Controller Releases Voting Machine Investigation Report; Finds Serious Flaws With the Procurement Process
September 25, 2019

For immediate release: Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Contact: Jolene Nieves Byzon, 215-300-1071


City Controller Releases Voting Machine Investigation Report; Finds Serious Flaws With the Procurement Process


Philadelphia, PA – Today, the Office of the City Controller released a report on its investigation into the procurement process for the City’s new voting technology, a $29 million contract awarded to Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) using the Best Value Guidelines. The investigation identified significant issues with the use of Best Value, including a lack of transparency and accountability throughout the process. Last month, the Controller’s Office released a finding regarding ES&S’s failure to disclose its use of lobbyists, the lobbyists activities and the lobbyists’ campaign contributions that resulted in ES&S agreeing to pay a $2.9 million penalty. In addition, the investigation found that two of the City Commissioners failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest in the procurement process.

“This process was flawed from the very beginning and fell far short of adhering to the Best Value procurement guidelines. Best Value is supposed to be a procurement tool that avoids favoritism and ethical misconduct. It’s supposed to be transparent and fair,” said City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart. “This process did the opposite – it was opaque, showed favoritism toward one vendor, and raised conflict of interest concerns.”

The Controller’s Office investigation included the review of thousands of pages of documents and more than 20 interviews of individuals involved in the procurement and selection process, including City Commissioners Al Schmidt and Lisa Deeley.

Key findings from the report include:

ES&S, through the use of a lobbyist, engaged with City Commissioners as early as 2013 regarding the procurement of a new voting system;

ES&S failed to disclose its use of consultants and its consultants’ campaign contributions, including campaign contributions to City Commissioners Al Schmidt and Lisa Deeley who ultimately selected ES&S to receive the contract;

The City Commissioners failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest. Despite City Commissioners Schmidt and Deeley receiving campaign contributions from ES&S’s lobbyists in the year prior to selecting them as a vendor and Commissioner Schmidt repeatedly being the recipient of “direct communications” with ES&S’s lobbyists, both Commissioners Schmidt and Deeley signed Confidentiality and Conflict of Interest forms for the voting technology procurement process, agreeing not to “take official action, including but not limited to participation in the proposal review and selection process, that impacts [his] financial interests” and that “if any such relationship exists with an applicant who submitted a response to this RFP, I must disclose the relationship and disqualify myself from reviewing and evaluating any proposals submitted in response to this RFP”; and

Other issues regarding the procurement process, including the rushed nature of the official procurement process, selection committee members feeling pressured to select ES&S, lack of procedures to ensure the integrity of the procurement process and the lack of overall transparency in the procurement process.

In the report, Controller Rhynhart recommends the development and implementation of a formal process to review self-reported disclosures and conflict of interest forms to help ensure the integrity of the process in the future. The full report, including recommendations, is available here.

https://controller.phila.gov/city-controller-releases-voting-machine-investigation-report-finds-serious-flaws-with-the-procurement-process/

Also see this - https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/phillys-voting-machine-fiasco/

The Commission did their "review" and kept the systems anyway because we were too close to the 2019 election and the state's cutoff time frame to get some system in place would be that year.

[markpkessinger]

10. Lisa Deeley isn't in the video -- Al Schmidt is n/t

[BumRushDaShow]

12. They both have the same issue per the City Controller - lobbied by ES&S and failing to disclose that

But as a note, the city got a $10,000,000 grant to prepare for the election including buying more scanning machines (am guessing for both the voting machine ballots and mail-in ballots) and mechanized letter openers, plus to use for setting up 15 "satellite election offices" where people can register to vote, apply for both types of "absentee" (mail-in) ballots and/or fill one out, and submit it via drop boxes that will also be available at those sites. They will also be using the money to buy more PPE for poll workers and will try to get us back close to the 800+ polling locations that we had before the pandemic.

We are just going to have to slog through this the best way we can. I had posted an LBN earlier where there are plans for Philly and the surrounding counties to work shifts for vote-counting, which will go 24/7 until they are done (I think it has to be certified by that Friday Nov. 6th).

Below posted here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142585011

Elections officials will count Pennsylvania mail ballots around the clock until they're done
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Everybody’s going to want to know who won the White House, and nobody wants to be the reason the world is waiting to find out. So elections officials in Philadelphia and its four suburban counties have an aggressive but simple new plan for reducing the time it will take to count a deluge of mail ballots: Once they start counting on Election Day, they won’t stop.

“We’re planning on running 24 hours a day,” said Bob Harvie, the Bucks County commissioner who chairs the elections board. “Once we start opening ballots, we’re going to have different shifts where we’re never going to close the doors of the Board of Elections.” That’s a significant departure from the past, when counties would process votes late into the night but eventually send everyone home, continuing to count ballots as part of lengthy work days following an election. This year, those work days won’t end.

The counting won’t stop either in Philadelphia, nor in Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. Together, the five Southeastern Pennsylvania counties have more than one-third of Pennsylvania’s registered voters. They will have to count hundreds of thousands — perhaps more than a million — mail ballots. That takes time, and Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow officials to start counting until polls open on Nov. 3. That means it could take days to call a winner in Pennsylvania, a state increasingly expected to play a decisive role in determining who wins the presidency.

[...]

This is the first year any Pennsylvania voter can vote by mail under a law passed last year, and it’s been clear for a while that counting those ballots could lead to long waits to call races. And Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, especially after months of false attacks on the method by President Donald Trump. That means there will likely be what’s known as a “blue shift” in the days after Election Day — the Republican-leaning in-person votes are counted first, making it seem like Trump is winning handily until the disproportionately Democratic mail ballots are slowly counted.

Read more: https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/counting-pennsylvania-mail-ballots-philadelphia-suburbs-20200918.html

[markpkessinger]

14. Again, you need to watch Chris Hayes' video

It isn't an attack on mail-in voting. It points out a very specific ruling by the PA Supreme Court that was a win for Republicans. You are commenting on things, and presuming the video comments on things, that are nowhere in the Chris Hayes report in the OP.

But I guess you know it all already, right?

[BumRushDaShow]

16. I posted the LBN about the ruling.

I know what the ruling is. And IMHO, this past year, Chris Hayes has been compromised.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142583918

Pennsylvania Supreme Court extends mail ballot deadlines for November election
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the state’s mail ballot deadlines on Thursday, a move that could allow tens of thousands of additional votes to be counted — and will likely draw criticism from Republicans, who have argued that votes should be received by Election Day.

State law says mail ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, but the high court said Thursday that ballots will be counted if they are received by 5 p.m. the Friday after the Nov. 3 election. To count, ballots arriving after Election Day must either be postmarked by Nov. 3 or have no proof they were sent afterward. Ballots that arrive by the new deadline with missing or illegible postmarks would still be counted.

In addition, the court held that state election law allows counties to use drop boxes for hand delivery of mail ballots; denied requests from President Donald Trump’s campaign and others to allow poll watchers to work in counties other than the ones where they are registered; and denied a request that other people be allowed to deliver voters' ballots.

Along with another decision that kicked the Green Party’s presidential candidate off the ballot, the rulings were a boost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign in a critical swing state just 47 days before Election Day.


Read more: https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/live/coronavirus-covid-cases-philadelphia-pa-nj-de-updates-testing-news-20200917.html#card-1470613893

------



The PA State Supreme Court is elected and is 5 (D) - 2 (R).

ETA - a longer article is now available here - https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-mail-ballot-deadlines-state-supreme-court-ruling-20200917.html

SUMMARY OF RULING

Mail-in/absentee ballots will now be considered "valid" if returned to the County Boards of Elections by Friday Nov. 6th @ 5pm as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3rd (and all other criteria are met)

Ballots MUST be placed in the "secrecy" envelope provided with mail-in/absentee ballots. That envelope is then placed in the pre-addressed outer envelope

Drop-boxes for those ballots ARE ALLOWED

Poll Watchers can ONLY work in the County in which they are registered (no "non-County" Poll Watchers)

Green Party candidates COMPLETELY kicked off the PA ballot (the lower state court had originally only kicked the VP candidate off)

[markpkessinger]

11. Come to think of it, did you even watch the video in the OP?

I ask because none of your comments here refute any aspect of Chris Hayes' reporting. The point of the report was that the PA Supreme Court, while extending the deadline for mail-in ballots to be counted,also ruled that so-called "naked ballots" -- i.e.,ballots that are not returned sealed first in the plain white envelope, and then in the mailing envelope, will not be counted. None of what you have written in this thread seems to address that in any respect, which makes me think you probably commented without watching the video in the OP.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Did you miss what I wrote?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017607605#post3

I'll summarize it then and remove some of it.

How many naked ballots will be thrown out in 2020?

It’s hard to say. The Pennsylvania Department of State advised counties to accept naked ballots as valid and count them in this year’s June primary. Most counties did so without tracking them. So there’s no statewide estimate for how many naked ballots there were.

[snip]

“It’s hard to say how big a problem this is, because Pennsylvania’s public accounting for rejected ballots is pretty limited,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who studies election administration and quantitative measures of election performance.

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-naked-ballots-supreme-court-philadelphia-20200921.html

This DIRECTLY SAYS that they have no idea how many "naked ballots" there were in the past so there is really no way to estimate how many may occur.

There is an assertion that you'll have "tens of thousands" of idiots who will just shove a ballot in the outer envelope and submit it. If anything, what might get a ballot rejected first before they even open the damn thing, is if the person doesn't complete section on the back of the outer envelope.

[markpkessinger]

15. This election is likekly to be very close ...

... it may not need to be "tens of thousands."

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Of course it will be

But you have a factor this year that didn't occur in 2016 - just based on that ruling. The Green Party has been completely removed from the ballot. There were 50K votes for that party here in PA for Jill Stein. That is often cited as a a bit more than the margin that Trump won by (where there was a 44,000 vote difference between him and Clinton).

But it is curious why the media refuses to talk about the other "elephant in the room" that can pull votes from the GOP and that is the Libertarian Party.

In 2016, Gary Johnson got 146,715 votes, almost 3 times what Jill Stein got - https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/General/SummaryResults?ElectionID=54&ElectionType=G&IsActive=0

And that itself was triple what he got in 2012 (49k) - https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/General/SummaryResults?ElectionID=27&ElectionType=G&IsActive=0

So the potential exists that Republicans here in PA may opt to vote for the Libertarian Party ticket for a ticket split and vote GOP for the state/county/municipal elections.

[Illumination]

4. More public service annoucements like this are needed! Voters don't forget to READ

THE INSTRUCTIONS!...

[llashram]

5. trump, putin, GOP

want a coup. Putin wants his tool in office 4 more years to continue the unravelling of our democracy in favour of what an always-KGB- leader would have had wet dreams about, American democracy destroyed and Putin's strongmen trump and the GOP in charge.