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We had a snap Provincial Election called, and it is interesting to see what is happening.
No public meetings, debates, town hall meetings, door knocking, kissing babies, etc.
Everything is online, by mail, or social media.
From my point of view ............ nice not to have knocking at the door time and time again, but I hate those robo calls from the candidates. I equate the computer-generated candidate call with the regular spam calls, and hang up without listening to the spiel.
Voting day is this coming Saturday 24th October, but they also set aside 7 full days for Advance Voting (Oct 15 to 21st), and constantly advertised mail-in ballots which had to be applied for before October 17, and returned by 8 pm on Election Day.
We have just been to vote at our Advance Voting Station, and followed all the procedures of wearing a mask, applying hand sanitizer when entering and as we left, and maintaining distance if necessary.
It was our first time of taking advantage of advance voting, and there really was no difference to voting on the day, except there were fewer registration tables and ballot boxes, and far fewer people than "on the day". Although there was a steady stream of people in one's and two's while we were there, there was always one of the 4 Registration tables free. No waiting at any time, although green tape was on the floor to identify 2 m spatial distancing.
In fact, the hardest part was finding the rear door entrance to the Community Centre gymnasium, which was the site! Really well sign posted, but still not a direction I've ever taken in over 50 years of knowing that building :-D . We actually saw all 4 sides of the building, either by driving or walking past them :-)
Voting was very simple, no contact, instead of signing that we were eligible to vote and had not already voted, we had to make a verbal declaration to the clerk who was sitting behind a plastic screen.
We could use our own pen or pencil to mark the ballot if we wanted, always a no-no before.
As for mail-in voting .............. over 700,000 people have apparently applied to vote by mail, and it is a guess as to how many will actually do that. In the last Provincial Election in 2017, they had just over 6,500 mail-in ballots to count.
And this is where the big difference comes in ........... by the current BC Election rules, mail-in votes and votes made on the day or in Advance voting in a registration district that is not your own are not counted until 13 days AFTER the the official vote day.
The results "on the night" are tentative only here, as they have to be double checked and re-counted, and any objections resolved by judge if necessary. Then the mail-in secrecy envelopes are opened, and the ballots inside returned to the Registration district for verifying and counting. The same happens to votes made in a different registration District.
It might be 3 weeks before we finally know the full result.
But just think of what the mail-in ballot is going to do below the line on November 4 when they will have millions of such votes?
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So, apart from not knowing where the exit is - not as difficult as the likes of Trump are implying :-D
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"It might be 3 weeks before we finally know the full result."
Trump is counting on just this to "steal the election" taking advantage of mail-in voting being heavily skewed towards the Democrats and delays in counting compared to walk-in voters. [update] He plans to get FoxNews and others to "call" the result based on exit polling long before most of the Democrat mail in votes have been counted. This is critical in the swing states.
US election law varies wildly from one state to another but fair dibs is rarely the outcome. Remember remember the third of November and hanging chads.
Last May Johnson solved the problem of UK local elections under covid by cancelling them. This May covid will probably still be with us. Will he cancel the elections again ? Rulers who cancel elections tend to form a habit of doing so.
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maggie ....................no!
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RTR ..............
I did not post this to get a lecture on what the trumpoid or Boris are or are not doing
I posted it merely as an example of how WE were handling it in BC, so that people could see that voting in a pandemic is not scary. I think that I am the first person on here to have voted under the new way of life.
I would remind you though that the result of an American Presidential election is never known definitely on the night, it is always delayed because it is not the voters who decide. it is the Electoral College.
We are like most other countries in the world, it is very rare that the provisional result stated or declared (often by the media) on the night is not in fact the final result after official counting, counting of mail-in and absentees votes, recounts etc etc have all taken place.
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Well elections during a pandemic can be very scary none more so than the coming US election this November.
The covida-19 virus has resulted in a huge rise in those using mail-in voting. Around two thirds of these are Democrats scared both of the virus and GOP thugs at the polling stations. These are few and far between for minority groups in some states such as Texas.
Trump is using every trick in the book so that FoxNews and others can "call" the election the following day as has generally been the case even if some votes were only counted later. If the counted votes - never mind a mountain of uncounted ones - he plans to use the leverage of the Electoral College to steal the election.
The Democrats find the scenario sufficiently scary that they have hired ten thousand lawyers to thwart any such attempt. What they can do about the Proud Boys is something else but arms sales in Californa have risen strongly.
So it is a comfort that Canada, with a 5 000 mile undefended border, is safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11_9MBpGtI
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Rollo .....................I know quite enough about the US election, especially this current one. We are inundated with news about it, Who's said what and when. I come on here to get away from that ................. to the extent that I almost RR'd your post because I do not need YOU telling me what's on!
It is the Electoral College that makes the decision on who has won, and yes, the person winning the popular vote may not win. But that is because the Americans, for all their modernity, so-called, are operating under an ancient system decreed by the Fathers back in the 18th century ............ when everyone was ruled by middle-aged white men who did not believe that anyone who was not what we now called WASP had the ability or intelligence to make any kind of decision, and most certainly not to vote.
However, one must also accept than the person winning the popular vote does not always win even in the Westminster system.
The Canadian border with the US is still closed until near the end of November despite that President wishing it to open up. No way Jose!
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