..... when I help my mom vote, I'm surprised that they ask you at the door if you want a paper version to study before going into the booth and the republican one is red and the democrat one is blue. I can't imagine it would be easy to vote your conscience in an all-red area.
.......
This feeling isn't exclusive to all-red areas. Living in a deep blue area 20 years ago, even hinting that you were thinking of voting for a reddish candidate or proposition resulted in being treated as a pariah. And heaven forbid, anyone see the blizzard of mailers that showed up in your mailbox. Better hope nothing was misdelivered to your neighbor. But to your point, at least you weren't labelled with a scarlet R at the voting booth.
I much prefer where I live now. We may have loony-tunes on both sides but sometimes we can actually have real discussions about opposing views. It's been a relief.
DH was an election judge in the deep blue inner city for decades. Even though the little old ladies who worked with him at elections had been trained otherwise, they still, all too often, handed everyone who came to vote a Democratic primary ballot rather than asking which ballot the voter wanted.
Steering much?
Well, if they're just getting a primary ballot, then it wouldn't matter much right? It's not like they're steering anyone away from Rep candidates if this actually happened.
No, not “right.” Why wouldn’t it matter that someone cheated another candidate from the win? Gosh. Unless you mean one Democrat is all Democrats and that could not be further from the truth.
So that you understand, in my city the winner of the Democratic primary is the defacto winner of the election. Moderate candidates (they would be “Republicans” in other jurisdictions) run on the Democratic ticket.
To be fair in explaining this specific race, it was one lying manipulative long term Democratic politician against a lying nutjob Democratic politician and as painful as it was for me, I had to vote for the nutjob in the re-do election to punish the election thief.
He won but not do well and took himself out of the office before his term in the statehouse ended.
I"m sorry, I didn't mean to upset you so much! But I still don't understand the situation, although I do agree in general that errors are wrong and there is no excuse for errors or especially on purpose steering of voting. I live in a city with similar voting profiles, and I guess I just don't understand what the point would be to try to steer someone to a different party in a primary vote. First off, I'd notice immediately. Second, even if I didn't, I'd only be voting out of a slate of candidates that I didn't want. I'm not in any way condoning any shenanigans, but I don't see the point. What would the benefit be?
Sorry, I was reacting more to your comment thinking you were responding to the stolen election I wrote about. That was outright malicious thievery.
I don’t think the little old ladies steering voters to a Democratic ballot are doing it purposely. I try not to mistake incompetence for malice.
Nor do I think the steering had an effect on outcome of the election, far from it. It’s one of many tiny things that go wrong in our democratic process of voting.
Keeping in mind, as you do, that every vote counts and it should be accurately recorded, newbie voters or voters without experience and conviction can easily be intimidated by the people in charge at the voting booth. Or, they may not even notice they were given a ballot without their preferred choices until settling in to mark it..
When someone comes in to vote Libertarian party and they’re handed a Democrat party ballot, and that voter is unsure about challenging the ballot given to them, Libertarians lose a vote. Those Libertarian ballots are counted and reported. In my state votes for one party are a determining factor in getting on the ballot in future elections (tho to be honest, I think it is general election votes that count.)
