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MLB moves All-Star game in response to GA voter laws (1 Viewer)

The Commish said:
There were a great many who didn't believe the voting laws pre pandemic were "working".
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Can you provide anything to back up that Georgians were unhappy with their voting process pre-pandemic that wasn't addressed or was made worse by the new law?

 
SB 202 is a big piece of legislation, containing a number of provisions touching on different aspects of election law. In his analysis, Cohn divides these provisions into four buckets: new regulations on absentee voting, new in-person voting rules, changes to runoff elections, and expansions of the state legislature’s power over election administration.

Many critics of Georgia’s law, myself included, have argued that this last set of provisions is the most troubling one. It gives Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly effective control over the State Board of Elections and empowers the state board to take over local county boards — functionally allowing Republicans to handpick the people in charge of disqualifying ballots in Democratic-leaning places like Atlanta.

Saletan argues that there are sufficient safeguards in the bill to prevent abuse of these powers, but this is a minority view. Voting rights advocates, experts I’ve spoken to, and even Cohn all think there’s a serious potential for abuse here. “This represents an obvious threat to American democracy,” he concludes after an in-depth analysis of the new provisions.

The more serious arguments that Georgia’s law isn’t so dangerous focus on Cohn’s other three buckets, which include regulations that:

Extend voter ID requirements to absentee ballots

Sharply limit the use of ballot drop boxes

Expand weekend voting during the early voting period

Require large precincts to take steps to limit crowd length

Criminalize giving voters with food and water while they wait in line (with an exception for poll workers)

Shorten the time between Election Day and any subsequent runoff elections from nine weeks to four, sharply contracting the early voting period for runoffs

These provisions will clearly make it somewhat harder to vote by mail; the impact on in-person voting is harder to discern but could plausibly make it harder to vote in Democratic-leaning precincts and easier in Republican ones.

But here’s the surprising thing: There’s some decent political science research that making voting marginally easier or harder, through policies like voter ID laws or expanding the use of drop boxes, doesn’t really affect turnout all that much.
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Why would local county boards need to be taken over by the state legislature?

 
Hoodoo said:
Because I listen to people talk about it and I read the news. And if you'e implying that it's because of Trump, then I would say that you're very wrong.

This is from back in 2018: Much of it talks about foreign intervention in our elections, which was pushed mostly, but not exclusively, by Democrats.

Are Voters Losing Confidence in the Integrity of Our Elections?

Link to the poll
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Your link focused on two main points; foreign influence on social media and Florida's "hanging chads". Do you think the new GA laws addresses either of those?

I think its more likely the result of pushing mistrust by right-wing media.

  • Trump claiming he could only lose a "rigged" election months before a single vote was cast
  • His lawyers falsely claiming to have evidence of voting machines switching votes
  • claims of illegal immigrants voting
  • Claims of mysterious boxes of ballots being found under a table
  • False claims that Trump campaign officials weren't granted access to watch counting
  • The unending stream of unnecessary lawsuits claiming fraud when they admitted in court to having no evidence
  • Right-wing media pushing these lies for months
 
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Hoodoo said:
Can you provide anything to back up that Georgians were unhappy with their voting process pre-pandemic that wasn't addressed or was made worse by the new law?
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Well yeah....you can go all the way back to the 90s, but recently in the mid 2000s....I think 2014 or 2015 there was a large group of people very upset that Macon county wsa cutting precincts.  Kemp (when Sec of State) was "investigating" New Georgia Project because they were growing their voter base.  There are several lawsuits from groups like the NAACP and other civil rights groups that have been filed over the years because of what they perceive as unfair practices.  I didn't make a controversial statement.  :shrug:  

 
Amused to Death said:
Your link focused on two main points; foreign influence on social media and Florida's "hanging chads". Do you think the new GA laws addresses either of those?
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LOL, knew you were shooting for a gotcha. I would have to look over the new laws again to see if any of it addresses that. I tend to doubt it does. That wasn't the point though & you know it wasn't. The point was that there are growing concerns over vote integrity. Whether that's right or wrong I can't wholly answer. I do know that there have been examples such as the postal worker who was fired in Kentucky for throwing mail-in ballots in a dumpster. I'm not going to spend hours trying to dig up examples so that we can debate the validity of every single one of them. Again, the point isn't whether or not every single instance is valid or not. The concerns are valid enough so that the state of Georgia thought they were worth addressing, which they did.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
"We should abolish drop boxes altogether because . . . . " 
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It's made all the time down here....I'll post a link when one pops up again...it shouldn't take long.  "they are not secure" and "people can put however many ballots they want in the boxes" are among the top things I've heard follow the "because" in your statement.

 
Hoodoo said:
LOL, knew you were shooting for a gotcha. I would have to look over the new laws again to see if any of it addresses that. I tend to doubt it does. That wasn't the point though & you know it wasn't. The point was that there are growing concerns over vote integrity. Whether that's right or wrong I can't wholly answer. I do know that there have been examples such as the postal worker who was fired in Kentucky for throwing mail-in ballots in a dumpster. I'm not going to spend hours trying to dig up examples so that we can debate the validity of every single one of them. Again, the point isn't whether or not every single instance is valid or not. The concerns are valid enough so that the state of Georgia thought they were worth addressing, which they did.
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It wasn't a "gotcha", your link mentioned nothing about concerns over mail-in ballots. Yes, there have been minor instances of impropriety - every election has some issues. But the sudden uproar over election integrity and specifically the right's concerns over mail-in voting, I think, stems from the constant lying about massive voter fraud. Its been repeated by the right since September. I mean, how many people were chanting "Stop the Steal!" for months?

To this day we still have Trump ally Mike Lindell promising bombshell evidence that will put Trump back in office in August. You don't think that constant hammering of propaganda is behind the right's mistrust?

 
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The Commish said:
It's made all the time down here....I'll post a link when one pops up again...it shouldn't take long.  "they are not secure" and "people can put however many ballots they want in the boxes" are among the top things I've heard follow the "because" in your statement.
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Are those people just arguing against vote-by-mail in general, or just drop boxes specifically? 

I can kind of see a security angle, since if somebody deliberately wanted to mess with an election a drop-box would be a more tempting target than my mailbox.  But the ballot-stuffing thing doesn't seem to have much to do with drop boxes themselves.  In theory I could go around stuffing mail-in ballots into people's mailboxes after they leave for work.    

Edit: I understand that the state actively works to secure drop-boxes and doesn't just leave them sitting there unattended under a highway overpass or anything.  I'm just trying to understand what the alleged argument them even is.

 
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Yenrub said:
I believed the stated reason for these new laws was something along the lines of making sure that Georgia has fair and secure elections

I buy that adding the ID number to an absentee ballot is in line with that reasoning.

Decreasing the number of drop boxes however is a much tougher sell.

How does reducing the number of drop boxes increase election security?

Keep in mind that the ballots that are being dropped in those boxes will now have the newly required ID on them.
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How many drop boxes were codified in Georgia law before? 

 
IvanKaramazov said:
Are those people just arguing against vote-by-mail in general, or just drop boxes specifically? 

I can kind of see a security angle, since if somebody deliberately wanted to mess an election a drop-box would be a more tempting target than my mailbox.  But the ballot-stuffing thing doesn't seem to have much to do with drop boxes themselves.  In theory I could go around stuffing mail-in ballots into people's mailboxes after they leave for work.    

Edit: I understand that the state actively works to secure drop-boxes and doesn't just leave them sitting there unattended under a highway overpass or anything.  I'm just trying to understand what the alleged argument them even is.
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I would say that drop boxes are more prone to fraud and abuse.  This past election the CA Republican Party put out more than 50 fake "official" drop boxes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/us/politics/california-gop-drop-boxes.html

 
FairWarning said:
The taxpayers of Georgia  funded that stadium with a perk of getting major events like the all star game.  I’m sure that was promised.    If MLB wants to play judge and jury, maybe they should finance their stadiums from now on, and don’t screw the people who built that shiny new stadium. 
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Of course it was, although it was never written in a contract you can better believe.  In late 2015 I was sitting in the building that used to sit across from the new stadium construction site with the Braves ops folks.  They had that building set up where you were looking directly into the construction site and literally could see where each tier of seating would be, etc.  It was kind of looking in from the left field foul pole area kind of angled toward right field, but you could see all the dozers down on what would eventually be the playing field, etc.  They went through the whole painstaking process of pointing out where each area would be, costs/benefits.  They had models set up there and at the time one of the big talking points was "When the All Star Game comes, you have the rights to these seats".  So of course they had been told because these guys were just pitching what they'd been told to, but again without any kind of contractual certainty as the game wasn't awarded at the time.  But as you said, it is a perk of getting these new premium seating type stadiums built on the taxpayers backs.  I think that's pretty standard across sports and it is expected.

You have to kind of go back in time to when the Braves decision to move from the actual city occurred.  Atlanta wouldn't put the money into Turner Field.  Keep in mind, that was the old Olympic Stadium.  The Braves may have played a few games there at the end of '96, that I can't recall for sure.  But 1997 would have been their first full year.  They left for this new stadium in 2017.  So they spent 20 years in that stadium, which is a short stay even by today's standards.  Because it wasn't built specifically for baseball, some of the sight lines in it were poor.  The main gripe though was that it didn't have adequate "premium seating areas".  That's the new thing now, all the new stadiums have the ultra high end stuff where you can be at field level, have sit down white table cloth dining experiences within the high end clubs, etc.  Turner Field was lacking in those things.  The team went to the city and the mayor at the time refused to put the money into it.  I actually recall at the time thinking good for him that he didn't bow to the team.  But of course someone else did pony up the money, that's the way it seems to always work these days for the teams and new stadiums.

The Braves are guilty of verbally promising things outside of contracts that they conveniently forget about too so while I'm against the game being moved, that one part I don't feel sorry for them about.  I don't think as a team though they could have done anything about it and have actually done a lot of work in the local minority community as I detailed earlier.

 
Yenrub said:
How much maintenance is needed for a drop box?

How do you know most of the drop boxes would remain empty or receive only a few ballots?

Fulton county will be reduced from 36 down to about one forth of 23, so let’s say 6.

What is Fulton county going to do with the other 30 boxes that they already have? Leave them in storage?
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Not sure if answered, but I think one of the biggest pains for these boxes was that they had to have 24 hour surveillance and that video had to be made available to people requesting it. 

 
IvanKaramazov said:
So what would be your preferred solution?  Mail in voting without drop boxes?  Or something else?
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I would be okay eliminating drop boxes altogether.  The post office has mailboxes set up throughout my city, and I assume most other US cities.  Those work just as well as a dedicated ballot drop box and we all know where they are located and what they look like.  I think someone would be far less likely to tamper with an actual mailbox as they'd have to sift through piles of other mail to get to the ballots.  I have no idea what the CA GOP did with the ballots in their drop boxes, or if there is any evidence that actual official drop boxes were tampered with.  There are also the mailboxes that 99% of the population have on their own property that require no effort to use.

I'm generally in favor of anything that makes voting easier, so despite the CA GOP's shenanigans I'm not opposed to keeping dedicated ballot drop boxes, but they do strike me as redundant. 

 
Dickies said:
I would be okay eliminating drop boxes altogether.  The post office has mailboxes set up throughout my city, and I assume most other US cities.  Those work just as well as a dedicated ballot drop box and we all know where they are located and what they look like.  I think someone would be far less likely to tamper with an actual mailbox as they'd have to sift through piles of other mail to get to the ballots.  I have no idea what the CA GOP did with the ballots in their drop boxes, or if there is any evidence that actual official drop boxes were tampered with.  There are also the mailboxes that 99% of the population have on their own property that require no effort to use.

I'm generally in favor of anything that makes voting easier, so despite the CA GOP's shenanigans I'm not opposed to keeping dedicated ballot drop boxes, but they do strike me as redundant. 
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I think one reason the drop boxes were popular in 2020 was the perceived shenanigans by the Postmaster General, Trump ally DeJoy such as removing/dismantling high speed sorting machines just before the election and removing hundreds of street mailboxes. These things took place after Trump encouraged his voters to not use mail-in ballots because they're "corrupt and in many cases they're forgeries".

Dems became suspicious of the DeJoy's intention. 

 
Dickies said:
I would be okay eliminating drop boxes altogether.  The post office has mailboxes set up throughout my city, and I assume most other US cities.  Those work just as well as a dedicated ballot drop box and we all know where they are located and what they look like.  I think someone would be far less likely to tamper with an actual mailbox as they'd have to sift through piles of other mail to get to the ballots.  I have no idea what the CA GOP did with the ballots in their drop boxes, or if there is any evidence that actual official drop boxes were tampered with.  There are also the mailboxes that 99% of the population have on their own property that require no effort to use.

I'm generally in favor of anything that makes voting easier, so despite the CA GOP's shenanigans I'm not opposed to keeping dedicated ballot drop boxes, but they do strike me as redundant. 
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Don't know where you are but the ballot drop boxes here are a whole lot more secure than a USPS mailbox.   Plus other than at the post office, I don't think there's a mailbox within 5 miles of my house.    We can drop ballots at any fire station.    

 
-fish- said:
Don't know where you are but the ballot drop boxes here are a whole lot more secure than a USPS mailbox.   Plus other than at the post office, I don't think there's a mailbox within 5 miles of my house.    We can drop ballots at any fire station.    
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You don't have a mailbox?

Edit: Fire stations seem like a good idea.  They're reasonably well dispersed throughout the community, there's always somebody around, and they're widely recognized as a "government building."  As a baseline just for comparison purposes, I wonder what the outcome would be if every city had that as an option.  [Update -- Apparently there are 34 fire stations in Atlanta.  Somebody with spatial analysis skills would need to set up a map and see how well they align with population density, racial and partisan distributions, etc.  But that seems like a promising starting point].

 
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-fish- said:
Don't know where you are but the ballot drop boxes here are a whole lot more secure than a USPS mailbox.   Plus other than at the post office, I don't think there's a mailbox within 5 miles of my house.    We can drop ballots at any fire station.    
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How do you get mail?

 
IvanKaramazov said:
Are those people just arguing against vote-by-mail in general, or just drop boxes specifically? 

I can kind of see a security angle, since if somebody deliberately wanted to mess with an election a drop-box would be a more tempting target than my mailbox.  But the ballot-stuffing thing doesn't seem to have much to do with drop boxes themselves.  In theory I could go around stuffing mail-in ballots into people's mailboxes after they leave for work.    

Edit: I understand that the state actively works to secure drop-boxes and doesn't just leave them sitting there unattended under a highway overpass or anything.  I'm just trying to understand what the alleged argument them even is.
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no....most around here love vote by mail.

But this is also an area that still has Qanon people out every Friday at one of our major intersections holding "rallies" for Trump so.....

 
IvanKaramazov said:
You don't have a mailbox?

Edit: Fire stations seem like a good idea.  They're reasonably well dispersed throughout the community, there's always somebody around, and they're widely recognized as a "government building."  As a baseline just for comparison purposes, I wonder what the outcome would be if every city had that as an option.
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I think we'd be fine if we did fire/police stations and US postal locations.....

 
parasaurolophus said:
Not sure if answered, but I think one of the biggest pains for these boxes was that they had to have 24 hour surveillance and that video had to be made available to people requesting it. 
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I’m aware but I’m guessing Fulton county hasn’t take the cameras down that were used in 2020. They probably put the drop boxes in places where they already had cameras.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
You don't have a mailbox?

Edit: Fire stations seem like a good idea.  They're reasonably well dispersed throughout the community, there's always somebody around, and they're widely recognized as a "government building."  As a baseline just for comparison purposes, I wonder what the outcome would be if every city had that as an option.  [Update -- Apparently there are 34 fire stations in Atlanta.  Somebody with spatial analysis skills would need to set up a map and see how well they align with population density, racial and partisan distributions, etc.  But that seems like a promising starting point].
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I mean those blue USPS public mailboxes.   I would not feel secure in mailing anything out of my home mailbox.  We have a lot of theft from personal mailboxes around here.

I agree that fire stations are a good idea and reasonably convenient.  

 
Amused to Death said:
I think one reason the drop boxes were popular in 2020 was the perceived shenanigans by the Postmaster General, Trump ally DeJoy such as removing/dismantling high speed sorting machines just before the election and removing hundreds of street mailboxes. These things took place after Trump encouraged his voters to not use mail-in ballots because they're "corrupt and in many cases they're forgeries".

Dems became suspicious of the DeJoy's intention. 
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But we're supposed to trust Biden's Postmaster General?  This is absurd.

I can tell you with 100% fact that there a LOT of people suspicious of Dem intentions as well.

 
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Amused to Death said:
I think one reason the drop boxes were popular in 2020 was the perceived shenanigans by the Postmaster General, Trump ally DeJoy such as removing/dismantling high speed sorting machines just before the election and removing hundreds of street mailboxes. These things took place after Trump encouraged his voters to not use mail-in ballots because they're "corrupt and in many cases they're forgeries".

Dems became suspicious of the DeJoy's intention. 
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So you believe that election tampering and fraud is a plausible issue?

 
BladeRunner said:
But we're supposed to trust Biden's Postmaster General?  This is absurd.

I can tell you with 100% fact that there a LOT of people suspicious of Dem intentions as well.
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ummmm....it's the same guy.  Not sure why he's not gone, but he's still there.  No idea why anyone would trust him.  Who here is saying he's trustworthy?  :oldunsure:  

 
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Hoodoo said:
Why not go back to what was working for them before the pandemic rather than use something that was specifically designed for a pandemic situation? The state of Georgia is obviously not expecting 1.3 million people to continue to vote by mail or use the drop boxes. Reducing the number of drop boxes that the state has to manage/maintain/secure then makes sense.
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How well was it actually working before now that we have seen 2020?   Unfortunately the R's will have to deal with the aftermath, they will not win this pissing match in the long run.  

 
The Super Bowl is in LA next year.  The following year ii is  in Phoenix.  Should we expect Phoenix to lose their SB because they are not as woke on every issue like LA is?  That seems to be the way the game is played now.

 
BladeRunner said:
That was the point. :shrug:

He's trustworthy now because Biden's in office?
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Hint: He's not trustworthy.

Some people have more faith in drop boxes.  Some people have more faith in the post office.  For the minimal expense of having the drop boxes - the more the merrier.

 
Sinn Fein said:
Hint: He's not trustworthy.

Some people have more faith in drop boxes.  Some people have more faith in the post office.  For the minimal expense of having the drop boxes - the more the merrier.
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Drop boxes were NEVER an issue before.  No one ever complained about not having enough drop boxes, even when there was less than 20.  Now, suddenly, 94 is the NEW floor?  And if we don't have that then "RACISM!!" ?

I'm not buying it.  I think the left knee-jerked on this one yet again.

 
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FairWarning said:
The Super Bowl is in LA next year.  The following year ii is  in Phoenix.  Should we expect Phoenix to lose their SB because they are not as woke on every issue like LA is?  That seems to be the way the game is played now.
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No, no one has argued that the game was moved because Atlanta was not as woke as Denver on every issue. 

 
rct said:
No, no one has argued that the game was moved because Atlanta was not as woke as Denver on every issue. 
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They don't have to, they can just latch on to one and run with it.  So will it be immigration or something else?  The race to peak wokeness is a thing now.

 
FairWarning said:
They don't have to, they can just latch on to one and run with it.  So will it be immigration or something else?  The race to peak wokeness is a thing now.
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How much are Magic Woke Points worth?  Can you cash them in at some point for a prize?  Like a large stuffed LGBTQ doll or something like that?

 
BladeRunner said:
How much are Magic Woke Points worth?  Can you cash them in at some point for a prize?  Like a large stuffed LGBTQ doll or something like that?
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How did I leave the alphabet out?  I guess Little Rock isn't getting a Super Bowl anytime soon.  Who knows, maybe Wal-Mart will be so offended by the Arkensas LGBTQ stance, they will pull out of Bensonville?  

OK, probably not.

 
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