In the northwest corner of Louisiana, a candidate for parish sheriff is demanding a recount after losing by a single vote in an election where more than 43,000 people voted.
The most salient part of the article:
When the recount takes place Monday only absentee ballots will be tallied again and checked for errors. But they only account for about 17% of the total vote in the runoff race. Absentee ballots are mailed in and are the only auditable paper trail under Louisiana’s current voting system.They can only recount absentee ballots?
That’s something that should really be fixed
Edit: Being able to audit the full process is important for preserving transparency in elections.
I thought the same thing. I went looking and found a whole trail of articles on it. Louisiana actually tried in years past, but internal state politics and bid rigging killed their efforts.
Louisiana is possibly the most corrupt state in the entire country, I don’t think they’d ever even come close to changing that
John Oliver talks about electronic voting machines and their impact, pre-2020.
This is why voting is so damn important
Don’t let apathy towards voting take hold and if you see your friends being apathetic to the idea of voting convince them to vote
The latest batch of tankie propaganda is that it doesn’t matter if you vote because no election is ever decided by a single vote. Ignoring the hilarity of the people using collective action as an argument saying that, this is why it matters. Because local and even state elections often have ridiculously small margins
Tankies have been on that one for awhile now
They’ll straight up mock you for even suggesting that voting is effective at anything
I just say to them, “so don’t vote. Not my problem.” They don’t know what to do about that.
I too don’t know how to respond when someone tells me to do exactly what I had planned to do and was advocating for others to do?
We can’t have another 2016.
You are advocating for others to not vote?
No. But by not disputing stupidity, you are
Your witty response is to agree with them
It’s not a witty response. I honestly don’t give a shit if they don’t vote. If they do vote, it will be for someone like Jill Stein or whatever dumbass the Libertarians are running this year, so fuck them.
Voting is the only thing that changes the rules. Protests, donations, volunteering, etc. are all meant to influence voting. Voting is the only thing that works.
No, money can’t buy everything. It can only influence. You are not going to bribe a Republican to raise taxes, or a (real, not fake) Democrat to vote for Trump.
…voting is very much not the only thing. Sure, it’s important, but there’s far far more to politics than just voting.
Protests are definitely not just to influence voting, unless you also mean “influencing politicians to propose and vote for law changes”
“you’re stupid if you think that will accomplish anything” and “they are the same party” is pretty old hat.
Haven’t seen the argument that individual votes don’t matter so individuals shouldn’t vote until recently. Is kind of a step up since it plays to the smug factor
Tankie = nice useful idiot for effective pincer maneuver from the right.
While the right galvanizes their voters with “these very limited interventions is communism”
Tankies undermine the left’s enthusiasm: “Not left enough” to make a difference.
Oh yeah? Enjoy the current supreme Court.
Remember that Kevin Costner movie “swing vote” where he was courted by the two presidential candidates because he was somehow the deciding vote in an election? I don’t remember how they rigged it that way in the story, or what the outcome was, but the premise of one guy being a deciding vote always stuck with me because it can happen in every election; we just don’t know who that guy is because it’s everyone
If memory serves he was dissolutioned with voting and his daughter tried to convince him to vote. She eventually tried to cast his ballot herself (that she filled out) but ended up damaging the ballot trying to put it into a machine. She told him but he kept it secret throughout the movie.
So because his ballot was damaged they had him recast it so they could count it.
At one point in the movie one of the candidates literally tries to bribe him with a job offer.
And in the end I believe the movie ended with him sitting down in front of the presidential candidates and having them do a debate right there in front of him on national TV. They never said who he votes for. They just leave it there which I think was a more powerful ending than I’d they said who he voted for.
Edit: I remember enjoying that movie but never remembering the title, so thank you.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time this has happened in recent memory. I think in 2018 there was another race decided by a single vote, and it remained a 1 vote lead after multiple recounts.
Voting matters, and every vote counts.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
(AP) — In the northwest corner of Louisiana, a candidate for parish sheriff demanded a recount Wednesday after losing by a single vote in an election where more than 43,000 people cast ballots.
The tight race shines a spotlight on Louisiana’s recount process and its outdated voting machines, which do not produce an auditable paper trail that experts say is critical to ensuring election results are accurate.
“This extraordinarily narrow margin … absolutely requires a hand recount to protect the integrity of our democratic process, and to ensure we respect the will of the people,” John Nickelson, the Republican candidate who trailed by one vote in last week’s election for Caddo Parish Sheriff, posted on social media Wednesday.
Caddo Clerk of Court Mike Spence said he has seen close races during his 46-years of experience, but none with such a sizeable number of voters.
The current system, used by virtually every in-person voter in Georgia, prints a paper ballot with a human-readable summary and a QR code, a type of barcode, that is read by a scanner to count the votes.
Secretary of State-elect Nancy Landry, a Republican who takes office in January, said implementing a new voting system is a top priority.
The original article contains 720 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Proof that your individual vote doesn’t matter. You have to bring your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, etc with you when you vote.
This would already be a dumb, apathetic take… but you commented it on a story where someone… literally had their individual vote make all the difference. You do realize how incorrect and defeatist you sound, right!?
Removed by mod
…surely it means that someone’s individual vote did matter?
Of all the conclusions you could have come up with, that is the one you picked? Really? Are you a troll or something?
I get what you’re trying to go for, “get the vote out, get the people to the polls” but homie this is the worst possible way to go for it.
