![[1221] Under A Killer Balloon: Into Darkness, Page 2](/comics/2020-10-26-1221-under-a-killer-balloon-into-darkness-page-2.png "[1221] Under A Killer Balloon: Into Darkness, Page 2")
It’s a tragedy that election fraud, or at least allegations of it, is becoming more common in “civilized” countries again.
That’s why I served as election observer for the last federal election at my local poll site.
- Caption: Private eye Sandy South and her trusty companion Qoo are on the lookout for criminal activity.
- Larisa: Keep ’em coming!
- Caption: Ballots
- Sandy South: Larisa, are you burning completed ballots there?
- Larisa: Yeah. But those are for the other candidate. You know, the one we don’t like!
- Sandy South: Ah! No problem then.
- Caption: The search continues!
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aaaaaa123456789 wrote:
Your system would work.
Problems would be if it was attempted.
1> Since it requires each person getting a token, there would be lots of people claiming they didn’t get one (even those who shouldn’t have… like felons and illegal aliens).
2> the tokens would be intercepted if sent by mail.
3> to ensure tokens would be available, there would have to be a location they would have to go to to get them (and register to vote when they do).
The post office and/or other government building would be chosen for this.
Just try to imagine the ruckus kicked up when one party or another discovers a particular location is not gathering enough voters for ‘their side’.
One party is already particularly adept at declaring “voter suppression” anytime a location they think should vote for them isn’t gathering enough voters for them.
jb wrote:
I agree with most of what you say.
I’m not going to say where I don’t agree, but it isn’t much.
I will add that it is well known ( to most of the American populace, at least) that the news media has an extremely strong bias and which way (politically) that bias leans.
In fact, all three of news outlets you mention share that bias (if my understanding is accurate).
So stating the size and circulation of a newspaper as proof that paper can not be fooled is simply foolishness (especially if the newspaper is a willing victim of such trickery) .
Now, to address the matter of vote ‘adjustment’…
there is one area of vote counting that the mass media does its best to ‘avoid’…
absentee voting..
There are a reasons for this.
First, absentee votes could take weeks to get voted and the election is usually (not always) decided well before the absentee votes are counted.
The last time they would have mattered was during the Bush/Gore election was stalled by the ruckus of the Florida voting.
Quite a few people were noting the longer the Florida votes were taking, the more it leaned toward Bush (who eventually won).
Not many (but some) noted that three OTHER states switched from democrat to republican during that delay (New Mexico, Montana, and Wisconsin).
These three states changed the electorial collage enough so that Florida’s votes did not matter.
This was because the absentee votes were coming in and were being counted.
There are basically three large (and supposedly very patriotic) groups that vote by absentee…
Active duty military, over-seas embassies, interstate truckers.
The patriotism of active duty military and embassies does not need to be explained, but truckers may need to be.
Truckers go to every part and every town/city of this great country.
Truckers see and experience the effects of policies at a street level everywhere they go.
They get to compare the experiences like nobody else and know beyond a doubt what helps this nation more… liberal or conservative.
More than 95% of them VOTE in every (and I do mean EVERY) national election.
Truckers vote almost exclusively by absentee votes because it usually is the only means available to them…
and there are more than 10 million of them.
So add the active duty military and embassies to the truckers voting by absentee and…?
@ BlueJay:
eh, i find it chuckleworthy
@ Drakefire:
Quite legally by the rules the Democrats set up for their own ballot harvesting in CA. And Republicans were the most likely to use the box, given the location. So hardly suppressing Democrat votes.
Anything that makes fraud easier is generally bad. But playing by the rules is just playing by the rules. It just steams Democrats when the realize the rules they set up to let them cheat more easily can be used by Republicans, too. And Republicans don’t even have to cheat to make the cheating harder!
Democrats are mad about Republican ballot harvesting because it makes it harder for their harvesters to collect suspected Republican votes for disposal or “correction.”
And Republicans don’t complain much about voter suppression; we worry about voter fraud. When we hear Democrats say “vote suppression,” what we know they mean is “vote fraud suppression.” We have faith in their voters’ intellect to figure out how to show up in person and use all the same security features Republican others do, and know the reason it seems that things go better for Democrats with less secure voting has little to do with more legal voters voting and a lot to do with more fraudulent ballots being mixed in with legal ones.
BlueJay wrote:
That’s nothing. Here in Germany, we had a newspaper that was literally inventing stories about Americans (The culprit had the name Claas Relotius), just to make them look bad.
@ Tadrix:
I disagree wholeheartedly.
There are many individually disliked topics. However, there is one inappropriate subject that will *always* be inappropriate: dehumanization humor.
Jokes that make -other- groups seem inferior. These serve as seeds of oppression propaganda, no matter how “innocent”. I don’t care if it’s Jews, Muslims, Gays, Straights, Trans, Cis, Chrisitan, Atheist, Black, White, Latino, etc. You don’t make jokes that make “the others” out to be less than human. That type of “humor” is never okay, and has always laid the seeds of violence and oppression. And it’s never a *just* a joke because there will always be someone who instead of saying, “That’s a wrong but slightly funny stereotype” says instead, “yea, they’re right. It’s funny because it’s true.” and they’ve thus seeded some kind of hate.
@ Harmony:
Thanks.
@ Nikary Flare:
To be serious for a moment: If that’s how you feel, you’re missing the point of voting I think. Personally I’d much rather win through superior numbers than by someone burning an opponents ballots. If you don’t trust or respect the voting system enough to not want to cheat it, it just means you don’t trust or respect people, and by default are against democracit republics (and democracy in general).
Not that “the people” don’t get things wrong sometimes mind you, but self-governance is supposedly the ideal that most “Western” nations have upheld, rather than a king or similar dictator. And with good reason, for most dictatorships have gone much worse for the people, regardless of whether they were considered “right” or “left” in nature.
To be less serious for a moment… I have severe doubts that ballots would be able to hold a sustained bonfire of that size for that long, particularly just being hand-fed, and how is she going to know who they’re for without opening each of them? Obviously she’s got help, so I guess someone else is screening them for her? The side-mystery deepens…
@ Harmony:
Much as I appreciate the sentiment… you’re wrong. Firstly, that’s not the only way to “plant seeds of hate” through alleged humor. Secondly, you’re clearly not thinking this through properly. Everyone is part of some group, so if you make a joke about even an individual, it can be interpreted as being against a group. If you make a joke about George Soros it can be interpreted (albeit perhaps incorrectly) as being anti-Jewish.
Additionally, there are a lot of “groupings” of humans. Murderers often get lumped together, as do, topically, rioters. People that live in a given city, play a certain game, and so on. Another thing to consider: Do you hold the same standard for not telling “dehumanizing jokes” about Nazi’s or the KKK?
If humor that risks “dehumanizing” a group isn’t allowed than you’ve essentially eliminated all jokes that deal with humans.
“A priest, a rabi, and a monk walk into a bar.” “Whoa, you can’t say that joke, you might dehumanize one of them!” “Someone might take offense, or worse, agree with the joke!” And failing that high standard, you’ll almost always end up with double-standards, where one group is “okay” to joke about and dehumanize but another isn’t… that makes things much worse.
The reality is… if someone thinks: “It’s funny because it’s true.” It’s because they’ve already been taught it. That “seed” is already there. If anything, making it an issue of humor can dillute that “seed.” Laughing about something makes people generally less serious about it, not more; and good humor disappates hatred.
To be perfectly clear, I think humans should be judged individually. I don’t think people should apply traits to groups of people beyond what is inherently part of that group (all humans are human for example) and issue judgements on them for those assumed traits. Neither positive nor negative.
But I also don’t think that jokes should be so limited as you’ve suggested. It’s important, sometimes, to be able to laugh at our own humanity.
I guess the main thing I’ve been saying is: “Trust in humanity.”
I will say that I find it funny how the comments paint a dark picture for the US when there was little attempted fraud. (And the fraud that was discovered was both small and prevented from interfering with the tally.)
I also will say that it has been depressing how some on the side that lost have acted since then, particularly 1/6 where people wanted to do what Larisa is doing in the comic on a larger scale.
The “private eye extraordinary” is payed by one of the political factions, if it consider only one of the candidates as an enemy.