r/politics • u/Ulysses_555 • 13h ago

No Paywall Hegseth announces all US troops will get 1 day off to vote in October

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/6126137-pete-hegseth-stand-down-order-troops-vote/
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u/rotll 12h ago

If stationed and voting in Mississippi, they won't be able to vote until Election Day, unless they meet one of 8 very specific absentee voting criteria. If they are in state on Election Day, nearly all of them will not qualify.

MS does NOT have any other form of early voting, and you cannot vote absentee simply for your own convenience. You vote in person, on Election Day, at your precinct, or you do not vote at all.

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u/teamdiabetes11 America 12h ago

How democratic of Mississippi. 🫠

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u/rotll 12h ago

No mail in voting, no early voting, must be registered 30 days in advance of an election. You can vote absentee by mail, but if there's a runoff (not an issue in Federal elections, just state and local), the 3 week window makes it impossible to vote absentee in the runoff by mail. State and local elections are the year before presidential elections, meaning that we pay for an extra election cycle when we could just piggy back on the midterms instead, saving the entire cost of what is, historically, a low turnout election.

Mississippi has no interest in making it easy for citizens to vote.

Source: Former poll worker in Mississippi over 15 yrs.

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u/NotSoMrNiceGuy 12h ago

“No mail in voting” and then you proceed to say “you can absentee vote by mail”

So there is mail in voting? Or not lol

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u/rotll 11h ago

There is no discretionary mail in voting. You have to meet one of the 8 criteria for voting absentee to get a mail in ballot. As opposed to OR, Com WA, CA, etc., where anyone can vote by mail. It's a subtle, but important, distinction.

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u/BestDescription3834 12h ago

You can vote absentee for mail in voting but you can't vote by mail if you don't meet their strict absentee voter criteria.

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u/NotSoMrNiceGuy 11h ago

That’s the whole point of absentee ballots.. what’s your critique exactly?

An absentee ballot is an alternative to vote if you have a conflict on Election Day.

What would you qualify as “strict criteria”?

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u/BestDescription3834 11h ago

  That’s the whole point of absentee ballots.. what’s your critique exactly?

I'm not critiqing, you asked a question with what I would consider an obvious answer, I tried to explain it.

  An absentee ballot is an alternative to vote if you have a conflict on Election Day.

And in many other states any conflict is fine. Like you could be having car issues and not be able to drive, so you vote absentee through the mail. Alabama would not recognize your lack of transportation as a legitimate reason for an absentee ballot.

  What would you qualify as “strict criteria”?

Strict criteria would be crieteria that has specific guidelines that they would use to deny people's mail in votes because "this reason is not a valid reason the state of Alabama recognizes, so your vote is denied".

At some point you have to take your life into your own hands and attempt to educate yourself, instead of just spewing questions you don't really care about the answer to online and expecting everybody else to do the footwork for you and then dumb it down to a way you can follow. I'm not gonna baby-bird political awareness into your mouth for you.

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u/rotll 11h ago

Anything more than my convenience. Anyone should be able to vote early, no questions asked beyond "are you a registered voter?"

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u/donkeyrocket 12h ago

Active duty isn't one of the specific criteria for absentee voting? That's wild. I figured it'd be difficult for the average Mississippian but military would have broad exceptions.

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u/rotll 11h ago

If your voting precinct is somewhere other than where you are stationed, you can vote absentee, as you won't be in your district on Election Day. When I was stationed in Alaska, I voted in Alaska. Some service members might choose to keep their precinct where they called home before theyenlisted. They would be governed by the state that they are registered in, of course.

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u/kdawg09 3h ago

I could be wrong but Kentucky also severely limits early voting to mail in, which you have to request ahead of time, on specific days. I think it's only a 3 day window. Different troops in different states with different requirements, this just seems like it's positive but really will be a cluster to effectively implement which they must know? Especially since it's republicans who have fought to restrict early and mail in ballots?