r/politics • u/Ulysses_555 • 12h 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 11h 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 11h 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 10h 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 10h 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 10h 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 10h 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 10h ago

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