I just got an email from Democrats Abroad in Manila to tell me to insist that they count our ballots.
Actually I haven't voted since moving here: Partly because my last voting address was Oklahoma and the Republicans there would overwhelm my little vote, and partly because I am not up to date to vote on local candidates there, but mainly because the mail is so slow that even if I send it in early, it might arrive late.
My latest mail to the USA took 3 weeks to get there, but the latest letter from the US to me was posted in late August. But even in good times, (pre covid) it took 2 to 3 weeks for "snail mail" to arrive. Much of the delay if from Manila to our town, which takes 7 to ten days on average.
But the worse delay was a pension check mailed in February that arrived damaged and unreadable in late July.
So the DemocratsAbroad. are correct in worrying that ex pats (overseas Americans) and others (especially military votes) will not be counted.
No link, but I sort of remember in 2000, when they were arguing about "hanging chads" in Florida, that at the same time lots of military ballots were never counted because they arrived too late.
The Military Times has a similar worry. LINK and the numbers are significant if the election is close:
Overall in 2016, there were 252,574 military absentee ballots counted by all the states; and 382,896 absentee ballots from U.S. citizens overseas, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. As everyone has seen, the margins of votes in this election are changing rapidly as more votes are counted. Military and overseas citizens' votes will be counted by election officials, but the fact that some states have previously carved out later deadlines to allow for more transit times for these ballots could make a difference.
that is one of the reasons for allowing counting of late ballots.
of course, when the law allows things like this, you have to remember it also allows people to discover ballot boxes in the back room: this is especially important when they don't require postmarks to be validated, or when the late ballots hint of fraud (i.e. too high a count for one side, or when more people voted than are registered, or when they find a ballot or two registered to a dead person, which makes one wonder how many fraudulent ballots will be overlooked.
so it looks like it will be another fight to see who wins. Nothing new here, alas, but the important news is that there haven't been riots: it looks like people are still trusting the constitution to play out according to law.
The best quip about all of this is from Dilbert:
Episode 1176 Scott Adams: Even the Looters Don’t Know What to do Now.
My son swears by NPR which tells him only Trump is worried about fraud. My take? I don't have one. But I don't especially trust NPR or most of the MSM here: the rule is that if they don't get the facts correct about things you know about, don't trust them about things you don't know about. And the distortion about the Philippines news and about the covid epidemic is there, although it's hard to tell if the distortions are from opinion pieces or regular news (they need to lable the difference, since it's hard to tell the difference when you get the news on line).
I get most of my news on line. And our internet problems mean I haven't been able to keep up with the deluge of propaganda from both sides. So if I haven't written about the election, it is because I have a life, and typhoons and epidemics and worry if the rice crop will survive and get harvested sort of seem more important right now.
I just don't trust the MSM, and the censorship of the conservative voices by social media to eliminate the right wing propaganda and fake news means it's hard to find the reasonable opinions from the other side.
I suspect that there will be a breakup of the social media no matter who wins, similar to the breakup of AT&T or IBM in the past, The monopoly laws go back to Teddy Roosevelt, so don't blame Trumpieboy (or Biden) when this happens.
Nor is the fight between government and huge internet based monopolies limited to the USA: The UKGuardian has an article about Jack Ma vs Xi.
well, anyway, I haven't been able to follow a lot of the kerfuffle in the US elections for the last six weeks.
Our internet has been going off and on during the day (the phone company is upgrading their cable to carry the traffic from all the kids at home using the internet to take classes, so often the internet doesn't work while they are working on the line). So the only time I know I can get on line is early in the morning, before 8 am.
To complicate matter we have had heavy rain and two nearby typhoons and brownouts.
But the main reason is that Joy is using my computer. Sometimes it is because the secretary (part time) is using it to update the books and data, and other times Joy uses my newer computer in order to do her zoom business conferences. But not just during the day: because the internet is off much of the time during the day, Joy is up late at night using my computer to do her email and business stuff late at night when the internet is working.
it is a real problem for Joy's business: Often the internet is out when she is on conference calls, so she has to link to the internet via her phone, which is expensive and slow.
So yesterday, she signed up for Huawei internet link. Yes, it will cost a bit, but cheaper and faster for business, (G5 link? I have no idea). She has the modem in her room, but it reaches to the dining room for the rest of us to connect if we wish.
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update: most of the local English papers here in the Philippines (run by the oligarchy that loves the Democrats) are comparing the confusion of the USA election to Marcos trying to stop the counting of legal ballots against him. But they sort of over look that many of the mail in ballots coming in late resemble the "Hello Garci" scandal, where a certain lovely president was recorded talking to a local bigshot asking him to make sure the ballots were being done properly, which most folks here interpreted as telling him to bring out the pre filled out ballots from the back room.
That scandal was one reason the Philippines paid a lot of money to get electronic voting machines.
a lot of what is happening, from the "BLM" and "antifa" demonstrations to the Democratic DA's who refuse to prosecute rioters, to the mail in ballot scheme, are all seen by Trump and his followers as a conspiracy (many of Trump's backers are Democrats who are upset that the extreme left took over their party).
But one does see the censorship of social media against the "deplorables", and the MSM is not very curious about checking on possible cheating, so one suspects the end result will be that the most productive and hard working folks in the USA will essentially be disenfranchised again by corrupt politicians of both parties who like the status quo where they can get rich. (another story rarely reported outside of the small right wing media which has since been banished from Youtube and facebook and twitter).
Not much I can do about any of this of course: When I pray, I only get the small quiet feeling that this is a chastisement for the USA and ultimately for the world.
As for us, a Biden presidency would mean letting China get away with their shennanigans stealing our fish and our petroleum reserves. StrategyPage has a longish essay on what is going on here LINK
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