05-19-2008, 09:35 PM
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#1 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 515
| This Election is Over Already I got my ballot today. It requires my name and USFA number on the envelope to be "validated." I will not vote under this system, and I bet many others will not either. Sorry T, but this is over. |
| | | And now for this message... | |
05-19-2008, 09:38 PM
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#2 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 461
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Soberin I got my ballot today. It requires my name and USFA number on the envelope to be "validated." I will not vote under this system, and I bet many others will not either. Sorry T, but this is over. | Why is that keeping you from voting? Afraid of repercussions from the National office and/or the winning slate? The directions explicitly state that the name & number will be used to validate the ballot, before the ballot is looked at, then separated so that no one will know how you voted. Do you have some reason to believe that it will not be don that way? |
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05-19-2008, 09:45 PM
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#3 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 4,952
| This kind of thing is pretty common procedure for the associations I belong to, in order to prevent people from voting fraudulently. All you have to do is sign and print your name, and enter your number, so they can check your name off as having voted. The inside ballot, the one that is counted, does not have your name on it anywhere. It's merely the equivalent of showing ID when you vote in person.
__________________ I'm not anonymous. We just haven't been properly introduced. |
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05-19-2008, 09:57 PM
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#4 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 216
| It's even quite similar to what I do regularly as a permanent absentee voter in California--I have to sign the outside of the envelope so they can verify that I am a currently registered voter in that precinct.
Standard operating procedure for most mail-in votes I've ever participated in.
Mary |
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05-19-2008, 10:25 PM
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#5 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 515
| All of what you say is true. However, the natural reaction to voting in this country is to have complete privacy, which cannot be assured under this mail-in system. As a result, I predict that people will hesitate to vote, the turnout will be low, and the results will not be truly representative of the USFA members. |
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05-19-2008, 10:43 PM
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#6 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Lubbock, Texas
Posts: 145
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Soberin All of what you say is true. However, the natural reaction to voting in this country is to have complete privacy, which cannot be assured under this mail-in system. As a result, I predict that people will hesitate to vote, the turnout will be low, and the results will not be truly representative of the USFA members. | I would predict this response regardless of how the voting is done. I mean just look at local government elections or national voter turn out. People want the right to vote but are too lazy to get out of the house and do it; or in this case mail it. 
__________________ I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.-Galileo Galilei |
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05-19-2008, 10:50 PM
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#7 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: MA
Posts: 7,731
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Soberin All of what you say is true. However, the natural reaction to voting in this country is to have complete privacy, which cannot be assured under this mail-in system. As a result, I predict that people will hesitate to vote, the turnout will be low, and the results will not be truly representative of the USFA members. | You expected to vote anonymously? How would that even be possible? |
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05-19-2008, 11:03 PM
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#8 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Lubbock, Texas
Posts: 240
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Soberin All of what you say is true. However, the natural reaction to voting in this country is to have complete privacy, which cannot be assured under this mail-in system. As a result, I predict that people will hesitate to vote, the turnout will be low, and the results will not be truly representative of the USFA members. | Even federal/state/local governmental elections are not anonymous. At a minimum, you have to identify yourself to local election workers when voting in person, and when voting absentee through the mail, one has to provide sufficient identifying information on the exterior envelope and through the absentee ballot request such that the ballot can be validated, similar to the ballot validaion in this election.
__________________ "Better living through chemistry." |
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05-20-2008, 05:46 AM
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#9 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 4,952
| We used to be entitled to anonymous voting in Philadelphia. Heck, dead people could vote. Numerous times. 
__________________ I'm not anonymous. We just haven't been properly introduced. |
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05-20-2008, 06:26 AM
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#10 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 515
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Peach We used to be entitled to anonymous voting in Philadelphia. Heck, dead people could vote. Numerous times.  | Chicago too. That's what made America great. |
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05-20-2008, 08:25 AM
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#11 | | Moderator
Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 10,820
| That's not anonymous. If it was anonymous, how would you know they were dead? It was identified, just not with particularly rigorous verification... |
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05-20-2008, 08:35 AM
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#12 | | Senior Member
Join Date: May 2006 Location: Here
Posts: 2,122
| I haven't received my ballot yet. Am I the only one?
__________________ Quote: |
Originally Posted by IHateMrPotatohead I can't think of anything to put down there! | |
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05-20-2008, 09:37 AM
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#13 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 4,150
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Originally Posted by IHateMrPotatohead I haven't received my ballot yet. Am I the only one? | Why should you get a ballot when you have already voted?
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05-20-2008, 11:08 AM
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#14 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: USA
Posts: 1,769
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Peach We used to be entitled to anonymous voting in Philadelphia. Heck, dead people could vote. Numerous times.  | So that is what the kid in The Sixth Sense was seeing.
Rick
__________________ "Some people are born great fencers, some people achieve fencing greatness, and some people have it thrust upon them."
My pet Monkey on an IBM selectric
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05-20-2008, 11:14 AM
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#15 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 4,952
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Originally Posted by piste off So that is what the kid in The Sixth Sense was seeing.
Rick | Yup--Voters.
__________________ I'm not anonymous. We just haven't been properly introduced. |
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05-20-2008, 11:43 AM
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#16 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 234
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Soberin I got my ballot today. It requires my name and USFA number on the envelope to be "validated." I will not vote under this system, and I bet many others will not either. Sorry T, but this is over. | I don't understand your problem with this system. How are hey supposed to know you are really a USFA member voting, or that you have not voted already in the election? It is not going to be on the actual ballot. With all the garbagey back and forth on the forums it would not surprise me if some people would be willing to cheat to see the ones they support have a better chance. It is a necessary safeguard.
And even if your name was on the actual ballot and the election was not anonymous; what do you think they would do if they knew how you voted? all of the sudden you are going to be looked down upon by those you did not vote for, and they will send their covert forces to silence your voice of dissent? I think you are over reacting to the idea of your name being tied to your vote. And I hope most people won't care either.
__________________
"LFM for Nationals Attunement. PST."
~cobalt
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05-20-2008, 11:54 AM
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#17 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Philadelphia, PA
Posts: 2,080
| For all intents and purposes, it's equivalent to putting a return address label on the envelope.
As many people have pointed out, there doesn't seem to be a way to verify voting by mail without some sort of identifying feature on the envelope. Seems like a non-issue to me.
--Philistine |
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05-20-2008, 12:11 PM
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#18 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 2,248
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Soberin I got my ballot today. It requires my name and USFA number on the envelope to be "validated." I will not vote under this system, and I bet many others will not either. Sorry T, but this is over. | You have to be kidding me, right? What do you think is going to happen, that one of the six people in the national office are going to tell everyone how you voted and you will be blacklisted from fencing for your vote?
Honest to goodness, I am certain they have better things to do with thier time.
__________________
Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. ~ Albert Einstein
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult. ~ Rita Rudner
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05-20-2008, 12:32 PM
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#19 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: West Coast
Posts: 2,922
| Quote:
Originally Posted by jfarmer Why is that keeping you from voting? Afraid of repercussions from the National office and/or the winning slate? | Soberin is afraid that, if he votes for the loser, the hobnailed-Ballestra-wearing thugs from the winning slate will fleche through his door late at night, and take him off to the Sam Cheris Memorial Re-education and Indoctrination Center for the Good of Fencing in Passaic, NJ.
There, the heirs of Stanley Kubrick will wire his eyes open, and he will be forced to watch countless hours of Inquartata lectures on the intricacies of the Keynesian economic model. That, or Mariah Carey music videos.
Either way, he's justifiably terrorized. 
__________________
"Fraud is the creation of trust. And then: its betrayal."
William Black, Ph.D.
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05-20-2008, 01:34 PM
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#20 | | Moderator
Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 10,820
| Jeff Bukantz lives in Passaic? |
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