Something fishy going on

[widdershins]

I just noticed an envelope on the coffee table and found that it was a letter for me. Not unusual. The kids bring in the mail and drop it wherever. Then I notice that it says "Voter Documents" on one side and "Voting Documents Enclosed" on the other. And then I noticed it's from Republican Party of Iowa. It's a request form for an absentee ballot. Actually, it's two of said forms. I have never voted absentee. I didn't ask for the request form. I'm registered independent. And Republicans HATE absentee voting because absentee voters are by and large Democrat voters.

Naturally, it coming from Republicans who's motto is "If you can't beat 'em, cheat 'em", I'm a little suspicious why I am getting a letter from Republicans clearly labeled as "Voter Documents" on both sides inviting me to request absentee ballots for the first time ever, and giving me TWO such forms. The way I see it, there are two possibilities.

A) they think that Republican voters just never thought of it before. Why else would Republicans lose almost all elections if it went by popular vote?
B) they truly believe this is the gateway to massive voter fraud, but since the evidence doesn't support that they're hoping to manufacture evidence

I had briefly considered that they hoped these would be stolen and my vote would be cast for me long before election day, but none of the information is filled out. And before your say that's paranoid, Republicans have, in the past, some of it recent, given certain voters the wrong date to vote, run Republicans as Democrats to confuse voters, tried to impeach every Democrat President since I started paying attention (I've already heard talk of how they might impeach Hillary) and disenfranchised likely Democrat voters. There is no low they won't stoop to in order to win. And Faux News today was just talking about how bad early voting is (at a customer's house way too long with that shit in the background. At least it wasn't "What A" Rush Limbaugh.) They're up to something and it probably buries the needle on immoral and is just barely this side of legal.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Remember, vote early and often!"

[SGOS]

Smells fishy to me too.

[widdershins]

Okay, I found an article about a similar push in North Carolina in 2012.  They're not up to anything fishy, they're just stupid.  Democrats usually start election day with a big lead because of absentee votes and their idea is that they are going to erase that lead through some form of magic.  Absentee ballots are overwhelmingly Democrat votes and higher voter turnout overwhelmingly helps Democrats, so what they are likely actually doing is getting more votes for Democrats if they're making a difference at all by sending out the request forms for absentee ballots in an effort to increase voter turnout.

They really are in their own little world.  They really believe that if they spend a few million dollars to push 2 things, absentee voting and higher voter turnout, 2 things which overwhelmingly and reliably work against them, it will somehow turn the tide in their favor.  Given that in 2013 Republicans in NC started arguing that absentee voting would allow dead people to vote and the laws passed after that which were recently shot down were known as the strictest in the nation, I doubt it worked out so well for them.  But hey, they didn't try it in Iowa yet, so, "Hey Rocky.  Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"

[Baruch]

Official absentee ballot from the local election commission would be legit.  One from the local R or D party would be ... smelly.

[widdershins]

They weren't actually absentee ballots.  They were absentee ballot request forms.  Having never so much as considered absentee voting before I was unfamiliar with either form, leading to my original suspicions.  I just don't trust Republicans.  I'm not exactly going to get into a windowless van with a Democrat either, but Republicans I find Republicans, who are already talking about impeaching our next duly elected president if they don't like the outcome of the Democratic process, to be especially slimy and worthy of suspicion.

I believe the intent is as it was in North Carolina in 2012, they believe that if they can just get more people to get out and vote it will somehow help them in the polls.  Republicans tend not to learn from (or particularly understand) history.  After the 2012 elections in North Carolina Republicans immediately began coming up with brand new (but still stupid) reasons why absentee voting was bad and should be banned, so apparently it didn't work out so well for them, but Iowa is trying it now.

[drunkenshoe]

If you noticed this, it means others will too.

I don't think it would open a way for massive voters' fraud or stealing votes etc..., but it could be a way of creating a perception management.

[Baruch]

They weren't actually absentee ballots.  They were absentee ballot request forms.  Having never so much as considered absentee voting before I was unfamiliar with either form, leading to my original suspicions.  I just don't trust Republicans.  I'm not exactly going to get into a windowless van with a Democrat either, but Republicans I find Republicans, who are already talking about impeaching our next duly elected president if they don't like the outcome of the Democratic process, to be especially slimy and worthy of suspicion.

I believe the intent is as it was in North Carolina in 2012, they believe that if they can just get more people to get out and vote it will somehow help them in the polls.  Republicans tend not to learn from (or particularly understand) history.  After the 2012 elections in North Carolina Republicans immediately began coming up with brand new (but still stupid) reasons why absentee voting was bad and should be banned, so apparently it didn't work out so well for them, but Iowa is trying it now.

We should go full Roman, have the Pretorian Guard choose, or have them liquidate whoever is sworn into office if they don't give them all a big raise.  There is a downside to our Greco-Roman heritage.

[Unbeliever]

[Mr. Pibb]

We should go full Roman, have the Pretorian Guard choose, or have them liquidate whoever is sworn into office if they don't give them all a big raise.  There is a downside to our Greco-Roman heritage.

Poor Pertinax. I'd rather not have Didius Julianus pinching silver from the coinage.   

[Baruch]

Poor Pertinax. I'd rather not have Didius Julianus pinching silver from the coinage.   

That is the most impressive obscure cross-reference I have seen here, from anyone, in the 16 months I have been posting.  On the other hand, we could get a good emperor like Antonius Pius.  I just got a posthumous aes of his wife, Faustina Sr.  Will people be collecting coins with Ms Clinton as First Lady ... 2000 years from now?  Or will they be defaced like so many surviving coins of Caligula?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If they were absentee ballot applications then I suspect somebody thinks there are at least two people of voting age at that address. If it's a residential address then the chances are actually pretty good. So it's not strange at all that two applications were sent in the letter.

[Mr. Pibb]

That is the most impressive obscure cross-reference I have seen here, from anyone, in the 16 months I have been posting.  On the other hand, we could get a good emperor like Antonius Pius.  I just got a posthumous aes of his wife, Faustina Sr.  Will people be collecting coins with Ms Clinton as First Lady ... 2000 years from now?  Or will they be defaced like so many surviving coins of Caligula?

One heck of a coincidence.  I just happen to have started Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I'm on the first book, right at the section where he is discussing the Year of the Five Emperors.  Think I might sweep the house for surveillance devices.   

I was a bit hesitant about starting such a body of work.  I thought the language or subject matter might be a bit dense given it's age and length.  Pleasantly surprised so far. 

[Baruch]

One heck of a coincidence.  I just happen to have started Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I'm on the first book, right at the section where he is discussing the Year of the Five Emperors.  Think I might sweep the house for surveillance devices.   

I was a bit hesitant about starting such a body of work.  I thought the language or subject matter might be a bit dense given it's age and length.  Pleasantly surprised so far.

We have much to speak of in the history section.  I have read that tome ... and Gibbon was one of my Irish cousins.  The language isn't too bad, if you read straight thru, and skip all the footnotes.  This is history done the old fashioned way ... verbose, political and with an agenda.  Gibbon's agenda was to undermine the Church of England and the Catholic Church ... because he felt they were holding the British Empire back ... thus the emphasis (and only an emphasis, there were many factors) on the rise of Christianity being what did the Roman Empire in.

Gibbon's main narrative starts with the reign of Emperor Commodus ... so you must be doing the intro section.  Commodus is the bad guy in the movie Gladiator ... where he kills his own father, Marcus Aurelius.  There has been much scholarship, with varying agenda, in the past 200 years of historiography.  My personal focus is on the economics.  Basically it comes down to Emperor Constantine choosing one form of Christianity to be orthodox (more or less) as a means of unifying the Empire around a new ideology.  Kind of like Stalin using communism to unify Russia.  He could have done better with his personal religion, popular in the Roman Army ... of Sol Invictus.  Only with Christian colored glasses does his attempt at grand strategy seem to work out ... but it was a failure within one generation (his sons and their successors still opted for frequent civil war) ... the Army wasn't unified ideologically, otherwise the subsequent civil wars wouldn't have been successful.  My own ancestor, Emperor Magnus Maximus (and an ancestor btw of Gibbon and the British royal family since the time of King Henry VII) was a gainer and loser of that failure.

I am a bit of an antiquarian ... but I enjoy both old style history and the newer more neutral and skeptical kind.  Currently I have resumed The History of the Persian Empire by Olmstead.  I hope you enjoy every paragraph of Gibbon.  He has no admiration for failed imperial strategies.

[widdershins]

If they were absentee ballot applications then I suspect somebody thinks there are at least two people of voting age at that address. If it's a residential address then the chances are actually pretty good. So it's not strange at all that two applications were sent in the letter.

Yeah, what I found strange, though, is that they were sent at all given that I'm not registered as a Republican.

As I said, I think what they're doing is the same thing they did in North Carolina in 2012.  Immediately after the vote they came up with a brand new excuse, that people might die before election day, for trying to get rid of absentee voting altogether, so it either didn't have the intended effect of producing more Republican votes or its failed intention was to have dead people voting.