I’m in the process of voting. Just got my ballot. We’ve done mail-in ballots for as long as I can remember. I think I might have voted at a booth once when I was 18? What I find funny is that the current occupant of the White House had no problem accepting the results of our state in 2016 and we do mail-in voting. My mom lives in N.Carolina (she’s a registered Democrat) and she received a letter from the Trump campaign telling her to request her mail-in ballot early in N. Carolina and get it turned in right away. That never has sat right with me.
Personally, I know 22 people who have died from this virus. This isn’t a joke but so many think it is. I sat and listened to my wife, who is a doctor, have to call family after family to give notice that their loved ones have passed from Covid19. I watched my neighbor who is an ER doc have to wear the same mask all day and the nurses at the hospital received one a WEEK. My wife received some PPE from her company who directly sourced it from China themselves. They couldn’t get gowns so they sent them disposable rain ponchos. We don’t leave the house for the sake of our 10 month old son except to go to the grocery store once a week and my wife goes to see patients twice a week. This is the side of the virus that we’ve experienced but everywhere I look people refuse to wear a mask or socially distance or throw their fist up in a fit of rage claiming their rights are being violated by having to wear a mask. Really? People are dying and that’s what you’re most concerned about? I’m just so sick of it.
Hi @Bitnik , I just wanted to share the latest Scottish ad in the 8+ year campaign to make a better world for "different minds ". Come move to Scotland (all of you) enjoy x
Thanks. My daughter was born in Northumberland and she half-seriously laments that we didn’t have the foresight to drive into Scotland for her birth. I think she imagines herself applying for a passport in a future independent Scotland on the grounds that she’d be Scottish-born.
One thing I’ve always found rather shocking about American elections is the size of the queues outside the polling stations. I’ve voted in the UK for over forty years and I’ve never once had to queue.
I asked about this before and one person did point out that American elections are much more complex than the ones we hold in the UK so there’s more of a bottleneck during voting. That’s a good point.
The most complex English election I can imagine would be if elections for a city mayor, borough councillors, MP and MEP, and police and crime commissioner were held on the same day. In practice this is rare and usually you just walk in, give your name and get it ticked off, take a single sheet ballot into the booth and make a single pencil mark then fold it, take it back and drop it into the ballot box. You’re in the polling station for about a minute. I know from experience as a party election worker that you can get a small queue outside the polling station after people get home from work (elections are almost always on a Thursday) and maybe another one after the evening soap operas finish.
Last year my daughter had her leg in a cast so we took a taxi down the street to the polling station and told the polling clerks she couldn’t make it inside. They brought the ballot paper out to the car and she cast her vote there.
I keep hearing people make excuses. Even if one didn’t think that there was voter suppression at play, you’d think people wouldn’t argue with you about suggesting that this process should be easy.
I have been dealing with folks arguing that it shouldn’t be simple, just sounds as if they worry if more people had some kind of voice that they might be damaged politically. /s
The people saying it should be difficult are obviously wrong. It’s as if they have taken the rhetoric of the civil rights struggle and turned it on its head.
I can’t even begin to enumerate the ways in which the American voting systems are messed up (some states manage to get it right.) I live in a country where constituencies are drawn by an independent boundary commission, eliminating partisan gerrymandering. The electoral rolls are diligently kept up to date, and if you’re on the roll you just show up to your designated polling station between 7am and 10pm on the day, give your name and you’ll get a ballot. In the unlikely event that there’s a queue to vote at 10pm, the polling station must be kept open until everybody who showed up has voted. If you can’t vote in person you can arrange for a postal ballot or for a person you trust to officially cast a vote in your name. I used to rely on my wife voting for me in our home constituency while I was working away from home.
There are controversies. Prisoners don’t have the vote (I think this is wrong and the European Court agrees with me, but sadly the government defies their ruling.) Once released from prison, everybody has the vote. The first past the post voting system is used, and this is probably not ideal.
Started to be able to go out for walks again to get over my trapped nerve in my leg. Its a bit cold today but atleast im outside away from my pita neighbour lol
I put a step counter on my phone to see how that goes, not so into the calorie burning part but knowing my steps will help =)
I bought two nice big office desks for £25 yesterday, required a long run out to Middleton-In-Teesedale but that’s a fun drive even in a LWB Transit Van, Nice to get out.
The desks are Finally allowing me to set up my PC I bought in January at my “Office/Workshop/Studio” One Desk replaces a small “Home Working” desk (2 24" monitors for the work laptop) , the other has 4 19" monitors 2 for the DAW/PCBCad PC and 2 for other PC work…
So now on my lunch break from work, I can wheel down to the Other end of the desk and begin to do Audio and PCB work again. And maybe some vintage PC gaming…
It’s taken up a bit too much space… But it starts to formalise my space a bit and get myself in order…
Being able to get out of the house every week day has kept me sane, and having my own workspace has been a godsend…
I did pop in to work this morning ( Been in a hand full of times for critical stuff only ) and it was nice to be there , even with virtualy nobody else there.
Been walking to the workshop rather than driving where possible too, it’s 2.5Miles which I was fairly used to a couple of years back as the real office is nearby. I had stopped walking but trying to get fit again.
Oh and got a £20 Amazon voucher from work as a thanks for some Above and Beyond work… Which was nice…
