The Countdown to the 2024 Election Starts NOW

The hot takes begin NOW, too.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Last Tuesday, I spent most of the day answering texts. Sure, most texts were from friends telling that they voted for me. But there was also buzz about the general state of chaos at the new voting booths.

The old way of voting was to walk into the gym at the local elementary school and tell the poll worker your name. She would find it in a book and have you sign your name on a form. If it looked similar to old signatures, she gave you ticket. Then you walked across the gym into the voting booth, handed the ticket to another volunteer, pushed some buttons, hit the green button the bottom, and then you were done.

In a system that was rolled out for the first time last week, now you give your license to the poll worker who scans it in. Then she hands you a card with a sim card. You take the card to a voting booth, insert it in a slot, push some buttons to vote, press “print” on the screen twice. The voting ballot is printed out on a printer that looks like it came from Staples. You have to be careful not to pull out the sheet too early, because the printer sucks the paper back in for a second time. Then you take the paper ballot, walk out of the booth, and hand it to another poll worker who quickly covers the ballot with a confidentiality folder. You walk that paper ballot across the gym. Take your ballot from the folder, which you hand off to the third worker. And then you feed that paper ballot into a scanner.

It took twenty steps to vote. There is now an electronic and a paper version of the vote, which was probably designed to increase accuracy. But there was so much that could go wrong and did go wrong, that voting was a mess. My voting area had three poll workers and only two spoke English. Nobody knew how to fix the jammed printers. With all this “error-proof” voting, there were still 140 contested ballots in our town’s election — more than enough to cause a recount if the candidates chose to contest the election.

My poll worker said, “things are a mess today. This will be a nightmare next year.”

The loonies are now convinced that all voting is fraudulent. My brother wrote a piece for the Westchester newspaper about self-appointed “poll watchers” who were harassing local voters about their votes. Ironically, the new systems that were devised to increase accuracy are actually increasing problems. Hopefully, those idiots can work out the kinks in the system in the next year.

To sum up the NJ elections really, really quickly. There was very low turnout. Democrats did well.

Turnout in my town was around 25%. Some now think that Democrats are the best at winning these low turnout election.

As someone who ran in this last election, can I just say that low turnout is really depressing? Considering the money and the effort put into this election by a long list of local candidates, it’s really a bummer that 75 percent of voters didn’t show up. It’s like the worst party ever.

The Republicans lost the “parental rights” stuff in New Jersey, but they didn’t do as badly as some think. Even though those social conservatives spent no money and did no campaigning, they scooped up a bunch of local votes. Other candidates were suddenly forced to answer questions — sometimes super hostile ones — about parental rights over their children. Those “Moms for Liberty” candidates didn’t win, but they definitely stirred up local trouble.

Democrats and Governor Murphy are taking the last election as a mandate to forge ahead with plans. The Governor’s wife is considering running for Menendez’s senator spot. The NJEA is pushing to eliminate a basic skills test for teachers.

And now we have to worry about another Trump election. There will be much discussion about Biden’s age, the possibility of a random candidate like Michelle Obama, and the impact of Trump’s legal issues on the campaign. Will there be a challenge and other riot if he loses? Can Biden live another four years? Does American want to see Kamala Harris become president?

So much political juiciness!

The Hamas-Israel war is going to have a big impact on the election, too. Many of my Jewish friends feel abandoned by their Progressive friends and might not show up to vote in the next election. If they walk away from the Democratic Party, will that be enough to shift an election?

Hillary Clinton and John Fetterman are the heroes on my Israel-frendly twitterfeed. Could they jump into the race?

Political junkies (me) are rubbing their hands together with glee, because this year is going to be totally cray-cray. Of course, we all hope that the crazy level is within normal ranges.

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LINKS

I agree with Drezner — Tom Friedman at the New York Times has been hitting home runs with his commentary over the situation there.

I really do need to talk about the campus protests at some point.

Did you like my posts about the election? I have a lot more election stories, which I’m considered turning into a proper article for publication. I wrote another 500 words this morning on the story.

Non-STEM professors would prefer that high school students have a better background in statistics, rather than algebra and calculus.

Alexander Russo writes: “There is reason to believe that school boards have very little impact on what actually happens in a school district.” Wow. I actually have a lot to say on this topic, but I’m going to save it until another day.

Shopping: Steve got an Ooni pizza oven from his folks for his birthday. Last Friday was the first chance that we’ve had to use it. Yum! We bought a special pizza paddle for it today. Picked up a couple of cheap sweaters from the Banana Republic Factory.

Photo: This adorable young man is Grimm, the failed foster kitty.