Voting in US Elections from Overseas

The idea is to AVOID the USPS. 

I thought the idea was to get your ballot there by November 3rd, and Priority mail is guaranteed delivery in 1 to 3 days since it doesn't go through the normal sorting offices.  Just trying to save you a few $

I thought the idea was to get your ballot there by November 3rd, and Priority mail is guaranteed delivery in 1 to 3 days since it doesn't go through the normal sorting offices.  Just trying to save you a few $

I have friends who received priority mail 3 weeks after it was sent this summer. The USPS is borked thanks to Trump. only going to get worse with the holidays.

I have friends who received priority mail 3 weeks after it was sent this summer. The USPS is borked thanks to Trump. only going to get worse with the holidays.

Wow, good info, what a mess.

He has his minions doing everything he can to keep voters from voting. Including trying to sabotage the Postal Service (removing sorting machines, etc.) Still, the lines are forming well before dawn for early voting, and people are waiting 10 and 11 hours outdoors in those lines to cast a vote.  The writing is on the wall.

I am waiting to see if he "cries foul" and refuses to accept defeat when it happens. He stands to be up on quite a number of legal charges once he no longer has the Office of the President status to protect him. I do imagine he will not go gracefully.  I'd be happy to see him dragged out by his ankles, if that's what it takes to get him the hell out of there and some semblance of sanity (or what passes for it in DC) restored. I'd be happy to help do it myself, if I was physically able.

He's gone after Fauci now. Anything to deflect the blame from what he has, or more importantly, has NOT done. What. A. Slug.

I do think I hear the engraving tool reving up, for his future seat down in the eighth circle of hell.... or is it the ninth? 

He will NOT go gracefully, nothing he ever does is graceful. At best he will be forced out of the Whitehouse by court order or physically dragged out. At worst he will incite riots and violence.

He is now suggesting that he will leave the country if he loses, I’m sure that will be an attempt to avoid prosecution.

Well, he's going to continue destroying Scottish natural habitats for his golf courses. But I can't see the Scottish or UK government protecting him from extradition.

Well, he's going to continue destroying Scottish natural habitats for his golf courses. But I can't see the Scottish or UK government protecting him from extradition.

He'll need to run to Equatorial Guinea or someplace else without an extradition deal with the USA. (China or N. Korea? - he used to get on great with both those dictators)

  I think you misspelled "flee the country"

yep.

Ok, so I gritted my teeth, walked to the USPS, paid for Certified Mail Delivery ($4.10) yesterday. Checked the status this afternoon and both of our ballots have been delivered. We've done what we can do. (So far.)

So who are we going for then?
Trump or Biden?

It's going to be a long week.  Trump is already claiming to have won and is trying to stop any further counting of legitimate votes. My guess is he's going to have Trump, Jr. , call out the brownshirts among them as he did in Texas. (Convoys of bubbas in trucks forced the Democratic Party's road bus off the I-35 and some of their trucks rammed the Demo's convoy's cars after Tjr suggested they go "have some fun".) It will get ugly before it's over.

Anyway,  Biden is ahead in the popular vote, which means nothing, as of about 22:30 your time 4 Nov. Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, but lost the election due to having the votes in the wrong states - not enough Electoral College votes behind her.  Just for those who are not clear on how Presidential elections work in the USA:

In the United States, the Electoral College refers to the group of presidential electors required by the United States Constitution to form every four years for the sole purpose of electing the president and vice president of the United States. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution provides that each state shall appoint electors selected in a manner its legislature determines, and it disqualifies any person holding a federal office, either elected or appointed, from being an elector. There are currently 538 electors, and an absolute majority of electoral votes, 270 or more, is required to win the election. Currently, all states rely on a statewide popular vote on Election Day, and all but two have a winner-take-all method to assign their electoral votes, with the exceptions being Maine and Nebraska, which use a district method.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College

Biden is projected to have 243 Electoral College votes as of now, so he needs 27 more to win. Trump has 214, so he needs 56 more.

One of the candidates has to get 270 electoral votes to be declared a clear winner.  If neither gets 270, it goes to the House of Representatives, who will vote and the outcome of that vote will decide the winner. The winner needs only a simple majority in the House to be declared a winner. There are 232 Democrats v 197 Republicans (and 1 Libertarian and 5 vacancies) in the House of Representatives.

The states that are pretty much still in question, per Reuters, (followed by their number of Electoral College members) are:

Nevada - 6
Arizona - 11
Wisconsin - 10
Michigan - 16

Pennsylvania - 20
North Carolina -15
Georgia - 16

At present, according to Reuters, Biden is being projected to take the first four, while the last three are leaning to Trump. There are still a lot of ballots to be counted, but if Biden takes some combination of the first four states to equal at least 27, he'll have the 270 and wins.  If he does not, and if Trump doesn't get 56 more Electoral College votes, it goes to the House for a simple majority vote. And Biden will win.

I will sleep much better tonight than I did last night. (Even with the pain meds, I couldn't sleep worth a damn - kept having to turn the TV on every half hour!) But it's still not a done deal and when counting mail votes, anything could still change.

I've chewed my fingertips off..........

I've chewed my fingertips off..........

I've been busy all day every day with medical cannabis awareness week, but my husband has been keeping a very close eye on it. I just can't! It will make me too stressed.

I've chewed my fingertips off..........

I've been busy all day every day with medical cannabis awareness week, but my husband has been keeping a very close eye on it. I just can't! It will make me too stressed.

I think Biden has the votes.  I think it's going to be exactly 270 EVs for Biden, which is not the landslide he needed to calm the waters.  I think the vote count itself is the least of the problems.  If it's not an overwhelming, decisive victory for one side or the other, things could get ... unpleasant.

I’m resigned to the fact that it is going to be another 4 years of hell regardless of who wins. 45% of the electorate are going to be convinced that it was fraud if Trump loses and since the Dems have not won the Senate Mitch McConnell will renew the pledge he made in 2008 that he will do all in his power to block everything he can and make this a 1 term Presidency.  Also ends the hopes of Washington DC gaining statehood, where there are more citizens than several of the smaller States combined but have little to no representation in Congress. Even if Trump is defeated Trumpism lives on.

If Trump wins then it’s a victory for the plutocrats and 4 more years of the US moving ever closer to an autocracy.  It’s a year of the census so the GOP will do even more gerrymandering to ensure they continue to win seats in districts where they are the minority. Supercomputers are used to draw electoral boundaries these days and those boundaries are drawn by the ruling political party. What an absurd system.