👍👍

> The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with an unsuccessful Republican candidate for a judgeship in Pennsylvania and threw out a lower court's ruling that had allowed the counting of mail-in ballots in the race that he had sought to exclude because voters neglected to write the date on them.

The conservatives in the state and on the Supreme Court want to throw out your vote if you make one mistake

Edit: You can still register to vote, don’t let the GOP take away your rights and freedoms. Make a plan to vote. Make a plan for your friends and family to vote. Do it today and don’t delay https://vote.gov/register/pa/

Edit2: Early voting is also an option! https://www.vote.pa.gov/Voting-in-PA/pages/early-voting.aspx

No it’s not good. Republicans (especially lackeys like Dr. Oz) want to make it harder for average folks to vote

That is concerning. Hopefully this inspired thousands to vote in-person instead of by mail.

They're active in r/conservative...tells ya all you need to know.

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Oh I am. Not gonna let the gqp take my voice telling them to fuck off away

I don't want to take away your vote, my hope is that as many people will vote in-person as possible instead of mailing.

This is the right attitude! Use that energy to vote and get your friends/family out to vote with you!

> Ritter argued that mail-in ballot rules improve election administration and deter fraud.

> Vacating the ruling does not change Ritter's loss in his race.

What’s the difference? And you can start pulling out a few instances of scattered issues with mail in ballots and my counter will be the mountains of evidence of election interference by Republicans, including Jan 6.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhaustive-fact-check-finds-little-evidence-of-voter-fraud-but-2020s-big-lie-lives-on

There is no voter fraud. It’s all made up by Trump and repeated by his lackey Dr. Oz. For some reason reality TV stars just love making it hard for working class folks in PA to vote

Can we just switch to online voting already?

Just curious, what are you guys going to blame this time when your candidates lose?

How about those without your mobility? Can they use mail in or are you taking away their right to vote?

Voting is a constitutional right and now we're playing games with people ballots because they weren't dated? Any reasonable person could tell you this is nothing more than disenfranchisement.

Not questioning the content of the post, but OP you post an awful lot in multiple states’ subs solely about political issues. I’m sure you’ll be a regular poster in r/Pennsylvania after the election cycle ends…

That.... Is not advisable. At least according to almost all the experts that have gone on the record about it.

Why did Kegan side with the conservative justices on this one? On SCOTUSblog I read only Jackson and Sotomayor dissented on this.

Take it one step further and run for office.

FWIW, this article is a week old. It was also discussed in the r/law subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/y1dcds/us_supreme_court_backs_republican_in_pennsylvania/

And in the r/SCOTUS subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/scotus/comments/y1d09m/us_supreme_court_backs_republican_in_pennsylvania/

The only issue with that is that in many places, especially cities, there can be long lines to vote which will deter many potential voters. At the polling place I worked at on the morning of the 2020 presidential election there was an hour long wait to vote and it was that short because roughly 1/2 of the votes cast at that district were cast by mail.

Look up voter fraud and 99% of it is Republicans

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The biggest problem with this is that we don't have an affirmative right to vote. What we do have is a bunch of negative rights, mostly the right to not be discriminated against for x, y, and z for the purpose of voting. We do this because it is still relatively popular to discriminate based on other reasons (eg not allowing a person to vote while in prison for a felony). So people can use the fact that we don't have this affirmative right to vote to chip away at it to get much of the same effect as other forms of voter discrimination.

So is OP

“Fully agree. No more voting for RINOs like Kemp. Vote for Hazel!”

There has NEVER been a case of mail fraud that affected any outcome. Vote by mail is as old as voting in itself in the US.

The difference is that voting in person makes voter suppression a lot easier.

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Deter fraud? The date in question is on the outside envelope, there is a date on the inside ballot already. It is a duplication. Stand corrected. It is only on the postal envelope and the signature is to confirm the voter declaration. I still do not see how this deters fraud. It is no different than signing in at the polling place (which does not make any declaration)

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Not everyone can take off work and stand in lines for hours. Mail in ballots allow people access to the vote. Pennsylvania should go completely mail in like Washington state.

And this is why I always vote in person. I don’t trust the republicans.

oh, it isn't dated ballots... it is a dated envelope. Hell, the date doesn't have to be anything official or even right to be accepted, that is how important the date is to the process.

No one is checking to to see it is an actual date, no one is checking your handwriting numbers against the little circles you fill in.

it doesn't add to election security.

There's a date on the inside ballot? Are you sure?

The date on the outer envelope - the only date on the return portion of the ballot may be immaterial, because the Voter Registration office date & time stamps returned ballots. If the ballot is received by the Voter Reg office by the predetermined deadline, it should count - if the date is the only "issue"/not taking into account other factors.

Why? Mail in voting has existed for a very long time and is the primary way service members vote when overseas. Do you want to take away veterans votes?

Thank you. Details are important. Especially when they're ridiculous.

The only way they can win is to cheat. VOTE THEM OUT. They stand for billionaires and oligarchs, NOT Pennsylvanians.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 insurrectionist, fascist majority.

FWIW the SCOTUS ruling does not forbid the counting of mailed-in ballots that are missing a date on the outer envelope. It instead states that election offices will now not be required to count such ballots. I believe it will now be at the discretion of each county whether undated mailed-in ballots will be counted or not.

I am so used to the onerous rules for applying for an antlerless deer license as a hunter that the notion that I have to write the date on my mailed-in ballot envelope seems like a nothing burger, but I do realize though that this requirement does absolutely NOTHING to increase security for elections, so all the same: I realize it's a loss for improving access to voting.

It could be if they set up a private network. I pay taxes online.

Money is trackable and can be accounted for. How you voted cannot, because it's ultimately a secret ballot.

Having mail in ballot, or an in person ballot leaves a paper trail.

If the ballot is postmarked before the election, then why does a date need to be written on it? What difference does it make if I write October 18th, and send it the day before election day having it post-marked?

Why do you hate old people, people in the Military, expats living abroad, college students, and people with disabilities?

Ah. BS. Everything online is trackable. Just because you do not understand security does not mean it does not exist. 99% of all business is done on line. As far as a secret ballot, we’ll that is questionable. All paper ballots have your information assign and in person you are logged into the rolls at a specific time. I am not so sure why we need a supposed secret ballot. It makes integrity at the polls even trickier.

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I am looking at my ballot right now and you are correct. Also, what you are signing and dating is the voters declaration not the ballot itself. So it is really not pertinent to the ballot at all. It is just to make sure what you can and cannot do after submitting the mail in ballot.

I made that decision right after the last election. I knew it was going to be one of their moves and if Mastiano cheats his way in we will never have representation from PA again. He has said this much already.

We need a secret ballot because anything else opens the gates to corruption: your employer or landlord would coerce you to vote a certain way, or people would sell their votes. Those are the reasons we moved to a secret ballot in the first place.

Software engineer checking in here: no. God no. Take that idea a hundred miles out into the desert, bury it ten feet deep in the ground, then launch an orbital nuclear bombardment at it.

Edit: if you're about to tell me that I'm wrong and this is easy, I recommend you consult the opinion of every other actual developer in this thread. You'd be hard pressed to find an engineer who would trust their elections to modern software capabilities and practices, and the reason is because it will be vulnerable. Not maybe, not eventually, but to a determined and well-funded actor it will be critically vulnerable from day one and it will remain critically vulnerable for the entire lifetime of the system.

Which side are you talking about?

>Everything online is trackable

Explain how, and why online fraud is still in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year if the solution is simply "track it, everything online is trackable"

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I've been lurking in the Mastriano Memes Facebook group for weeks now just so I can be there when the narrative goes from "we're definitely gonna win" to "there was definitely widespread but unprovable voter fraud", and also to take screenshots for the FBI when that widespread but unprovable voter fraud leads to Republican terrorism.

I would more argue that it’s actively trying to keep legitimate votes from being counted.

Good 👍

Anyone in Pennsylvania can vote by mail already.

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Sadly not true. Both parties have engaged in a wide variety of voter fraud over the years. Don't trust either party. They only care about themselves.

And there it is. I was looking for the context. This is the kind of stuff the supreme court is supposed to do. Wonder why the lower courts didn’t go that route in the first place.

Both, unfortunately.

Because the lower court understood how dumb a statute it is

I’ll be honest I don’t know much (or understand much) about law stuff, so I was genuinely curious. I guess it’s just something I’ll have to call my reps about (unfortunately, one of them is a 2020 election denier 😩).

I think what people are forgetting is that countries restructure themselves every 200 years or so, and the last time we had a major scale restructuring was back in the 1800s. In the next 40 years (as long as we’re still here) I could see a revolution going down. But hey I’m just a kid ya know

Probably because it is a law on-the-books, making it a bit more complicated than initially it might seem.

It's an incredibly stupid law and those ballots should be counted, but I can understand not wanting to wipe the law out, especially given how polarizing this one is.

Lol no not “both”.

> Vacating the ruling does not change Ritter's loss in his race.

I love this part. Dude's just a sore loser but he's going to create precedent to disenfranchise people over his own ego.

Indeed. The paper ballot is a way for the person the verify how they voted when it's scanned into a machine (which should be air gapped) and allows for a recount. An online system would either have no way for you to verify your vote (so you can't verify that the vote went through correctly) or it would, be an open to tracking by others.

“bOtH sIdEs ArE tHe SaMe”

Lazy and disingenuous

I mean, in theory, I think we could, but the cost would probably be far greater than returns.

That being said, happy to see us go after the larger fish when it's feasible.

Another Software Engineer here. Completely agree. Paper ballots with digital scanning is the best way. Anything else can and will be hacked.

Also love the XKCD reference there.

Helo me understand the difference between what I'm saying and what you're saying.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ

Tom did a video on this a few years ago.

as far as i can tell, what you linked to has nothing to do with OP or anyone i can see in this thread.

Everything is trackable, that does not mean that companies investigate fraud all the way to putting a person in jail. Most of it is written off. That does not mean that they can’t track it, it means the chose not to pay for resources to do the investigations. They are making a decision to write off bad debt rather than pay the costs to track it down and have it prosecuted. Happens all the time, especially in insurance. They just pass the costs off to other customers. Most of these crimes require accountants and IT professionals. How many police departments hire accountants and IT professionals along with the computer equipment they need?

get fucked.

OP deleted the comment, the quote was a comment they posted on r/conservative

I'm so fired up to vote I'll probably vote multiple times /s

In this day and age, it is already determined if you are party affiliated. So, now tell me how a secret ballot stops someone from coercion? Even knowing a party affiliation how does that stop coercion? It doesn’t. Companies ask their employees to give to their PACs They do not require it, but they certainly try to influence their employees. Like I said, not seeing the benefits you seem to think we get with a secret ballot. It can still be private, just like your bank statements. You would then be able to confirm your ballot was counted and included in the final count with read only access after you submitted your ballot.

Just wait till republicans come for gay marriage and birth control after November, this is nothing

This is grossly misleading.

Yes, I said completely mail in meaning no polling locations.

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Anyone can commit fraud, republicans use it as a tool to disenfranchise voters as well as committing the fraud themselves.

Nope. But do go on.

Of course you could verify your vote. I can verified the amount of taxes I have paid on my quarterly estimates I have submitted. I can also download a receipt and get email notification.

They are fucking Americans every day right in front of you. They are so pro life they want to cut Medicare and Medicaid and social security. And if your wife or daughter will die without an abortion, we’ll that’s the price of freedom. Like all the dead children’s bodies they walk over. If you ever wondered how Germans got taken by the Nazis, it started like this. Even the antisemitism is being screamed. Fuck the GOP before they fuck us all.

Ah, so you've no expertise at all and you're guessing based on how you think the world works. Okay, have a great day!

How much do we spend on elections every years? Billions. We should put a tax on every political donation and PAC to pay for secure elections. We have the means, but of course why would we invest money on decent infrastructure!

Are your passwords anonymous? Yes. They are converted to ******* when you input them, so Tom does not understand the basics of security. Like I said it can be done. And it probably will be someday. We still have a culture of people who do not understand technology they use everyday.

Anything can be hacked. Even paper ballots that are scanned. At the end of the day you are still using software to tabulate the outcome. Ughhhhh

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Ok so basically you are saying, your experience with software development is so bad that you cannot build a secure system.

On a small scale sure. But if the tabulators are only able to push data, not allow incoming connections, and you have an auditable paper trail with a certain percentage of machines being randomly audited you can be pretty damn secure while still having fast results.

Way less attack vectors than online voting though.

The Court didn’t perform any analysis on PA’s election code in vacating the Third Circuit decision. It was strictly procedural, and not a ruling on the merits of the argument to count undated or wrongly dated ballots.

????? I’ve worked in IT for the last 23 years and managed a infrastructure and Network Security program, but sure you do not like my easily verifiable answer and therefore try to tell me I do not know what I am talking about!!! Use Google and do some research.

????? I do not think you are replying to the right comment.

Replying to GOP fraud?

Really? Who would you call to tell you who you voted for last election?

There are no records of who you voted for. None. There are only records that you voted.

And when you voted, you for a paper ballot, which you would verify is correct, and then it gets counted. That's it. It's a secret ballot. No one gets to know how you voted, except you. Which is, again the problem with online services. No air gap which means altering your vote would be possible in a way a paper ballot makes it impossible. You have no way of knowing what the machine at the other side received, or whether someone highjacked your vote.

The really fun part is that this got to court because of a "number of elderly democratic and republican voters" forgot to put the date on the envelope.

I hope those republican voters realize that these republicans has argued that we shouldn't count their votes.

You may be in IT, but I'm gonna guess you've never defended a mission critical distributed application / network against every major nation state attacker all at once.

If you implement a vote online system, that's exactly what you would have; China, Russia, Hell even some of our supposed allies all trying to hack their way in at the same time to skew the elections in their favor. And you may know after the fact that there was a hack, but good luck finding what they changed once they have root level access to your network.

Lastly the government is generally terrible at everything they implement technology wise. They couldn't even launch a healthcare website without months of issues and overrun budgets. I don't trust them to develop and secure un-auditable digital systems that determine who is in power.

Voting online is just an all around terrible idea.

Of course they do….

Lol, I live in small town PA, and where I would usually see a ton of GOP election Signs, I see only a few. And although it's not many, I have seen more Shapiro or Fetterman signs than this area should ever have, if the GOP would win.

My town will still go Red, but on the state wide race, I think it's going to be a victor for the Dems (but I am sure it will be close, because it always is).

People think Russian bots are already influencing our elections and then someone literally suggests internet voting.

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> and you have an auditable paper trail

The voting machine should print me a receipt of my votes as it recorded them.

I am also a software engineer, and I agree with every other software engineer in here. Internet/Online voting is a terrible idea.

There is no such thing as invulnerable code. There are no networks anywhere connected to the internet that cannot be hacked. Shit hackers have even managed to cross air gaps to exploit systems.

I am absolutely saying that no way in hell would I be able to code an unhackable, uncheatable, unbreakable software solution to allow online voting, and any software engineer who tells you they can is either lying or not a software engineer.

I want absentee voting and its previously used process to remain in use.

I do not want massive mail-in voting by anyone for no reason when it can give rise to these types of confusion-inducing scenarios or lead to uncertainty to which criteria need to be met and which don't, creating gray areas.

To be perfectly honest, if we want to deflate this issue voting in-person will go a long way in helping that (if the person is capable, which is what we've been doing all along until 2020.)

Our government should make voting day a national paid holiday to cut out the obstacle of work/ school.

It is comical to drop in here and read all the comments of Liberals losing there shit over every single political article. Cracks me up. You can carry on now.

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When every other software engineer you ever meet shares this opinion with me, you're gonna wanna revisit this comment

I think the discrepancy here are that there are very specific types of trust we want to discourage in voting: specifically, trust between bad actors or between bad actors and potential victims.

The secret ballot, by definition, just requires that no one except the voter can possibly know who they voted. It doesn't prevent coercion for party registration or PAC funding - those are separate issues which have their own ins and outs.

You argue in favor of a private - not secret - ballot. I hear you and understand the value you find in that. It would be great for cases when there are no bad actors AND when people don't trust their votes are being counted accurately.

However, a private ballot like you endorse is completely open to coercion and corruption, even with read-only access. Imagine that a random person honestly offered to refund me for a debit card purchase of $20 at Wal-Mart. In the private world you're describing, Wal-Mart, my bank, and I know that I did. However, I can still validate it by showing the random person my private bank account statement.

In the current, secret ballot system we have, no one would rationally offer money for my vote because there is no legal way of validating the transaction. Even if I do as they wish, they have no way of knowing that I'm not lying through my teeth. In your private ballot system, I can use my read-only access to show the candidate, a party leader, my boss, or landlord that I completed my end of the bargain. Now, they can establish trust: they can use my ability to access that data to confirm that I voted the way they wished. As a result, they can coerce or bribe you or I to vote the way they wish.

Of course - scotus is political, biased and against voting rights protection.

Interesting article

To think something like voter fraud doesn’t exist when candidates run campaigns receiving donations of close to $2,000,000,000 is one of the most naive statements I’ve ever heard.

You got individuals and groups donating millions upon millions of dollars — Very powerful individuals, I might add.

If you don’t think that campaigns aren’t willing to pull out all the stops and explore every possible avenue both legal & illegal in order to secure a victory and reap the spoils that victory brings you need to come join us in the real world.

Despite the agreed upon talking points all your favorite partisan hack journalists obnoxiously repeat what you’ve been lead to believe is far from the truth.

Biden’s added $4,000,000,000,000 to the national debt. Thanks to Democrats their ain’t gonna be any Medicaid, Medicare or SS anyway.

Just an FYI. if you were sent a mail in ballot, and want to vote in person, you MUST present your mail in ballot so they can determine you aren't voting twice.

Shocker. Republican supreme court majority sides with a republican. I'm glad he still lost though, makes me laugh to know he must still be so butt hurt.

Any reasonable person knows that in order to prevent fraud, rules must be set and established.

Now if we can only get a strong voter ID law, as most every other country has, maybe people will start having faith in the election process again.

Why is it always the Democrats that assume their followers are the ones too stupid to follow simple rules.

Perhaps they are right?

Voter ID is republican bullshit. PA dems offered a free voter ID a while ago, repubs shot it down. They wanted people to have to pay for it. Gee I wonder why? Meanwhile it’s illegal to make someone pay for one as it constitutes a poll tax. But of course the jackasses will keep screeching about it, making up shit about voter fraud, etc. it’s all just bullshit and you guys are dumb enough to fall for it.

Republicans gave billions to the most wealthy among us in tax breaks. What’re does that money come from? Get your head out of your ass.

Audits that were funded by the losing candidate concluded there was not fraud to a degree that would have had any effect on the outcome. Find a new line or find a new person to try it on.

It’s a good thing a put the date on my mail in ballot

Until you have actual evidence of this you are just spouting paranoid conspiracy theories.

The jump from scuzzy campaign donations to voter fraud is a huge jump. Mostly because it crosses the line from legal yet unethical to illegal and unethical. Not impossible but extremely unlikely without some actual evidence.

There was someone in Philly that was arrested and doing time for voter fraud? Is it enough to overturn an election? Who knows but to think it doesn't exist is pretty ignorant of what takes place.

More ways to get more voters is what a healthy democracy should want, not less.

Of course they do.....🙄

I miss the olld days of getting a doe license. Now you need a lawyer to figure it out

I really don't think it's all that bad today. It's no more complicated than it ever was before (back when I started hunting 20 or so years ago), you just have more licenses you can buy now. What would be ideal is if the PA legislature would vote to allow the PGC to sell and issue antlerless licenses the same way that almost every other hunting/fishing license is sold: through an online portal. That'd really simplify things. But I digress and go back to still standing by it that this rule for ballots is both not that hard to follow and also completely useless if the goal is extra security around voting.

On line portal,,AMEN..Oh, I started in 1967. Single shot 12ga while dad used the 3030 he bought after the war

You've been at it a while!

Isn't there a postmark on the envelope, with a date?

To implement the constitutional right, the state legislature must codify the rules. It's how it works in all 50 states. Pennsylvania's election laws were sane, deterring fraud while maintaining full access. But they were overridden egregiously "because covid". The election laws weren't changed by the legislature, they were just ignored where inconvenient to those running the elections... mostly in the major cities, which lean strongly toward one party.

Nonsense. Boss Tweed would like a word with you.

There also appear to be 80-year cycles - four generations. Check out the book The Fourth Turning.

Specifically, what laws were ignored?

To expect that there would be absolutely zero fraud in an election where thousands or millions of votes are cast would be naive. To demand that we add entire layer of rules and procedures that everyone must follow to a tee in order to thwart that one guy in Philadelphia is asinine.

You can vote provisionally in person without your mail-in ballot. This is useful, for example, when the tracking fails to show your mailed ballot being counted. Explain your situation at the polling place, and they'll set you up with a ballot. That way you won't be flagged for attempting to vote twice fraudulently. The election board will sort it out.

https://www.vote.pa.gov/Voting-in-PA/Pages/Voting-by-Provisional-Ballot.aspx

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Good news

I want to vote IN PERSON. The whole mail-in ballot issue were so bad the last time, I just want to do it in person.

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You just believe the first thing you read don't you. If you haven't noticed the media is biased as fuck and you're absolutely blind to what's actually going on if you don't think that there was cheating. I watched them stop counting ballots for no fucking reason, and there's video of those chicks running the same batches of ballots numerous times. Ntm all the videos of people stuffing the shit out of drop boxes. And another thing...since 2016 all I've heard is Dems like Hillary, and Stacy Abrams fucking swearing up and down that "trump" stole the election. Or "Kemp stole Georgia" so you my friend have proven to be a HYPOCRITE

Yes, why put rules in place to prevent fraud, because none exists /s

That one person was responsible for hundreds of fraudulent ballots being cast. It wasn't just one or two.

And who was behind releasing these videos? Remember, you said the media is biased as fuck.

Literally none of those things proves fraud. What, someone stopped counting on video? What of the numerous State's recounts with special poll workers?recounted ballots... How do you know what it was for, if they were counted twice or just double checked for accuracy? Putting ballots in a box... Do you even hear yourself? Why don't you volunteer as a poll worker since you have so little faith in the system?

We leftists said the electoral college should be abolished, not that the results of the election.. the actual number of votes weren't legitimate. If you're gonna talk shit about something, get it right 👍

You know how required licensing only burdens working class and POC with owning firearms and doesn't actually stop violent crime? Why is voter ID supposed to stop voter fraud instead of disenfranchise voters when there's not any significant statistic of fraud?

The post office does that when it processes the mail-in ballot

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Ballots with any date are counted, whether they're future or past dates, but not undated ballots. How immaterial is that?

You are referring to this? https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/former-us-congressman-and-philadelphia-political-operative-pleads-guilty-election-fraud

That was fraud all right, but that was an inside job by someone on the election board to stuff ballot boxes. That was not Gramma forgetting to write a date on her mail-in ballot.

If you look at my 1st post. Someone said voter fraud doesn't happen. It does and we should try to discourage it from happening. We never know about it until after the election.

I am not sure what you are talking about. I had zero issues with the mail in ballot. I received emails throughout the whole process tracking my ballot. Easy, no waiting, no trash being pushed at the polls.

This is the right’s entire personality, and it’s pathetic

Trump spent more than any person in history in four years.

Because you’ve never heard of fake IDs? It solves zero

Everything you’ve said has been easily debunked. You lost, grow up

Would you have thought otherwise? Now where are those 11,780 votes trump needed?

Umm remember Covid 😂

So you believe we should get rid of drivers licenses. Because, after all they can be faked.

Umm, he spiked the deficit before that.

I’m just saying it’s not a full proof way to prevent things, just ask any college student.