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ScienceWasLove t1_j3gmpep wrote

Reply to comment by defusted in Majority of 16k canceled Pa. mail-in ballots were from Dems by TransporterOffline

1% of democrat and 1.8% of republican mail in ballots were discarded, per the numbers in the article.

The headline is intentionally deceptive.

Using the date in the article, republicans were 1.8x more likely to have their mail in ballot canceled.

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5illy_billy t1_j3gztpn wrote

Another way of saying this is that since relatively few republicans voted by mail, the ones who did (against the “advice” of republican leaders btw) were more likely to have their ballot thrown out.

It’s almost like.. they knew a bunch of mail in ballots would be discarded.. because they wrote the laws.. and promoted conspiracies to discourage their voters from casting votes by mail..

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ScienceWasLove t1_j3h12hj wrote

What “they” know - both sides - is that relative to in-person voting, a small percent will vote with mail in ballots.

In this case under 2%.

The politicians themselves and their campaign people know this….

They know in the vast majority of districts mail-in ballots are inconsequential to the results. They always have been and most likely will continue to be statistically insignificant because they make up such a small amount of overall votes.

They also know that by commenting on these issues in the press, and pretending like there is significant vote fraud or that a significant amount of ballots are discarded - they can galvanize their political base, get more financial contributions, and increase in-person voting.

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TransporterOffline OP t1_j3h69ht wrote

I've seen your copy-pasted responses all over this page, so I have to ask. What is the more appropriate headline? Literally, the majority of all mail ballots that were rejected were from Democrats. I agree on your 1% and 1.8% numbers, but what does this really mean?

Let's take your numbers and make new headlines:

  • Commonwealth election officials wonder if Republicans are too dumb to vote with mail ballots
  • Republican mail ballots discarded at alarming rate (nearly twice that of Democrat ballots!!)
  • 1%-2% of mail-in ballots rejected in PA due to procedural issues
  • Democrats vote with mail-in ballots at 5x the rate of Republicans

Like seriously this was about the most factual, non-inflammatory headline they could have chosen. Instead, why don't you look past the headline (like you beg others in the comments) and make some real commentary? What do these numbers mean? Or do you just plan to copy the same thing over and over and over in this thread? You can't just say "they're pushing a narrative guys!!" and not say what the narrative is. WHAT is the deception?

Edit to add: If anything, this article gave the people exactly what they needed: transparency in the operations of mail-in voting. We know exactly how many were rejected and for what reasons. And those reasons were litigated well in advance of this election up to the Supreme Court and advertised here for everyone to learn from for the next election. All parties had the same rules applied to them, and these numbers were the outcome. There's no "narrative" to be had.

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ScienceWasLove t1_j3hbgf5 wrote

They could have said "98+% of 1.2 million ballots processed error free in PA mid-term election".

That would have been a much more neutral statement that conveyed the raw number of votes and the percent of them that had issues.

The AP intentionally used the word "majority" - which can mean anything from 50.1% upto 100% of 16,000 number. They new exactly what they were doing. Based on the comments on here, most people read it EXACTLY how they intended....

Read it, get outraged, hopefully click on the article. Most people here stopped at step 2.

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TransporterOffline OP t1_j3hcnfi wrote

And now I think you and I fully agree. I think the headline even mentioning Democrats was slanted from the beginning, but the article was quite neutral. And yes a lot of the comments in this thread really missed the point, especially claiming it's a form of voter suppression, but like I said in my edit to my comment above, this is exposure to the risks and rules of the system so people will actually learn from the mistakes. Too many people hating the game instead of learning the game's rules. Voting is not political. Politics are political, and a lot of people can't separate the two. Unfortunately that's mostly due to partisan meddling in voting itself.

All I wanted was for you to explain your position and I'm glad you took me up on it. I 100% agree.

I would have preferred "Despite warnings from election admins, nearly 2% of mail-in ballots discarded due to voter errors with envelopes, dates" but yours is probably more positive in encouraging people to vote altogether.

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ScienceWasLove t1_j3hfkyg wrote

Right. And we cannot let the perfect get in the way of the good.

We should not go around celebrating 1-2% of mail-in ballots being discarded.

We also should acknowledge that voting is a messy process that will have errors when tabulating the results for over 5 million in-person/mail-in votes. A target of 0% errors is noble but impractical.

We should not proclaim that democrats were disenfranchised because of rule following democrats (democratic poll workers in democratic districts) throwing out democrat voter mail-in ballots enforced by republican legislature and the republican leaning supreme court.

=============

An even more cynical discussion would involve the discussion of district by district in-person and mail-in ballots numbers and how counting these ballots won't really change the district based election results and thus the overall election results for the state at large.

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TransporterOffline OP t1_j3hiedd wrote

It will be even more difficult to address Postal Service issues also, or at least ballots reaching the office. Unfortunately what I consider to be a given, "we need a national postal service", seems to be a debate these days. I would say all in all, after two major cycles of mail-in balloting, the system seems to be working well.

Redditors by and large are Internet-savvy, but I'm blown away how many people still don't know you can track your ballot status. I'm not faulting anyone in this thread, I'm just saying I thought it was common knowledge. From my perspective, I get tons of TV news segments, articles, emails, postcards, the news flashes about fixing/curing ballots, etc., with mail-in ballot information on a regular basis, so I'm secure in this process. I am still shocked how many have no idea how this works on their own personal level. How many people ask in my local subreddit where their freaking polling station is, people waiting literally till election day to find their voter card or ask if they need an ID to vote, people asking how to check ballot statuses, etc.

I'm grateful how much of the system does work, given all these challenges from the top of the pyramid down to the individual voter.

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SolutionsExistInPast t1_j3hyl3t wrote

Hello TransporterOffline and ScienceWasLove,

Nice job between you both that a question can be asked and a persons head does not get blown off in response.

As for the headline first impression without reading the article was…

  • Ok all those ballets tossed and Americans were still voted in.”

After reading Sciences clarification I then knew how many, by percentage, both parties had tossed because it was not only 1 party.

With the title saying only one party name the unscrupulous Americans will then use that headline to say that one party is guilty, see how many ballots were rejected, when in reality, both parties had ballots rejected and nobody’s guilty of anything.

The best title would be: 16k+ Pennsylvanian Mail-In Ballots Rejected because PA. Residents Cannot Follow Directions.

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ScienceWasLove t1_j3hcwvb wrote

I also agree. The article does present most of the information. The problem is not even the title.

Most people understand that titles/headlines are attention grabbing, click bait.

The problem, as I see it, is that majority of Redditors take the implied meaning of the headline as the summary of the entire article.

As your proposed headlines show, the actual content in the article gives much better and nuanced understanding of the voting patterns.

I can easily say "duh, most democrats can't read anyways, no wonder a majority of their mail ballots were thrown out" using the headline. Using my 1.8x times stat, I could say "duh, most republicans, can't read anyways".

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___Dan___ t1_j3h5ap9 wrote

It’s also deceptive for you to say that without giving us the total number of mail in ballots. If a greater fraction of voters used mail on the dem side that changes the takeaway. So you’re just as bad as whoever wrote the headline.

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just-kath t1_j3gq45k wrote

Many if not Most headlines are deceptive.

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ScienceWasLove t1_j3gqixg wrote

It’s true. What’s scary is most people here can’t read past the headlines and down votes those who read the article and comment on the article.

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just-kath t1_j3gu12i wrote

All news is broken. I have at times seen the same story reported on different networks or different sites and the details are rarely the same. Who knows what actually happened? You are absolutely correct about people not reading past the headline, too.

And while I'm venting, I am over speculative "news" and panel shows. I look at an article and it says "If so and so says/ does/is elected ..." and there are people who will just take this as gospel. No one knows what will happen until it does.

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Atrocious_1 t1_j3hbvz8 wrote

That's not even close to what the article states

>Democrats had 10,920 votes thrown out, about half for lacking secrecy envelopes. Republicans saw 3,503 ballots forfeited. Independents and third parties amounted to 1,731 votes that did not count in the fall election.

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ScienceWasLove t1_j3hdtai wrote

What I said is EXACTLY what the articles states, because I read the entire article.

Almost 1.2 million mall in ballots were cast. This info is in the article.

1,000,000 dem and 187,0000 rep mail in ballots. (in the article)

1% of dem and 1.8% of rep mail in ballots were discarded. (in the artcile)

Republicans were 1.8 times more likely to have their mail-in ballot canceled vs. dems using the raw numbers of mail in votes.

Dems were 3 times more likely to have their mail-in ballot canceled vs. republicans using the raw numbers of discarded mail-in ballots.

My last two statements are clearly deceptive because we are not given context and are not given the raw numbers.

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Atrocious_1 t1_j3igkz7 wrote

You doing your copy paste for the thousandth time doesn't make you any less wrong

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