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TransporterOffline OP t1_j3h69ht wrote

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

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.

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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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