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Republicans shut down the polling sites in Arizona to save money, and also this was decided well before anyone knew Bernie would be a contender. Same with all t
by daughart 10y ago
Republicans shut down the polling sites in Arizona to save money, and also this was decided well before anyone knew Bernie would be a contender. Same with all the voter registry purges. Bernie is right that he attracted a lot of people who don't regularly vote... which explains why they weren't registered to vote. Another of his main supporter groups are college students, who have been being purged from voter rolls for years due to frequent mailing address changes (this happened to me in Pennsylvania in 2008). There are more logical explanations for this than can be mentioned here, Occam's Razor.
Same for exit polls. The author notes that Clinton voters were more likely to vote early, which would logically cause them to be under-represented in exit polls. Also the "enthusiasm gap". Also lots of people have written about how poor exit polls are at predicting outcomes (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ten-reasons-why-you-should-ignore-exit/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ten-reasons-why-you-shou...). Exit polls are notoriously bad, which is why they're basically only fodder for the cable news industry.
- DamienSF 10y agoThe "saving money" argument is always used to explain the reduction of the number of polling sites but it is not a credible one when considering that only very specific locations are being impacted. Also, the volume of purged voters is inexplicably high ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORoXanoqXwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORoXanoqXwQ ) and many troubling irregularities have been reported such as cases of forged signatures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k6YAEU-eDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k6YAEU-eDE
- daughart 10y agoYouTube isn't a very reputable source. That being said, universal voter registration is the real answer, which sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
- DamienSF 10y agoI don't see why YouTube (the medium) is the problem here. Both reputable or non-reputable sources can post content on YouTube. The first video is an interview of two poll workers expressing their concerns regarding the unusually high number of voters that were removed from the voter roll. There aren't any apparent reason why their testimony should not be considered as credible. The second video shows a voter being shown a document she allegedly signed and that had for effect to switch her party affiliation from Democrate to Republican. However, it seems the signature on this document has been forged. There have been multiple reports of allegedly forged signatures during this election, most of them reported by voters on social media. Here is another example: https://www.facebook.com/groups/518955314959236/permalink/519676198220481/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/518955314959236/permalink/51... Sure the validity of these reports need to be verified but I don't see why they should be dismissed beforehand.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]