Free Republic

Thousands of US flags have been placed at the National Mall in honor of the nearly 200,000 Americans who were not able to be present for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The display, which is called the 'Field of Flags,' is comprised of 191,500 US flags and 56 pillars of light. Images taken on Monday showed the flags carefully placed in rows near the US Capitol. The flags are representative of the Americans who cannot travel to Washington, DC, to attend the inauguration in person due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As Republicans pursue a longshot chance of overturning the presidential results in Wisconsin, they’re focused on absentee voters' addresses, the state’s residency requirement and a flash drive that was briefly left in a counting machine. With a lead of more than 20,000 votes by President-elect Joe Biden, Republicans would need to find something momentous to shift the state’s results to President Donald Trump. And in the unlikely scenario that Biden loses Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, he could still claim the presidency because of other states. Wisconsin Republicans are scrambling to find issues they can raise in the recount Trump has...

Will Democrats use fear of coronavirus — and that election in Wisconsin the other day — to push for their ultimate power fantasy, a national mail-in election in November? Remember the wisdom of failed Chicago mayor and now Democratic TV talking head Rahm Emanuel: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” [T]he Democratic push is on to leverage the next coronavirus aid package to force all states into the vote-by-mail camp. Republicans insist that a mail-in vote would lead to massive vote fraud. They demand both in-person voting and voter ID. Democrats insist the Republicans argument is cynical,...

"In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an unprecedented increase in requests for absentee ballots, as more and more voters sought to comply with public health guidance and avoid potential risk to their health by avoiding in-person voting," they wrote Thursday in a letter to Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service Tammy Whitcomb. "The United States Postal Service (USPS) in short, had an out-sized role in ensuring Wisconsinites could safely exercise the right to vote and participate in our democracy." "Unfortunately, there have been numerous accounts from the state that USPS failed to fulfill that critical function for...

Observers of this week’s confirmation hearings for the post of U.S. attorney general might think it odd to see Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., rewind the clock to a single voter fraud case from the 1980s. Under persistent questioning, Sessions has had to defend his decision to prosecute a case of brazen voter fraud—something that was his job to do. The repeated references to this case by some senators represent just how far the civil rights industry has swerved from its honorable roots to derail a confirmation. Character assassination, false testimony, performance protests aimed at securing retweets instead of reconciliation, and...

Here is the latest on Florida Absentee Ballot requests (REPs lead in this category by 79,000 in 2012) 09/30/16: REPs - 1016k, DEMs - 873k, lead of 143,000 for REPs 09/29/16: REPs - 997k, DEMs - 857k, lead of 140,000 for REPs 09/28/16: REPs - 978k, DEMs - 838k, lead of 140,000 for REPs 09/27/16: REPs - 933k, DEMs - 801k, lead of 132,000 for REPs

Two updates today by Jay: Cuyahoga (heavily Dem Cleveland) county is STILL underperforming, coming in at 6% under 2008 levels. Hamilton (Cincinnati) is just under 2:1 Rs, a net gain of just under 7 points for the Republicans over 08. Franklin (Columbus) which went for Obama by 21(!) shows a very small but steadily increasing R lead in total votes (+5893) for a significant swing (+9 over 08 absentees, +26 overall for Rs). Summit (near Cleveland, went for Obama by just under 18 points) now has a 5.5% lead for Ds and Rs within 1200 votes of actually taking the...

On Dec. 8, 2000, supporters of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush burst into cheers in the rotunda of the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla. They had just learned of a judge's ruling that absentee ballots cast in pro-Bush counties would not be thrown out. They taunted supporters of Democrat Al Gore with the song that baseball fans sing when an opposing pitcher is knocked out of the game. "Na-na-na-nah, hey hey, good-bye!" they chanted. Bush was pronounced the winner of the state of Florida, and the presidency, four days later, and the preservation of those "absentees" was a...

American soldiers can hump 60-pound packs through the broiling desert, kill for their country and die for it, but they can't always vote for their commander in chief. A solution has long been proposed: Just get rid of the Byzantine process which forces those in far-flung battle zones to vote by mail that must be delivered to thousands of local election districts across the United States. Advertisement But the Pentagon has found that bringing military voting into the 21st century is not so simple. The number of absentee military ballots applied for that ultimately get counted is consistently low. In...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Lawyers for the state and groups that opposed Ohio's voter identification rules claimed victory Wednesday in a settlement that suspends the law for absentee voters and clarifies and expands it for voting in person. The agreement clears up confusion in key areas and allows more citizens to vote, said Subodh Chandra, one of the lawyers who filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The plaintiffs, including the Service Employees International Union and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, had argued that county elections boards were disenfranchising voters by inconsistently applying the law. "We have never contended...

Fox news reportes that absontee ballots in Floriday may not get counted tonight due to a close race at the polls. The absentee ballots are expected to favor Bush. So an apparent close Kerry victory may not be so.

It is a bit after 5am, but I just got woken up by a call from someone in the GOP who shared with me that the early voters and absentee ballots are suggesting that if the trend holds, we are looking at Bush 55, Kerry 45. It comes down to this; TURNOUT. If our folks show up in numbers, it wont even be close and we will know by 10pm San Diego time that Bush has been reelected. If you get out there and vote, this thing is over TONIGHT. You know what to do, so dont let the door...

The Madison County Republican Party challenged 85 absentee ballots that were cast in Tuesday's general election. Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings said Thursday the votes in question included people voting from vacant lots, condemned houses or houses that were damaged by fire. He said the GOP decided to issue challenges to the votes after receiving complaints from mail carriers, neighbors and precinct workers. "When people were doing polls of the precincts, they would discover that people were registered to vote from vacant lots," Cummings said. "The Election Board should not be letting people vote from vacant lots. They should be...