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How to Make Sure Your Vote is Secure and Properly Counted

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This is REALLY important information to get to your friends in battleground states. Make sure you send it to them. Spread this widely.

As you’ve probably read, the GOP is doing all kinds of nefarious things to suppress votes like slow down the post office (which messes with mail-in voting during a pandemic) and disqualifying valid voters.

I’ve been doing phone banking fro the Biden/Harris campaign for a month and here’s what I learned are the best ways to make sure your vote is secure:

Why Early Voting is Vital to Beating Trump

First find out if your state has early voting by checking right here. If it does, you MUST NOT wait until Election Day to vote. Here’s why:

Cheetolini has indicated that he will not hand over power peacefully if he loses, so we need to beat him by a landslide and we need that to be apparent election night. The longer it takes to tally the votes – the more days it drags on – means the more opportunity Donald Dumpster has to try and undermine the election results. To win we NEED your vote to be counted on election night. This is why getting your vote in early is VITAL.

In-Person Early Voting

This is the most secure way to vote.  If you’re comfortable going out in public, please vote this way.

The reason it’s the most secure way to vote is because it won’t have to rely on a purposefully slowed down postal service. Also, since there will be far less of an onslaught of people voting then on Election Day, there’s less chance for any kind of voting mishaps or malfunctions due to overwhelmed polling places. And best of all you won’t have to wait in long lines like on Election Day. The first day or two of early voting in your state will most likely be busy so maybe wait till the third day to avoid lines.

If you’ve already received your mail-in ballot, you can bring it with you when you go to vote early and surrender it to the poll workers.

To find out where the early voting locations are in your area google “Early voting locations” and the name of your county.

Drop Off your Mail-In Ballot at an Early Voting Location

Despite what the Fucktard-in-Chief says, we are still very much in the middle of a pandemic and not everyone feels safe going to a polling location. So dropping off your mail-in ballot at an early voting location is the second best way to make sure your vote is counted. Early voting locations have secure boxes to receive dropped off ballots. By doing this, you’re still voting early and avoiding the possibility of your ballot going missing in the mail. Plus you don’t have to worry about being around idiots who refuse to wear masks.

How You Sign Your Mail-in Ballot is Important

The evil GOP bastards in Florida threw out thousands of ballots in the primary because people’s signatures on their mail-in ballots didn’t match the ones on the voter rolls. This is an obvious form of voter suppression, so we must be vigilant to defend against it in every state.

To do this, try your best to make sure the signature on your ballot matches the one in voter rolls. Not sure what it looks like? You can try requesting it from your local department of elections. Otherwise, make sure it matches your driver’s license.

Also, it’s very important that you put your email and/or phone number next to your signature so they can reach out instead of throwing away your vote.

Track Your Ballot

Many states that allow mail-in voting have an online tracking system so you can see if/when you vote has been counted. If yours is one of those states, be diligent about tracking your vote. To find yours, you can google the name of your county and “Track my ballot”. I dropped mine off two days ago and just tracked it right now:

As you can see, they’ve acknowledged reviving my ballot and verifying the signature. They will start counting ballots 10 days before the election, so I’ll check back then. You should do this too.

Volunteer to Work the Polls

Finally, if you care about beating the orange clown and making sure the election is secure, volunteer to work the polls. Starting with early voting, you can be on hand to help people get their votes in and double check to make sure election officials aren’t doing anything shady.

Now let’s beat this bastard!

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.