So my wife and I went out and voted Thursday, the first day of non-excused absentee voting in Jefferson County. Here are some of the things we learned.

1. You can vote at any of 25 sites in the city, regardless of address. (The sites are listed at the top of this post.)
2. Drive through voting is a thing. I find it weird people don’t leave their cars and walk to the voting booth. In Louisville, you can hop in your car to the Fairgrounds and drive through the polling place. Here it is in action:

I guess I understand it, though. Back during the days of covid (remember that happened in the Orange Menace’s first term), I got a drive-through vaccine at the Fairgrounds. I guess if you can get a drive-through vaccine, you can cast a drive-through ballot.

3. Remember all that talk about the MAGA morons’ Save America Act and its restrictions on voter ID. Republicans were saying drivers’ licenses weren’t good enough and people should get passports? If you don’t remember that, here’s a recap from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee:

WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, outlined the various obstacles that Americans would face when attempting to register to vote under Republicans’ SAVE America Act, legislation that is designed to prevent Americans from exercising their fundamental right to vote. Under the SAVE America Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, driver’s licenses and other government-issued IDs, including a REAL ID, alone would not be sufficient. According to a nonpartisan study by the Brennan Center and the University of Maryland, more than 21 million Americans who are eligible to vote—or about one out of every ten voting age citizens—do not have documents readily available to prove their citizenship.

Durbin said, “What this proposal [the SAVE America Act] would do is [create] a dramatic change in registering to vote in America. Let me be specific. With this proposal, the proof that you have to present of your identity when you register to vote changes dramatically. When you look at the second page of [the bill], they start listing what you have to bring in to prove that you are eligible to vote. The first suggestion is a passport. Well, half of the people in America, roughly half, own a passport and half do not… Creating this as a standard [showing a passport to vote] in the election in November… can you imagine what’s going to happen at the passport office?”

“The second opportunity you have to prove you’re really an American is to present your birth certificate. [There’s a] problem. [It] turns out a substantial number of Americans don’t have a birth certificate, and they have to obtain one [under the SAVE America Act]. And secondly, there’s a problem with a birth certificate if it reflects a maiden name of a woman before she was married. There has to be a change made there,” Durbin continued.

So to test this out, I decided to use my passport as my photo ID. Here’s what I learned. When you sign in to get your ballot, the election worker scans your ID. The scanners work great for drivers’ licenses, but they can’t handle passports. So, the election worker has to manually input that data. Plus, your drivers license has your address on it. Passports don’t include addresses, so the election worker has to check our your name and verify which ballot you get based on your address. There’s more work involved that takes up a lot of time.

In other words, the Save America Act makes it harder to vote, not easier. And that’s what the GOP wants.

4. And let’s address this concept of electoral cheating. MAGA morons will swear on their stack of unread Bibles that the election system will fall prey to hordes of illegal immigrants swarming to polling places to instill Sharia law in Amurka. Here’s an illegal immigrant couple voting in Minneapolis.

Oh, wait a minute. Those aren’t illegal immigrants. It’s a couple of scumbag Republicans, most notably James O’Keefe, the lowlife who was kicked out of Project Veritas.

And why was he ejected from the group he created? Let AI provide the answer!

Key Reasons for the Ouster

• Financial Misuse and Excessive Spending: The board alleged that O’Keefe spent exorbitant amounts of donor money on personal luxuries. Internal audits and board statements cited expenditures including:
  • Around $14,000 for a charter flight to fix his boat (disguised as a donor meeting)
  • Over $150,000 to $208,000 on “black car” private transportation services
  • A $12,000 helicopter flight from New York to Maine (Southwest Harbor)
  • $60,000 in losses from dance events and $2,500 on DJ equipment 
• Staff Mistreatment: Employees sent a critical memo to the board describing O’Keefe as a “power-drunk tyrant,” citing abusive behavior, yelling at colleagues, and forcing staffers to run personal errands like picking up laundry and cleaning his boat. 
• Fear of Losing Nonprofit Status: Board members and legal analysts noted that using tax-exempt donor funds for personal enrichment and unreasonable insider benefits threatened Project Veritas’s legal and tax-exempt status. 

Aftermath

Following his removal, Project Veritas sued O’Keefe, alleging that he and others misappropriated funds and attempted to start a competing organization, the O’Keefe Media Group. O’Keefe denied the allegations in a video statement announcing his departure. 

O’Keefe tried to join the pantheon of Republican ratfuckers, but was as successful as Tommy in Michigan. But what I really enjoy is what happened next (from AP):

Conservative activists James O’Keefe and Cam Higby were charged Wednesday with unlawful voting and identity theft after a Minnesota prosecutor said they gave false names to poll workers during the state’s primary election. The men recorded the exchanges for a video to expose what they say are vulnerabilities in the state’s voting laws.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced the felony charges at a news conference. She said O’Keefe, 42, of West Palm Beach, Florida, and Higby, 26, of Covington, Washington, wore costumes and used the names of registered state voters while starting the “vouching” process in the Aug. 11 primary. The process provides a way for voters who lack proof of their current address to register and vote in their new precinct on the same day after a voter already registered in that precinct “vouches” for them.

Poll workers were suspicious and reported their behavior. Moriarty said the situation shows that “the system for identifying misconduct and responding to it functioned well during the primary.”

O’Keefe and his crony need to go to jail. They are typical MAGA scum. But we regularly see stories about people trying to vote illegally, and the vast majority of those cases involve Republicans.

Not to mention that the Orange rapist, pedophile, racist conman now in the White House is continually harping on the evils of mail-in ballots when he himself casts mail-in ballots in Florida.

Otherwise, how is voting going in Louisville?

Nearly 136,000 Kentuckians cast ballots on the first day of in-person, no-excuse early voting, a sharp jump from the last midterm election, according to Secretary of State Michael Adams, R-Ky.

Adams said on X that 135,901 people voted early Thursday, up from 81,961 on the first day of early voting in 2022. That is an increase of about 66%.

Democrats made up the largest share of Thursday’s early voters. By party registration, 66,166 Democrats, 60,793 Republicans and 8,942 independents voted. In 2022, 37,640 Democrats, 39,349 Republicans and 4,972 independents cast ballots on the first day. In 2023, the figures were 44,909 Democrats, 35,342 Republicans and 4,392 independents.

I’m going to remain pessimistic here. The majority of voters in Kentucky are registered as Democrats, but a huge swath of them vote Republican, especially outside of Louisville, Lexington and a couple of small pockets of blue districts.

These numbers don’t mean anything right now. Let’s see what happens when the results come in on Tuesday.