Libertarians are automatically against anything that has even a hint of humanity. We eat children and abuse the elderly for sport. At least, thats what I'm told I believe by random people on the Internet.

Yeah, but it's so much easier to complain about how "they took our Slashdot!"

Those who hate group X have a hard time seeing that there is a lot of shit flung at group X here. Substitute whatever group you want and there are people who irrationally hate them. I agree that there are very few places on the Internet where you get a larger cross-section of society than here. Despite all the crap, there is still a lot of insightful commentary Glad there are others who still recognize that fact.

Interesting is one way to put it with that additional context. That actually subtracts from my estimation of the original comment, but "headline" was all that was available to comment on before. He's certainly made headlines, but I have yet to see one that wasn't actually about an important issue. I'm not in Oregon any more though, so I only see the national ones.

The difference between standard mail-in ballots and absentee ballots is huge. First, mail fraud requires that the real voter never returns their ballot for every fraudulent vote. When a 2nd ballot comes in (the real one, or a replacement if they actually managed to get ahold of originals and the voter requests it because they never received their ballot), the voter is contacted and the ballots are examined to determine what happened. For 100% mail-in systems, there are no absentee ballots. They're irrelevant. Second, large-scale fraud requires massive coordination in order to create voters who don't exist and create counterfeit ballots linked to those voters. It requires access to the voter database and the ballot processing equipment in order to get them into the mail stream without being blatantly obvious. Doing so on any sort of scale would require the system to already be so thoroughly compromised that the fraud would be simply a matter of course at that point.

So no, while the system is vulnerable to certain frauds, wholesale fraud is not one of those vulnerabilities. Being "way more susceptible to fraud" is only obvious if you think about it for a few minutes and then stop thinking before you actually get to the important parts.

You apparently know nothing about him then. He's one of the few Senators I'm aware of who still commands a significant amount of respect from both sides of the aisle (among voters, anyway).

The signature is used when more than one ballot with the same voter information comes in. Only one will be valid, at most.

Might be easier, assuming you have access to voter lists necessary to craft counterfeit ballots and envelopes containing accurate voter data. What happens when those names pop up twice, half of which came from a single location, however, is not as easy to control. That requires significant access to the entire voting apparatus, and if you're that intimately involved with the entire process there are easier methods of fraud. Of course, that assumes there are people who have access to the entire vote-by-mail system at that level, which is not borne out by any evidence anywhere.

No, then you're followed in and monitored as you vote. It doesn't happen in the modern era, but it most certainly has happened. When it has happened, it happens on a wholesale level at every precinct in which it occurs. With vote-by-mail, it gets a lot more difficult to commit wholesale fraud without resorting to completely different means.

Wait, that's not what Facebook is for now?

I can answer the "why" part: power. Whether it's the busybody down the street, or the DA downtown, making and enforcing laws and mores makes people feel powerful and in control. Many people cannot abide having nobody on whom they can look down in smug superiority. The drug laws were created to "keep them in their place." Which group was "them" has varied over time. With opium, it was the Chinese laborers in the West. With marijuana, it was the Latinos. With crack it was the blacks in LA. The rest are just a very rich icing of civil asset forfeiture on top of the sick, fat, and corrupt cake that is the entire US law enforcement community and criminal justice system.

To be fair, only dumbass democrats believe anything of the sort. It is politically convenient to whip up some foreign boogeyman
(Mexican rapists, Syrian terrorists) than to focus on more disturbing questions here at home, such as how child rapist Trump is the best their party has to offer.

That was easy, and just as informative.(and non-authoratative) as the original. And no, I'm not a Hillary supporter either, but you don't have to be one to see how much stupid is encapsulated in your statement.

The problem isn't that it can't be mitigated, it's that there's no political will to oppose police unions during contract renegotiation. My city council rolled over and wet itself rather than enforce a voter-lead initiative to change the city charter and add an independent police ombudsman with investigatory and disciplinary powers. The office has never done anything in its 5 or so years of existence, and can't until the newly-negotiated contract expires. State law says the union has to okay any changes that could effect disciplinary procedures, so the only way things change is if the city council doesn't blink, lets the contract lapse, and contracts with the sheriff's office until a new police department can be hired.

Not sure what study you're referring to, but years of data from dozens of western countries don't agree (Canada, Australia, Germany, etc).

In terms of the US, only if you ignore that legal fictions are constituted completely under the powers reserved by the States. Regulation of legal fictions is completely within the power of the several States as outlined by the 10th Amendment. We have the problems we do now because people have been complacent regarding the use of expedient, but patently unconstitutional, shortcuts to get the results they desire faster. The electorate is ultimately to blame, because people are greedy and self-serving when it comes to anonymously (from a functional societal standpoint) helping themselves to public resources.

Indeed. My post was not well-considered.