I try not to write about politics on here. Because that would be all I write about if I did.

I find it insanely disgusting that Donald Trump doesn’t want Americans for have easy access to voting. He explicitly railed against Democratic provisions in a round of stimulus talks that would have increased the ability to vote by mail and early voting timetables:

“I will tell you this, when you look at the before and after, the things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again, they had things in there about election days, and what you do…and it was totally crazy.”

So there it is. Increased voter turnout is not something Republicans want. They would prefer low voter turnout, at least according to the President and head of their party.

How can anyone defend that statement?

Instead of defending all of his supporters and other Republican senators and representatives just ignore it. I know mine do.

I live in Ohio’s 16th District. It’s a pretty disgustingly drawn district.

I live in the top part of this. That small Minnesota shaped puzzle piece connected by a very thin strip of land. Before it was redrawn by Republicans after the 2010 census it actually looked like a sane person drew it, instead of a heavily data influenced algorithm that had a goal of making a safe republican seat. See for yourself:

Look at that district. Totally makes sense in the fact that it is a small, normal shaped area.

My current representative is Anthony Gonzalez. I’m sure he’s a real nice man, but I’m not sure why he is qualified to be a Representative. Judging by his bio, his sole accomplishments in life is playing football in the NFL.

I’m maybe an annoying constituent. When I worked at Summit and had early mornings, I called my Representatives and Senators on a weekly basis to let them know how I was feeling about issues. I was frustrated with Gonzalez because like most politicians his public tweets and statements don’t align with his votes.

The one time I actually got a response to him was last summer when immigrant adults and children were being held in horrid conditions all across the United States. I had written him an email and stated two lingering concerns: 1. That John Kelley, former chief of staff sat on the board of one of the largest private organizations housing immigrants in a massive conflict of interest, and 2. That these private organizations, including the one John Kelley sat on, were being paid more than triple the amount a school is paid to educate an average student on a day to day basis. Essentially they turned a massive profit by housing as many immigrants as possible in unsanitary conditions with many, many reported abuses.

His response to me didn’t touch upon either of those concerns, rather stated that he was proud congress passed the H.R. 3401 two months earlier and he was proud of that. Oh, and there has to be more discussions on immigration. Which is wonderful, I acknowledged both of those in my email to him, but my concerns were more narrow in the corruption and conflict of interest being ignored in the pursuit of profits, something he just didn’t seem to understand.

But he does state on his House website:

I can only speak for myself, but I’m a little disgusted that the non-response response I got from him is counted among those 20,000 responses. Other topics I’ve called and left messages with him on are budget votes (particularly when he says one thing and votes another way), oversight of the congressionally appropriated funds, and many, many of the president’s statements and actions that overshadow everything else in the world. Nothing else has gotten a response. And not all my calls are about concerns. There are times I’ve given him credit for his statements, but also called him out on his walk-backs of those statements and conflicting votes.

In Ohio we have one Republican Senator – Rob Portman, and one Democratic Senator – Sherrod Brown. I’ve probably left close to a hundred messages for Senator Portman over the years, and not one response. Which I guess when you represent a whole state could be expected. Although in everyone of his answering service messages he states he will get back to each person. Maybe it’ll be like Ringo Starr in the Simpsons and I’ll get a response decades from now:

Sherrod Brown hasn’t replied to anything either. But at least he gives the appearance of replying. And to be honest I’ve left much less messages for him than the other two. I used ResistBot to fax all of my congressional representatives about the USPS, asking what action they would take on the issue and its importance to me.

(Honestly, ResistBot is amazing and I encourage everyone – whatever your views are – to check it out.)

Since having Marceline, I’ve written more mail than any other time in my life. It would be ridiculous to think that such a service would be allowed to go bankrupt and fail when it benefits and serves every single person in the United States. How does the president, and republicans in Congress, justify bailing out airlines and other industries, but not fund the USPS fully?

Hell, (that’s right, Hell), more than half of all of the stimulus checks to Americans will be mailed to them. I wonder if the USPS was going to go bankrupt before those checks are going to be delivered, that Trump would have a different attitude towards them. If USPS having no funding left disrupted delivery of the stimulus checks Trump is so proud of, I bet he would find it in his heart to fund it.

Odd that President Trump is ok with that, but doesn’t think expanded access to vote by mail is a good thing. Of course it’s OK for him to vote by mail. That’s different, obviously.

Sherrod Brown’s office immediately replied to my fax with an email:

I suppose it is not much more than the answering service message from Senator Portman, but it was an actual response which is more than I was expecting.

All of this rant came from getting my Vote By Mail ballot yesterday. Ohio has easy access to vote by mail, meaning you don’t have to have a reason to vote by mail, you can just request a vote by mail ballot and they will send you one.

But not really. You see to get a vote by mail ballot, you have to first send a request to you county office to request a request for a vote by mail ballot.

Don’t go back and read again, you read it right. You have to request to have a request to vote by mail ballot mailed to you.

Then you can fill out the request to vote by mail, mail it back to the county office and they will send a ballot to you.

It seems absurd to have that extra step. It means from the day you submit a request for a request for a vote by mail ballot, it will take two weeks for an actual vote by mail ballot to arrive at your door. I suppose that not bad for three pieces of mail traveling 30 miles ( Me: online request for request for vote by mail ballot. Them: Mail vote request for vote by mail ballot. Me: Receive, open and fill out request for vote by mail ballot and put in next day’s mail. Them: Receive request for vote by mail ballot, process, and mail vote by mail ballot. Me: Receive vote by mail ballot).

When Ohio cancelled it’s primary election on March 17th (literally was cancelled March 16 in the evening – but even then a court challenge hadn’t been finished) it took just over a week for an agreement on what would be acceptable to happen. Instead of in person voting, vote by mail deadlines would be expanded until April 27th. That gave an extra 6 weeks to vote by mail, which when you think of how long it takes to actually get a vote by mail ballot it isn’t a lot.

With no physical voting occurring, and how many steps there are to get a vote by mail ballot, voter participation in the primary is going to be way down. Which is a shame. But as Trump clearly said, that’s good for republicans.

Still what it comes down to is that I am lucky enough to live in a state where I can vote by mail simply by requesting a request for a vote by mail ballot and filling it out. I suppose the multiple step process reduces the chances that voter fraud by mail would happen (even if it is extremely rare, just as any voter fraud is – the last big case of mail voter fraud, or any voter fraud, was a republican operative in North Carolina).

I know, again, this is a long rambling post. It is why I try not to write about politics often.