The Twins open their "season" with several games in Chicago, including one at Wrigley. Maybe I can sneak into the scoreboard or something...
66 thoughts on “July 9, 2020: Sweet Away Chicago”
Just mailed our mail-in ballot request to the county election authority for August voting. Absentee requests have limitations to them, but not mail-in requests apparently.
Is this an ACA/Obamacare distinction?
Interesting, from the SOS website on How to Vote
Registered Missourians who expect to be prevented from going to their polling place on Election Day may vote absentee beginning six weeks prior to an election.
Absentee voters must provide one of the following reasons for voting absentee:
Absence on Election Day from the jurisdiction of the election authority in which such voter is registered to vote;
Incapacity or confinement due to illness or physical disability, including a person who is primarily responsible for the physical care of a person who is incapacitated or confined due to illness or disability;
Religious belief or practice;
Employment as an election authority, as a member of an election authority, or by an election authority at a location other than such voter's polling place;
Incarceration, provided all qualifications for voting are retained.
Certified participation in the address confidentiality program established under sections 589.660 to 589.681 because of safety concerns.
For an election that occurs during the year 2020, the voter has contracted or is in an at-risk category for contracting or transmitting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (COVID-19).
Voters who are considered at-risk for contracting or transmitting COVID-19 are those who:
Are 65 years of age or older;
Live in a long-term care facility licensed under Chapter 198, RSMo.;
Have chronic lung disease or moderate to severe asthma;
Have serious heart conditions;
Are immunocompromised;
Have diabetes;
Have chronic kidney disease and are undergoing dialysis; or
Have liver disease.
Voters can request absentee ballots from their local election authority in person, by mail, by fax or by e-mail. Relatives within the second degree (spouse, parents and children) may complete an absentee ballot application, in person, on behalf of the voter who wishes to vote absentee. DO NOT SEND ABSENTEE BALLOT APPLICATIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE. ABSENTEE BALLOT APPLICATIONS MUST BE SENT TO THE APPROPRIATE LOCAL ELECTION AUTHORITY BY THE DEADLINE IN ORDER TO BE VALID. Contact information for local election authorities and an absentee ballot application form may be found at the links below.
the whole idea of requiring a reason for voting by mail is so anachronistic. I really, really hope that a lot of states do away with it and allow routine VBM going forward.
And I expect that in blue-ish states, those that haven't done it already will do it soon in response to the nonsensical response from Trump Republicans. It's such a weird flex from Republicans. Historically, VBM has been more closely associated with more affluent voters. Increasingly, I guess, that's not a great predictor of vote preference, so that deterring VBM may not have clear partisan effects. But when states are making it harder and harder for urban voters to cast ballots, those things surely have partisan effects.
like I said, you don't need a reason to vote by mail, you need a reason to vote absentee. I don't really understand the difference.
the Missouri difference is that "Senate Bill 631 into law on June 4, 2020, which authorizes mail-in ballots for the August 4, 2020 primary election and the November 3, 2020 general election". In other words, temporary.
I'll take it.
I requested my mail-in ballot for both the primary and general elections today. It took only a few (<5) minutes and I had to go to retrieve my wallet to get my DL#. Do it.
I received my primary ballot last week, and signed up to also get my mail-in ballot for the November general at the same time. Since I had already registered for a mail-in ballot during the spring primary, it was pretty slick.
I am very glad to get to do California’s permanent vote by mail. I suspect there would have been times I would have missed a local election if it weren’t for the fact that a ballot showed up in the mail.
I made the switch a while ago. I always liked going to my polling place in person and getting my sticker. But now, they send the sticker with the VBM ballot!!!111one111!!!
I'm usually an election judge, so I've been doing early voting. Just requested VBM now though.
On that first point, I'm still trying to decide what I should sign up for the general or not yet. I'm sure they'll need the help, but the boss isn't keen on the idea.
I have thought about volunteering, given expectations that older, typical election-day workers will be scarcer. But, I'm 57, and A+ blood type and male. All on the somewhat higher risk side. Have not decided.
This is why I'm only going to do phone/text banking and no door knocking for candidates this year.
In California, at least, you can still bring the vote-by-mail ballot to a polling place, if they don't send a sticker and you really really want one.
Being a big-time procrastinator, I often end up dropping my ballot off at the polling place on election day instead of mailing it back. That of course lessens the advantage of vote-by-mail, but even just having the official ballot at home to mark on my own time is nice.
Unless Minnesota has changed its rules, that's not allowed here. Mail in ballots have to be postmarked the day before election day to be valid and poll workers won't accept them on election day.
When everything was closed here during the April primary, the City Clerk established secure ballot drop-offs at designated public library branches. They simply converted the book return to a ballot drop. I thought that was pretty neat, and given the concerns about ballots arriving via mail in time to be counted in the election, it eliminated a significant source of stress:
After much legal wrangling over this year’s absentee ballot deadlines, the Supreme Court’s decision held that ballots must be postmarked by Election Day to count. But in at least one city, Madison, a number of ballots received by the clerk were never even postmarked to begin with.
“We are still receiving mail now from the post office, and about half of it is postmarked,” said Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the city clerk. “It’s probably by now a couple thousand that we’ve received from the post office with no postmark.”
She said her office is dating the ballots with its own stamp as soon as they arrive, and is working with the city attorney to determine what to do with them.
Of course, your mailed ballot actually has to be delivered to you so you can vote. We had problems with that in April. My brother-in-law was one of the many folks who never received a ballot and had to go vote in person.
Done
Early voting is also an option in Minnesota if you still like voting on site. It starts in September after the ballots are printed. You can vote at any county courthouse and most city halls during their regular business hours up to election day.
From where did you request it? Some web site? I'd like to do this in CT. Early. And. Often.
Early. And. Often.
I'm no lawyer, but you may want think twice about that last one...
Yeah, I'm too cheap to pay the extra postage (.55 for each forever stamp).
Just saw this in link further below by BrianS: The Hill
Connecticut: In Connecticut you can vote by mail if you are out of town, sick or disabled, in the military, or if your “religious beliefs prevent you from performing secular activities like voting on Election Day.”
Last month Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (D) said the state will send out absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state and pay the postage for their ballots.
Merrill is pushing the state legislature to add “a global pandemic” to the list of reasons somebody can vote by mail.
I am an election judge and I am absolutely terrified about the August elections because I will have to interact with people. I would bail but out precinct really needs judges.
My wife is making French dip sandwiches for dinner tonight.
Notary is NOT required in MO for mail-in. That link is over a month old.
right, like I said. I only did a cursory google-search, but that was the most recent one I ran across.
ooooh, mail-in requests don't have to be notarized -- mail-in ballots do :/
NOTARIZED?!
slap me with a trout, but that is stupid. It's basically a vote-by-mail fee, which is probably unconstitutional. Or would be with a slightly different configuration of Supremes.
yeah, no surprise. look up the color of the state
I'm a notary in Illinois if anyone needs anything here.
I thought that such things were just recently upheld somewhere when Governor soandso (or maybe State Sec.) tried to change the requirement temporarily for current circumstances.
Or maybe it was yes to requiring a witness, no to the notary. So much news to pay too much attention to.
I don't love everything about an all-mail-in balloting system, but it's been perfectly smooth for me in WA ever since they made the switch some years ago.
I saw on the Twitters that the B1G is gonna announce only conference games for football in 2020. I would expect that all the P5s will follow suit on their way to no games at all.
Sounds like no HS football in TX. Shit's getting real.
whoa. That is big. Particularly since this is just the sniffles.
"Sports are like the reward of a functioning society" -- Trevor Bauer
Pretty sure that was Doolittle.
Upon further review, you are right.
Texas cancelled its State Fair. Probably just as big as no football.
Having lived in texas I'm going to go with no football being the biggest thing that has ever happened to anyone in texas*.
*non Alamo edition.
From Nicole Auerbach at The Athletic: "Multiple industry insiders said they expect the Pac-12 to make a similar decision as the Big Ten in the coming days."
That's gonna take Oregon off of my alma mater's schedule. They have not played an FBS school since 2016 and won't now until 2022, I think. But who am I kidding. Every game is gonna be taken off the schedule.
The Ohio State AD has moved from "cautiously optimistic" to "very concerned" about the prospects of a football season. He's still more optimistic than me.
for a majority of D-I universities, cancelling the season might actually save them (a little) money.
Only if they fire the entire coaching and support staffs and pay them nothing to get out of the contracts. Otherwise it's lots of spending with no income to help counteract it.
yes, there's a lot tied up in payroll. But a lot also tied up in avoidable operating expenses. And you can bet that a lot of those schools will lay off a lot of support staff or cut their hours.
I don’t know about other universities, but less than one-tenth of the head football coach’s salary comes directly from our university. The majority comes from foundation (donor) money. We’re still talking millions of University dollars consumed by the athletic department in base salary for coaches, though.
Yeah, at this point the ADs just have to figure how to convince as many of their followers as possible that they are making the right decision to cancel the season. I'll grant you that the NCAA has way more money than a supposedly amateur organization ought to have, but if MLB is having difficulty getting their tests processed on time, there is no way the NCAA is realistically going to put together the kind of testing you would need to make this possible.
On top of that -- we're talking about college students here. At least at the University of Washington -- and I suspect at other schools -- the university actually pays to put the players in a hotel the night before home games, because they can't expect the players to act like adults and get a decent night's sleep and get to the game on time the next day. If they need to go to those lengths just to keep the kids from drinking, partying, and oversleeping, there is a 0% chance any team would have high enough compliance with physical distancing protocols to make it through a season.
so, Cowboy Joe West....
Big surprise that he's all aboard the conspiracy train and not content just being a sh*tty umpire.
Still calling 'em as he sees 'em, which is not well.
At 67 he's lucky to have a job and a union to protect that job.
If you go to the Twins facebook page, you can watch their intra-squad scrimmage. No announcers or anything, so not easy to follow, but it is TWINS BASEBALL!!
Stay-at-home Wattsy has watched more NASCAR and Xfinity Series racing than the last 10 years combined.
I am still uneasy about baseball starting up.
NASCAR is at the bottom of my favorite racing series but hey, it's still racing so I've been watching more this year as well. The series hands-off approach to testing is not great.
So with the ceremony today of my FIL at the cemetery, there was an opportunity for the family to put some items in the grave with the Urn. I dropped in 2 homer hankies (1987 and 1991). RIP Odean Berg.
Just mailed our mail-in ballot request to the county election authority for August voting. Absentee requests have limitations to them, but not mail-in requests apparently.
Is this an ACA/Obamacare distinction?
Interesting, from the SOS website on How to Vote
the whole idea of requiring a reason for voting by mail is so anachronistic. I really, really hope that a lot of states do away with it and allow routine VBM going forward.
like I said, you don't need a reason to vote by mail, you need a reason to vote absentee. I don't really understand the difference.
the Missouri difference is that "Senate Bill 631 into law on June 4, 2020, which authorizes mail-in ballots for the August 4, 2020 primary election and the November 3, 2020 general election". In other words, temporary.
I'll take it.
I requested my mail-in ballot for both the primary and general elections today. It took only a few (<5) minutes and I had to go to retrieve my wallet to get my DL#. Do it.
I received my primary ballot last week, and signed up to also get my mail-in ballot for the November general at the same time. Since I had already registered for a mail-in ballot during the spring primary, it was pretty slick.
I am very glad to get to do California’s permanent vote by mail. I suspect there would have been times I would have missed a local election if it weren’t for the fact that a ballot showed up in the mail.
I made the switch a while ago. I always liked going to my polling place in person and getting my sticker. But now, they send the sticker with the VBM ballot!!!111one111!!!
I'm usually an election judge, so I've been doing early voting. Just requested VBM now though.
On that first point, I'm still trying to decide what I should sign up for the general or not yet. I'm sure they'll need the help, but the boss isn't keen on the idea.
I have thought about volunteering, given expectations that older, typical election-day workers will be scarcer. But, I'm 57, and A+ blood type and male. All on the somewhat higher risk side. Have not decided.
This is why I'm only going to do phone/text banking and no door knocking for candidates this year.
In California, at least, you can still bring the vote-by-mail ballot to a polling place, if they don't send a sticker and you really really want one.
Being a big-time procrastinator, I often end up dropping my ballot off at the polling place on election day instead of mailing it back. That of course lessens the advantage of vote-by-mail, but even just having the official ballot at home to mark on my own time is nice.
Unless Minnesota has changed its rules, that's not allowed here. Mail in ballots have to be postmarked the day before election day to be valid and poll workers won't accept them on election day.
When everything was closed here during the April primary, the City Clerk established secure ballot drop-offs at designated public library branches. They simply converted the book return to a ballot drop. I thought that was pretty neat, and given the concerns about ballots arriving via mail in time to be counted in the election, it eliminated a significant source of stress:
Of course, your mailed ballot actually has to be delivered to you so you can vote. We had problems with that in April. My brother-in-law was one of the many folks who never received a ballot and had to go vote in person.
Done
Early voting is also an option in Minnesota if you still like voting on site. It starts in September after the ballots are printed. You can vote at any county courthouse and most city halls during their regular business hours up to election day.
From where did you request it? Some web site? I'd like to do this in CT. Early. And. Often.
I'm no lawyer, but you may want think twice about that last one...
Yeah, I'm too cheap to pay the extra postage (.55 for each forever stamp).
Just saw this in link further below by BrianS:
The Hill
Connecticut: In Connecticut you can vote by mail if you are out of town, sick or disabled, in the military, or if your “religious beliefs prevent you from performing secular activities like voting on Election Day.”
Last month Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (D) said the state will send out absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state and pay the postage for their ballots.
Merrill is pushing the state legislature to add “a global pandemic” to the list of reasons somebody can vote by mail.
I am an election judge and I am absolutely terrified about the August elections because I will have to interact with people. I would bail but out precinct really needs judges.
My wife is making French dip sandwiches for dinner tonight.
Awwwwwwwwwww juuuuuuus.
Don’t say that too loudly in Chicagoland...
I'll get "baptized".
#Winning
Every state's VBM status as of early June (state by state links embedded)
Notary is NOT required in MO for mail-in. That link is over a month old.
right, like I said. I only did a cursory google-search, but that was the most recent one I ran across.
ooooh, mail-in requests don't have to be notarized -- mail-in ballots do :/
NOTARIZED?!
slap me with a trout, but that is stupid. It's basically a vote-by-mail fee, which is probably unconstitutional. Or would be with a slightly different configuration of Supremes.
yeah, no surprise. look up the color of the state
I'm a notary in Illinois if anyone needs anything here.
I thought that such things were just recently upheld somewhere when Governor soandso (or maybe State Sec.) tried to change the requirement temporarily for current circumstances.
Or maybe it was yes to requiring a witness, no to the notary. So much news to pay too much attention to.
I think that might have been Oklahoma.
Per this NPR piece from last month, OK and MS both require notarization (in addition to the afore-mentioned Missouri)
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/865043618/need-a-witness-for-your-mail-in-ballot-new-pandemic-lawsuits-challenge-old-rules
I don't love everything about an all-mail-in balloting system, but it's been perfectly smooth for me in WA ever since they made the switch some years ago.
I saw on the Twitters that the B1G is gonna announce only conference games for football in 2020. I would expect that all the P5s will follow suit on their way to no games at all.
MLB optimistically threw out 2021 schedule. Hope Covid-19 doesn't stall negotiations
Sounds like no HS football in TX. Shit's getting real.
whoa. That is big. Particularly since this is just the sniffles.
Pretty sure that was Doolittle.
Upon further review, you are right.
Texas cancelled its State Fair. Probably just as big as no football.
Having lived in texas I'm going to go with no football being the biggest thing that has ever happened to anyone in texas*.
*non Alamo edition.
From Nicole Auerbach at The Athletic: "Multiple industry insiders said they expect the Pac-12 to make a similar decision as the Big Ten in the coming days."
That's gonna take Oregon off of my alma mater's schedule. They have not played an FBS school since 2016 and won't now until 2022, I think. But who am I kidding. Every game is gonna be taken off the schedule.
The Ohio State AD has moved from "cautiously optimistic" to "very concerned" about the prospects of a football season. He's still more optimistic than me.
for a majority of D-I universities, cancelling the season might actually save them (a little) money.
Only if they fire the entire coaching and support staffs and pay them nothing to get out of the contracts. Otherwise it's lots of spending with no income to help counteract it.
yes, there's a lot tied up in payroll. But a lot also tied up in avoidable operating expenses. And you can bet that a lot of those schools will lay off a lot of support staff or cut their hours.
I don’t know about other universities, but less than one-tenth of the head football coach’s salary comes directly from our university. The majority comes from foundation (donor) money. We’re still talking millions of University dollars consumed by the athletic department in base salary for coaches, though.
Yeah, at this point the ADs just have to figure how to convince as many of their followers as possible that they are making the right decision to cancel the season. I'll grant you that the NCAA has way more money than a supposedly amateur organization ought to have, but if MLB is having difficulty getting their tests processed on time, there is no way the NCAA is realistically going to put together the kind of testing you would need to make this possible.
On top of that -- we're talking about college students here. At least at the University of Washington -- and I suspect at other schools -- the university actually pays to put the players in a hotel the night before home games, because they can't expect the players to act like adults and get a decent night's sleep and get to the game on time the next day. If they need to go to those lengths just to keep the kids from drinking, partying, and oversleeping, there is a 0% chance any team would have high enough compliance with physical distancing protocols to make it through a season.
so, Cowboy Joe West....
Big surprise that he's all aboard the conspiracy train and not content just being a sh*tty umpire.
Still calling 'em as he sees 'em, which is not well.
At 67 he's lucky to have a job and a union to protect that job.
If you go to the Twins facebook page, you can watch their intra-squad scrimmage. No announcers or anything, so not easy to follow, but it is TWINS BASEBALL!!
Stay-at-home Wattsy has watched more NASCAR and Xfinity Series racing than the last 10 years combined.
I am still uneasy about baseball starting up.
NASCAR is at the bottom of my favorite racing series but hey, it's still racing so I've been watching more this year as well. The series hands-off approach to testing is not great.
So with the ceremony today of my FIL at the cemetery, there was an opportunity for the family to put some items in the grave with the Urn. I dropped in 2 homer hankies (1987 and 1991). RIP Odean Berg.
Sorry for your loss, NBB.