An Election Week Message · 7:40pm Oct 27th, 2020
Apologies to the non-US-citizen and/or under-18 folks who follow me; I promise that next time you hear from me, it’ll be because I have something you can participate in, i.e. a story to read. But right now, here’s an important message for the rest of you:
Voting ends one week from today. It’s not too late to vote before election day, and in many states, it’s not too late to register; vote.org (which I’ve promoted before and will surely promote again) is a non-partisan one-stop-shop for finding out if you’re registered, getting that taken care of if you aren’t, finding polling locations and times, finding out who/what’s on your ballot, and more.
If you haven’t already voted by mail, it’s too late to do so in most states (well, too late to be sure your vote will be counted; most states don’t accept ballots that arrive after Nov. 3rd, but you can check your state’s rules at… wait for it… vote.org!), but in addition to voting in person, early voting or delivering an absentee ballot to a state-approved dropbox/polling facility can be safe, no-contact options.
Please bug your friends, family, co-workers, and whomever else you can. Voting is important. The various roadblocks that have been thrown up around the country are not insurmountable, but they are proof that your vote matters. Targeted disenfranchisement wouldn’t be such a prevalent political strategy if the franchise wasn’t important in the first place. And even if you live in a “safe” Biden or Trump state, there are other elections downballot that matter. You can find out which ones at… wait for it… vote.org, and by doing quick google searches on any candidates for state representative or school board or what have you whom you’ve never heard of. Even in deep-blue and ruby-red districts, some of these races are likely to be competitive, and they often have more direct impact on your day-to-day life than the president does.
Okay, good? Good. But there’s one more bit I want to ask.
On a personal note.
*****
You probably recall that in June, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis Police officer. You probably recall how his murder (or more accurately, the state’s initial decision not to even investigate the officers in question; contrary to what you might remember, the protests didn’t really begin until it became clear that, absent public outcry, absolutely nothing would be done about the murder) sparked demonstrations across the country. On a smaller, more idiosyncratic level, you might recall a bunch of posts right here on FiMFic about the ongoing problems in our country of which this murder served as just one tragic example. I hope you haven’t forgotten those things.
Because as a Minnesotan,
And as an educator at a majority-minority school,
And as a believer in the rule of law,
And as a human being,
I am reminded daily that none of the problems highlighted then have gone away. The remedies to the many and varied problems laid bare by that and other crimes unpunished cannot be solved quickly, or easily, or simply. We cannot pass one law, or jail one man, or elect one person, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and continue on as if everything is solved. But we can continue to make progress, and this week, by far the most vital and effective tool for making that progress is to vote.
Please, if you only take one piece of voting advice from a blog on a horse fiction site, make it this: vote for the candidates who best represent the highest ideals of our nation. Vote for those who want, in the words of our pledge, “liberty and justice for all.” Or, if your sense of cynicism is too great to allow you to acknowledge that a politician, of all things, is not only capable, but desirous, of acting in the best interests of our country, then vote against those candidates who most slavishly follow the teachings of such “luminaries” as Joseph McCarthy, and who seek division for no other reason than personal advancement, even at the expense of our country.
They are not hard to find. One need only ask which candidates are quick to condemn the “riots, looting and arson” when they appear to involve “the blacks” (nevermind that much of the destruction in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder was caused by far-right activists), but are strangely silent, or worse, dismissive, of terror plots when they’re hatched by white people. One need only ask which politicians have conspicuously failed to disavow those they’d surely otherwise have no problem labeling “violent thugs” when they are a demographic fit for “their” party. One need only ask which politicians declare their love for “law and order,” even as they refuse to distance themselves from literal criminals. Vote for their opponents.
Find the candidates who believe that nobody is above the rule of law, and who recognize that the way we treat people should be based on their actions, not their skin color. Vote for them. Or if you refuse to acknowledge that such people exist, at least find those who don’t even bother to hide their disdain for anyone who isn’t their ideological and melatoninic doppelganger. Vote against them.
It’s a small step, and it’s a long road ahead of us. But it is a step.
This is a good call. Apparently they're trying to rig things even more with the SCOTUS to push to not take any mail-in ballot that arrives past the day even if it was posted before hand. Now more than ever things need to happen asap.
5387018 Um. That's the law in those states. If it's not in by closing time of the polls on election day, the ballot is invalid. Therefore vote early, or vote at your polling place, or vote your absentee ballot and drop it off at the polling place, or drop it off in one of the multiple official ballot collection boxes they have.
Wisconsin State Law on Elections, Chapter 6
Yep. I just voted earlier today. Waited about an hour on the line (brought a chair and music/headphones with me, so it really wasn't bad at all), and did my civic duty. Now to just wait for the results.
Go vote, everyone!
5387030 Right now with the extreme pressure in the mailing system thanks to certain changes by a certain group of people that have made things worse with cuts in equipment, coverage, and people, not to mention the issue with the pandemic on top of that, it would have been reasonable to extend the period. Of course if someone doesn't want people's votes to count regardless of whether they would have at any other point in time arrived under different circumstances, and you have a sudden majority in the SCOTUS thanks to appointing lackeys in there, you can deny the changes those same states requested to allow for the votes to come in and count within a small period of extra time.
You'd think, of course, that if you had the best interests of the whole country in mind, you'd allow for most of the country to vote as best as they can.
Well, I sent in my ballot by mail, so I may have voted.
For those interested in a more general review of the situation: AP finds most arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals
5387101
Not quite. The article says its information is from federal court documents, and you will of course remember the numerous stories of state DA's declining to press charges against arrested rioters in a number of areas where lawlessness continued for extended periods of time, with federal law enforcement coming in at the tail-end of riots due to shutting them down. If the charges are not brought against someone who has committed arson, then there are no court documents to pull data from. "Reports of theft have dropped by almost 100% after we decided to stop taking reports of theft, so that means crime isn't happening!"
The rest of the article uses constant weasel-words to brazenly lie and deflect, and I mean constant. The article isn't worth the electrons it took to download.
5387042
Man, don't even get into it with Georg. Conversations there are basically a glue trap - you'll want to gnaw your leg off before long.
I have noticed lately anyone who stays neutral as I do. They get bashed hard by people on both sides. I did vote I was about not going to because I just had no interest. But I finally went and voted today. Now someone did get upset at me because. i refused to say who I voted for. I feel I don't need to. But yeah I hope things finally calm down.
5387042
The responsibility to vote is left with the voter. Not the state. You cannot compel someone to vote against their will, as such, you cannot expect the state to accede to that person's demand that their vote be counted after the due date. It's just like homework. Get it in before or on the due date, or get a failing grade. It has been this way as long as vote by mail has been a thing.
5387042
It’s funny how hard some people are making voting while praising democracy. You’d expect every vote to count but idk, I’m no political expert :/
I definitely agree that this election is important to our country (and even to the rest of the world depending on what the people we elect chose to do to influence the other countries). And my wife and I are definitely going to vote. I’m not going to tell anyone here how I’m voting because this is not the proper forum for political discussion. And also because every American is FREE to vote the way that they see fit. (And I will defend that freedom to my grave, even if I don’t agree with your stance!)
The only thing I will say is to PLEASE not believe everything that is put out in the PRESS. Do your own research. Look into what all these groups (both left and right) post on their websites. Then you are free to make up your own mind on who you wish to support or oppose. I seem to me that a lot of what is “reported” on the news any more is political opinion rather than fact.
I sincerely hope I haven’t offended anyone (any pony?) with my ramblings. All I ask is that we all try and make the most intelligently informed decisions that we can. Thanks for listening to me and may everybody have a wonderful day.
5387030
That's what the earlier ruling stated. As long as you got your mail postmarked by Nov 3rd it would count. After all Nov 3rd is really just the deadline to vote, and if you dropped your mail off by the 3rd then you've effectively voted in time.
It's just that the SCOTUS incidentally more or less the very first ruling after the new Justice was rushed in record time. A coincidence I'm sure. now says that nope, your mail-in vote in Wisconsin must be delivered by the 3rd. Doesn't matter how early or late you mailed it, if the post office doesn't deliver it by the deadline then oh well.
Incidentally the post office has been under attack by the GOP for a couple months now, forcing an enormous backlog and slowing mail delivery to a crawl. Also coincidence, I'm sure.
5387191
1. Talking about "compelling people to vote" is a non-sequitur here; that's not what anyone is saying.
2. Votes postmarked before the required send-off date aren't late, though. Delivering mail-in ballots on time isn't something an individual voter controls. Throwing out a valid vote for no fault of that voter is a game being played to try to disenfranchise people by political interests who think they stand to benefit by it, and that's disgusting.
5387125
I believe what you're talking about is a DA who decided to drop a whole slew of more minor charges, not crimes as serious as arson, dude. Which are the crimes we should care about, no use getting up in arms over minor property damage or disorderly conduct. In other states, it's probably a similar story. There were whole swathes of people whose status as "rioters" is dubious who were arrested for very minor things over the course of the protests. You could be abducted by DHS agents in unmarked vans for being in the wrong place.
From the ones who were charged, left-wing extremism wasn't all that notable. It's not even that surprising. Untargeted violence and destruction is less likely to have a political motivation, and was more likely from people taking advantage of the chaos. If the rioters in question burn down a police car though for instance, there's much more reason to suspect a political motivation.
I wonder what you believe are or are not weasel words.
5387191
Yes, but given that the USPS has been purposefully sabotaged and there is an unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots, it's not unreasonable to extend the deadline like Pennsylvania is doing. And lo and behold, Trump's enablers in the Supreme Court tried to stop that. They would have gotten away with it too if ACB had been there. They did just get away with it in Wisconsin. Their decision to shove through their shiny new extremist judge just a single week before an election is paying off.
5387219
Apparently it wasn't clear. The state cannot compel anyone to vote. In the same breath, no one can demand the state count a vote marked after the date the state marked as due. It's already law that so long as your vote is post marked before the date due for your vote to count, it is counted. I.E. The actor here is the state.
Wanderer is making the argument that every vote needs to be counted regardless of the date marked. I'm making the argument that it is the voter's responsibility, and solely the voter's responsibility, to get the vote in on time to count, not the state's. The only way one would be able to MAKE that vote count on time is by compelling a vote from the voter.
5387224 Don't put words in my mouth. My very first post says this:
5387204 No, the previous ruling violated the law. This SCOTUS decision upheld the law as written. Example:
Justice Gorsuch, joined by Kavanaugh, disagreed with the argument that the 6-day extension was necessary on the facts:
The full order from the Supreme Court is found here.
5387227
I'm not putting words in your mouth, Your second post clearly states you want votes counted that were mailed past the due date, "Give them some extra time". It is not the state's responsibility to ensure you get your vote in on time. The due date is known a year out. The fact people can't get a piece of mail in on time does not mean they should get a pass. They had time. They had months to get it in. Vote by mail started back in June here in Arizona. There's 4 months between then and the election. If one can't get their vote in on time that's on their head at the end of the day. Not the state's responsibility.
That is the contract of citizenship. You have the responsibility to ensure you get your vote in on time or early. You can't go to a poling place the day after the election and say "Hey I wanna vote now!" It doesn't work like that, it has never worked like that.
5387235 You need to learn to read. At no point did I say anything about people posting after the due date. I said that it is reasonable to add a few more days to count the votes.
5387229
We've seen the footage. I don't see how anyone thinks it somehow exonerates the officers. I doubt anyone's opinion was changed by it.
5387230
Sure, Wisconsin made efforts to expand early voting, but they're still arguing that it's reasonable that your vote which was mailed out before the deadline should be thrown out. At a time when there is an unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots, a pandemic, and sabotage of the post office. Weak.
5387224
That is literally what is being done.
Votes post-marked by the due date are cast on time.
Certain factions are trying to have some of those votes thrown out anyway, despite being cast on time.
That is not imposing a cutoff out of a legitimate interest in a timely voting process. That is setting a rule, then throwing out votes anyway even though they followed the rule. And that is voter suppression, plain and simple.
5387246
Oh but you see! George Floyd was a *shuffles cards* felon who committed crimes 11 years ago. Also, he apparently had used drugs. Ergo, he deserves to have had 'professionals' execute him on the spot.
There's no arguing with these people. The only thing you can do is exclude them until they finally change because you can't reason them out of their positions.
5387245 the point is, and I apologize for the 'need to learn to read' remark, that the SCOTUS is pushing to have the votes validated by the end of the day instead of allowing a reasonable period of time for the ones that are stuck in the mail to be counted even assuming they were postmarked before election day.
Even though vote-counting always goes on longer than election day, this is a clear attempt to declare a winner as soon as possible, rather than a real tally of the votes.
My argument is that it is not unreasonable to have a slightly longer period of time to count the votes that came in within that period and under the lawful submission time predating Election day or dropping it on the box, instead of expecting everything to be done in one night. In fact, in the last few elections, voting has always been counted through the days after Election Day, but right now with the way they have expressed their decision, it's indicative that they intend to use Election Day as a hard cut for vote-counts if it comes to the Court.
5387230
The reasoning in that ruling is that it declares, "Nah, see, it's okay to throw out votes because the state did X, Y, and Z to let people vote early and who's to say that wasn't enough?"
The problems with this reasoning are 1. that X, Y, and Z don't actually matter, because 2. there is a very clear thing that could and should have been done to make it "enough," (ensure that the postal system is able to get every vote in on time) and that thing wasn't done. In fact, it was deliberately not done, in order to cause the very outcome of finding a rationale to throw out votes even for voters who were on time and cast valid votes.
Voter suppression doesn't stop being voter suppression just because you can appoint judge(s) who agree with a law technically making it look like votes can be thrown out. That just means that it's a law designed to implement voter suppression. Maybe we shouldn't have those, and maybe shouldn't be too quick to enforce them where they do exist since the Constitutionality of disenfranchising people may in itself be questionable.
5387257
Your post doesn't make much sense. They kneeled on his neck for several minutes to "calm him down"? They were behaving extremely unprofessionally, and should have known better. It is on them that he died. Floyd told them he couldn't breathe, and they should have listened to that. Just because you can say you can't breathe does not mean you have adequate airflow.
5387258
"He was no angel!!! Floyd was a felon and a drug user!"
I've seen conservatives just make shit up about him, like say that he held a pregnant woman at gunpoint, just so they can feel his death was more justified.
For anyone wondering why there's deleted comments up above:
I removed two of Baineblade's posts for falsely claiming that any vote postmarked Nov. 3rd or earlier will be counted. In fact, in many states, these votes will not be counted, and must arrive at their polling site by Nov. 3rd regardless of when they were sent. As this all varies on a state-by-state basis, and in many places is currently subject to litigation, please make sure you know how voting is handled in your state (wait for it... vote.org can help!), and do what you need to to get your vote counted.
I haven't deleted any other comments, and don't intend to, so long as they don't actually spread false information that could result in someone failing to get their vote counted.
5387275
... Really? THAT'S your response? You'll delete my comments made in good faith while claiming they're false? I pulled Directly from the SCOTUS decision to back up my claims. BUT I GUESS DIRECT QUOTES don't matter do they. Just VOTE DOT ORG. Okay dude. Have it your way.
5387292
Not to belabor the really, really obvious, but there never has been and almost certainly never will be any SCOTUS decision determining what the national standard for postmarked ballots is. Among the many reasons why this is the case, perhaps the simplest is that any such national standard would be patently unconstitutional. The running of elections is the province of the individual states, and the national government has virtually no authority in how they're handled.
As should not need to be added, but which I will note for the sake of completeness: the court decision you cited did not apply nationwide; it was a ruling on an individual state's election laws, which apply only in that state. In any event, that ruling did not do what you seem to think it did. Nothing wrong with making mistakes, which is why I haven't blocked you or deleted any other posts (including this one!)... but whether you chose to realize it or not, your statements were both entirely false and, if someone believed you, potentially harmful.
5387174
I mean, your vote is your vote, man. If you don't wanna tell people who you voted for, that's completely fine. I mean, hey, so far as I understand it it's illegal to force someone to tell you.
5387275
Yeah, it's super whack and varies by state. It's best to get your ballot in before the day or go in person, but always always always look up your own state. Considering the decision for Wisconsin to not accept any after the date, I'm glad I didn't wait till now to vote.
5387299
... Yeah because I wasn't discussing that specific case with Wanderer... Despite quoting from the exact same document he did... Both of us knowing we were discussing a specific ruling that so far 4 people have referenced in this discussion thread. Whatever dude. You do you. Censorship and all.
5387258
Of course, Humans are, after all, perfectly logical computing machines that are always right and are never influenced by silly things like honest mistakes or psychological forces like rationalizations. The only reason why 'these people' hold such despicable opinions is because they're evil and they want to be evil.
So until they decide of their own volition to stop evil baddies we should isolate them from society, leaving them no point of contact but other evil individuals (because I'm sure there's no way that could ever go wrong). This is clearly the only alternative, as everyone knows that friendship is never an option and that reforming villains is always absolutely impossible.
Im not saying they're evil. I'm saying they have wrong, harmful opinions and that we needn't entertain them.
By excluding them, you tell them that their behavior is not welcome. It provides an impetus for change. Leaving them open to the community so they can leave further hateful comments or misdirections isn't going to change them from the steady ramp of radicalization they're on. They didn't reason themselves into this position, so you can't reason them out. All you can do is put them in the time-out chair, until they stop using drugs and a previous criminal record as a valid excuse to execute ethnic minorities.
Mailed in my ballot weeks ago, and was long since able to confirm on my local voter information website that it was received by my county. I'm confident that mine will be counted.
While I am, admittedly, tired of getting calls, emails, and texts reminding me to vote when I sent in my ballot almost two weeks ago now, it is a very important issue and I thank you for bringing it to light.
5387275 5387292 Chris is correct in this regard, and back in 2000, it was one of the many screaming points in the disputed Indecision 2000. Military ballots had to be postmarked by election day, but could show up and be counted up to X days afterward, due to the slow way mail was handled in FBOs and ships. The problem was their ballots had to be postmarked, and many ships did not postmark outgoing mail. So yes, this is not a new problem. Most of the time an election is X votes apart, and as long as there are not X+1 absentee/military ballots, the SecState can just certify the election and not worry about opening all those envelopes and verifying and counting. (or they open/verify/count until the X/X+1 threshold is reached) That takes money, after all.
5387367 Either voting early this week or in person. Either way, Kansas makes it easy. Show drivers license, beep the machine, sign, pick up ballot, mark it, deposit it in the counter, wave goodbye. No hanging chads, no double-voting, or at least inside Kansas. If all the states duplicated our system, voter registration could be checked across state lines and the rolls cleaned out to only voters, not people-who-used-to-be-here-five-years-ago.
5387328
History is such a good tool because it gives us something really valuable when it comes to things like "should websites moderate/ban racist assholes". It gives us precedent. Precedent of what happens to websites that act vs ones that don't.
Invariably, and I literally can't think of an exception, unmoderated or very poorly moderated that do not spell out that this shit is not okay eventually become cesspools of hateful speech disguised as "edgy" humor, racism, ironic nazis, and actual nazis. They infest the place and drive out every decent person. Literally every time.
So yeah, banning/excluding people who try to insinuate black people who get shot by cops deserve it is not a bad thing, because allowing those kinds of people to spew their garbage represents a real, existential threat to the health of the community of any website or forum they inhabit. And a person who complains that they're being shut out over this will stomp their feet and say snide shit, but in the end it all boils down to "I wish this place was more like 4chan".
The biggest problem I’m having with most of the debate that is going on here is that some are laying the problems that the USPS is having on the Executive branch of our government. This is not my first election (I’ve been around for quite a few), however this is the first I have ever heard of where there are mass mailings of ballots that were not requested by the individual voters. And these millions of extra ballots are what has put this extra strain on the postal service. The Postal Service does not receive extra federal funds for it’s operation, it is completely financed by the revenue it generates from the people who use it’s services. This is why postage rates have to be increased to cover the operating expenses. And as far as I know it has been this way since Benjamin Franklin was our first Postmaster General.
Congress is where the push for the massive mailing of ballots originated. The original system of requesting absentee ballots has been in place for longer that all of us have been around. And while there may be some issues with it, it has worked pretty well. The biggest problem I can see with ballots that are blindly sent out is that there is no way for there to be any accountability. If I requested a ballot, then my name is on the voter register as an absentee voter and I cannot vote in the local polling place. However, by mailing out millions of unsolicited ballots there is no way to to keep accurate records of who is voting in person or by mail. Plus add in all the reports of completed ballots turning up in trash dumpsters (And yes, there has even been a case reported recently by the local news here in Kentucky where I live).
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if something is not broken you don’t need to FIX IT. And that if Congress wanted to change up the way we vote, doing so at the proverbial last moment is not how it should have been done. And since it was pushed through extra funding should have been set aside to make sure that the USPS was not overwhelmed.
It just really annoys me that all the discussions that are going on are really predicated on a bunch of poorly thought out political decisions to try and influence how we vote. When all the legal problems we had before were worked out many decades before.
Ok, it’s time I hopped of of my soapbox (That statement should give you a starting place for my age LOL). Thanks for putting up with old codger.
5387220
You should have read the article. From it:
The double-think is incredible.
Look at this excerpt from the article. I will highlight the weasel words that tell us nothing but want you to fill in the details for yourself, and add in (parentheses) the data they want you to think for yourself:
Bring skepticism and scrutiny to anything you read, and stop swallowing propaganda and outright lies. This article was pure garbage.
5387460
That's not the only article I was reading though. Officers claimed they had evidence of him making a molotov, but not, you know, using it. So, he hasn't committed arson, then? Or had his charges dropped? My point still stands.
You're seriously reaching with your "weasel words", but that's about what I expected from you. The word "weapon" is a weasel word according to you.
That word isn't just going conjure up images of pepper spray, but various melee weapons, and a variety of guns too.
For example, "Some have criminal records" means exactly what it says, that some of them had criminal records, which could mean anything from speeding to assault. They don't need go into the exact crimes they've committed, that would be odd.
What you claim they want us to think is ridiculous. No half-way rational person would think that unless they were already convinced the article is just propaganda.
I have brought my skepticism, that's why I'm not too scared of a bunch left-wing radicals coming to start riots.
5387478
Wow. "He was only making molotovs during the riots".
No reaching, it just means you've chosen to turn off your brain and blindly accept everything you're told at face value. Since you've decided that civility and respect are luxuries you can't afford, I guess we're at this point now. I expected better from you, but that was my mistake. You did, after all, victim-blame a child for people trying to murder him like some kind of rape-apologist. "He shouldn't have been there, he shouldn't have left his friends, it was his fault they tried to kill him." Remember?
Not in the least, simply reading the article and paying attention to the tone and lack of specifics is enough to make someone skeptical unless they were already slack-jawed and just looking for vague confirmation for their outrage.
I haven't seen any from you yet, just blind obedience and doggedly towing the party line at every possible opportunity. Unless, wait, were you serious? You actually thought that you use skepticism?
'Cause I haven't seen any from you every time you deny reality in every thread we run into each other, you're practically a paid advertisement. Thanks, a good laugh was a nice start to my day! 
5387460
I don't understand what your problem with that segment is. The charges against Lartigue haven't been dropped, the judge merely ruled that preventive detention wasn't necessary. Even without contemplating the health risks that putting someone in jail right now entails, it seems to me like such a case hardly necessitates detention until trial.
You can't claim that the article obfuscates the real number of cases when they literally have a table with all of them clearly presented just a few paragraphs back.
Why does "some"=one or two, while "also" and "others"= literally millions?
The word nazi doesn't appear once in the entire article, while at the same time the article provides specific examples of anarchists and members of anarchist groups being arrested.
What? The criminal record of the guys in Kenosha is never brought up. And all the AP has said on the subject is that:
and
Both of which are quotations. I mean, c'mon, this is twitter levels of putting words in other people's mouths.
Either way, if the article is so incredibly and obviously biased. Can you identify a single provable false claim made by the AP in the entire thing?
5387316
Can't tell if sarcasm or naive idealism that doesn't actually work in real life when it comes to beliefs except in very rare fringe cases.
5387235
I smell a shill.
5387508
A mixture of both. I would say though that the far-right continually proves that changing people's minds on the internet is possible. Since they have been doing so for quite some time now.
5387444
I just wanted to hop back in and clarify a few things that might help explain the nature of the current debate:
Actually, five states have been doing this for years, some of them for decades. This year, four more states (plus D.C.) opted to do so as well due to the pandemic. So it's not a particularly novel approach.
This is true in the literal sense that "more mail = more work." However, it's a bit misleading, since it suggests that without those extra ballots going back and forth, mail speed would be steady. In fact, mail has been delivered at historically slow rates since early August.. There are a variety of reasons for that, but the Postal Governor's decisions to eliminate many counting machines, stop paying deliverypeople overtime, etc., are clearly a major factor.
As I mentioned upthread, the US Congress has virtually no say in how elections are run. This is up to individual states. Some of those states are indeed pushing for more mail-option voting, either through their state congresses, through their governors, or through their secretaries of state; how those powers are delegated varies state-by-state. Other states have chosen not to do so, or in a couple cases, are actually rolling back mail-option voting.
This is handled differently state-by-state, so there's no one "here's how we make sure people don't double-vote" answer. In Minnesota, though, when my ballot was received and verified by the election office, they marked me as having voted on the register (which I can check online), so that I know my vote was counted successfully. I can't go in and vote in person now--I'd be turned away because I'm checked off on the register--but that's a product of my vote being counted, not just being sent out. Again, rules vary state-by-state.
As for "ballots in the trash," this is indeed very concerning on the rare but real occasions when it happens without the voter's knowledge (such as the KY case you're referring to). However, this is a human problem, not a voting one: literally every election sees a case of ballots somewhere being left unattended by a distracted poll worker, forgotten about, and not discovered until later, sometimes even after the vote has been certified and it's too late to do anything about it. This is a serious problem, to repeat. It's just that it's a "people handling ballots" problem, no a "ballots in the mail" problem.
Given America's historically poor voter turnout, and its especially low rates among demographic groups that have historically been subject to targeted voter suppression, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the system is broken. Not past the point of all functioning, obviously, but it's certainly not working as intended. Be that as it may, the larger reason for all this is of course the pandemic, which is pretty much the definition of a Black Swan event: something significant and rare enough to require an out-of-the-normal response.
...Well, that got a little long! Anyway, I hope that explains a bit more about what people on both sides are upset about, and how we got to the place we're at now.
You could have just said vote Democrat instead of writing a whole essay.
Edit: This isn’t an endorsement of either party, just summing up the OP’s message.
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Whether or not a reader may agree with it, it is obvious that the essay is significantly more thoughtful and thought-provoking that simply typing the words "vote Democrat", hence the discussion in the comments.