Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin Makes a Stirring Declaration in Favor of Letting Voters Vote for Whom they Wish

Posted on by January 2, 2024

On January 2, Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin, a Democrat, spoke to reporters.  He made a stirring defense of the right of voters to vote for whomever they wish, and distinguished between ballot access and eligibility to hold the office.

See this story.

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Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin Makes a Stirring Declaration in Favor of Letting Voters Vote for Whom they Wish — 42 Comments

  1. MA MORE COMMIE THAN CA ???

    GOP FOLKS DYING OFF QUICKER IN MA OR CA —
    FATAL OCEAN WATER ???

  2. I suspect this declaration will prove to be hypocrisy the moment the Green Party tries to gain ballot access in MA. I’d like my suspicions to be wrong, but history indicates otherwise.

  5. Beware of demon rats paying lip service. They have very sharp teeth, strong jaws, ravenous stomachs, and rodent brains.

  6. The best way to ensure that voters can vote for whoever they want is to get,rid of government printed ballots .

    Since voter handwriting, fraud through surreptitiously casting multiple handwritten or preprinted ballots, and the security of electronic voting are all concerns, it’s a lot better to have voters stand up and be counted off by party,with the winning party then caucusing to pick officeholders.

    This has many advantages discussed in previous article discussions here. Among them:

    Accountability – voting is political power; power without accountability is dangerous. Secret ballots fester evil and incubate wrongdoing.

    Honest elections – anything short of public, in person, on the record voting is basically just asking for widespread election fraud .

    There are many others.

  7. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/us-national-debt-hits-record-222459735.html

    US national debt hits record $34 trillion as Congress gears up for funding fight

    —
    ONE MORE RESULT of the 3 minority rule gerrymander systems in the USA regime since 1789.

    States/locals – about $16 trillion DEBT — total mere $ 50 TRILLION DEBT

    send your payment now — or wait for hyper-inflation to destroy the USA economy — esp NOOOO capital investment.
    —-
    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  8. Mac Plan FTW is right. The Max Plan for conducting election administration is the only logical solution.

  9. That’s very nice, Bill, but it is relatively much easier to get on the ballot in Massachusetts for President, than for other offices. It is especially hard for qualified minor parties get candidates on the primary ballot, given that they can only collect signatures from either voters who are unregistered, or registered in their own party.

  17. So this means anyone under 35 or naturalized citizens should have access to the Presidential ballot in MA. Time will tell if this is political hypocrisy.

  19. Mike posted:

    “Walter, that would be better directed at the legislature?”

    The Secretary has some authority to modify election law thru regulation. This authority was used during the pandemic to authorize electronic signatures, and reduce the numbers of required signatures.

    in any event, the Secretary can also propose legislation directly to the legislature on these matters

  21. Mr. Riley?

    That’s Mr. ForTheWin to you. And why would I want to do that? Are, for example, Iowa or Nevada caucuses conducted in one place?

  22. Mr. Maximov does say that ultimately we should break government down to units which are small enough for everyone to get together in one place and know each other (around 100k population with around 100 voters, plus or minus x10) but that part is probably further down the road than the part we’re discussing here.

  30. The two letter entity might be in danger of overheating its motherboard.

  33. A Zillion fake news stories, and apparently the absurd zombie two letter bot is going to post comments linking each and every one.

  34. @M.P. FTW,

    MaxZ has never explained how we (the World) are going to go from 150 or so countries to 80,000 sovereign communities.

    The caucuses in Iowa and Nevada are single party caucuses.

    Precinct caucuses choose delegates to county conventions. County conventions choose delegates to statewide conventions.

    So you are apparently suggesting that voters meet at 1000s of precinct caucuses and choose a “party”. Rather than casting a record vote, they stand in mobs/crowds and count off, with a video hopefully capturing a record.

    Who is that guy in the blue shirt?
    Him? (pointing)
    No. He has a grey shirt, the lights make it look blue. That guy next to the lady in brown sweater.
    Oh, I see. I don’t know who he is.

  35. J.R. –

    MASS VOTERS ON STRIKE / IN SECESSIONS ???

    — ESP NO PAY TAXES / MAKE LOANS TO CURRENT BIG REGIMES ???

  36. It doesn’t really surprise me that Galvin gave Trump a pass to be on the ballot in Massachusetts. There have been quite a few indicted politicians that have run for office in Massachusetts. It would be the height of hypocrisy to keep Trump off.

  37. Rural New England towns have been holding open town meetings since colonial times. They elect all local office holders, and used to elect representatives to the colonial and state legislatures up until the 19th century. They are the base of the pyramid that forms the US federal system in New England up to the US Congress.

    Some of the larger towns have representative town meetings, where the residents pick a body of representatives from each voting precinct in the town to conduct all of the business formerly conducted in the open town meetings.

    Even today, all town agenda items are openly discussed and voted on in the town meetings. The actual election of town officers is usually conducted with secret ballots now.

  38. It’s disappointing that they conduct elections by secret ballot now, but no reason why they can’t go back to doing it the correct way.

  39. The way to devolve from 150 to ~80k is by lopping off the top layers of that pyramid, starting at the top. The first step of that is to devolve as much power as far down the pyramid as possible and as quickly as we can.

    That also involves support for policies which consciously don’t try to make government the universal answer to everything, building up family (including extended), faith, business community, charity etc as counterbalancing institutions to address society’s problems.

    But that’s not the focus of this particular discussion. Here, we’re only looking at the voting method.

  40. The fact that caucuses are single party doesn’t speak against the voting method as a suggestion for general elections.

    Instead of picking one candidate’s delegation to a party convention, the same voting method can be used to pick a party in the general election. I’ve seen no confusion over who’s allowed to vote or who voted in caucuses or conventions which use the voting method I suggest.

  41. @M.P. FTW,

    I don’t understand why you believe that caucuses are record votes.

    If you want record votes you would use signed paper ballots. You could do like the Texas Senate did during Paxton impeachment trial.

    Each count would be read and the Senators would vote Yes/No on a paper ballot which they would sign. The ballots would be shuffled and the Senate secretary would read each ballot one by one. As she did so, she would mark the tally sheet.

    Then the presiding officer would call each Senator by name alphabetically. The Senator would then rise and confirm their vote.

    This November, the ballot will include President, US Senator, US Representative, Texas Representative, Texas Senator (1/2 the districts), many county offices, and many dozens of judicial offices.

    There might be 8000 polling places across Texas – like several X more if you want to have manageable meeting size. (say 200 persons?).

    How do we know that the “Republicans” in Dalhart or El Paso are the same as “Republicans” in Brownsville or Texarkana?

    Let’s say that the “Republicans” receive the most votes statewide. How do they then decide who should hold office (1000s across Texas).

  42. Easy enough. Count people off, on video. It’s a record. Your face is your signature.

    How parties appoint is up to them. They can hold their own elections before or after the main event, let an executive committee pick,etc.

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