I am an undecided Voter.

[oddity83]

Eight days left to cast my ballot and I am no closer to deciding who to vote for than I was after the primaries. I am not tied to either party, not sure if I want to vote third party again this year, do a write in, pick the lesser of two evils, or just say nuts to the whole thing and not vote.
It is a sad state of things when this is the best that the Democrats and Republican can offer. Plus there is all the voter fraud crap being stirred up all ready.

On a side note any American expats got any tips on where to go or how to go about it?

 

[JackLuis]

Eight days left to cast my ballot and I am no closer to deciding who to vote for than I was after the primaries. I am not tied to either party, not sure if I want to vote third party again this year, do a write in, pick the lesser of two evils, or just say nuts to the whole thing and not vote.
It is a sad state of things when this is the best that the Democrats and Republican can offer. Plus there is all the voter fraud crap being stirred up all ready.

On a side note any American expats got any tips on where to go or how to go about it?

I feel your pain. However the Presidency is only a small part of the election. The Senate and House need to be readjusted too. State and Local affairs need to be decided.

 

[MaryanneB]

I feel your pain. However the Presidency is only a small part of the election. The Senate and House need to be readjusted too. State and Local affairs need to be decided.

I'm with you. The Congressional openings are probably more important!

 

[RUlookingup]

This is what the lying thieves wrought.....the jig us up. Throw em all out and reset.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Eight days left to cast my ballot and I am no closer to deciding who to vote for than I was after the primaries. I am not tied to either party, not sure if I want to vote third party again this year, do a write in, pick the lesser of two evils, or just say nuts to the whole thing and not vote.
It is a sad state of things when this is the best that the Democrats and Republican can offer. Plus there is all the voter fraud crap being stirred up all ready.

On a side note any American expats got any tips on where to go or how to go about it?

The choice is simple: If you like Obama and want more of the same, pick Hillary. If you want a different gang of thieves and gangsters, pick Trump.

American politics is an eternal struggle between Al Capone and Bugsy Moran, for Chicago.

 

[Legatus]

The whole system is messed up from top to bottom. If you or me did 1/100th of the things Hillary has done with classified information, we'd be rotting in a cell.

Trump may not be a successful president, but I completely believe that he is the wrench that needs to be thrown into the machine.

 

[sr71plt]

Eight days left to cast my ballot and I am no closer to deciding who to vote for than I was after the primaries. I am not tied to either party, not sure if I want to vote third party again this year, do a write in, pick the lesser of two evils, or just say nuts to the whole thing and not vote.
It is a sad state of things when this is the best that the Democrats and Republican can offer. Plus there is all the voter fraud crap being stirred up all ready.

On a side note any American expats got any tips on where to go or how to go about it?

First, are you actually an American? We have a lot of posters here who aren't Americans but who are posting like they have a say in this election.

And, second, I'm sorry, but if you are still undecided with what you know of the choices, I think you're a lost soul. The whole e-mail business is a mole-hill issue hyped for years by Republicans who did that and more (the Bush administration destroyed 22 million e-mails investigators wanted to get at; both Republican predecessors of Clinton at State admitted to having private communications paths too--and both have endorsed Clinton for president); Trump's issues are more like Mount Everest.

 

[KingOrfeo]

This is what the lying thieves wrought.....the jig us up. Throw em all out and reset.

I'm afraid "None of the Above" is not an option you'll see on the ballot.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The whole system is messed up from top to bottom. If you or me did 1/100th of the things Hillary has done with classified information, we'd be rotting in a cell.

Ah, yes, the emails . . .

Emails

Long story short, most politicians are technophobes. Some of the State Department's emails contained highly-classified information that was sent from an insecure server. Later on, somebody dug up a policy, blew some dust off it and discovered that what everyone was doing was against official regs, effectively saying Hey, stop using your smartphones and go back to using state e-mail.[156][157][158] This memo was about as popular as the plague and went conveniently ignored.[159]

BlackBerrys caught on with politicians back when they were the top mobile company. That peculiarity never really went away.[160] Obama was granted a secure BlackBerry like he requested, as was Condoleezza Rice, the previous SoS. Clinton was repeatedly denied one as it was too much of a security risk and they wanted to phase it out.[161] (In exchange, the NSA offered her this monstrosity.[162]) She could have had two devices, one for state.gov (which, based on the Mills deposition, can be accessed from State-issued mobile devices[163]) and one for her private email. That would have given her more protection, since she could say everything on her private server is personal, everything on the state.gov server is 'work.' Clinton stupidly used only one of each (at home![164]), because didn't want to have to partition conversations between different devices and addresses.

Even the State Department IG report mentioned how inadequate their digital infrastructure is: For example, Colin Powell justified his use of a private email address, saying, "State's system at the time was inadequate."[165] State's e-mail has been hacked extensively by Russia, and they didn't get around to scrubbing it for months (perhaps Russia is still balls-deep in the network as we speak?). There is also no money to fix it. One of Clinton's e-mail exchanges in 2011 concerning how inadequate State Dept. technology was. The Department's Director of Policy Planning wrote to Clinton and her aides:

I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but it would be a great time for someone inside or outside to make a statement/ write an op-ed that points out that State’s technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively. Further cuts to State’s budget just makes matters much much worse. We actually need more funds to significantly upgrade our technology.[166]

And Clinton agreed. They discussed strategy to get more funding to improve things, but didn't want to go public with it for fear of alerting enemies to another snafu. It doesn't seem to be an isolated issue: The current SoS, John Kerry, was caught in December still using a private email account.[167] There's a long Daily Show segment (actually, several segments) covering in detail the complete inadequacy of the computer systems at the Department of Veterans Affairs and how it's made their job effectively impossible and defied any attempts to fix it.[168]

Slashing government funding has consequences, even if they're not immediate. In retrospect, it was brilliant on Republicans' part, because she gets blamed for a lot of the fallout, e.g. cutting funding for embassy security after Clinton warned them that it would affect national security (but that's another topic.)

So why not just use a state.gov address? Well, here's where FOIA may come into play. Clinton is a paranoid person,[169] mostly because she has been under constant scrutiny for the last quarter-century. Most of those investigations have included FOIA requests. The Freedom of Information Act can perform its transparency function only when government employees follow the e-mail guidelines.[170] Clinton supporter and former Governor and senator of Nebraska, Bob Kerrey, is disturbed by the email scandal: “It is about wanting to avoid the reach of citizens using FOIA to find out what their government is doing, and then not telling the truth about why she did.”[171] Though, she likely hasn't done anything criminal,[172] her subsequent improper deletion of 30,000 emails violated the Federal Records Act[wp].[173] The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation into this matter and it appears that the use of the private server violates several federal criminal statutes.

On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey issued a statement that said that Clinton's use of the server was 'careless', but that no criminal charges had been recommended:[174]

Comey said that the FBI could not find a case in the past that would support bringing criminal charges based upon the facts. The bureau did not find clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of materials, or indications of disloyalty to the U.S. or efforts to obstruct justice.

More or less torpedoing the idea that blanket punishments should be applied severely and across all avenues of life.

Trump may not be a successful president, but I completely believe that he is the wrench that needs to be thrown into the machine.

http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/TMW2011-08-17colorlowres.jpg

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/hissyspit/hissyspitiphone/C87BBD49-F864-4257-968E-4AFFE28794D7_zpsgctgzzfe.png

 

[Legatus]

<snip>

What a condescending, ad hominem wall of drivel.

 

[KingOrfeo]

What a condescending, ad hominem wall of drivel.

There's no drivel in RationalWiki's quite sensible account of the Hillarys'-emails nontroversy. And, in this particular case, certainly none in Tom Tomorrow, either. There is indeed condescension -- which is always entirely appropriate, when dealing with Tea Partiers. Now there's an ad hominem for your sorry Teabagging ass!

 

[KingOrfeo]

The choice is simple: If you like Obama and want more of the same, pick Hillary.

Certainly and certainly.