@Pat Hartman
I live in Ohio though it was same in New York but you needed a *reason* to request an absentee ballot. Though with the current pandemic the Governor has said no reason\excuse needed to request an absentee ballot for this election.
There is no receipt cut-off date which is one of the reasons it is *strongly* requested you mail them back early. I can remember a few elections where preliminary results were *announced* but the actual count did not arrive for a while. And you can go to the County Board of Elections and keep up with the count if you want to as it gets updated multiple times during the day until the final count is tallied.
I get the whole Democrats prefer vote-by-mail but I am looking at the other side of the coin. And since those must be counted by hand I get why they can turn an election around. So, I'm going to leave that alone.
As for ID, I know lots of people who do neither so they would have no *need* photo ID required. The *kids* today don't even use checks so they don't need it for that either. In New York it's an *affair* to get ID, just too many people. That said, when I registered to vote I had to fill out a paper and provide valid ID which could have been my birth certificate. So, why not make that card I received with Voter ID on it my identification? While there is no picture on it there is PII which MUST match something else in my possession, problem solved.
I do not and have never said, put in my yard, posted or done anything else to advertise who I voted for. You can ask me but I will remind you in my day there was a curtain on the booth. It has nothing to do with cancel culture which extends to both sides (I have a link to both boycott lists, red and blue which I periodically review for sh*ts and giggles.) I just don't think it's any of your business.
As for multi-language, I'm all for that. If English is not your native language then let's make it easier for you to understand. Hmm, if I recall English only became the native language of the US in the 5 or 10 years (might be less). So anyone before that had no *obligation* to learn a native language we didn't have. Oddly enough I never hear anyone complain when instructions are printed in any other language. I never hear people complain when any other language is spoken except when it's a Spanish dialect. You go to a French restaurant and they are speaking French, no one screams, SPEAK ENGLISH! A little Italian restaurant I used to go to when I was in New York they spoke Italian in there, no one screamed at them. What am I missing? What do I care if the instructions are in their native tongue? When I go overseas quite a few places are kind enough to have English translation available for me. I have family living overseas took them a while to learn French and were quite please English was made available for them to get what they needed to get done accomplished.
That said, I remember a friend from Mexico explained to me why the English language is a little more difficult to learn\understand. For instance, we say *screen* which could mean window, screen, television screen, screening a moving, screen a person for a job. Another example, we say No Standing at the bus stop, then how does one wait for the bus? There is no indication those instructions for cars. So, yeah I get why putting it in their native tongue would be less confusing. Remember, Gilda Radner? She made entire Saturday Night Live skits on *misunderstanding and always ended with *Nevermind!* once it was explained because, guess what, we don't even understand ourselves.