Access Florida Fax: Fill & Download for Free

Most states already do allow that.I vote in Florida. My absentee ballot is EMAILED to me, if I asked for it that way.I can then print it out, vote on it, and then chose either to:Physically mail it back to the county board of elections for my county in Florida.FAX it back to the same.If I choose the Fax option, there is a disclaimer that I waive the right of privacy of my ballot, but that as soon as my ballot is received and verified, that the ballot has any identifying information removed and placed in the normal box of ballots.An exact same procedure is available in Wyoming. And Pennsylvania. And Massachusetts. Those are all states I have person experience with. I know at least a dozen other states that do the same thing, and I presume all the states which provide an absentee ballot by email also provide a fax-back option.Fax-back is not a great thing, as it does reveal your ballot to election officials. But, frankly, only briefly, and it is illegal for them to reveal anything they might incidentally know about how I voted. And faxing is a good option for oversees people.I voted from New Zealand this year. It took 13 working days to get my paper ballot back to Florida from New Zealand. I spent $25 USD to have it FexEx Priority Global - literally the fastest physical method I could legally use, which should normally take 2–3 days for the same. Not over 2 weeks. So yeah, faxing is sometimes a necessary choice.

My mother had a part-time job as a church secretary during the late 60s and early 70s, and was tasked with creating the weekly programs handed out at the services on Sundays. The bulletins were printed on 8.5x11 paper that was ordered from religious supply companies, and had a nice 5 x 8 color image printed on one side so that when they were folded in half the program would have an attractive cover image. To populate the inside of the program Mom would type a mimeograph stencil, which looked like this (only shorter, for letter sized pages)....and then she would run the program paper through the mimeograph machine, which looked like this:She would have to type it in a landscape orientation, of course, so that the text inside the folded program would be readable, so she had a typewriter with an extra wide carriage. Mimeograph stencils were just that, stencils, a translucent waxy top page over an opaque backing that provided stability for typing or freehand drawing with a stylus. The typewriter key or stylus onto the stencil would carve away enough of the waxy coating that ink could penetrate those areas when the stencil was stretched over the drum of the mimeograph machine. When you made a mistake typing on a stencil, you painted over the error with a clear liquid that filled in the gaps of the waxy coating, and after it dried you could make your correction. Mimeographs typically printed with black ink and should not be confused with ditto machines, which printed in purple. Ditto machines, which looked like this...were a little simpler and cheaper to operate, and were used by teachers to create classroom materials all through my public school education, from 1962-1973. Ditto masters were thick white glossy top sheets attached to thick purple backing sheets. When you wrote or typed on a ditto master the purple ink on the inside of the backing sheet would adhere to the back of the white top sheet. If you made a mistake you could use thin paper tape to cover it on the back of the white top sheet and type or write over it again, or you could use a single edge razor blade to shave the mistake off the back of the white top sheet, then type or write over it.I myself got my first full-time corporate office job about ten years later, in 1979, at Major League Baseball, and worked there for ten years, during which time I used a lot of other technology that is now mostly unheard of.I remember using the fax precursor that was called a Qwip machine.There was an 11" long rotating drum that opened up slightly so a standard US sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper could be clamped into it lengthwise. It was attached to an acoustic coupler designed to hold an old Western Electric style telephone handset, which was also attached to the device.If you wanted to send a facsimile copy of a document to someone else you would pick up the handset attached to your Qwip machine and call the phone number associated with the Qwip handset on the other end. If they didn't answer, you were out of luck. If they did answer you would tell them you had a document to send and how many pages it was. You would ask them if they preferred six minutes per page (standard resolution, which was still pretty grainy) or three minutes per page (grainier yet). You would then clamp your original onto the drum of your unit while on the other end the recipient would clamp into his or her drum a sheet of special thick glossy thermal paper. Once the papers were clamped in you would confirm by voice that the other side was ready and then each of you would put your handsets into the acoustic couplers. The sender's machine would begin to whine, the recipient's would whine in return (like the old dialup modem handshakes), and the transmission would begin. On the sender's end a stylus/needle would scan the original document from top to bottom as it rotated on the drum, looking for text or other dark pixels to transmit. On the recipient's end the stylus/needle would literally burn the image received into the thermal paper, which would emit a distinctive odor.After the page finished both humans would pick up their handsets out of their acoustic couplers and discuss the quality of the transmission. "Did it come through OK?" If not, they might re-send it. If it did, then they would repeat the process for Page 2, if there was a Page 2. And Page 3, and onward, always doing the voice check between pages.When Federal Express first started up, in addition to their air courier services, they had a near-monopoly on the first generation of plain paper fax machines. It was possible to take a thick document to a Federal Express office and have it transmitted within minutes to another Federal Express office hundreds or thousands of miles away, where the intended recipient could come and pick it up (or have Federal Express deliver it to them). As the prices of plain paper fax machines came down and more offices had them, this part of Federal Express' business evaporated, and today very few people remember it. (I remember sending at least one document this way.)When I went to work for the American League in 1980 I was given an office that included a Western Union TWX machine (close cousin of the better known Telex machines).You could dial up another TWX machine directly or you could use a paper tape with one or more stored addresses on it to contact other TWX users (in my case, the other MLB offices and clubs). You could type your message live or record your message on paper tape (which was quicker and allowed correction of errors). I learned to cut and read paper tapes. I could look at a paper tape and tell you if it was an address tape or a message tape, and if it was an American League address tape or an all-clubs message tape (this was more trivial than it sounds: not only was the all-clubs tape twice as long, it began with ATL BRAVES instead of ORIOLES BAL and so just by looking at a few lines of the tape I could easily tell the difference).The one in my office had a clear plastic foam-dampened hood over it, similar to the one in this image, which was intended to reduce the noisiness when the device was operating.It was basically useless and I always referred to it as the "Cone of Silence" for that reason.My job with the American League included daily waiver transactions and publication of a daily bulletin. During spring training I used the TWX machine (because the clubs carried their TWX machines with them to Florida and Arizona), but during the rest of the year I did this using an IBM Mag Card 1 terminal, basically a hopped-up Selectric, and pre-stored my content on reusable 50-line magnetic cards that fed into a reader attached to the typewriter.By 1986 when I was out of law school and working in the MLB Commissioner's Office, we had a sponsorship deal with IBM and there was some kind of mainframe in an air-conditioned room. The secretaries all had terminals on their desks, where they used word processing software to prepare our correspondence, contracts, etc. I startled my secretary Eileen by asking her to teach me how to do basic word processing / editing tasks on her terminal, but I found it very useful. She left at 5:30 and I was routinely there for at least another hour or two (and the Federal Express office a block away was open till 8). I could often get documents done, printed, and out the door instead of waiting for her to come in and follow my handwritten edits in the morning.I did use a Dictaphone during this period of my life, mostly for correspondence and to go through a to-do list of things I wanted Eileen to help me accomplish the next day. She came in at 8:30 and I came in at 9:30, so she could get a good head start on me this way. Usually I would do this in the evenings. I would speak into a little handheld unit that contained a microcassette, and leave the cassette in my outbox. Eileen would then play it back on a unit that looked like this (note the foot pedal, so Eileen could play/pause with her foot, keeping both hands on the keyboard typing):In 1989 I went to work for an agency called ProServ that represented athletes. At ProServ I had access to a Dictaphone but again found that the professional staff had no access to computers or other technology. The secretaries and assistants did have terminals where they did word processing and had a primitive form of email or IM that communicated only among terminal owners. I found this out because several of them got in trouble for sending some very mocking messages about the corporate leadership, not knowing that anyone else could see them.Within a year or three I had a Macintosh at home and began agitating at the office for a computer that would allow me to do more work hands-on, editing my own documents instead of marking them up with ink and waiting for an assistant to do it. No lawyer or professional at ProServ had ever had a computer on his or her desk, but after a little while they relented, and my modern era of office work began.

This is because the narrative in the news doesn’t match the reality. That there’s no such thing as an actual labor shortage, at least not in modern history. Every shortage has been manufactured by the one who claimed it exists, or is the result of significant external factors that can’t be overcome.You also have to question who is saying the message, and why. Every organization, individual, special interest group, etc. may have an ulterior motive of some sort. Particularly if the message reads more like an advertisement or opinion piece than a statement of fact.Advertisements technically have to tell the truth, but are often free to emphasize the good while downplaying the bad, or perhaps not telling the entire truth, when the additional facts could substantially change the perception.Sometimes, a “labor shortage” is manufactured even when one doesn’t exist. For some unscrupulous organizations, this can offer advantages for them. Examples include government grants for training programs to reduce their operating expenses, the for-profit education sector, and because foreign worker visas are typically sponsored by an employer, this permits them to exercise more control over the employee as a form of indentured servitude. To push the worker into longer hours or less pay under threat of deportation.I’ll explain a few examples of this in action, in real life.Requirements That Are Impossible To MeetSometimes, a job advertisement calls for requirements that are literally impossible to meet. The other day, I job for a combination network administrator, systems administrator, and desktop support that had a stated salary of $70K and called for 10 years of experience with Windows 10. Except that Windows 10 was released in ‘15. I saw this job posting on Craigslist, so it could have been written incorrectly. Or perhaps, it was on purpose. Also, that if someone really had over a decade of professional, full-time experience with Systems, Network, and Windows support he’s likely to ask for much more than $70K, at least in any large metro area.Other examples might be less obvious and require more digging.In these cases, there will obviously be a lack of suitable applicants.The requirements would then change for the foreign workers to be those that are possible to meet.Engineering A Lack Of ApplicantsOur esteemed President of the U.S. (as of this writing) owns Maralago, a country club in Florida. Like any country club, it requires a staff to operate, and it might be seasonal. Also, every occupation in the hospitality industry of any sort is staffed by a majority of American citizens, although some employees may not be. Either way, from time to time, Maralago may post job postings to solicit applications. The duties listed and most requirements weren’t really noted, but the compensation package included a salary that was basically the equivalent of minimum wage, along with free room and board. This is very unusual for jobs in the U.S. It sounds a lot like a job situation designed for migrant workers, doesn’t it? Especially if the salary is too low to live independently without welfare benefits.The job posting was in a single printed publication (I forget which one) that individuals who are likely to be interested in this kind of work are unlikely to read. It seemed like they didn’t actually want many applicants. Posting on Indeed or Craigslist is likely to yield a lot more applicants for hospitality jobs than posting something in Harper’s Bazaar or the Wall Street Journal, for example.Then perhaps most curiously, the posting only offered one way to apply, and likely the most inconvenient.. by faxing in the application materials. Faxing! You couldn’t e-mail, mail in anything, apply in person on a paper application, or utilize an online job application. Faxing has largely been superseded by e-mail, and wasn’t given enough time to become really popular for home use. As a result, most households never had a fax machine, and the ones that did have one, have likely disposed of them by now.So to apply to this low salary hospitality job, you had to fax it in. For most potential applicants, they will have to make a special trip to Kinko’s, or maybe the local library. If some don’t have regular access to a motor vehicle, going to that place will be a challenge and likely require a special trip. This is a big deal for someone of limited means. Either way, such potential applicants, if they even know about the job (remember, posted in a publication where they’re unlikely to read it), will likely pass on applying, decided to apply to other employers with a considerably easier application process.Despite these roadblocks, nevertheless they received 2 applications for something like several dozen jobs. This is an engineered shortage of applicants. Then they used this as evidence of a need for migrant worker visas.Sometimes, The Job Just Doesn’t Pay EnoughAwhile back I read about a coffee shop that ceased operations because they simply couldn’t find anyone willing to work there. The owner offered $15/hr. His financial situation didn’t permit him to really pay any more than that. But at $15, isn’t that a pretty decent wage for someone only with high school, if even that? Or for someone still in high school? Lot of jobs out there that pay less than that, and those jobs get applicants. How could he be unable to find anyone? Sounds impossible on the surface.Okay, I’ll add one more detail. This coffee shop was in a San Francisco city neighborhood. Of course he can’t find anyone. When an apartment in Stockton, CA, a city that would be a 2 hour daily commute from San Francisco has rents around $1,600 for a 1 bedroom unit, $15/hr. doesn’t cut it. Not unless you’re homeless.While this is a more extreme situation, similar types of situations exist out there. I won’t commute 1 hour every day for something that pays only $12/hr. Would you?But if a company can still get enough qualified applicants, they might decide to just keep offering the low rate of pay. Especially if the training period is short and easy to understand, standards are low, and just about anyone who’s a warm body can do the job. They might not care if the turnover is sky high.-Completely free markets will adjust to how much abuse individuals are willing to take. If everyone is only looking out for #1, this amount of abuse is potentially very high. This is why countries have governmental regulations and programs to prevent this. To preserve the free market aspects that are widely regarded as good (freedom to choose and pursue your own desires and inclinations) while minimizing the negative aspects of severe abuse and exploitation.