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This is absolutely a great place to start, but the rest of the country would need to follow. Election day should not be on a work day, as the working poor are

This is absolutely a great place to start, but the rest of the country would need to follow. Election day should not be on a work day, as the working poor are disproportionately excluded because they cannot get to the polls (for a number of reasons that I'm not sure we need to get into). In addition, automatic voter registration and easily accessible mail in ballots are needed as well.

jdmichal 10y ago
I would guess that the working poor also tend to disproportionately not work the normal 9-5 business week. Moving it to the weekend doesn't help when the weekend is the busiest time for retail and food. I'm not sure whether making it a holiday fixes this either -- those are exactly the types of places that are still open on holidays. We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes.
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  You're correct. It needs to be a real, paid day off. It wouldn't kill us as a society to do that. And if that's enough to put someone out of business - 1 paid day every 2 years - so be it.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes. Voting over multiple days doesn't mean that partial results are available. (Given that, even in places that don't have all-mail elections, mail/absentee ballots are a significant fraction of ballots, we have voting over multiple days now -- even in the places that don't have "early voting" at actual polling locations. We don't have results before voting closes, though, and this prevents partial results from having an impact [outside of Presidential primaries, which are series of separate-but-related elections, where we have a very big effect of results early in the process].)
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    There's rarely partial results available. That doesn't stop media from doing exit polling and printing headlines like, "Banana is leading by 10%! Can Pear make up the difference?". I'm sure this already has some impact which is limited simply by the single-day period. Imagine if that was on the nightly news instead.
clint 10y ago
Poor people often work 2+ jobs. Most poor people, even those with a single job must work _at least_ 8 hours a day, 7 days a week to come close, but nowhere near enough, to supporting themselves—let along improving their station in life. And this is simply their job. Add onto this time that must be spent taking care of children and parents. This class of individual is not going to be able to find time, even on a weekend, to vote because our society is explicitly engineered to put them at a disadvantage in time, capital, and thus political influence.
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  See my other comments in this thread, or tl;dr, I agree with you entirely.
- todd8 10y ago
  Let's look at the numbers. Your suggestion that most poor people work at least 56 hours a week isn't consistent with what I've read. For example, from The Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis, "Who are the working poor?", first paragraph: > In 2013, 45.3 million people were poor. The majority of the people who live below the poverty level do not work. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 10.5 million or 23 percent of the poor were “working poor.” [1] Note that I'm not arguing that there is not problem with voting and the poor. [1] http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/who-are-working-poor http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/who-are-working-poor
briandear 10y ago
Automatic voter registration? No. If you aren't informed or concerned enough to register then you ought not be voting. Some significant percentage of Americans can even name the chief justice of the Supreme Court.. Do we actually want those people voting? Kim Kardashian would be President of that we're the case. We should require an oral civics exam before anyone is allowed to vote. If you don't understand basic government functions, you sure shouldn't be allowed to vote on those functions. That's like asking the marketing department to debug C. Why should the ignorant be allowed to make decisions that affect everyone's lives unless they care enough to actually understand what they're voting for? Voting is certainly a right, but that doesn't preclude the responsibility.
- sverige 10y ago
  I agree that automatic registration is a bad idea, but I disagree that the uniformed should not be allowed to vote. Who decides what's going to be on the civics test? Half the population or more couldn't pass it now if it were only as rigorous as to require knowledge of the three branches of government and separation of powers. OTOH, if it had been required in the past, we'd probably have better government officials than we have now...
sverige 10y ago
Automatic voter registration assumes that everyone wants to register to vote. Not everyone does.

jdmichal 10y ago

I would guess that the working poor also tend to disproportionately not work the normal 9-5 business week. Moving it to the weekend doesn't help when the weekend is the busiest time for retail and food. I'm not sure whether making it a holiday fixes this either -- those are exactly the types of places that are still open on holidays. We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes.

SmellTheGlove 10y ago
You're correct. It needs to be a real, paid day off. It wouldn't kill us as a society to do that. And if that's enough to put someone out of business - 1 paid day every 2 years - so be it.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes. Voting over multiple days doesn't mean that partial results are available. (Given that, even in places that don't have all-mail elections, mail/absentee ballots are a significant fraction of ballots, we have voting over multiple days now -- even in the places that don't have "early voting" at actual polling locations. We don't have results before voting closes, though, and this prevents partial results from having an impact [outside of Presidential primaries, which are series of separate-but-related elections, where we have a very big effect of results early in the process].)
- jdmichal 10y ago
  There's rarely partial results available. That doesn't stop media from doing exit polling and printing headlines like, "Banana is leading by 10%! Can Pear make up the difference?". I'm sure this already has some impact which is limited simply by the single-day period. Imagine if that was on the nightly news instead.

clint 10y ago

Poor people often work 2+ jobs. Most poor people, even those with a single job must work _at least_ 8 hours a day, 7 days a week to come close, but nowhere near enough, to supporting themselves—let along improving their station in life. And this is simply their job. Add onto this time that must be spent taking care of children and parents. This class of individual is not going to be able to find time, even on a weekend, to vote because our society is explicitly engineered to put them at a disadvantage in time, capital, and thus political influence.

SmellTheGlove 10y ago
See my other comments in this thread, or tl;dr, I agree with you entirely.
todd8 10y ago
Let's look at the numbers. Your suggestion that most poor people work at least 56 hours a week isn't consistent with what I've read. For example, from The Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis, "Who are the working poor?", first paragraph: > In 2013, 45.3 million people were poor. The majority of the people who live below the poverty level do not work. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 10.5 million or 23 percent of the poor were “working poor.” [1] Note that I'm not arguing that there is not problem with voting and the poor. [1] http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/who-are-working-poor http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/who-are-working-poor

briandear 10y ago

Automatic voter registration? No. If you aren't informed or concerned enough to register then you ought not be voting. Some significant percentage of Americans can even name the chief justice of the Supreme Court.. Do we actually want those people voting? Kim Kardashian would be President of that we're the case. We should require an oral civics exam before anyone is allowed to vote. If you don't understand basic government functions, you sure shouldn't be allowed to vote on those functions. That's like asking the marketing department to debug C. Why should the ignorant be allowed to make decisions that affect everyone's lives unless they care enough to actually understand what they're voting for? Voting is certainly a right, but that doesn't preclude the responsibility.

sverige 10y ago
I agree that automatic registration is a bad idea, but I disagree that the uniformed should not be allowed to vote. Who decides what's going to be on the civics test? Half the population or more couldn't pass it now if it were only as rigorous as to require knowledge of the three branches of government and separation of powers. OTOH, if it had been required in the past, we'd probably have better government officials than we have now...

sverige 10y ago

Automatic voter registration assumes that everyone wants to register to vote. Not everyone does.