13 ms·

Why I’m giving my company Election Day off

106 points by _nh_ 10y ago

spc476 10y ago
A nice gesture, but will the company also give the day off for local elections? Where I live, we just had an election on August 30th for a few very local offices. Local elections have more of an affect on our lives than national elections.
- stesch 10y ago
  We get every election day off in Germany.
  - mungoman2 10y ago
    In Sweden elections are simply placed on weekends...
    - chvid 10y ago
      In Thailand they ban alcohol on election day ...
      - chvid 10y ago
        In Denmark; you can register a new company, pay your bills, fill out your taxes and so on online with a secure national identity card. But for voting you still have to queue up on voting day, go to a box and put some marks on a piece of paper. Which tells me that with voting and democracy we don't quite have the same rationality and that there is something else going on (celebration, history, rituals etc.).
        germanier 10y ago
        Or it could tell you that doing elections online is a much harder problem than company registration or filling out taxes. For starters, none of that is anonymous which makes verifiability a much simpler problem. Remember that election results should be verifiable for everyone. "Pen on paper in a ballot" is very easy to reason about compared to "huge software stack somewhere running complicated cryptography". For elections, "easy to verify" is a top priority feature or we can stop having elections in the first place. Not to mention that the theory behind such systems is still in its infancy and many details are not worked out yet.
        chvid 10y ago
        In the old system trustworthiness comes from having representatives from various political parties including opposition present at the voting stations. For an electronic version of this you could do something similar: Allowing all parties to audit the voting systems insuring that traces of who voted what were destroyed and that votes were counted probably.
        hueving 10y ago
        How could an average person without a CS background be able to ensure that all traces of a vote were destroyed to preserve anonymity?
        foepys 10y ago
        How can you tell that even if you audited it, nobody will tamper with the system between the audit and the election? Being present at the voting stations is irrelevant because you cannot observe what the software actually does without standing right behind every voter.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        How do I verify that dead people or Mexican nationals aren't voting on paper? Or that ballots from some district (packed with votes for the wrong party) aren't being lost? Or even that vote counters aren't just ignoring questionable marks on votes that skew towards the wrong candidate? The idea that paper ballots are somehow ungameable or easily verified is a myth. Our history is littered with examples of elections being stolen in the paper ballots era. Many even believe Bush v Gore was such a scenario.
        caf 10y ago
        Aren't there candidate-appointed scrutineers overseeing the counting?
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Not at every single stage of the process. There is no method of, for example, challenging a voter at the voting booth. Or this: https://youtu.be/PKQEQ7qHvgM https://youtu.be/PKQEQ7qHvgM (I fraudulently voted as someone else a long time back and he voted as me, as part of a bet on whether this was possible. Nothing stopped us, there was no ID check, no security, no one found out.)
      - UlyssesSKrunk 10y ago
        Okay, now that's just fucking stupid. What idiot thought that up?
    - borski 10y ago
      Not everyone gets to take weekends off, unfortunately.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      And there's a 2 week pre-election period where you can vote any day of the week.
  - germanier 10y ago
    That's because elections are held on Sundays (and of course some people need to work that day).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Stratoscope 10y ago
  This is so true, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone. Just look at the first sentence of the article: > This year’s U.S. presidential election is confusing for everyone. Yeah. Presidential election. That's who you think about, right? Trump, or Hillary, or maybe Gary Johnson if you're like me. But it's so weird: they have all this other stuff on the ballot! Senators, congresspeople, state assemblypersons, governors, county boards of supervisors, even your mayor and city council members. And if you're in California, there are probably fifty ballot propositions to worry about too! Who has time to think about all that? It's so much easier to just think about one contest: The Big One. So yeah, I definitely appreciate your comment. Perhaps now I have shamed myself into thinking about all the more local issues that really do have much more effect on our daily lives. Living in Menlo Park (CA), this is very real. I look at our neighbors Palo Alto and Redwood City with all the development and activity there. Compare either of those downtowns with downtown Menlo Park and see which ones are hopping and which one ain't. The local joke is that we want to Keep Menlo Dark. It's a nice quiet downtown, where nobody has to bear the burden of running a successful restaurant or retail shop.
  - shostack 10y ago
    I live in RWC and while the city is active on Nextdoor the reality is between work and family I have no time to get involved in local politics. That said, be careful what you wish for. We seem to be getting a lot of big buildings approved without the necessary additional parking. Also, downtown is basically all restaurants or random business offices. There are very few shops and boutique that cause people to walk around and create a vibrant downtown scene like MV, PA, Burlingame or San Carlos. The city also doesn't seem to have much in the way of budget beautification or schools so it still looks quite rundown and property prices are depressed comparatively, even in the nice parts of RWC due to the school ratings.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    I (from UK) didn't think you elected a president, I thought you elected people who you think will vote for the president you want. It's such a convoluted system; it seems so, uh, undemocratic(?).
- skylan_q 10y ago
  Local elections have more of an affect on our lives than national elections. They determine if there will be a draft or a war or what trade policy is?
vacri 10y ago
> Interestingly, Morocco was the first country to publicly recognize the United States as an official state with the ratification of the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship in 1786. Signed by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, it recognized Moroccan ports as open to U.S. ships and is the longest-standing unbroken treaty relationship in U.S. history. Within a decade of recognising the US, Morocco was pirating their ships again, and the US had to pay huge sums to the Barbary corsairs for safe passage - leading to the creation of the US Navy and the First and Second Barbary Wars in 1801 and 1815. Maybe the treaty was never torn up and discarded, but it was broken pretty quickly.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  The quote says the treaty recognizes Moroccan ports as open to US ships. Have Moroccan ports ever been closed to US ships? Piracy isn't the same issue. edits / further thoughts, having read the treaty ( http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1786t.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1786t.asp ): It violates the treaty for any captured American ship, person, or property not to be restored to America upon docking in a Moroccan port, whether that ship was captured by Morocco or by a "Moor" (in the treaty, Moor seems to contrast with Christian) hailing from any other state. It specifically does not violate the treaty for the United States or Morocco to wage war against each other, though if one is at war with a third party, the other is prohibited from "accepting a commission" from that third party. It does violate the treaty for prisoners of war to be enslaved rather than ransomed. It's a little odd to refer to the treaty as having lasted for 220 years, since by its own article 25 it expired in 1836.
  - vacri 10y ago
    > It specifically does not violate the treaty for the United States or Morocco to wage war against each other That's like saying "anyone is welcome in our nightclub (port), as long as they can get past the bouncers (pirates)". In any case, the treaty you link says that passengers and goods shall be released unmolested and allowed to pass on a vessel belonging to that party (article 3). Morocco taking a US prize runs directly counter to this. Thanks for finding the link, by the way. I forgot to look for the treaty itself.
kyriakos 10y ago
I think elections should be held on weekends giving the maximum number of voters the opportunity to vote. This is the case in most countries anyway.
- gaur 10y ago
  I think elections should be held by mail, so that people can vote on whatever day they damn well please. Some states already do it that way.
  - seszett 10y ago
    This would be much more difficult to make anonymous (though not impossible), add quite a few middlemen, and prevent you from being sure your vote has actually been counted and not tampered with, though. I like putting a piece of paper in a box very much (and elections are always on Sundays in France so you don't have to choose between this and your job).
    - finnn 10y ago
      In Washington State in the US the only way to vote AFAIK is by mail. You can go online and monitor your ballot through the processing steps after it's been dropped off.
  - dsp1234 10y ago
    Oregon votes by mail, and I've generally been happy with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon
    - sxcurry 10y ago
      Agreed - simple, accurate, and allows lots of private time to read the ballot document and make decisions. I'm not sure why more states don't adopt vote by mail.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
KON_Air 10y ago
All things aside who are the candidates? The joke that Hillary and Trump are seriously being candidates got old fast.
coldtea 10y ago
The real question is why isn't Election Day a mandatory public holiday, for both state and private employees. Even if it was on a Sunday, employees should be required to give 3-5 hours off of work for people working that day. Perhaps this democracy thing is not considered that important, except for lip service.
- sb057 10y ago
  >employees should be required to give 3-5 hours off of work for people working that day Time off from work to go vote is already legally mandated.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    It should be automatic and without need to ask for it for all employees (is it?), so you don't the have the phenomenon were you're considered a "bad employee" for going to vote. A mandated downtime during which businesses wont be open (which some special shifts for businesses that can't close, like hospitals etc) would fix that.
  - biftek 10y ago
    Not everywhere, and there are a lot of exceptions. Paid time off is also not a requirement. source: https://justworks.com/blog/can-i-leave-work-to-vote-check-your-states-voting-laws https://justworks.com/blog/can-i-leave-work-to-vote-check-yo...
- travmatt 10y ago
  There is a certain political party that is harmed by high voter turnout in the USA and is actively engaged in disenfranchising demographics that don't share their worldviews. They certainly will oppose efforts to make it easier to vote.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    And there is a certain party who has certain captured voting blocks that tend to work shifts and hourly jobs for places that stay open on 'mandatory' holidays. Those people would not be helped by this, or do you think joy those who work 9-5 salaried office jobs deserve special accommodations to vote?
unimpressive 10y ago
I recently had occasion to compile a table of general election turnout for different countries, the results may surprise you: Austrailia 91% Brazil 78.90% Britain 66.4% Canada 68.3% Finland 70.1% France 79.48% Germany 71.5% India 66.3% Israel 72% New Zealand 77.90% Russia 65.25% United States 54.9%
- davegardner 10y ago
  I think the main reason why Australia has such a high voter turnout is because it's extremely easy to vote. It is compulsory in Australia, but the fine is only $20 (~US$15). Voting always takes place on a Saturday. There are polling booths all over the place, and you can lodge your vote at any booth anywhere in the country. If you know you won't be able to make it on the day then it's quite easy to find a pre-polling station or lodge a postal vote in the few weeks prior to the election.
  - edcastro 10y ago
    Brazil also have compulsory votes with fines. Fines are low but are a pain in the ass to pay. Also if you don't vote you cannot get some documents (passports, etc) and you can't take any job in the government. Voting booths are abundant and it's always holidays tho. If for some reason you can't vote you have to justify to the "voting justice"-related thingy. Usually not a big deal.
- Grue3 10y ago
  You forgot North Korea: 99.9%
danblick 10y ago
Many states require employers to give time off to vote: http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html
sctb 10y ago
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291529
sausman 10y ago
I wish I could vote every day and have it count. Thankfully this is the case for many goods and services that are provided on the market. If I don't like the product I am getting or where my money is going I simply take my business elsewhere. Providers of goods and services that face market competition are encouraged on a continuous basis to be responsive to consumers or they risk going out of business. By comparison, voting in elections feels ineffective. Monopolies, even those run by politicians elected every X years, are notoriously bad at serving the needs of consumers. Even if we could vote every day from our phones on who is in charge of a given monopoly, I still don't think it would change much.
markpapadakis 10y ago
In Greece, elections are always held on Sundays. No provision for submitting votes by any other means other than physically going to election posts(in practice, the government uses schools), entering a tiny makeshift voting booth (which in theory protects you from prying eyes and gives you privacy, but it really doesn't), selecting one paper sheet among the pack you received before entering the booth (one sheer for each political party), placing it in an envelope, sealing it, exiting the booth and dropping it into a box. It doesn't get more analogue than that. Also, there are penalties for those who do not vote - in theory you will be prosecuted, in practice, AFAIK, it rarely happens, but either way, it adds to the ridiculousness of the whole thing (of course the parties want you to vote, and they conspired to force you to vote by making it illegal not to.. This is Greece).
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  According to this [1] article the abstention rate is near 44% for Greek votes. It seems making it easier doesn't not necessarily make it more inclusive. Here in the states I always vote absentee. I get my ballot, fill it out, and drop it in the mailbox. I'm not sure how they can make this process easier without it being online or making the postage free. [1] http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/09/21/voter-turnout-in-greek-elections-drops-to-new-historic-low-infographic/ http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/09/21/voter-turnout-in-...
  - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
    Here in Oregon it can be free, as there are ballot dropboxes at public libraries, along with election commission offices if you don't want pay for a stamp.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Well in the US early voting is pretty big so you get basically 10 days to vote. I feel like this doesn't come up a lot (though I still think having election day be a holiday is good)
markpapadakis 10y ago
In Greece, elections are always held on Sundays. No provision for submitting votes by any other means other than physically going to election posts(in practice, the government uses schools), entering a tiny makeshift voting booth (which in theory protects you from prying eyes and gives you privacy, but it really doesn't), selecting one paper sheet among the pack you received before entering the booth (one sheer for each political party), placing it in an envelope, sealing it, exiting the booth and dropping it into a box. It doesn't get more analogue than that. Also, there are penalties for those who do not vote - in theory you will be prosecuted, in practice, AFAIK, it rarely happens, but either way, it adds to the ridiculousness of the whole thing (of course the parties want you to vote, and they conspired to force you to vote by making it illegal not to.. This is Greece).
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
With all of the data available around the word (some having it on a weekend, some a holiday) I can't see making a change like this having an appreciable impact on voter turnout. Besides, say what you want about the US electorate system, but it has not changed much. There are fundemantal problems related to voter turnout, and superficial changes like this really are pointless in the scheme of things.
malloreon 10y ago
Reminder that in America high voter turnout almost always favors Democrats, and the Republicans are very good at gerrymandering and taking control of state governments. They use this power to restrict voting rather than make it easier, mainly in the name of combating voter fraud, which statistically doesn't actually occur in the first place.
- awqrre 10y ago
  voter fraud is probably more likely to happen with digital voting machines... a paper trail should always be available
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    > voter fraud is probably more likely to happen with digital voting machines Why?
    - awqrre 10y ago
      because it is so much easier ... hack one machine, change how many votes?
      - awqrre 10y ago
        and if you can hack one machine, you probably can hack many since there is probably many exact same models in circulation
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I might be responding to a HN project that remixes Bernie tweets. But I'll bite. --- > Reminder that in America high voter turnout almost always favors Democrats Wrong; the effect is mixed. http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/sanders-shaky-turnout-claim/ http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/sanders-shaky-turnout-claim... > Republicans are very good at gerrymandering and taking control of state governments Both sides gerrymander as much as possible. But Democratic votes already naturally clump geographically in a state, causing them to say, win 90% in an urban district and loose 40% in a bunch of others. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-08/why-democrats-can-t-blame-gerrymandering https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-08/why-democ... Most analyses just look at total votes and resultant state representation, while forgetting that most of the effect is a natural consequence of Democratic geopolitics, rather than some Republican superiority in gerrymandering acumen. > They [Republicans] use this power to restrict voting rather than make it easier Maybe the media favors that story in the past 12 months, but that is not a trend. The Voting Rights Act had better support by Republicans than by Democrats. In fact, the Democratic majority had fillibustered the bill in the Senate until the Republican minority leader stepped in. Remember the voting rights case where a federal court concluded there was "a systematic and deliberate attempt to reduce black political opportunity. Such an attempt is plainly unconstitutional. It replaces a system in which blacks could and did succeed, with one in which they almost certainly cannot...The inference of racial motivation is inescapable." Whom did that case convict? The original President Clinton. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/osg/briefs/1990/01/01/sg900402.txt https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/osg/briefs/1990/... Both sides play these dumb games. > voter fraud, which statistically doesn't actually occur in the first place. Probably. While it's often repeated that there are very few "credible" cases of voter fraud, that doesn't necessarily say much. Remember that George Bush won the presidency in 2000 by 0.009% of the Florida vote. The Democrats were sure counting the beans then.
dbg31415 10y ago
Cute, but I think there's a bigger issue than just people not voting. Local races, and local issues they can have a dramatic impact, get very little news coverage. So even if you vote, you don't really know what you're voting for. Many ballot initiatives are intentionally confusing to take advantage of this. This is dangerous. Perfect example, in Texas the Energy Commission is known as the Railroad Commission. These people have tremendous power over oil production and thus our economy... But if you are the average voter who only knows about parties and the presidency, you probably are just voting blind, or you say to yourself, "I really don't care who runs the railroad... didn't even know we still had a railroad... how quaint." Another great example, the wording on the ballot initiative that banned Uber and Lyft from Austin -- in the exit polls many people thought they were voting to keep Uber and Lyft but in fact voted the opposite of their intent. We need to do more to ensure that people are aware of the down ballot issues and races -- voting doesn't mean much if people aren't informed and are just selecting candidates based on who's name looks better on the page. EDIT: Cleaned up typos. Why did I try and write on my phone? Sorry! * Explaining Exactly What a 'Yes' and 'No' Vote on Prop 1 Means | KUT || http://kut.org/post/explaining-exactly-what-yes-and-no-vote-prop-1-means http://kut.org/post/explaining-exactly-what-yes-and-no-vote-... * Ask the Candidates: Should the Railroad Commission Change Its Name? | StateImpact Texas || https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/02/24/ask-the-candidates-should-the-railroad-commission-change-its-name/ https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/02/24/ask-the-candida...
NetStrikeForce 10y ago
In Spain we also hold elections on Sunday, but the problem comes when they happen to be in summer on a really nice sunny day. Some people can't be arsed and probably for good reason.
jrnichols 10y ago
I've found it easier to either get an absentee ballot or vote by mail, and in a lot of places around here you can do early voting. haven't gone to a poll on election day in a long time.

106 points by _nh_ 10y ago

A nice gesture, but will the company also give the day off for local elections? Where I live, we just had an election on August 30th for a few very local offices. Local elections have more of an affect on our lives than national elections.

stesch 10y ago
We get every election day off in Germany.
- mungoman2 10y ago
  In Sweden elections are simply placed on weekends...
  - chvid 10y ago
    In Thailand they ban alcohol on election day ...
    - chvid 10y ago
      In Denmark; you can register a new company, pay your bills, fill out your taxes and so on online with a secure national identity card. But for voting you still have to queue up on voting day, go to a box and put some marks on a piece of paper. Which tells me that with voting and democracy we don't quite have the same rationality and that there is something else going on (celebration, history, rituals etc.).
      - germanier 10y ago
        Or it could tell you that doing elections online is a much harder problem than company registration or filling out taxes. For starters, none of that is anonymous which makes verifiability a much simpler problem. Remember that election results should be verifiable for everyone. "Pen on paper in a ballot" is very easy to reason about compared to "huge software stack somewhere running complicated cryptography". For elections, "easy to verify" is a top priority feature or we can stop having elections in the first place. Not to mention that the theory behind such systems is still in its infancy and many details are not worked out yet.
        chvid 10y ago
        In the old system trustworthiness comes from having representatives from various political parties including opposition present at the voting stations. For an electronic version of this you could do something similar: Allowing all parties to audit the voting systems insuring that traces of who voted what were destroyed and that votes were counted probably.
        hueving 10y ago
        How could an average person without a CS background be able to ensure that all traces of a vote were destroyed to preserve anonymity?
        foepys 10y ago
        How can you tell that even if you audited it, nobody will tamper with the system between the audit and the election? Being present at the voting stations is irrelevant because you cannot observe what the software actually does without standing right behind every voter.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        How do I verify that dead people or Mexican nationals aren't voting on paper? Or that ballots from some district (packed with votes for the wrong party) aren't being lost? Or even that vote counters aren't just ignoring questionable marks on votes that skew towards the wrong candidate? The idea that paper ballots are somehow ungameable or easily verified is a myth. Our history is littered with examples of elections being stolen in the paper ballots era. Many even believe Bush v Gore was such a scenario.
        caf 10y ago
        Aren't there candidate-appointed scrutineers overseeing the counting?
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Not at every single stage of the process. There is no method of, for example, challenging a voter at the voting booth. Or this: https://youtu.be/PKQEQ7qHvgM https://youtu.be/PKQEQ7qHvgM (I fraudulently voted as someone else a long time back and he voted as me, as part of a bet on whether this was possible. Nothing stopped us, there was no ID check, no security, no one found out.)
    - UlyssesSKrunk 10y ago
      Okay, now that's just fucking stupid. What idiot thought that up?
  - borski 10y ago
    Not everyone gets to take weekends off, unfortunately.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    And there's a 2 week pre-election period where you can vote any day of the week.
- germanier 10y ago
  That's because elections are held on Sundays (and of course some people need to work that day).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Stratoscope 10y ago
This is so true, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone. Just look at the first sentence of the article: > This year’s U.S. presidential election is confusing for everyone. Yeah. Presidential election. That's who you think about, right? Trump, or Hillary, or maybe Gary Johnson if you're like me. But it's so weird: they have all this other stuff on the ballot! Senators, congresspeople, state assemblypersons, governors, county boards of supervisors, even your mayor and city council members. And if you're in California, there are probably fifty ballot propositions to worry about too! Who has time to think about all that? It's so much easier to just think about one contest: The Big One. So yeah, I definitely appreciate your comment. Perhaps now I have shamed myself into thinking about all the more local issues that really do have much more effect on our daily lives. Living in Menlo Park (CA), this is very real. I look at our neighbors Palo Alto and Redwood City with all the development and activity there. Compare either of those downtowns with downtown Menlo Park and see which ones are hopping and which one ain't. The local joke is that we want to Keep Menlo Dark. It's a nice quiet downtown, where nobody has to bear the burden of running a successful restaurant or retail shop.
- shostack 10y ago
  I live in RWC and while the city is active on Nextdoor the reality is between work and family I have no time to get involved in local politics. That said, be careful what you wish for. We seem to be getting a lot of big buildings approved without the necessary additional parking. Also, downtown is basically all restaurants or random business offices. There are very few shops and boutique that cause people to walk around and create a vibrant downtown scene like MV, PA, Burlingame or San Carlos. The city also doesn't seem to have much in the way of budget beautification or schools so it still looks quite rundown and property prices are depressed comparatively, even in the nice parts of RWC due to the school ratings.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  I (from UK) didn't think you elected a president, I thought you elected people who you think will vote for the president you want. It's such a convoluted system; it seems so, uh, undemocratic(?).
skylan_q 10y ago
Local elections have more of an affect on our lives than national elections. They determine if there will be a draft or a war or what trade policy is?

vacri 10y ago

> Interestingly, Morocco was the first country to publicly recognize the United States as an official state with the ratification of the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship in 1786. Signed by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, it recognized Moroccan ports as open to U.S. ships and is the longest-standing unbroken treaty relationship in U.S. history. Within a decade of recognising the US, Morocco was pirating their ships again, and the US had to pay huge sums to the Barbary corsairs for safe passage - leading to the creation of the US Navy and the First and Second Barbary Wars in 1801 and 1815. Maybe the treaty was never torn up and discarded, but it was broken pretty quickly.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
The quote says the treaty recognizes Moroccan ports as open to US ships. Have Moroccan ports ever been closed to US ships? Piracy isn't the same issue. edits / further thoughts, having read the treaty ( http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1786t.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1786t.asp ): It violates the treaty for any captured American ship, person, or property not to be restored to America upon docking in a Moroccan port, whether that ship was captured by Morocco or by a "Moor" (in the treaty, Moor seems to contrast with Christian) hailing from any other state. It specifically does not violate the treaty for the United States or Morocco to wage war against each other, though if one is at war with a third party, the other is prohibited from "accepting a commission" from that third party. It does violate the treaty for prisoners of war to be enslaved rather than ransomed. It's a little odd to refer to the treaty as having lasted for 220 years, since by its own article 25 it expired in 1836.
- vacri 10y ago
  > It specifically does not violate the treaty for the United States or Morocco to wage war against each other That's like saying "anyone is welcome in our nightclub (port), as long as they can get past the bouncers (pirates)". In any case, the treaty you link says that passengers and goods shall be released unmolested and allowed to pass on a vessel belonging to that party (article 3). Morocco taking a US prize runs directly counter to this. Thanks for finding the link, by the way. I forgot to look for the treaty itself.

kyriakos 10y ago

I think elections should be held on weekends giving the maximum number of voters the opportunity to vote. This is the case in most countries anyway.

gaur 10y ago
I think elections should be held by mail, so that people can vote on whatever day they damn well please. Some states already do it that way.
- seszett 10y ago
  This would be much more difficult to make anonymous (though not impossible), add quite a few middlemen, and prevent you from being sure your vote has actually been counted and not tampered with, though. I like putting a piece of paper in a box very much (and elections are always on Sundays in France so you don't have to choose between this and your job).
  - finnn 10y ago
    In Washington State in the US the only way to vote AFAIK is by mail. You can go online and monitor your ballot through the processing steps after it's been dropped off.
- dsp1234 10y ago
  Oregon votes by mail, and I've generally been happy with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon
  - sxcurry 10y ago
    Agreed - simple, accurate, and allows lots of private time to read the ballot document and make decisions. I'm not sure why more states don't adopt vote by mail.
- madeofpalk 10y ago

KON_Air 10y ago

All things aside who are the candidates? The joke that Hillary and Trump are seriously being candidates got old fast.

coldtea 10y ago

The real question is why isn't Election Day a mandatory public holiday, for both state and private employees. Even if it was on a Sunday, employees should be required to give 3-5 hours off of work for people working that day. Perhaps this democracy thing is not considered that important, except for lip service.

sb057 10y ago
>employees should be required to give 3-5 hours off of work for people working that day Time off from work to go vote is already legally mandated.
- coldtea 10y ago
  It should be automatic and without need to ask for it for all employees (is it?), so you don't the have the phenomenon were you're considered a "bad employee" for going to vote. A mandated downtime during which businesses wont be open (which some special shifts for businesses that can't close, like hospitals etc) would fix that.
- biftek 10y ago
  Not everywhere, and there are a lot of exceptions. Paid time off is also not a requirement. source: https://justworks.com/blog/can-i-leave-work-to-vote-check-your-states-voting-laws https://justworks.com/blog/can-i-leave-work-to-vote-check-yo...
travmatt 10y ago
There is a certain political party that is harmed by high voter turnout in the USA and is actively engaged in disenfranchising demographics that don't share their worldviews. They certainly will oppose efforts to make it easier to vote.
- djrogers 10y ago
  And there is a certain party who has certain captured voting blocks that tend to work shifts and hourly jobs for places that stay open on 'mandatory' holidays. Those people would not be helped by this, or do you think joy those who work 9-5 salaried office jobs deserve special accommodations to vote?

unimpressive 10y ago

I recently had occasion to compile a table of general election turnout for different countries, the results may surprise you: Austrailia 91% Brazil 78.90% Britain 66.4% Canada 68.3% Finland 70.1% France 79.48% Germany 71.5% India 66.3% Israel 72% New Zealand 77.90% Russia 65.25% United States 54.9%

davegardner 10y ago
I think the main reason why Australia has such a high voter turnout is because it's extremely easy to vote. It is compulsory in Australia, but the fine is only $20 (~US$15). Voting always takes place on a Saturday. There are polling booths all over the place, and you can lodge your vote at any booth anywhere in the country. If you know you won't be able to make it on the day then it's quite easy to find a pre-polling station or lodge a postal vote in the few weeks prior to the election.
- edcastro 10y ago
  Brazil also have compulsory votes with fines. Fines are low but are a pain in the ass to pay. Also if you don't vote you cannot get some documents (passports, etc) and you can't take any job in the government. Voting booths are abundant and it's always holidays tho. If for some reason you can't vote you have to justify to the "voting justice"-related thingy. Usually not a big deal.
Grue3 10y ago
You forgot North Korea: 99.9%

danblick 10y ago

Many states require employers to give time off to vote: http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html

sctb 10y ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12291529

sausman 10y ago

I wish I could vote every day and have it count. Thankfully this is the case for many goods and services that are provided on the market. If I don't like the product I am getting or where my money is going I simply take my business elsewhere. Providers of goods and services that face market competition are encouraged on a continuous basis to be responsive to consumers or they risk going out of business. By comparison, voting in elections feels ineffective. Monopolies, even those run by politicians elected every X years, are notoriously bad at serving the needs of consumers. Even if we could vote every day from our phones on who is in charge of a given monopoly, I still don't think it would change much.

markpapadakis 10y ago

In Greece, elections are always held on Sundays. No provision for submitting votes by any other means other than physically going to election posts(in practice, the government uses schools), entering a tiny makeshift voting booth (which in theory protects you from prying eyes and gives you privacy, but it really doesn't), selecting one paper sheet among the pack you received before entering the booth (one sheer for each political party), placing it in an envelope, sealing it, exiting the booth and dropping it into a box. It doesn't get more analogue than that. Also, there are penalties for those who do not vote - in theory you will be prosecuted, in practice, AFAIK, it rarely happens, but either way, it adds to the ridiculousness of the whole thing (of course the parties want you to vote, and they conspired to force you to vote by making it illegal not to.. This is Greece).

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
According to this [1] article the abstention rate is near 44% for Greek votes. It seems making it easier doesn't not necessarily make it more inclusive. Here in the states I always vote absentee. I get my ballot, fill it out, and drop it in the mailbox. I'm not sure how they can make this process easier without it being online or making the postage free. [1] http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/09/21/voter-turnout-in-greek-elections-drops-to-new-historic-low-infographic/ http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/09/21/voter-turnout-in-...
- blacksmith_tb 10y ago
  Here in Oregon it can be free, as there are ballot dropboxes at public libraries, along with election commission offices if you don't want pay for a stamp.
rtpg 10y ago
Well in the US early voting is pretty big so you get basically 10 days to vote. I feel like this doesn't come up a lot (though I still think having election day be a holiday is good)

markpapadakis 10y ago

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

With all of the data available around the word (some having it on a weekend, some a holiday) I can't see making a change like this having an appreciable impact on voter turnout. Besides, say what you want about the US electorate system, but it has not changed much. There are fundemantal problems related to voter turnout, and superficial changes like this really are pointless in the scheme of things.

malloreon 10y ago

Reminder that in America high voter turnout almost always favors Democrats, and the Republicans are very good at gerrymandering and taking control of state governments. They use this power to restrict voting rather than make it easier, mainly in the name of combating voter fraud, which statistically doesn't actually occur in the first place.

awqrre 10y ago
voter fraud is probably more likely to happen with digital voting machines... a paper trail should always be available
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  > voter fraud is probably more likely to happen with digital voting machines Why?
  - awqrre 10y ago
    because it is so much easier ... hack one machine, change how many votes?
    - awqrre 10y ago
      and if you can hack one machine, you probably can hack many since there is probably many exact same models in circulation
paulddraper 10y ago
I might be responding to a HN project that remixes Bernie tweets. But I'll bite. --- > Reminder that in America high voter turnout almost always favors Democrats Wrong; the effect is mixed. http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/sanders-shaky-turnout-claim/ http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/sanders-shaky-turnout-claim... > Republicans are very good at gerrymandering and taking control of state governments Both sides gerrymander as much as possible. But Democratic votes already naturally clump geographically in a state, causing them to say, win 90% in an urban district and loose 40% in a bunch of others. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-08/why-democrats-can-t-blame-gerrymandering https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-08/why-democ... Most analyses just look at total votes and resultant state representation, while forgetting that most of the effect is a natural consequence of Democratic geopolitics, rather than some Republican superiority in gerrymandering acumen. > They [Republicans] use this power to restrict voting rather than make it easier Maybe the media favors that story in the past 12 months, but that is not a trend. The Voting Rights Act had better support by Republicans than by Democrats. In fact, the Democratic majority had fillibustered the bill in the Senate until the Republican minority leader stepped in. Remember the voting rights case where a federal court concluded there was "a systematic and deliberate attempt to reduce black political opportunity. Such an attempt is plainly unconstitutional. It replaces a system in which blacks could and did succeed, with one in which they almost certainly cannot...The inference of racial motivation is inescapable." Whom did that case convict? The original President Clinton. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/osg/briefs/1990/01/01/sg900402.txt https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/osg/briefs/1990/... Both sides play these dumb games. > voter fraud, which statistically doesn't actually occur in the first place. Probably. While it's often repeated that there are very few "credible" cases of voter fraud, that doesn't necessarily say much. Remember that George Bush won the presidency in 2000 by 0.009% of the Florida vote. The Democrats were sure counting the beans then.

dbg31415 10y ago

Cute, but I think there's a bigger issue than just people not voting. Local races, and local issues they can have a dramatic impact, get very little news coverage. So even if you vote, you don't really know what you're voting for. Many ballot initiatives are intentionally confusing to take advantage of this. This is dangerous. Perfect example, in Texas the Energy Commission is known as the Railroad Commission. These people have tremendous power over oil production and thus our economy... But if you are the average voter who only knows about parties and the presidency, you probably are just voting blind, or you say to yourself, "I really don't care who runs the railroad... didn't even know we still had a railroad... how quaint." Another great example, the wording on the ballot initiative that banned Uber and Lyft from Austin -- in the exit polls many people thought they were voting to keep Uber and Lyft but in fact voted the opposite of their intent. We need to do more to ensure that people are aware of the down ballot issues and races -- voting doesn't mean much if people aren't informed and are just selecting candidates based on who's name looks better on the page. EDIT: Cleaned up typos. Why did I try and write on my phone? Sorry! * Explaining Exactly What a 'Yes' and 'No' Vote on Prop 1 Means | KUT || http://kut.org/post/explaining-exactly-what-yes-and-no-vote-prop-1-means http://kut.org/post/explaining-exactly-what-yes-and-no-vote-... * Ask the Candidates: Should the Railroad Commission Change Its Name? | StateImpact Texas || https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/02/24/ask-the-candidates-should-the-railroad-commission-change-its-name/ https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/02/24/ask-the-candida...

NetStrikeForce 10y ago

In Spain we also hold elections on Sunday, but the problem comes when they happen to be in summer on a really nice sunny day. Some people can't be arsed and probably for good reason.

jrnichols 10y ago

I've found it easier to either get an absentee ballot or vote by mail, and in a lot of places around here you can do early voting. haven't gone to a poll on election day in a long time.