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>And if you're in a position that requires you show up for work at a certain time or lose your job You can vote on your way home or wake up early. >and your c

>And if you're in a position that requires you show up for work at a certain time or lose your job You can vote on your way home or wake up early. >and your commute requires 90 minutes of bus rides, and your polling place is not on your bus route, how do you go to your polling place? Not sure about all states but California has been allowing people to vote in different polling places then their own. If this becomes widespread it would eliminate this part of the issue. >And should there be some issue with your registration, and you need to go all the way to the county courthouse to file a provisional ballot... This would also be an issue with mail in ballots. Your vote would either not count or you would have to go in. >There are plenty of people for whom actually making it to a polling place can be a challenge; just because it's easy for you, who is presumably a salaried worker commuting by car to a workplace that doesn't mind you showing up ±several minutes from regular working hours doesn't mean it's easy for large portions of the population. You can go after work as well. Many polling places are open until 8 or 9. In California they have the polling places open for multiple days prior to the election as well. I am not sure how wide spread that is outside of California. Just to be clear I am in favor of making voting day a holiday. Some people still need to work (doctors, grocery stores, police, etc) but they could be given a few hours of paid vacation to vote. I think this is a better solution than mail in ballots.

jcranmer 6y ago
> You can vote on your way home or wake up early. That assumes the polls are open when you're going home. > Not sure about all states but California has been allowing people to vote in different polling places then their own. This is literally the first time I've heard of a state that allows that. It is not the case in any of the three states I've voted in, and it is quite surprising to me that it is logistically feasible to make work, given that each polling place needs its own ballot design for the local races. What you're missing as well is the logistics of making it to unusual destinations when you're dependent on often poor-quality bus transit. If bus routes come every half-hour, and only during certain times, inserting an unusual destination onto your itinerary can be challenging. It especially doesn't help if you also live in a state where the polling place is shut down and moved elsewhere because the wrong party votes there.
rsynnott 6y ago
Okay, so it seems like California has gone to considerable efforts to make it easier to vote (both by keeping its polling places open quite late compared to other places, and by opening them on days outside the election, and by allowing people to vote at alternative locations). You seem okay with _that_ effort to make it easier to vote. So what's wrong with other efforts?

jcranmer 6y ago

> You can vote on your way home or wake up early. That assumes the polls are open when you're going home. > Not sure about all states but California has been allowing people to vote in different polling places then their own. This is literally the first time I've heard of a state that allows that. It is not the case in any of the three states I've voted in, and it is quite surprising to me that it is logistically feasible to make work, given that each polling place needs its own ballot design for the local races. What you're missing as well is the logistics of making it to unusual destinations when you're dependent on often poor-quality bus transit. If bus routes come every half-hour, and only during certain times, inserting an unusual destination onto your itinerary can be challenging. It especially doesn't help if you also live in a state where the polling place is shut down and moved elsewhere because the wrong party votes there.

rsynnott 6y ago

Okay, so it seems like California has gone to considerable efforts to make it easier to vote (both by keeping its polling places open quite late compared to other places, and by opening them on days outside the election, and by allowing people to vote at alternative locations). You seem okay with _that_ effort to make it easier to vote. So what's wrong with other efforts?