5 ms·

Some countries have vote by mail. Many US states do as well. In the US our voting is on a work day, which is not given off by law. State politicians also contr

Some countries have vote by mail. Many US states do as well. In the US our voting is on a work day, which is not given off by law. State politicians also control where polling locations are placed and how they are staffed, which leads to significant waiting times for people at polling places (hours and hours in many situations). The introduction of electronic voting machines has created additional bottlenecks, as you can’t scale out those machines horizontally the same way with paper ballots. You’ll often end up with just a couple of e machines in place of a location that would typically have 20 or 30 booths for paper voting. Did a bunch of research on this before our midterms in 2018: https://medium.com/@eagerlabs/if-voter-turnout-spikes-our-voting-infrastructure-wont-hold-up-dc782672b914 https://medium.com/@eagerlabs/if-voter-turnout-spikes-our-vo...

gus_massa 6y ago
> In the US our voting is on a work day, which is not given off by law. State politicians also control where polling locations are placed and how they are staffed, which leads to significant waiting times for people at polling places (hours and hours in many situations). I know. I know. I just wonder why if we in Argentina (that is not the most organized country in the world) can make a reasonable election, it is so difficult there. [The elections are not perfect here anyway If you have some popcorn I can add a few anecdotes.] > The introduction of electronic voting machines has created additional bottlenecks, as you can’t scale out those machines horizontally the same way with paper ballots. It is weird because we once tried here with mixed voting machines. (You choose whom to vote in the machine, the machine gives you a paper version, and you put it in the urn.) And it was faster than the manual version. You just need more machines.

gus_massa 6y ago

> In the US our voting is on a work day, which is not given off by law. State politicians also control where polling locations are placed and how they are staffed, which leads to significant waiting times for people at polling places (hours and hours in many situations). I know. I know. I just wonder why if we in Argentina (that is not the most organized country in the world) can make a reasonable election, it is so difficult there. [The elections are not perfect here anyway If you have some popcorn I can add a few anecdotes.] > The introduction of electronic voting machines has created additional bottlenecks, as you can’t scale out those machines horizontally the same way with paper ballots. It is weird because we once tried here with mixed voting machines. (You choose whom to vote in the machine, the machine gives you a paper version, and you put it in the urn.) And it was faster than the manual version. You just need more machines.