4 ms·

As an Australian who lives in the US, the vast chasm between how elections work in the two countries still boggles my mind. First, the US needs mandatory votin

by cletus 6y ago

As an Australian who lives in the US, the vast chasm between how elections work in the two countries still boggles my mind. First, the US needs mandatory voting. This is what Australia has. The argument against this has always been about uninformed people voting and "fraud". I used to be sympathetic to this argument until I saw the massive scale of voter suppression that occurs in the US. Mandatory voting immediately changes the conversation from "How do we get our side to vote and the other side note to?" to the legal obligation officials have to ensuring everyone can vote. Voting also happens on the weekend in Australia. This greatly simplifies finding polling places. Most of them are schools. The other thing that Australia has that the US needs (which will never happen) is preferential voting. A big mistake the US makes (IMHO) is how the election process itself is politicized. I mean who thought it was a good idea that election supervisors are an elected position? In Australia, we have the Australian Electoral Commission, who is responsible for organizing elections, tallying and reporting the results and determining district boundaries. Somehow this manages to function without it being a partisan battleground. The real problem here seems to be cultural. You have a conservative once-majority now-minority that seems to feel that the ends justify the means. I mean the level of hypocrisy here is truly jaw-dropping. Four years ago it was too contentious to hold hearings on a nominee 10 months before an election. Now? We may have a Supreme Court confirmation in a lame duck session. Remember the outrage around Hilary's emails? Yet on Russian interference in the election? Nothing. No, that's "fake news". And by any objective measure, Trump himself is a reprehensible human being, whether you agree with his politics or not. How self-described "moral voters" can turn a blind eye to all this, basically "because abortion", is almost incomprehensible. I have to wonder if overturning Roe v. Wade might not be the best thing at this point. Two-thirds of the population live in states that will legalize it anyway and then this issue can stop being a rallying cry. As for this effort, I don't actually believe it was organized this way from the top (ie White House, RNC). It's the sort of thing that really smells like some mid-level functionary and state politics wannabe acting on their own with something that ultimately probably won't matter but is great virtue signaling (for someone who wants endorsements and support for some later election). Or it could be some partisan mid-level manager who acted on their own. To anyone saying "no maintenance takes a day", I guarantee you it can. This could easily be a database server that is being replaced. It needs to be set up and the database copied over. Not everyone runs EC2 instances. In the real world deployments can be (and usually are) incredibly primitive.

pc86 6y ago
In general this shows a lack of understanding of the US system of government common to folks not from here (and honestly to at least half the people who were born here). Broad national-level statements like "election supervisors are an elected position" are almost always wrong for huge swaths of the country. Not a single election judge, election helper, or poll watcher (three distinct positions with distinct roles) in my entire state is elected. They're all volunteers, and with the exception of the poll watchers are almost always not elected in their day job. You simply cannot make broad sweeping changes across the country to something like an election. It's controlled by every state individually. You can even see this in mail-in balloting where some states allow it, some don't, the dates are all different, etc. This is a pain is the ass but it's by design. The US was explicitly founded to not have a strong, centralized federal government. So that makes it very difficult to make huge changes like you're talking about. Having contracted for a few state agencies myself, I agree with you maintenance can absolutely take a day. Typically it's one or two people responsible for the entire tear down and set-up, and if you have 9 hours to get it done there's little incentive to be super efficient about it. You'll take prod down at 8:01am and plan to bring it up around 4 to check for issues. Even if you're done by noon you may just wait.
- DFHippie 6y ago
  > You simply cannot make broad sweeping changes across the country to something like an election. It's controlled by every state individually. You can even see this in mail-in balloting where some states allow it, some don't, the dates are all different, etc. This is a pain is the ass but it's by design. The US was explicitly founded to not have a strong, centralized federal government. So that makes it very difficult to make huge changes like you're talking about. I don't think the OP is ignorant of this, or not necessarily. I think they're saying we need federal standards for national elections, which would necessitate a constitutional amendment, sure. (Among the dubious features of our constitution is its amendment mechanism.)
  - pc86 6y ago
    This is sort of my point. Technically it's not a national election, it's 50 state-wide elections. Each individual state's Department of State can prescribe most of the manner in which the election is handled. The electoral power starts and ends at the state level, and Constitutionally speaking, the fact that the state count is part of a national election is merely a byproduct of that.

by cletus 6y ago

pc86 6y ago

In general this shows a lack of understanding of the US system of government common to folks not from here (and honestly to at least half the people who were born here). Broad national-level statements like "election supervisors are an elected position" are almost always wrong for huge swaths of the country. Not a single election judge, election helper, or poll watcher (three distinct positions with distinct roles) in my entire state is elected. They're all volunteers, and with the exception of the poll watchers are almost always not elected in their day job. You simply cannot make broad sweeping changes across the country to something like an election. It's controlled by every state individually. You can even see this in mail-in balloting where some states allow it, some don't, the dates are all different, etc. This is a pain is the ass but it's by design. The US was explicitly founded to not have a strong, centralized federal government. So that makes it very difficult to make huge changes like you're talking about. Having contracted for a few state agencies myself, I agree with you maintenance can absolutely take a day. Typically it's one or two people responsible for the entire tear down and set-up, and if you have 9 hours to get it done there's little incentive to be super efficient about it. You'll take prod down at 8:01am and plan to bring it up around 4 to check for issues. Even if you're done by noon you may just wait.

DFHippie 6y ago
> You simply cannot make broad sweeping changes across the country to something like an election. It's controlled by every state individually. You can even see this in mail-in balloting where some states allow it, some don't, the dates are all different, etc. This is a pain is the ass but it's by design. The US was explicitly founded to not have a strong, centralized federal government. So that makes it very difficult to make huge changes like you're talking about. I don't think the OP is ignorant of this, or not necessarily. I think they're saying we need federal standards for national elections, which would necessitate a constitutional amendment, sure. (Among the dubious features of our constitution is its amendment mechanism.)
- pc86 6y ago
  This is sort of my point. Technically it's not a national election, it's 50 state-wide elections. Each individual state's Department of State can prescribe most of the manner in which the election is handled. The electoral power starts and ends at the state level, and Constitutionally speaking, the fact that the state count is part of a national election is merely a byproduct of that.