14 ms·

World reaction to long queues of voters in US

• Taek 6y ago
  It's both amazing and terrible. Amazing to see people standing up for their rights and voting in the face of adversity, these voters deserve praise and are role models for the country. Terrible because it means that they are in corrupt districts that are not properly facilitating democracy. Worthy of a federal corruption investigation potentially resulting in criminal charges. Though I am very glad people are willing to put in the time, it's a terrible thing that they are required to.
  • Sargos 6y ago
    This is very much a "We've investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong" situation.
  • sudeepj 6y ago
    With all her flaws, India's elections and its election commission does a stellar job. Just look at the stats for 2019 elections [1] (copying few of them): 1.035 million: The total number of polling booths across India. 2: The maximum distance in kilometres from any given voter’s house to he nearest polling booth 3.96 million: Number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in use this election 1.7 million: Paper trail or voter-verifiable paper audit trail machines. It is a documentary record of the voter having exercised his franchise 11 million: Election personnel being deployed to conduct polls 15,256: Height of the world’s highest polling station, in Tashigang, Himachal Pradesh, in feet 35: Kilometres an election team travels just so the only resident of the remote Gir National Forest in Gujarat, where Asiatic lions outnumber humans, can vote. The temple priest gets his own polling station, complete with an EVM [1] https://qz.com/india/1591214/indian-election-2019s-voters-polling-booths-and-candidates/ https://qz.com/india/1591214/indian-election-2019s-voters-po...
    • bmax20 6y ago
      EVMs have always had vulnerabilities and should not be trusted. They are forbidden in Germany. https://indiaevm.org/ https://indiaevm.org/
      • sudeepj 6y ago
        The comment was not about the EVM but the sheer personel & logistics deployed to make voting as convenient as possible. Remember India is not a rich country like US, so think in that context as well.
      • manquer 6y ago
        India was doing same scale pre evm as well. Logistics has not simplified all that much because of evms. There are voting booths for literally for one person.
    • rightbyte 6y ago
      2 km to the nearest pooling booth from every house hold? That doesn't seem to make sense.
      • sudeepj 6y ago
        Why this does not make sense? Can you elaborate?
        • rightbyte 6y ago
          It seems to good to be true?
          • sudeepj 6y ago
            I can see why that can be hard to believe. See the report from Reuters[1] Also there is a book written [2] "An Undocumented Wonder : The Making of the Great Indian Election" https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-ELECTION-STATIONS/010092FY33Z/index.html https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-ELECTION-STATIONS/010092F... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22119020-an-undocumented-wonder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22119020-an-undocumented...
          • szatkus 6y ago
            With over one million polling booths it was about 3 booths per a square kilometer.
          • Balgair 6y ago
            Here's a 2019 report from the Boston Globe about the extreme lengths that poll workers will go to in India to ensure access: https://www.bostonglobe.com./news/world/2019/04/13/poll-workers-journey-reach-india-most-remote-voters/79FiVHiO9xV4q7FTOkCEXM/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com./news/world/2019/04/13/poll-work... "The polling booth in Gir Forest National Park in Gujarat is set up for the sole human inhabitant, a Hindu priest who lives among the lions. Polling officials hike for a whole day to reach the remote village of Malogam in Arunachal Pradesh, where just one woman is registered to vote." "Another Ladakh station, Anlay Pho, is so high at 4,500 meters (almost 15,000 feet) above sea level that polling teams must carry oxygen tanks." "The voting machines were protected inside waterproof boxes and other polling material was kept dry under layers of plastic cover. The journey ended with a splash: Priyadarshini and the team clambered out and waded through waist-high water to reach the shore. All this for just nine voters." "Many polling booths in remote areas have no mobile connectivity. Here too, the team had to use wireless sets and satellite phones to send the commission’s mandated twice hourly reports on the progress of polling." Such a strong commitment to democracy, even through all the other messes in India, is beyond heartening. Such efforts should be emulated throughout the world.
  • 0x262d 6y ago
    It drives me nuts that the "opposition" party is not responding to this with calls for mass action to demand fair elections, including occupations and strikes if necessary, but by exhorting unlikely voters who feel apathetic to vote harder against voter suppression.
    • specialist 6y ago
      Any reform will come from outside the system. Said from experience. I share your frustration. I worked on election and voting issues for a decade, fulltime for two years. I was slow to realize that my Mr Smith Goes to Washington folk theory of politics has no basis in reality. The only successes me and mine achieved were thru bringing pressure. I highly recommend Camp Wellstone's training for organizers. (Please share recommendations.) Electeds, leaders, and partisans to effect change is a misunderstanding of what they do. They are in a neverending knife fight for power. Any actual policies are merely the playing cards in the game. Sure, many pols do hold one or two firm positions, for which they will expend "political capital". Leah Stokes' recent book Short Circuiting Policy is a very good, data driven explanation of policy formation. I collect books about politics, policy, etc. Mostly to better understand and learn from own experiences. Many very good. That said, Stokes most closely matches my understanding of how legislators behave wrt policy.
      • 0x262d 6y ago
        Totally agree about inside/outside the system. I'm in this org and we won an unlikely major victory this year (not voting rights but still cool) because our city councilor member has a clear understanding her power to negotiate and legislate for positive change is virtually nil, but her power to agitate and build mass movements to bring pressure is high. Unfortunately almost no other orgs/elected officials embrace this strategy right now (yet). I think the article neglects this fact for some reason but the actual tax legislation that was passed was written by Democrats, not us, and they try to frame it as their own idea... but the reality is they passed it literally the day after we announced we had enough signatures to put our somewhat larger tax on the ballot, in response to it. https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/07/09/amazon-taxed-lessons-of-the-tax-amazon-victory-in-seattle/ https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/07/09/amazon-taxed...
  • LiquidSky 6y ago
    >Worthy of a federal corruption investigation potentially resulting in criminal charges. Except these voter suppression tactics are currently being applauded and encouraged at the federal level, which is itself engaging in similar tactics.
  • bpt3 6y ago
    The election is a still almost a month away. I fully support improving election processes and infrastructure and think election officials could have foreseen this demand, but I would argue that most of your comments are hyperbole. No one in the US is required to vote weeks in advance of election day in person.
  • Kapura 6y ago
    The problem with a federal corruption investigation is that the people in charge of the investigation need to not see themselves as being on the same "team" as those doing the suppression.
  • smoe 6y ago
    Amazing and terrible I think it is pretty fitting. As a Swiss I have voted almost every single time (about 4 times a year) since I was able to, but I have never even left the house for doing that beyond dropping it off in the next regular or official mailbox. I don't know what a polling stations look like from the inside after 15 years of voting, and being completely honest, I probably couldn't be arsed for the majority of votes/elections to go stand in line somewhere in the rain for doing so. Potential manipulation risk for mail in voting in general aside, what I found baffling doing a quick google search on administrative cost of an election is how much more the US seems to be spending per citizen than Switzerland. Switzerland spends a little less than 2$ per voter whereas the US spends 10$, at least according to this article https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2019-01/mohr_et_al_2017summary.pdf https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2019-01/mohr... What would make it so much more expensive? Staff cost? Much larger geographical distribution of voters? Or just being inefficient? As a reference, in Switzerland 80-90% of votes are mail-in.
    • apta 6y ago
      Do you have to provide ID when voting in Switzerland?
      • smoe 6y ago
        You automatically get all the material sent from the municipality you are registered in (this is mandatory) around 2 months before each vote in a re-sealable envelope that contains information how to vote, a one-off voting id, the ballot and an inner envelope to place the ballot to be separated from id before counting. You can either just send back the envelope with your vote via normal postal service for free, put it into a voting drop box that some places have, or bring voting id and ballot to a polling station. I’m not completely sure if you need other form of ID when voting in person. But don’t think that would be a problem since everyone has a national id card. https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/votes/how-to-complete-a-ballot-paper-correctly/ https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/votes/how-to-complete-a-ball...
        • apta 6y ago
• gjs278 6y ago
  anyone waiting in line right now might just be stupid. you can early vote pretty much any other day or time or mail your ballot in if you had half a brain to request it.
• cletus 6y ago
  In Australia we have two things the US system desperately needs: mandatory voting and preferential voting. Preferential voting allows you to vote for a third party without wasting your vote. The standard argument against mandatory voting is people not wanting the uninformed to vote (trust me, they're voting) and the usual US predilection against that infringing "freedom". I was sympathetic to this until I saw the US system in practice. Waiting for hours in line to vote is exactly why mandatory voting is better: optional voting encourages voter suppression. If you think one party doesn't make it harder to vote in areas where they have a disadvantage you're crazy. Also, voting needs to be moved to the weekend. This makes finding venues easy: you use schools. This is what we do in Australia. In Australia voting typically took me 5 minutes at most.
  • jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Many people would love to see literally all of these reforms. You correctly identified the problem, though: > If you think one party doesn't make it harder to vote in areas where they have a disadvantage you're crazy. Difficult to enact meaningful reform when the people in power have an existential need to prevent it.
    • dawnerd 6y ago
      Exactly. Both parties will complain about parts of the voting system that made them lose. Then when they come to power again won’t change what made them win (which is naturally what caused them to lose originally). This is why we’ll never see the delegate system go away.
  • arethuza 6y ago
    We don't have either of those things in the UK and I've never had to queue to vote - the whole process only takes a couple of minutes.
    • TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      > I've never had to queue to vote In live and vote in the US. Never waited in a queue. Just dropped off my ballot at a local ballot box. Not sure why the people in the article can’t do that, but I’ve lived in 4 states and all of them had ballot boxes.
• AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  The people behind this would tell you it's a "feature": by making it incredibly undesirable for people in densely-populated areas to vote (which almost universally lean Democratic), you ensure that only the "right" people are able to vote.
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    I eyeballed a few people making that very same argument right here on HN but draped in the typical and disgusting line about “personal responsibility” when someone was lamenting how difficult some states are making it to even get registered.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • SQueeeeeL 6y ago
      HN always has these "hot takes" discounting any societal failings, probably because the average user expects their worthless "Facebook for dogs" idea to turn them into a billionaire and want to keep low taxes
      • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        hey, once Intel's computerized nose takes off https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-is-teaching-a-computer-chip-to-smell/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-is-teaching-a-computer-c... my facebook for dogs is going to be raking in the bucks!
  • jimbob45 6y ago
    It is a feature but not how you’re describing. The US governing system is designed in such a way as to move at a glacial pace but also to not make mistakes or over correct. The polling systems may seem broken now but will inevitably get corrected over time. Further, the US take states’ rights seriously and allows states to make many key decisions in terms of how they wish to hold elections. The thinking is that you’d rather have Johnny down the street dictate your election than someone you’ve never heard of in Washington DC. It’s en vogue to shit on the US election system right now but y’all are still using first-past-the-post just like the US. Seems a bit hypocritical.
• kpennell 6y ago
  “Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” ― David Frum, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic
• zwieback 6y ago
  I live in Oregon and can't even remember what it was like to vote in person.
• 734129837261 6y ago
  I've never voted for the POTUS and I expect I never will. From my POV I don't really care who wins but I think my preference leans to Trump. That has mostly to do with the Democrats being overly populistic about all the concerns, without offering any solutions. If you push through the endless barrage of misinformation from both sides, it does seem that the conservatives have a better understanding on how to progress the USA in a reasonable manner. Unfortunately, in the online, and also in the educated world, this is an incredibly unpopular opinion. I've been labeled a racist, xenophobe, women-hater, and bigot so many times, it's a bit stale by now. I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-guns, I love science, I think the Trump administration royally messed up the COVID-19 response, and I also think anyone in his stead would have done a terrible job (albeit slightly better from an advisory POV). Still, a Democratic POTUS wouldn't get any of the Republican voters to listen to them. So that would've ended in disaster as well. Trump is a vile person. But from the two available options, he's the lesser of two evils. I've grown up being a left-wing ideologist and I consider myself a centrist today. It just took people like AOC to push me all the way over into the realm of, well, not falling victim to populist rhetoric that is based in the realm of fantasy. By that I mean, of course, her ridiculous Green New Deal plan. Luckily a plan that Biden doesn't support, his one redeeming quality from the last debate.
  • dsauerbrun 6y ago
    What does this have to do with long lines?
  • matsemann 6y ago
    It's hilarious how so many on the far-right label themselves as centrists and then blame the left on "forcing" them to vote right.
    • wutbrodo 6y ago
      Truly incredible how much nonsense you managed to lack into such a brief comment. What about the parent comment sounds "far right" to you? In a two-party system, everyone's vote is a combination of push and pull, which means that it's incredibly normal for a bad candidate to help determine your vote (or as you dishonestly framed it, "force" you to vote otherwise). Isn't that what all the "anyone but Trump" voters are saying? I happen to be fairly happy with Biden, so it doesn't directly apply to me, but I would have voted for any of the Dem primary candidates over Trump, and for the ones I didn't like, he would've "forced" me to vote for them.
• manishsharan 6y ago
  I think the most worrying aspect is an emerging strain of political thought in the US that USA is merely a republic but not a democracy. I find it quite shocking that it has gained a great deal of acceptance. edit : typo
  • baggy_trough 6y ago
    Depending on how such things are defined, it's absolutely the case, and that is how the system was designed.
  • beervirus 6y ago
    But this is true, and has always been true.
  • Sargos 6y ago
    The USA is technically not a democracy and is instead a representative republic which is a fact. I guess you're alluding to how citizens can "vote" which means it's actually a democracy to which I would strongly disagree. I have little to no influence over my government as I live in a gerrymandered district so my representative is decided for me ahead of time. I also only get to pick between 2 old white guys every 4 years which is me actually being optimistic as I don't live in a state that actually decides the presidential election so my vote doesn't matter there either. In a democracy I would actually be able to vote on issues and have my voice heard. That's clearly not happening in the USA.
    • tom_mellior 6y ago
      > The USA is technically not a democracy and is instead a representative republic which is a fact. [...] live in a gerrymandered district so my representative is decided for me ahead of time. In what way is your republic "representative" then?
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > The USA is technically not a democracy and is instead a representative republic I have a degree in political science, and I've never seen anyone who knows what they are talking about use the term "representative republic". The US is, in theoretical structure, both a federal republic and a representative democracy, albeit one with very unequal representation. In practice, it tends to work as something like a plutocratic aristocracy, but its considered impolite in many circles to the point that out. > I also only get to pick between 2 old white guys every 4 years That's only true if you choose to restrict yourself to participation in only Presidential general elections, and not all the elections for other offices or earlier parts of the cycle (and also requires an unusually broad definition of "white" [e.g., including Barack Obama, 2008 & 2012] and "guy", [Hillary Clinton, 2016] and "old" [prior to Trump, the last three presidents were elected at ages 46, 54, and 47--though in the first and last cases their opponents were significantly older--which is certainly middle-aged but hardly "old" for a head of government.])
• james_pm 6y ago
  I have never in my entire life waited longer than five minutes to vote in any election in a municipal, provincial or federal election. That includes early voting or election day voting. I walk over to a school near my house (or community center, or church) and vote. I can't understand how anyone in the US accepts the status quo of their terrible and flawed election system. Make it a terrible experience, especially in lower income and minority communities, and you don't really have to worry about courting those people since many won't be willing, or able to vote.
  • dawnerd 6y ago
    I don’t spent more than five minutes voting either, but that’s only because Oregon figures it out and does statewide mail in ballots and automatic registration. It’s stilly the other states are so far behind.
    • LiquidSky 6y ago
      It's not about being "far behind", these delays are intentionally engineered where they're happening.
      • dawnerd 6y ago
        Yes, some of these are very obviously intentional. But California just now getting on the mail in ballots train does put them far behind. Some 20+ years behind. That’s pretty far if you ask me. (Yes I know they’ve had absentee, I used to vote that way).
  • ohsonice 6y ago
    How do you suggest that people in these lower income communities stop "accepting" this status quo?
  • LiquidSky 6y ago
    >I can't understand how anyone in the US accepts the status quo of their terrible and flawed election system. Your next paragraph shows you understood all too well. People support things like long voting lines because it suppresses the votes of other people they don't think should be voting at all.
• qwerty_123 6y ago
  The lack of voting booths does seem a bit silly, in the UK during elections there is usually voting booths in pretty much every church, school and town hall so you'd struggle to live more than a mile away from one. I once got called a "god botherer" by some kid after leaving to vote in a church, that was a bit bizarre.
  • throwaway2048 6y ago
    Its not silly, its by design to disenfranchise voting, which benefits one party in particular.
  • luckylion 6y ago
    > in the UK during elections there is usually voting booths in pretty much every church, school and town hall so you'd struggle to live more than a mile away from one. On election day or in the month leading up to an election? We have plenty of places to vote at in Germany, but only on the day of the election, not for early voting.
    • arethuza 6y ago
      Only on the actual election day.
• TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Why would you wait in line 11 hours to vote when you can drop off your ballot at a ballot box?
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/us/texas-election-ballot-drop-box-ruling/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/us/texas-election-ballot-drop... One ballot box per county in some counties means waiting hours in line for that too.
    • beervirus 6y ago
      You can also mail them in. That whole thing was a fake controversy.
      • dvtrn 6y ago
        I suspect you and I define the words “fake” and “controversy” quite differently.
        • beervirus 6y ago
          The opinion issued by the federal appeals court gives a lot more context than any news article I've seen. Even if you read just the first couple of pages, you'll be better-informed than 99% of the people talking about this, and I suspect you'll see my point. http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-50867-CV0.pdf http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-50867-CV0.pdf
          • dvtrn 6y ago
            I’m not sure what bearing a court opinion has on my criticism of your calling the events that happened in Texas “fake”; regardless that said court decided the impact of Abbott’s proclamation was de minimis.
            • 6y ago
• blondie9x 6y ago
  Voter suppression is very real and it is very sad. Those in power say they are in power by a majority but that's false. They aren't. Senators in majority represent minority of voters. A President is in the White House who received less votes than the challenger. This so called majority make laws and claims they can do so because they represent the majority of voices in this country, that is completely false.
• jdmichal 6y ago
  So, these lines are not representative of an actual election day. Actual election day is November 3, 2020. Some states are in early voting right now [0]. That typically means that there's a very limited number of polling stations open. For instance, in Pinellas County, FL there's only 5 early voting locations, compared to 301 poll locations during election day. That's a 60x discrepancy! This is for 713,000 registered voters. Pinellas county early voting also doesn't start until next Monday, October 19. I think there was likely not much thought put into the number of early voting locations. It's always been viewed as a low-budget, customer-friendly alternative to voting on election day. That probably should have been re-evaluated given the pandemic and the likelihood of greater numbers of early voters. And by far, the biggest problem is that election day is always on a Tuesday and is not a national holiday. IMO this would be the best change to make first, to enable more people to be available for voting. [0] The availability and dates of early voting are determined at a state level.
  • itsangaris 6y ago
    At the end of the day ordering the new iPhone should not be easier than voting
    • aww_dang 6y ago
      Generally speaking, commercial enterprises are more accountable to customers and efficient than state endeavors. Fanatics still line up and camp overnight to obtain a new iPhone when they are first released. That said, I've never waited more than a few minutes when voting on election day in the US.
    • jdmichal 6y ago
      Clearly you don't remember the lines of people camping out multiple days to pick up an iPhone...
      • specialist 6y ago
        Then Apple adapted by allowing preorders. Now suffering the queues is elective.
• 0x262d 6y ago
  This article is an incredibly misleading, fake positive framing of what is in reality a rapidly failing democratic system. An 11-hour wait to vote is absolutely prohibitive to many of the people who most need change, on top of being terrible for everyone else; not that that is anything new for the US. It's basically a poll tax, which is one of the most regressively anti-democratic tools, but applied unevenly by location. There is not close to a technical need for this, even if we used completely low-tech voting and had all the necessary COVID-19 safety measures. As Glenn Greenwald tweeted, "Few things function efficiently in Brazil. And yet -- in a country just a little smaller & way poorer than the US -- elections work smoothly. Held on a Sunday, mandatory voting, automatic registration at 16, polls open at 7am, close at 5pm, all votes reliably counted by 8:30 pm." The article is the election version of "feel-good" stories about people who work into their late 80s or 90s in low-paying jobs and are given some token gift like a car by their boss, in response for years and years of life stolen from them. Infuriating.
  • wutbrodo 6y ago
    What on Earth are you talking about? The headline, first paragraph, and last two thirds of the article are all about _criticism_ of long voting lines. The fact that they spend part of the article acknowledging that some in the US take pride in coming out to vote in the face of long lines doesn't mean that they're taking this position, especially given that most of the article is dedicated to criticism of the conditions.
    • 0x262d 6y ago
      Hm, I skimmed this but might have come away with a skewed sense of the balance between reactions to it.
  • sumtechguy 6y ago
    Early voting is always hit or miss on the first day. Did a 4 hour stint once myself years ago. Couple of dudes went the next day and got in and out. Voting on the proper day is usually fairly easy enough. Most employers work with you to do so. One time it was a 1 hour wait on election day. Few years later it took less than 20 mins total from parking going in and driving off. All at the same location. Early voting locations have a secondary issue as they usually have an amalgamation of several districts. So the biggest hold up is making sure you have the correct ballot. As depending on where you are at you may have a different ballot per precinct. I may be in district 'xyz' for this congress man but not on the ballot for the mayor of the city because I do not live in a city. That sort of thing.
• PeterStuer 6y ago
  Over here voting takes one morning (population 11M), results are in by evening. I can't see why it wouldn't scale.
  • komali2 6y ago
    It does scale, however in the USA, the republican party directly benefits the less people vote, so in states where the republican party controls voting means, you'll see things like long lines, arbitrary voter ID requirements, etc. In the USA, voting is handled at a state level.
    • 542354234235 6y ago
      > the republican party directly benefits the less people vote True, and they benefit even more when they can actually target the voters of the other party. “Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one… Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott’s order forced them to close most sites.” [0] [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballot-drop-off/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballo...
• knubie 6y ago
  Hanlon's razor applies here. Many people here and elsewhere on the net are quick to point out corruption or voter suppression, but I think a more realistic explanation is plain old incompetence from the people running these places.
  • Larrikin 6y ago
    One party as a platform is always trying to make it more difficult to vote in ways that mostly affect people that tend to vote for the other party. There's no reason to pretend it's incompetence when there's clear evidence of voter suppression
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    What a coincidence that the party most often claiming that government is incompetent is also the one doing the most to make voting difficult. Removing mailboxes, closing DMVs, fighting against early and absentee voting...
  • loudmax 6y ago
    I think you're not wrong, but more cynicism is warranted. As a baseline makes sense that it's going to be easier for people to vote in some places than in others. Money spent in the right places could mitigate that imbalance by making voting safe and convenient for everyone. The United States certainly has the resources to make that happen, but it doesn't. This isn't so much active voter suppression as selective passive voter discouragement.
• nabergh 6y ago
  Are these fair statements to make? Most counties don't set up infrastructure for early voting at the same capacity as they do for election day voting. This level of early voting turnout is unprecedented right? Of course people shouldn't have to wait in line to vote and it's great that these people are but I think people abroad are not getting the full picture.
• Kapura 6y ago
  Disgusting country. The GOP is actively supporting and implementing systems of voter suppression, and the opposition party doesn't seem to have the will to do anything about it. I was concerned about the reports of foreign influence on the 2016 election. Since then, the senators in Washington have made it crystal clear that they do not want to protect the integrity of the election. The Republicans want to win at all costs, and if they can't win they want to poke enough holes in the system to completely undermine trust in American democracy. And I don't see it getting better. If the GOP stays in power after this election cycle, I am going to be trying to get out of the country ASAP. I've read enough to know that it doesn't get better when the single autocratic power is able to fully insulate itself from the will of the public. At that point, it becomes fight or flight time, and the local gun stores have been sold out for a while. If the Democrats win this election, their first priority should be holding vote suppressors accountable, and trying to restore faith in the federal system. But I've seen Democrats win before, and they have never failed to disappoint. I am sick of trying to pretend they're good, when the reality is that the opposing party is just so, so bad.
  • api 6y ago
    The Democrats are a terrible opposition party. They only look good in comparison with the Republicans and their embrace of full blown doctrinaire fascist ideology.
• tom_mellior 6y ago
  As a data point, we had municipal elections in Vienna, Austria this last weekend. I went there at a "busy" time, so I had to queue for something like five minutes. This is in a city of about 1.9 million inhabitants. Here's a map of the results of the election: https://www.wien.gv.at/stadtplan/grafik.aspx?lang=de-AT&bookmark=yUnlRF9XqUXHotdGofg9Rv8d7h5lmnGmmkeu25v6MZj6Cg-b-b https://www.wien.gv.at/stadtplan/grafik.aspx?lang=de-AT&book... . Ignore the colors, but each delineated area is one "voting district" (Wahlsprengel, not sure if there's a better translation). Each of these "districts" corresponds to a separate ballot box (not a separate polling place; several districts usually have separate rooms at a shared polling place, typically a school). I can't find data on how many districts there are in total, but each seems to correspond to about 500-1000 voters.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• bpt3 6y ago
  I'm not saying this is universally true, but in my area, a large portion of the people standing in these long lines are intentionally doing so to make a political statement (or more skeptically, are virtue signaling). There has been one voting station open in the entire county which adequately supported early voting based on historical trends, while dozens more are opening soon and will reduce (if not entirely eliminate) the long lines. Personally, I'm waiting until then to vote.
  • hexadec 6y ago
    What political statement are they making aside from saying 'I would like to vote'? Even the densest election board recognizes this year is not based on historical trends and that early voting (which has been touted on national news) is one way to solve the issue.
    • bpt3 6y ago
      > What political statement are they making aside from saying 'I would like to vote'? The comments I've heard are to the effect of: "I want Trump out of office so badly, I waited in line for 2 hours to vote against him!" > Even the densest election board recognizes this year is not based on historical trends and that early voting (which has been touted on national news) is one way to solve the issue. Agreed. In their defense, we are currently in the "early early voting" stage in most areas (meaning very few polling stations are open), with the "early voting" stage starting up in the near future (with more polling stations opening up), followed by orders of magnitude more on election day.
  • justin66 6y ago
    Are the officials administering the queue part of the conspiracy to create a long line to make a political statement (or more skeptically, are virtue signaling) as well?
    • bpt3 6y ago
      In general, no. They assumed people would just wait until more polling stations opened up closer to election day (or on election day itself) to avoid waiting in these lines.
• jrumbut 6y ago
  The only long line to vote (and it wasn't anything like the lines in the article, we're talking maybe 25 people) I've ever seen was the one time I voted in a jurisdiction with electronic voting machines. Otherwise they all had paper ballots and it's never been more than (say) 5 people in line. Some of these places with the long lines (and clunky voting machines for that matter) are places with a history of voter suppression and I suspect that's the real reason they see these lines year after year and do nothing.
  • komali2 6y ago
    Correct. These are invariably in states where republicans can influence voting procedures.
• emptyfile 6y ago
  Shocking. I live in eastern europe and we've had a parliamentary election this July during the pandemic. Two volunteers with disinfectant at the entrance to the local grade school. Political party volunteers to oversee the voting. Paper ballots and temp uni students to count them at the drop off sites. Literally hundreds of countries do the same with no difficulty.
  • bpt3 6y ago
    Sounds like this was on election day, which is 3 weeks away in the US and there will be significantly more polling places open then.
• bartread 6y ago
  Good on them, I say. There's clearly a problem if people are having to wait that long to vote (to my knowledge it's rarely happened here in the UK, and I've never had to queue for more than a handful of minutes when I've voted), but I applaud the fact they're willing to wait and how seriously these people are taking their democratic responsibility as citizens. Well done!
• alex_young 6y ago
  I have personally waited in line for more than 6 hours to vote on Election Day in the US. How many could not wait that long and had to leave before their vote was recorded? This is a real thing that happens in many states and should not be acceptable in a democracy.
• dpcan 6y ago
  I requested a ballot. I received my ballot in the mail. I filled out my ballot. I walked right up to my elections office, dropped it in a box, with no line. Done. My problem with all of this is that it’s so easy to do it right, there should be no excuse for all these places to be doing it so wrong. Washington State has perfected mail in voting, and has done it for over a decade. Just do what they do. My state opens voting locations and makes it easy to get an absentee ballot and drop it off, no lines, no problems. Locations with these problems should be embarrassed for not simply looking to locations that do it right, and then copying what they do.
• pdonis 6y ago
  The article only mentions in passing that these lines were on the first day early voting was open. Of course if everybody tries to show up on the first day, you're going to have long lines. Those polling places will be open for a total of three weeks (up until the weekend before election day--and in many US jurisdictions early voting lasts even longer, in my area it opened two weeks ago) and for most of that time there will be no lines at all. But that won't get reported in the news because it doesn't fit the "voter suppression" narrative.
  • epistasis 6y ago
    > Of course if everybody tries to show up on the first day, you're going to have long lines. What you seem to take as obvious does not seem obvious at all to me. Why should there be long lines? It doesn't make any sense at all for a system that typically does voting all at once on one day.
    • pdonis 6y ago
      > Why should there be long lines? Because many people don't stop to think that they have a full three weeks to vote, so they all pile in on the first day as if it were election day (note that the article also talks about yesterday as if it were election day and all these people in the lines would have no chance to vote if they didn't stand there for hours instead of just coming back another day); but early voting polling places, because they are spreading the voting out over weeks instead of all in one day, aren't set up to handle a huge pile of people all showing up at once.
• 12xo 6y ago
  A little out of left field but here is my opinion on why we are here. None of this is possible without the perverted media market that view based advertising has created. The entire political landscape has grown to this mess because of "Click Bait" style ad metrics. Every single news outlet, media outlet and otherwise has been corrupted and perverted to seek instant gratification and has lowered their editorial bar so low that they'll say, show, do anything that gets more attention. Because attention brings them more ad $. Without the money flowing from ads via these false metrics, none of these media outlets could exist let alone thrive. And they, are the reason America is so divided. Sensationalism is what is driving the discourse, not intelligence or reason. The power brokers know this and the leverage it very, very well. We have created a US where information is the ball, and our lives and the policy that governs us, is the sport.
  • jakelazaroff 6y ago
    How is this relevant? These long lines and the voter suppression that they cause are both very real. Shining a light on that isn't "sensationalism".
    • 12xo 6y ago
      Its relevant - albeit a little out of the purview, because without the rise of sensationalist based media creating the distractions, none of this is possible. The lies, the distractions, the propaganda, the amplification of issues that simply-do-not exist, allows the power brokers the opportunity to do these types of things without the oversight and regulation that the Constitution and history used to have in place to contain such acts. Its no different than a magical or illusionist using distraction and human behaviors against the audience so that they can paint a picture of what ever they choose. Or the infinite number of psych tricks used to fool people into giving up their money.... If the media was still beholden to facts and held actual integrity, and were not instead chasing a false metric that benefited them, the power brokers could not get away with these types of acts. It goes deeper but the checks and balances of our Republic are no longer in place because we whored out our Congress and allowed the Foxes to buy their way to the front of the henhouse...
• Jeremy1026 6y ago
  There are going to be a lot of people still voting into the early hours of 11/4 this year. Add in mail in ballot counting that can't even start until polls close in some states, we aren't going to have a vote count for at least a few days after Election Day.
• throwaway4good 6y ago
  The long queues obviously are there on purpose; incredible your sitting government can get away with it. It is really a sign of a broken system - there are supposed to be checks and balances.
  • rightbyte 6y ago
    What does voter turnout matter when electors are chosen on a district level anyways? Ie a city got its allocated electors versus a town with nicers ques and higher turnout.
    • 542354234235 6y ago
      For a clear cut example, look at Texas. “Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one… Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott’s order forced them to close most sites.” [0] If party A looks at the districts with majority party B voters and targets those areas for polling station closures, that can have a huge effect. [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballot-drop-off/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballo...
• flixic 6y ago
  We had a parliament election in Lithuania this weekend. Even with everything taking longer because of COVID-19, I didn't have to wait more than 10 minutes. If you vote in another precinct than the one you are registered at, you might have to wait a bit more (maybe 20 minutes). It really is remarkable just how many small things seem to be broken in strange ways in the US.
• aluminussoma 6y ago
  I get the impression that this is an opportunity to paint a political story that makes your side look better (other side is suppressing the vote, therefore my candidate lost!), or perhaps in this specific case, to poke fun at America as it is a favorite international past time. The data I see shows another possibility: voter turn out has increased by a large amount and the government is struggling to meet the demand. Over 20 years, the number of voters in a presidential election has increased by more than 30 million. That's more than the entire population of the state of New York.
  • akiselev 6y ago
    According to [1] and plenty of other studies of their kind, closure of voting locations have been a major problem since the Shelby decision gutted the voting rights acts. Summary: > We found 1,688 polling place closures in places once covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Of the 757 counties in our study, 298 (39 percent) reduced the number of polling places between 2012 and 2018. Because presidential elections tend to have higher turnout rates than midterms, we analyzed the data to determine whether the number of polling places varied to meet the different demands of each type of election. They did not. Most (69 percent) closures (–1,173) occurred after the 2014 midterm election. > The Shelby decision paved the way for systematic statewide efforts to reduce the number of polling places in Texas (–750), Arizona (–320), and Georgia (–214). Quieter efforts to reduce the number of polling places without clear notice or justification spread throughout Louisiana (–126), Mississippi (–96), Alabama (–72), North Carolina (–29), and Alaska (–6). Can't argue population growth in good faith when polling places are actively being shutdown in states with growing populations like Texas. [1] http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/Democracy-Diverted.pdf http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/Democracy-Diverted.p...
    • 542354234235 6y ago
      Texas is really going out of its way to suppress voting. “Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one… Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott’s order forced them to close most sites.” [0] [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballot-drop-off/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballo...
• jedberg 6y ago
  A lot of people outside the USA don’t realize we don’t have an election. We have 51 parallel elections, each with their own rules. For example, you’ll never see long lines like that in California or Oregon. For some reason people are super allergic to having federal standards on how federal elections should be run. Sure, run your state however you want. But it’s messed up that I, a Californian, have no say in how elections are run in Florida, even though it has a big effect on me, and vice versa.
  • nathanaldensr 6y ago
    It's not messed up, and the Framers agreed, hence why every state is allowed to determine how to run its elections. The argument of federal power at that scale was lost long ago. If one doesn't like the way one's state exercises its power, one can move to another state. This is a feature, not a bug.
    • jedberg 6y ago
      That made sense in the 1700s when communication was slow and the states ran mostly independently. It makes no sense in our modern world of connectedness. It’s only a feature because the framers of the constitution didn’t have the foresight to see a more interconnected world.
      • DuskStar 6y ago
        And telling people to move is a better counter today than it would have been in the 1700s due to ease of movement and communication.
        • jedberg 6y ago
          Except that ease of movement and communication have nothing to do with moving one's home, because you can't bring your land with you. It does however have everything to do with elections.
    • jedberg 6y ago
• tengbretson 6y ago
  Wait, did I miss election day or something?
  • komali2 6y ago
    Early voting
• komali2 6y ago
  The reason for this, as the article aptly points out, is because of the historic technique of the American conservative party (today the American Republican Party or GOP) to restrict the ability of traditionally liberal voters (today the American Democratic party) to vote. Given that the working class, naturalized immigrants, and people of color traditionally vote liberal, the best way to secure a win is simply make it as hard as possible for them to vote. So they've opposed legislation guaranteeing a day off to vote [1], making it fairly impossible for people living paycheck to paycheck. They've opposed legislation to make it easier to vote by mail in ballot [2] which would make it easier for working class people to vote. They've purged voting rolls so that people with less understanding of the registration process find themselves unable to vote on election day [3], and of course the incessant cries that somehow voter fraud is a big enough issue that it's worth disenfranchising thousands with strict voter ID laws. In my home state of texas we had once instance voter fraud in the last 4 years, and it was a woman on parole being lied to by her parole officer about her right to vote. Typical bad faith conservative arguments include that mail in voting leads to voter fraud (it doesn't), voting holidays are a power grab by democrats (Mitch mcconnell's verbatim words), and that millions of Mexicans citizens / non americans are voting in american elections (also no). In texas the republicam governor said vague things about covid and then banned counties from having more than one ballot drop off location. For reference, my county (harris) has one of the largest cities in america (houston) in it, a population of 30 million people, and can take up to an hour and a half to drive from an edge to the center. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/politics/election-day-holiday-mcconnell.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/politics/election-day-... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-voting-republicans/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-vot... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/voter-purges-republicans-2020-elections-trump https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/voter-purges...
  • acomjean 6y ago
    Voting issues have been happening in the US for a long time (when the US was founded only property owners could vote). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Milestones_of_national_franchise_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St... Its only been 100 years since women were allowed to vote, and that barely squeeked through. Historically they had "Poll Taxes" (Pay to vote) another form of voter repression (struck down in the 1960s). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_taxes_in_the_United_State... States set their own voting rules, even in national elections. It got so bad in the 1960s the Federal Government passed a "Voting rights act" to try and fix thing. That of course has been dragged through the courts and in the past couple years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Milestones_of_national_franchise_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...
• aimor 6y ago
  The GAO has a much better writeup about wait times on election day in 2012. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-850 https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-850
• bennettfeely 6y ago
  One shouldn't be mislead to thinking these unacceptably long lines are common. From MIT: > For general elections, the average wait time decreased from 14 to 12 minutes between 2008 and 2012; it dropped again in 2016 to an 8-minute average. https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/insights-into-voting-wait-time-from-the-2016-elections-performance-index-6693576e9b99 https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/insights-into-voting-wai...
• trey-jones 6y ago
  I live in a city/town in Georgia USA with a population of about 25k. I have never waited more than 10 minutes to vote. This type of thing (long lines in Atlanta) was in the news last year during our very close gubernatorial election and I don't think it's far fetched to say that it decided the election. As I recall, the main reason in the news was that there were so few voting machines available in Atlanta. My observation as I walked in to vote instantly (on Election day mind, not early voting) was that we had 3 voting machines at my polling place. It seems a pretty simple thing to me that if I can vote in 10 minutes or less and people are waiting for hours and hours in Atlanta (taking time off from work, giving up their whole day?), then it seems fair to me that my polling place can do with 1 voting machine and they can take the other 2 to Atlanta. And of course I'm assuming that this strange distribution of voting machines exists in many other polling places as well. If it didn't fix the problem, then it could at least make it a little bit less bad.
• framebit 6y ago
  Just a little local perspective on the lines in Georgia. The waits that some folks had to endure in the primaries were a huge problem. Georgia absolutely has history of voter suppression like many post-confederate states, and some seriously shady stuff has gone down in the past. However, the really long lines yesterday were more attributable to incredible turnout on the first day of early voting, which also happened to be a federal holiday so many people had the spare time to come out and vote. There are new voting systems, new volunteers for whom that was their first day running the polls, and a very motivated electorate. For comparison, today, two days later, I know of at least two people who were in and out in 15 minutes in some of the same areas that had incredible lines on Monday. There are legit voter suppression stories of great concern in GA, but I don't think the lines of Oct 12 qualify. I'm totally open to being corrected on this opinion though.
• ocardoso 6y ago
  From Mexico: We have a better system than the US when it comes to vote ballots and logistics, it's ironic that with all the resources they have, they are unable to do a better job than we do. It's really sad to see how the US politicians have used gerrymandering to drive the outcomes of the elections. It's really encouraging that the people, despite the current situation, are going to vote no matter the time. Good luck, we hope you get Trump out of the WH.
• onecommentman 6y ago
  If the posted title is correct, this is an article about some comments about some images surrounding an event...the start of an election period. So if I comment on it, I will be commenting about an article about comments about images about an event. This would violate my rule refusing to comment on things two abstractions away from what passes as reality. It should violate your rule too. Cf. the children’s song “There’s a hole is the bottom of the sea”. “There's a fleck on the speck on the tail On the frog on the bump on the branch On the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.” Or “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly” “She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her! She swallowed the spider to catch the fly; I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she’ll die.”
• LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  I'm wondering if there are ballot boxes like this anywhere in the US? [1] https://www.wahlurne.de/Wahlurne%20Muelltonne%201.png https://www.wahlurne.de/Wahlurne%20Muelltonne%201.png [2] https://mobil.express.de/image/31438468/max/600/450/a7c42ec3a1ff30aecc5271de961b619a/Dt/soeder-stimmabgabe--1-.jpg https://mobil.express.de/image/31438468/max/600/450/a7c42ec3... [3] https://scheinwelt.lima-city.de/assets/images/mulltonnen-wahl.jpg https://scheinwelt.lima-city.de/assets/images/mulltonnen-wah... The above pictures are from Hamburg and Bavaria. When I saw them for the first time I thought were kidding me.