7 ms·

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

by 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

by Taek 6y ago

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