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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 p

by 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.
  - kawfey 6y ago
    Many states don't have ballot boxes, and a LOT of people are distrusting of mail-in and absentee voting which forces them to vote in person.
- Macha 6y ago
  In Ireland we don't have mandatory voting but we still provision polling stations to handle the possibility of all voters actually voting. The result is when I lived in a high turnout area, I once had to queue 10 minutes to vote when I had to do it during lunch time, and now I live in a low turnout area 10 minutes is the time from leaving my house to being back having voted in between.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    I've voted in the centre of cities and in rural areas in Scotland for ~35 years and I've literally never had to queue - I usually vote in the early evening as well which I would have thought was a fairly popular time.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
In the US, one can vote for any party (preferential voting). There are other parties in America but you seldom hear about them. Two examples are the Green Party and the Libertarian party.
- Sargos 6y ago
  In a first past the post system like the US has it will always mathematically be a 2 party system. Maybe the democrats or republicans actually self destruct and cease being a party and one of those other parties take its place but there can never be a 3 party government in our system as it's impossible.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    I suggest you read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_States) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_St... A significant number of Libertarians have held and do hold state legislature positions and governorships. There is also currently 1 Libertarian in the US House of Representatives. Libertarian presidential candidates have received electoral college votes in the past. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third_party_and_independent_performances_in_United_States_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third_party_and_inde... And https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_performances_in_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_performa...
- lhopki01 6y ago
  Preferential voting means you list the candidates in your order of preference. It means you can put your first choice for a small party and if they get eliminated by having the least votes your second choice becomes your vote and so on.
- singlow 6y ago
  Preferential Voting is a system by which you can rank your preferences rather than choosing a single candidate. You might range Green party first, Democrat second. There are various methods of tallying the votes, but it usually means that you can support the less popular candidate without giving up your weight in the choice between two frontrunners.
jasonjayr 6y ago
I don't disagree with moving voting to the weekends, but I can confirm that when I was attending High School some 20ish years ago, our school would block off the path from the entrance to the gymnasium from student traffic, and use it as a polling place during the school day. Students old enough to vote were encouraged to go do so during their lunch or free period. Some areas do make the effort to make the elections fair to all. It's a shame that there are so many areas that don't.
kawfey 6y ago
My voting location is a school, but voting days are always on weekdays while school is in session. The voting public occupies the school's gym, so it annoys me that the students must forgo PE and physical activity for the day for my precinct to vote.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Voting should probably be a higher priority than PE. It's one day.
ihuman 6y ago
Some states use preferential voting for local elections, but right now Maine is the only one that does it for the presidential elections. I hope preferential voting will be the next major change to the election, after the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact gets enough members to activate.
- cletus 6y ago
  Ugh, the popular vote. It's such a mistake, even in this form with the compact and I really wish people would realize it. Put it this way: what happens (and this will happen) when the popular vote is ridiculously close? We had a preview of this in Florida in 2000 when a few thousand votes decided the election. Now imagine the litigation, the endless recounts and the uncertainty but it engulfs the entire country. Imagine an election decided by less than 10,000 votes and litigants try to scrounge up a few dozen votes in every county in the country. As much as people like the crap on the electoral college it has (thus far) done one thing well: and that is to create w winner. Creating a winner is _way_ more important than creating the "right" winner. The one big problem with the electoral college is that the Founders never envisioned the huge population disparities we have today ie California has >500 times the population of Montana, Vermont or North Dakota. There are legitimate issues with the electoral college. A national popular vote for president is not the answer.
singlow 6y ago
It is several weeks until election day. Right now some areas have early voting available. Early voting is available in most areas every day of the week for several weeks prior to election day, including weekends. During early voting you can choose to vote at any location in your county which often include convenient places such as the grocery store, instead of being required to vote at your assigned district polling center, which is usually a public school, but is sometimes another government or community building. I cannot remember waiting in line to do early voting even once. Sometimes I would go to the grocery store two or three times during early voting and see a line to vote, and I just wait until I see no line. There are always surges in the first and last days of early voting, but a big lull in the middle.
manquer 6y ago
One difference in US is there are lot of jobs which have elections like sheriff, judge, board comissioners etc. Prefential or ranking systems work better when you vote a party and /or have less positions to vote for.
acomjean 6y ago
I'm in america, and never had more than 30 minute wait to vote. But I'm in Massachusetts and we have early voting and a election commision that seems to want to make it easy. Mandatory Voting actually seems like an interesting idea. Work/Government would have to make accommodations. Voting rules here are handled by local entities (cites, counties and states). So sometimes sadly it gets gamed to try to favor one group of voters over another. Its kinda a mess. Lawsuits are common.
Larrikin 6y ago
Mandatory voting in the US would simply be an excuse to fine or jail the same people that are targeted for voter suppression. Also personally I'd just rather people who have no interest in voting not be forced to randomly choose candidates just because they are forced to vote. Along that line, voting in person should universally become optional with mail in/drop off becoming the norm. I'd always had a valid reason for absentee voting when I had residency in my home state and it would take me atleast a day to properly research the down ballot candidates. I now live in a state with judges on the ballot and it took me an entire weekend to actually look through everyone that wasn't in the federal races. Mandatory voting, especially without universal access to absentee voting, would just exacerbate the issue of people just voting based on name or party instead of stance when there are so many people on the ballot.
- cletus 6y ago
  "Mandatory voting" is perhaps a misnomer because what it really means is "mandatory attendance". There's nothing stopping you from going to the polling place and putting thee piece of paper with no votes into the ballot box. In Australia some people deliberately place such "spoiled ballots" or only vote on the stuff they care about. It's completely fine. What you can get fined for in Australia is not getting your name crossed off when attend a polling place, not for failing to supply a complete and valid ballot. In Australia you can also vote "above the line" or "below the line". Voting "above the line" means you just select a party (and this includes minor parties) and use that party's preferences (which must be filed in advanced). Voting "below the line" had become sort of involved because there was ultimately dozens of Senate candidates and you once had to number them all. They reformed this so you only have to put in as many preferences as you like (so only numbering 1 to 6 out of 40). Another detail: in Australia you have two ballots. One for the House of Representatives and the other for the Senate. You can vote above/below the line separately on each.

by cletus 6y ago

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.
- kawfey 6y ago
  Many states don't have ballot boxes, and a LOT of people are distrusting of mail-in and absentee voting which forces them to vote in person.
Macha 6y ago
In Ireland we don't have mandatory voting but we still provision polling stations to handle the possibility of all voters actually voting. The result is when I lived in a high turnout area, I once had to queue 10 minutes to vote when I had to do it during lunch time, and now I live in a low turnout area 10 minutes is the time from leaving my house to being back having voted in between.
- arethuza 6y ago
  I've voted in the centre of cities and in rural areas in Scotland for ~35 years and I've literally never had to queue - I usually vote in the early evening as well which I would have thought was a fairly popular time.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

In the US, one can vote for any party (preferential voting). There are other parties in America but you seldom hear about them. Two examples are the Green Party and the Libertarian party.

Sargos 6y ago
In a first past the post system like the US has it will always mathematically be a 2 party system. Maybe the democrats or republicans actually self destruct and cease being a party and one of those other parties take its place but there can never be a 3 party government in our system as it's impossible.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  I suggest you read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_States) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_St... A significant number of Libertarians have held and do hold state legislature positions and governorships. There is also currently 1 Libertarian in the US House of Representatives. Libertarian presidential candidates have received electoral college votes in the past. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third_party_and_independent_performances_in_United_States_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third_party_and_inde... And https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_performances_in_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_performa...
lhopki01 6y ago
Preferential voting means you list the candidates in your order of preference. It means you can put your first choice for a small party and if they get eliminated by having the least votes your second choice becomes your vote and so on.
singlow 6y ago
Preferential Voting is a system by which you can rank your preferences rather than choosing a single candidate. You might range Green party first, Democrat second. There are various methods of tallying the votes, but it usually means that you can support the less popular candidate without giving up your weight in the choice between two frontrunners.

jasonjayr 6y ago

I don't disagree with moving voting to the weekends, but I can confirm that when I was attending High School some 20ish years ago, our school would block off the path from the entrance to the gymnasium from student traffic, and use it as a polling place during the school day. Students old enough to vote were encouraged to go do so during their lunch or free period. Some areas do make the effort to make the elections fair to all. It's a shame that there are so many areas that don't.

kawfey 6y ago

My voting location is a school, but voting days are always on weekdays while school is in session. The voting public occupies the school's gym, so it annoys me that the students must forgo PE and physical activity for the day for my precinct to vote.

Jtsummers 6y ago
Voting should probably be a higher priority than PE. It's one day.

ihuman 6y ago

Some states use preferential voting for local elections, but right now Maine is the only one that does it for the presidential elections. I hope preferential voting will be the next major change to the election, after the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact gets enough members to activate.

cletus 6y ago
Ugh, the popular vote. It's such a mistake, even in this form with the compact and I really wish people would realize it. Put it this way: what happens (and this will happen) when the popular vote is ridiculously close? We had a preview of this in Florida in 2000 when a few thousand votes decided the election. Now imagine the litigation, the endless recounts and the uncertainty but it engulfs the entire country. Imagine an election decided by less than 10,000 votes and litigants try to scrounge up a few dozen votes in every county in the country. As much as people like the crap on the electoral college it has (thus far) done one thing well: and that is to create w winner. Creating a winner is _way_ more important than creating the "right" winner. The one big problem with the electoral college is that the Founders never envisioned the huge population disparities we have today ie California has >500 times the population of Montana, Vermont or North Dakota. There are legitimate issues with the electoral college. A national popular vote for president is not the answer.

singlow 6y ago

It is several weeks until election day. Right now some areas have early voting available. Early voting is available in most areas every day of the week for several weeks prior to election day, including weekends. During early voting you can choose to vote at any location in your county which often include convenient places such as the grocery store, instead of being required to vote at your assigned district polling center, which is usually a public school, but is sometimes another government or community building. I cannot remember waiting in line to do early voting even once. Sometimes I would go to the grocery store two or three times during early voting and see a line to vote, and I just wait until I see no line. There are always surges in the first and last days of early voting, but a big lull in the middle.

manquer 6y ago

One difference in US is there are lot of jobs which have elections like sheriff, judge, board comissioners etc. Prefential or ranking systems work better when you vote a party and /or have less positions to vote for.

acomjean 6y ago

I'm in america, and never had more than 30 minute wait to vote. But I'm in Massachusetts and we have early voting and a election commision that seems to want to make it easy. Mandatory Voting actually seems like an interesting idea. Work/Government would have to make accommodations. Voting rules here are handled by local entities (cites, counties and states). So sometimes sadly it gets gamed to try to favor one group of voters over another. Its kinda a mess. Lawsuits are common.

Larrikin 6y ago

Mandatory voting in the US would simply be an excuse to fine or jail the same people that are targeted for voter suppression. Also personally I'd just rather people who have no interest in voting not be forced to randomly choose candidates just because they are forced to vote. Along that line, voting in person should universally become optional with mail in/drop off becoming the norm. I'd always had a valid reason for absentee voting when I had residency in my home state and it would take me atleast a day to properly research the down ballot candidates. I now live in a state with judges on the ballot and it took me an entire weekend to actually look through everyone that wasn't in the federal races. Mandatory voting, especially without universal access to absentee voting, would just exacerbate the issue of people just voting based on name or party instead of stance when there are so many people on the ballot.

cletus 6y ago
"Mandatory voting" is perhaps a misnomer because what it really means is "mandatory attendance". There's nothing stopping you from going to the polling place and putting thee piece of paper with no votes into the ballot box. In Australia some people deliberately place such "spoiled ballots" or only vote on the stuff they care about. It's completely fine. What you can get fined for in Australia is not getting your name crossed off when attend a polling place, not for failing to supply a complete and valid ballot. In Australia you can also vote "above the line" or "below the line". Voting "above the line" means you just select a party (and this includes minor parties) and use that party's preferences (which must be filed in advanced). Voting "below the line" had become sort of involved because there was ultimately dozens of Senate candidates and you once had to number them all. They reformed this so you only have to put in as many preferences as you like (so only numbering 1 to 6 out of 40). Another detail: in Australia you have two ballots. One for the House of Representatives and the other for the Senate. You can vote above/below the line separately on each.