8 ms·

No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much health

No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much healthier for democracy.

romwell 5y ago
Um, why not both?
skissane 5y ago
In Australia we always have elections on Saturday. Works well for most people. Of course, there is a minority of people it doesn't work well for, such as people who have to work on Saturdays, and observant Jews. And for those people we have early voting and postal voting too. I never quite understand why voting is such a controversial topic in the US. In many countries (I'm sure Australia is not alone in this) it is a boring thing that just works. You might not always like the outcome, but the process itself rarely becomes the topic of discussion. I think one thing that helps in Australia is that federal elections are completely controlled and run by the federal government. For federal elections, we don't have each state doing its own thing. Local government has no role to play in elections either. (Even local government elections are actually run by the state governments.) Addendum: I must point out when I say "controlled and run by the federal government", they are run by an independent and non-partisan federal agency, politicians don't have direct control over them. Likewise, each state has an independent and non-partisan agency to run state and local elections
- caslon 5y ago
  It's largely because increased voting overwhelmingly (and almost exclusively) benefits one side in the US. While it's obviously good to have increased participation in democracy, the side that's going to more or less cease to exist if we ever get even 80% citizen participation obviously has an incentive to make voting harder.
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    I'm not sure how you rationalise that with the fact that Australia consistently votes in a right-wing government. UK (which doesn't have compulsory voting) also reelected a right-wing government.
    - jwmhjwmh 5y ago
      They were talking about the US specifically.
    - DFHippie 5y ago
      Here's a recent article about the special electoral conditions in the US: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/
    - trhway 5y ago
      Australia has 83%+ (with 67% being of British ancestry) and UK has 86% white population while US has 60% non-hispanic white population (with no such single major ancestry inside it like the British ancestry of the AU and UK white populations). Thus there are huge sources of racist/xenophobic voting power drivers that the right-wings in AU and UK can tap into while doing so in US causes blowback of similar scale and which grows with voting participation increase.
    - mastax 5y ago
      The "wings" are not very comparable between countries. They are influenced by their environment. I can confidently say that an alternate universe where those countries had US-style elections would have very different parties, though not necessarily more US-like.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - smhost 5y ago
    "we can't have democracy because then the anti-democratic party would have to change" is my favorite talking point
- andrepd 5y ago
  There's a long history of targeted disenfranchisement in the US. Particularly when it comes to black people.
  - User23 5y ago
    This is because the USA was never intended to be a democracy.
    - FranchuFranchu 5y ago
      Very few countries were
- acomjean 5y ago
  It’s controversial because the party in power sets the voting rules and they tend to try and do so to their advantage. Be it gerrymandering [1]districts or setting voting rules they think will favor their party. These rules are state level functions so we have 50 different sets. It creates a system where on political party is pretty much guaranteed to win certain districts and they’re aren’t a ton of competitive races. Part of the problem is an electorate that would “vote for a bag of rocks” if it belonged to the right party. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
- jolux 5y ago
  Voting is also compulsory in Australia.
  - NamTaf 5y ago
    And that’s fantastic. It provides impetus to the government to make it as frictionless as possible. It means I can be in and out within 5 minutes.
    - jolux 5y ago
      > It provides impetus to the government to make it as frictionless as possible. Ahahahaha. Have you tried dealing with American bureaucracy? None of it is frictionless, it’s all horribly inefficient and fragmented, and one party is steadfastly committed to keeping it that way, and the other party only vaguely recognizes how big of a problem it is. Voting needs to be made easier, but making it compulsory would not automatically do that. edit: besides which, voting already takes me only about 5 minutes. The problem is that that experience, which I have as a wealthy white person in a liberal suburb of a blue state, is not universal.
      - NamTaf 5y ago
        I was talking about Australian voting, given the post to which I replied talked about Australian voting. Specifically, I was pointing out that in Australia, compulsory voting is great. I don’t really know about the US’s ghoulish pantomime that is government, but at least here, the understanding that one can be fined for not voting comes with the societal expectation that the roadblocks to doing so will be cleared as much as possible by them, across the board, to everyone. That way, people who fail to vote fail to do so by their own choice and thus the fine is not farcical. Australia’s government understands and honours that.
        jolux 5y ago
        It’s possible it could be a good idea, I suppose I’m just cynical that it could be implemented in a way that doesn’t end up further alienating those who don’t vote — mostly poor people. I’m also somewhat worried in this political climate that such a measure could start another civil war, for one thing, and that at minimum there would need to be federal military intervention to enforce it in southern states, as in the 1960s. The Supreme Court would also need to be packed, because the justices currently holding the majority would never support it (they gutted the Voting Rights Act with no pretense of legal argument eight years ago merely because it was an ideological goal).
- temp8964 5y ago
  I heard requiring photo id in voting is also common, but what do I know? I must be a bigot who hates people without a photo id.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  >such as people who have to work on Saturdays A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US. Which is why that early and postal voting is so important.
  - Jedd 5y ago
    > A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US. Questions around the math aside, in Australia for federal elections the polling booths are open from 08:00 through to 18:00 - and the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections. In either case, it means the number of people who can't get to a polling booth during those 10 hours on the Saturday is relatively tiny. And, as you and parent noted, early / postal voting is a convenient, non-contentious, trusted option.
    - nickff 5y ago
      >"... the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections.." The process is typically fast in the US as well, but the edge cases are what get into the news. The USA also has a population 13x larger, so we should expect any given issue to occur about 13x as often in the USA as in AUS.
      - majewsky 5y ago
        > The USA also has a population 13x larger, so we should expect any given issue to occur about 13x as often in the USA as in AUS. Nitpick: "13x as much", not "13x as often".
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  Saturday is a potential issue for people who observe Sabbath and any attempt to move elections to Saturday would be seen as a potentially discriminatory act in the US.
- technion 5y ago
  Also Australian here. Unironically the whole family looks forward to voting day for the snags. I've seen kids ask why voting day so far away. Is that sort of environment all the US is missing that makes this controversial?
  - Jedd 5y ago
    In some states in the USA recently there's been legislation passed that makes it illegal to provide even water to people waiting to vote. For us Australians, I suspect that invites a huge range of questions, including how long are people normally waiting that they need water, and why would a nominally capitalist society legislate against selling libations and comestibles under these very specific conditions.
    - refurb 5y ago
      Why are you, as an Australian, so rabid about American politics?
    - umvi 5y ago
      Yeah because it's like bribing a vote. If it was non partisan water no one would care but instead it's "Oh you're hot and thirsty standing in line? Here, have a cold one courtesy of Biden (or Trump)!" Nothing is stopping voters from drinking their own water and eating their own snacks in line. I applaud laws that limit "gift giving" at the polls. The polls should not be a place where your vote is swayed by a gift.
      - skissane 5y ago
        In Australia, schools are often used as polling stations. Schools generally have parent volunteer groups who try to raise money for the school, and those parent volunteer groups use election day as an opportunity to sell food (traditionally, sausages) to the voters in order to raise funds. The sale of food is an entirely non-partisan thing. If a partisan group started giving voters free food or beverages at a polling place, that would be illegal.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory. Well, to within a practical degree; some people can't, some people don't etc By making it mandatory: 1. everyone has to accept that voting has to be accessible. 2. it's pretty hard to contest the results of a vote when you know "everyone had their say". In the US the variations around accessibility can significantly affect voter turnout.
  - skissane 5y ago
    > As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory Unlike Australia, New Zealand doesn't have compulsory voting. And yet, I am led to believe that the process of voting is just as boring in New Zealand as it is in Australia. And one could make the same point about a number of other countries – Canada, the UK, Ireland, much of Western Europe. So the reason that these countries to have far less controversy over the voting process than the US does must be something other than the question of optional-vs-mandatory voting.
  - chrismcb 5y ago
    People tend to contest the result because they feel the result was wrong or miscounted. Not because not everyone voted. I don't see how that changes if everyone is forced to vote.
nightski 5y ago
Some states already do this. It's not up to the federal government really.
redisman 5y ago
The states run their own elections
gfodor 5y ago
The secret ballot and full chain of custody of ballots is a pretty important thing in democracy.
- c0nducktr 5y ago
  Could you not have both? I'm not certain how mail-in ballots are counted currently, but it is certainly possible to have the ballots be in a sleeve, and the ballot itself only be exposed to the machine reading it. Put the ballot 'inserters' under camera if needed. It seems like a simple problem to solve. Another commenter mentioned that a real issue is that the counting of ballots isn't transparent, which is true. When I vote, all I know is that the ballot scanner increments its 'scanned ballot' count. I can't verify that it actually voted for who I voted for, and they're closed source, so I have to rely on someone else's word that they are. Maybe this is finally a use for blockchain? lol
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    No you cannot have both. Once a ballot is sent out via the mail, there is no physical control over it. It is therefore impossible to ensure the ballot is secret, which makes it impossible to know whether the voter is being bribed/coerced.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      It’s funny your comment is downvoted because what you state is self evidentially true. In general, sacrificing this important principle was acceptable if the alternative was to disenfranchise the voter (eg, they are overseas.) Now it seems there are many who want to just throw it away in the name of making voting “more accessible” in general. This is a pretty bad stance imo unless you assume it is cost-free, which it isn’t.
  - ryathal 5y ago
    blockchain seems like a terrible solution as it directly ties every person to their vote in a non anonymous way.
  - 5y ago
sidlls 5y ago
No, a healthy democracy only exists with complete transparency and access throughout the whole process. That means a public counting of paper ballots--no mail-ins, no electronic ballots, etc. Other large democracies manage to do it this way; America can, too.
macspoofing 5y ago
>That’ll be much healthier for democracy. Are you sure about that? This past election wasn't exactly very healthy. Be careful with removing all the pageantry around elections. Symbolism is very important and singular day election days play into that. So does filling in a paper ballot, and going to a polling place with your fellow citizens. Imagine you created an app, wherein you enter your preference (Dem or GOP) and the app goes and proceeds to vote for you automatically anytime there's an election. Would that improve democracy or alienate people from it?
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  This past election wasn't exactly very healthy What elections were? We have a rigged two party system. Layer conservatives and liberals stacking the system on top of that and you have an unhealthy democracy pretty much guaranteed. Given the corrupt nature of the leaders of the US, and the corrupt nature of the voters as well if we're being fair, the US has a remarkably smooth functioning system. It's definitely breaking down and showing its cracks, but given the breadth and scale of the assault it's been under for about the past 40 or 50 years, you have to be impressed at how it has held up.
egypturnash 5y ago
Yes yes a thousand times yes, I miss this from when I lived in Seattle.
notyourwork 5y ago
What's wrong with both? Expanding access in form of holiday for day of and early support seem like both good to have things.
RickJWagner 5y ago
No. Ensuring every single citizen gets access to a Identification Card that guarantees access to health care, social service, and voting would be much healthier for democracy and for the card holders. Everyone deserves access to public services. Everyone needs a government ID.

No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much healthier for democracy.

romwell 5y ago

Um, why not both?

skissane 5y ago

In Australia we always have elections on Saturday. Works well for most people. Of course, there is a minority of people it doesn't work well for, such as people who have to work on Saturdays, and observant Jews. And for those people we have early voting and postal voting too. I never quite understand why voting is such a controversial topic in the US. In many countries (I'm sure Australia is not alone in this) it is a boring thing that just works. You might not always like the outcome, but the process itself rarely becomes the topic of discussion. I think one thing that helps in Australia is that federal elections are completely controlled and run by the federal government. For federal elections, we don't have each state doing its own thing. Local government has no role to play in elections either. (Even local government elections are actually run by the state governments.) Addendum: I must point out when I say "controlled and run by the federal government", they are run by an independent and non-partisan federal agency, politicians don't have direct control over them. Likewise, each state has an independent and non-partisan agency to run state and local elections

caslon 5y ago
It's largely because increased voting overwhelmingly (and almost exclusively) benefits one side in the US. While it's obviously good to have increased participation in democracy, the side that's going to more or less cease to exist if we ever get even 80% citizen participation obviously has an incentive to make voting harder.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  I'm not sure how you rationalise that with the fact that Australia consistently votes in a right-wing government. UK (which doesn't have compulsory voting) also reelected a right-wing government.
  - jwmhjwmh 5y ago
    They were talking about the US specifically.
  - DFHippie 5y ago
    Here's a recent article about the special electoral conditions in the US: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/
  - trhway 5y ago
    Australia has 83%+ (with 67% being of British ancestry) and UK has 86% white population while US has 60% non-hispanic white population (with no such single major ancestry inside it like the British ancestry of the AU and UK white populations). Thus there are huge sources of racist/xenophobic voting power drivers that the right-wings in AU and UK can tap into while doing so in US causes blowback of similar scale and which grows with voting participation increase.
  - mastax 5y ago
    The "wings" are not very comparable between countries. They are influenced by their environment. I can confidently say that an alternate universe where those countries had US-style elections would have very different parties, though not necessarily more US-like.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- smhost 5y ago
  "we can't have democracy because then the anti-democratic party would have to change" is my favorite talking point
andrepd 5y ago
There's a long history of targeted disenfranchisement in the US. Particularly when it comes to black people.
- User23 5y ago
  This is because the USA was never intended to be a democracy.
  - FranchuFranchu 5y ago
    Very few countries were
acomjean 5y ago
It’s controversial because the party in power sets the voting rules and they tend to try and do so to their advantage. Be it gerrymandering [1]districts or setting voting rules they think will favor their party. These rules are state level functions so we have 50 different sets. It creates a system where on political party is pretty much guaranteed to win certain districts and they’re aren’t a ton of competitive races. Part of the problem is an electorate that would “vote for a bag of rocks” if it belonged to the right party. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
jolux 5y ago
Voting is also compulsory in Australia.
- NamTaf 5y ago
  And that’s fantastic. It provides impetus to the government to make it as frictionless as possible. It means I can be in and out within 5 minutes.
  - jolux 5y ago
    > It provides impetus to the government to make it as frictionless as possible. Ahahahaha. Have you tried dealing with American bureaucracy? None of it is frictionless, it’s all horribly inefficient and fragmented, and one party is steadfastly committed to keeping it that way, and the other party only vaguely recognizes how big of a problem it is. Voting needs to be made easier, but making it compulsory would not automatically do that. edit: besides which, voting already takes me only about 5 minutes. The problem is that that experience, which I have as a wealthy white person in a liberal suburb of a blue state, is not universal.
    - NamTaf 5y ago
      I was talking about Australian voting, given the post to which I replied talked about Australian voting. Specifically, I was pointing out that in Australia, compulsory voting is great. I don’t really know about the US’s ghoulish pantomime that is government, but at least here, the understanding that one can be fined for not voting comes with the societal expectation that the roadblocks to doing so will be cleared as much as possible by them, across the board, to everyone. That way, people who fail to vote fail to do so by their own choice and thus the fine is not farcical. Australia’s government understands and honours that.
      - jolux 5y ago
        It’s possible it could be a good idea, I suppose I’m just cynical that it could be implemented in a way that doesn’t end up further alienating those who don’t vote — mostly poor people. I’m also somewhat worried in this political climate that such a measure could start another civil war, for one thing, and that at minimum there would need to be federal military intervention to enforce it in southern states, as in the 1960s. The Supreme Court would also need to be packed, because the justices currently holding the majority would never support it (they gutted the Voting Rights Act with no pretense of legal argument eight years ago merely because it was an ideological goal).
temp8964 5y ago
I heard requiring photo id in voting is also common, but what do I know? I must be a bigot who hates people without a photo id.
LordDragonfang 5y ago
>such as people who have to work on Saturdays A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US. Which is why that early and postal voting is so important.
- Jedd 5y ago
  > A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US. Questions around the math aside, in Australia for federal elections the polling booths are open from 08:00 through to 18:00 - and the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections. In either case, it means the number of people who can't get to a polling booth during those 10 hours on the Saturday is relatively tiny. And, as you and parent noted, early / postal voting is a convenient, non-contentious, trusted option.
  - nickff 5y ago
    >"... the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections.." The process is typically fast in the US as well, but the edge cases are what get into the news. The USA also has a population 13x larger, so we should expect any given issue to occur about 13x as often in the USA as in AUS.
    - majewsky 5y ago
      > The USA also has a population 13x larger, so we should expect any given issue to occur about 13x as often in the USA as in AUS. Nitpick: "13x as much", not "13x as often".
BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
Saturday is a potential issue for people who observe Sabbath and any attempt to move elections to Saturday would be seen as a potentially discriminatory act in the US.
technion 5y ago
Also Australian here. Unironically the whole family looks forward to voting day for the snags. I've seen kids ask why voting day so far away. Is that sort of environment all the US is missing that makes this controversial?
- Jedd 5y ago
  In some states in the USA recently there's been legislation passed that makes it illegal to provide even water to people waiting to vote. For us Australians, I suspect that invites a huge range of questions, including how long are people normally waiting that they need water, and why would a nominally capitalist society legislate against selling libations and comestibles under these very specific conditions.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Why are you, as an Australian, so rabid about American politics?
  - umvi 5y ago
    Yeah because it's like bribing a vote. If it was non partisan water no one would care but instead it's "Oh you're hot and thirsty standing in line? Here, have a cold one courtesy of Biden (or Trump)!" Nothing is stopping voters from drinking their own water and eating their own snacks in line. I applaud laws that limit "gift giving" at the polls. The polls should not be a place where your vote is swayed by a gift.
    - skissane 5y ago
      In Australia, schools are often used as polling stations. Schools generally have parent volunteer groups who try to raise money for the school, and those parent volunteer groups use election day as an opportunity to sell food (traditionally, sausages) to the voters in order to raise funds. The sale of food is an entirely non-partisan thing. If a partisan group started giving voters free food or beverages at a polling place, that would be illegal.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory. Well, to within a practical degree; some people can't, some people don't etc By making it mandatory: 1. everyone has to accept that voting has to be accessible. 2. it's pretty hard to contest the results of a vote when you know "everyone had their say". In the US the variations around accessibility can significantly affect voter turnout.
- skissane 5y ago
  > As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory Unlike Australia, New Zealand doesn't have compulsory voting. And yet, I am led to believe that the process of voting is just as boring in New Zealand as it is in Australia. And one could make the same point about a number of other countries – Canada, the UK, Ireland, much of Western Europe. So the reason that these countries to have far less controversy over the voting process than the US does must be something other than the question of optional-vs-mandatory voting.
- chrismcb 5y ago
  People tend to contest the result because they feel the result was wrong or miscounted. Not because not everyone voted. I don't see how that changes if everyone is forced to vote.

nightski 5y ago

Some states already do this. It's not up to the federal government really.

redisman 5y ago

The states run their own elections

gfodor 5y ago

The secret ballot and full chain of custody of ballots is a pretty important thing in democracy.

c0nducktr 5y ago
Could you not have both? I'm not certain how mail-in ballots are counted currently, but it is certainly possible to have the ballots be in a sleeve, and the ballot itself only be exposed to the machine reading it. Put the ballot 'inserters' under camera if needed. It seems like a simple problem to solve. Another commenter mentioned that a real issue is that the counting of ballots isn't transparent, which is true. When I vote, all I know is that the ballot scanner increments its 'scanned ballot' count. I can't verify that it actually voted for who I voted for, and they're closed source, so I have to rely on someone else's word that they are. Maybe this is finally a use for blockchain? lol
- torstenvl 5y ago
  No you cannot have both. Once a ballot is sent out via the mail, there is no physical control over it. It is therefore impossible to ensure the ballot is secret, which makes it impossible to know whether the voter is being bribed/coerced.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    It’s funny your comment is downvoted because what you state is self evidentially true. In general, sacrificing this important principle was acceptable if the alternative was to disenfranchise the voter (eg, they are overseas.) Now it seems there are many who want to just throw it away in the name of making voting “more accessible” in general. This is a pretty bad stance imo unless you assume it is cost-free, which it isn’t.
- ryathal 5y ago
  blockchain seems like a terrible solution as it directly ties every person to their vote in a non anonymous way.
- 5y ago

sidlls 5y ago

No, a healthy democracy only exists with complete transparency and access throughout the whole process. That means a public counting of paper ballots--no mail-ins, no electronic ballots, etc. Other large democracies manage to do it this way; America can, too.

macspoofing 5y ago

>That’ll be much healthier for democracy. Are you sure about that? This past election wasn't exactly very healthy. Be careful with removing all the pageantry around elections. Symbolism is very important and singular day election days play into that. So does filling in a paper ballot, and going to a polling place with your fellow citizens. Imagine you created an app, wherein you enter your preference (Dem or GOP) and the app goes and proceeds to vote for you automatically anytime there's an election. Would that improve democracy or alienate people from it?

bilbo0s 5y ago
This past election wasn't exactly very healthy What elections were? We have a rigged two party system. Layer conservatives and liberals stacking the system on top of that and you have an unhealthy democracy pretty much guaranteed. Given the corrupt nature of the leaders of the US, and the corrupt nature of the voters as well if we're being fair, the US has a remarkably smooth functioning system. It's definitely breaking down and showing its cracks, but given the breadth and scale of the assault it's been under for about the past 40 or 50 years, you have to be impressed at how it has held up.

egypturnash 5y ago

Yes yes a thousand times yes, I miss this from when I lived in Seattle.

notyourwork 5y ago

What's wrong with both? Expanding access in form of holiday for day of and early support seem like both good to have things.

RickJWagner 5y ago

No. Ensuring every single citizen gets access to a Identification Card that guarantees access to health care, social service, and voting would be much healthier for democracy and for the card holders. Everyone deserves access to public services. Everyone needs a government ID.