5 ms·

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 en

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.
    - umvi 5y ago
      That sounds more reasonable to me than interest groups going to the polls giving out freebies
    - asciimike 5y ago
      Election sausages are by far my favorite fun fact about voting in Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage
  - Jedd 5y ago
    The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing. That sufficient number of people (to warrant passing such legislation) would be swayed on the topic of who to vote for, to disregard their experience and opinions built up over the past several years, in return for a $2 bottle of water to quench a mild thirst, seems inconceivable. I wonder if there's perhaps other reasons at play there. I guess it may be interesting to look at whether there's any common features at all of all the state legislatures that have passed such laws this year.
    - umvi 5y ago
      > The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing. I shouldn't have used Biden/Trump in my example, because where freebies really sway votes is not the POTUS, but in the dozens of other positions and issues on the ballot. In Maryland this last election the ballot was like 4 pages long and took me many hours of prep work to determine who I wanted to vote for board of education, representatives in congress, etc. If you haven't done the prep work and only came to vote for the president, your vote in the other areas is up for grabs. That's why people at the polls try to stuff your hands with brochures and freebies that have names on them - anything to make their preferred candidate's name pop into your mind while you are filling out the ballot.
      - Jedd 5y ago
        > In Maryland this last election the ballot was like 4 pages long and took me many hours of prep work to determine who I wanted to vote for board of education ... The what?! That sounds absolutely awful. We have partisan people outside the front gates at schools etc for our polling booths, with a 'how to vote' but they tend to be very well behaved, and aren't allowed on the property, so it's a small and mild gauntlet. At federal election time we have only two pieces of paper to fill out. A small green piece for (upper house) senate with 5-10 candidates, and a (ridiculously) large white sheet with ~130 names on it sorted in to about 40 columns for the (lower) house of representatives. Party / independent status is listed under each name on the former, and at the top of the columns on the latter. The voting rules have relaxed slightly - several years ago for the lower house you could opt for one or more column headings with a numeric preference OR every person under the column headings. Even that typically took you less than ten minutes, and for most people the time consuming bit was to work out which fringe parties to put at the very end of your preferences. IIRC now you can fill in as many preferences as you like below the column headings - until you get bored, basically. Either way this is a mechanism to let you select where your spill over preferences go to, rather than allowing your first preference to 'sell off' your votes, if it looks like they aren't going to obtain a seat. Ie. force your cascading preferences, rather than pass that decision onto your first preference. Interestingly in the last federal election here a good 25% of the population did not vote for either of the two major parties (both of which are somewhere to the right of center, gung-ho on being all-in on fossil fuel, etc). That group of people is trending upwards the last several elections, so there's some small optimism that we may escape the end-game of a viciously partisan two-party system here. In any case we have no other votes to cast at these events. (I recall a federal referendum about 20 years ago that was tied in to an election, but that would have been a 'yes or no' option on a separate, very small, piece of paper - with a LOT of public discussion preceding it, as it was the ol' chestnut of whether Australia should remove itself from the British Commonwealth and become a republic.) Every aspect of the voting experience in the USA really does seem to be designed to be as hostile to the citizenry as possible.

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.
  - umvi 5y ago
    That sounds more reasonable to me than interest groups going to the polls giving out freebies
  - asciimike 5y ago
    Election sausages are by far my favorite fun fact about voting in Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage
- Jedd 5y ago
  The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing. That sufficient number of people (to warrant passing such legislation) would be swayed on the topic of who to vote for, to disregard their experience and opinions built up over the past several years, in return for a $2 bottle of water to quench a mild thirst, seems inconceivable. I wonder if there's perhaps other reasons at play there. I guess it may be interesting to look at whether there's any common features at all of all the state legislatures that have passed such laws this year.
  - umvi 5y ago
    > The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing. I shouldn't have used Biden/Trump in my example, because where freebies really sway votes is not the POTUS, but in the dozens of other positions and issues on the ballot. In Maryland this last election the ballot was like 4 pages long and took me many hours of prep work to determine who I wanted to vote for board of education, representatives in congress, etc. If you haven't done the prep work and only came to vote for the president, your vote in the other areas is up for grabs. That's why people at the polls try to stuff your hands with brochures and freebies that have names on them - anything to make their preferred candidate's name pop into your mind while you are filling out the ballot.
    - Jedd 5y ago
      > In Maryland this last election the ballot was like 4 pages long and took me many hours of prep work to determine who I wanted to vote for board of education ... The what?! That sounds absolutely awful. We have partisan people outside the front gates at schools etc for our polling booths, with a 'how to vote' but they tend to be very well behaved, and aren't allowed on the property, so it's a small and mild gauntlet. At federal election time we have only two pieces of paper to fill out. A small green piece for (upper house) senate with 5-10 candidates, and a (ridiculously) large white sheet with ~130 names on it sorted in to about 40 columns for the (lower) house of representatives. Party / independent status is listed under each name on the former, and at the top of the columns on the latter. The voting rules have relaxed slightly - several years ago for the lower house you could opt for one or more column headings with a numeric preference OR every person under the column headings. Even that typically took you less than ten minutes, and for most people the time consuming bit was to work out which fringe parties to put at the very end of your preferences. IIRC now you can fill in as many preferences as you like below the column headings - until you get bored, basically. Either way this is a mechanism to let you select where your spill over preferences go to, rather than allowing your first preference to 'sell off' your votes, if it looks like they aren't going to obtain a seat. Ie. force your cascading preferences, rather than pass that decision onto your first preference. Interestingly in the last federal election here a good 25% of the population did not vote for either of the two major parties (both of which are somewhere to the right of center, gung-ho on being all-in on fossil fuel, etc). That group of people is trending upwards the last several elections, so there's some small optimism that we may escape the end-game of a viciously partisan two-party system here. In any case we have no other votes to cast at these events. (I recall a federal referendum about 20 years ago that was tied in to an election, but that would have been a 'yes or no' option on a separate, very small, piece of paper - with a LOT of public discussion preceding it, as it was the ol' chestnut of whether Australia should remove itself from the British Commonwealth and become a republic.) Every aspect of the voting experience in the USA really does seem to be designed to be as hostile to the citizenry as possible.