5 ms·

The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing. That sufficient number of people (to warrant passing such legislation) would be

by 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.
  - mos_basik 5y ago
    I interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" of research [during the days/weeks before election day] to decide which candidate to vote for in the down-ballot races. They said this to support their proposition that it might be easier to sway voter's down-ballot votes with poll gifts because it takes a lot of personal time to research the policies of low-profile candidates (i.e., candidates who aren't Trump/Biden). Voters who haven't spend that time might plausibly sell those votes for a free water bottle. Sounds like you may have interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" to fill out the ballot [on election day]. So, you gave a rundown of your ballot's mechanics as an example of how a ballot can be designed in a way that doesn't take "many hours" to complete.
    - Jedd 5y ago
      Oh, no, I actually took it to mean that time-consuming research was required before turning up to the polling station -- but acknowledging that 4 pages of ballots could be onerous, especially as one of the votes is clearly way more momentous than the others. I guess the argument is that because it's a weekday, you want to aggregate many into the one event.
      - jfengel 5y ago
        In addition to some obscure offices, 3 of the 4 pages were taken up with various bond issues, like this: An Act enabling the County to borrow money and issue bonds in an amount not exceeding $38,134,000 to finance the design, construction, reconstruction, extension, acquisition, improvement, enlargement, alteration, renovation, relocation, rehabilitation or repair of Public Safety Facilities (including Fire Department Facilities), as defined therein. I think very few people actually bother to research such questions. They just either reflexively tick Yes or No. Researching a better answer requires a lot of questions. Does the county actually need to repair its Public Safety Facilities? What new construction do they plan? Have they been spending their money well in the past? Answering all that would take a fair bit of time. And there were a dozen items like that.

by Jedd 5y ago

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.
- mos_basik 5y ago
  I interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" of research [during the days/weeks before election day] to decide which candidate to vote for in the down-ballot races. They said this to support their proposition that it might be easier to sway voter's down-ballot votes with poll gifts because it takes a lot of personal time to research the policies of low-profile candidates (i.e., candidates who aren't Trump/Biden). Voters who haven't spend that time might plausibly sell those votes for a free water bottle. Sounds like you may have interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" to fill out the ballot [on election day]. So, you gave a rundown of your ballot's mechanics as an example of how a ballot can be designed in a way that doesn't take "many hours" to complete.
  - Jedd 5y ago
    Oh, no, I actually took it to mean that time-consuming research was required before turning up to the polling station -- but acknowledging that 4 pages of ballots could be onerous, especially as one of the votes is clearly way more momentous than the others. I guess the argument is that because it's a weekday, you want to aggregate many into the one event.
    - jfengel 5y ago
      In addition to some obscure offices, 3 of the 4 pages were taken up with various bond issues, like this: An Act enabling the County to borrow money and issue bonds in an amount not exceeding $38,134,000 to finance the design, construction, reconstruction, extension, acquisition, improvement, enlargement, alteration, renovation, relocation, rehabilitation or repair of Public Safety Facilities (including Fire Department Facilities), as defined therein. I think very few people actually bother to research such questions. They just either reflexively tick Yes or No. Researching a better answer requires a lot of questions. Does the county actually need to repair its Public Safety Facilities? What new construction do they plan? Have they been spending their money well in the past? Answering all that would take a fair bit of time. And there were a dozen items like that.