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> Early voting, including one or more Sundays, is available in the Republican states that people are complaining about, e.g. Texas and Georgia. But that is not

> Early voting, including one or more Sundays, is available in the Republican states that people are complaining about, e.g. Texas and Georgia. But that is not when most polling stations are open. Only a small subset are... because everyone is expected to vote on a Tuesday. > free ID at your county registrar's office Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office. > In the U.S., polling sites are typically run by the county or municipality. And I'm sure that financing does not affect availability of these sites, right? This is HN, not Facebook, I'm sure most here are aware of how systems operate and and have heard of compounding effects.

tptacek 5y ago
In the US, the Democrats generally control urban areas, the Republicans rural. So financing is not so much the issue with polling places. I don't know what "this is HN, not Facebook" is supposed to mean, but I'm pretty sure the guidelines ask you not to write stuff like that.
xyzzyz 5y ago
> Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office. Given how sparsely populated country was in 19th century, and how cumbersome travel was back then, do you think that democracy in the US in 19th century was impossible?
- tptacek 5y ago
  First, yes, it was impossible: most people in the country were legally ineligible to vote. That aside, though: voting in the 19th century looked nothing like it does today. Most of what we think of as modern Democratic voting (the secret ballot, registration, etc) are Progressive Era reforms.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    None of your comment addresses my actual question. Your first is a failed attempt at a gotcha, which I expected and specifically preempted by asking whether it was possible, not whether US actually had a democracy. Second is a piece of historical trivia, which is irrelevant to my question. So, how is it? Is democracy only possible in heavily urbanized countries, so that the citizens never are in more than walking distance from a polling place? Or, hopefully, it is a more general political systems that can apply to more varied range of human societies?
    - pvg 5y ago
      None of your comment addresses my actual question. Your first is a failed attempt at a gotcha That's a curious characterization given your original question is a gotcha question, someone just replied to it as if it wasn't.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I'm sorry. I didn't make this clear enough. I thought "voter registration was an innovation of the Progressive Era" spelled this out, and that it was sort of also implied by the fact that for much of the 19th century, we didn't even have widespread photography, and certainly not photographic ID, but, to be clear: my point was that in the 19th century nobody had to go to the DMV to vote, because voter identification wasn't a thing. Before I responded to your original comment, I did some poking around about 19th century voting practices. It's an interesting question. If you want to keep talking about it, can I ask first if you've taken the time to do the same thing? This is one of those discussions where we don't have to derive everything axiomatically.
rayiner 5y ago
> But that is not when most polling stations are open. Only a small subset are... because everyone is expected to vote on a Tuesday. Not true. Under the Georgia law, for example, counties are required to provide at least two Saturdays of early voting, and certain large urban counties are required to provide early voting in certain designated locations. Insofar as polling places are often schools and similar locations, obviously there will be fewer early voting polling locations. But in Atlanta, for example, there are typically dozens in key locations such as public libraries accessible by public transit. > Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office. In France you have to apply for your national ID card in person as well. In Germany and most German-speaking countries, you’re required to show up in person to the municipality within 30 days of moving to a new location. People manage. > And I'm sure that financing does not affect availability of these sites, right? Yeah, and more affluent counties typically vote democrat. In Georgia, it’s certainly not the mostly white rural counties that have all the money. > This is HN, not Facebook, I'm sure most here are aware of how systems operate and and have heard of compounding effects. I think there are a lot of people who are willing to make assumptions and believe wild exaggerations about people on the other side of the political aisle.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Infamously, Georgia provides more early voting access than much of New York.
- ghaff 5y ago
  On the one hand, the evidence suggests that requiring IDs to vote is a solution in search of a problem in the US. That said, I strongly suspect that whatever reasonable scheme you concocted to get free photo IDs into the hands of people who don't have one would be broadly criticized as requiring too much time, too much documentation that some people don't have, too much of a privacy violation, etc.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    > requiring IDs to vote is a solution in search of a problem in the US It's not, you're just failing to correctly identify the problem. Elections must not only be secure as a matter of fact, but be perceived as secure. The security of an election must be apparent on its face, to different groups who have adverse interests and don't trust each other. Watch how people in Taiwan count votes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw. They don't do it this way to address fraudulent elections in the past. They do it so that the vote counting is above question. Election procedures where the integrity of the voting is established by after-the-fact studies or the results of litigation showing the absence of fraud are bad procedures that don't actually satisfy all the requirements for good elections. This is not a republican versus democrat thing. Election denial after 2020 undoubtedly has been especially bad--which in part shows that election procedures should be robust against demagoguery!--but more than a third of democrats believed that the 2004 election was stolen, and about the same percentage of republicans believed the same thing about the 2012 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/04/many-republicans-think-election-was-fixed-thats-what-losing-partisans-often-think https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/04/many-repu.... The numbers for the GOP right now are double that, but it's also worth observing that the 2004 and 2012 elections didn't occur against the backdrop of last-minute pandemic-related changes to voting procedures. Either way, a system where an incumbent wins by multiple points (Bush won by 2.4 and Obama by 3.9) and still one out of three members of the losing party still think they cheated is dangerous to democracy.

tptacek 5y ago

In the US, the Democrats generally control urban areas, the Republicans rural. So financing is not so much the issue with polling places. I don't know what "this is HN, not Facebook" is supposed to mean, but I'm pretty sure the guidelines ask you not to write stuff like that.

xyzzyz 5y ago

> Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office. Given how sparsely populated country was in 19th century, and how cumbersome travel was back then, do you think that democracy in the US in 19th century was impossible?

tptacek 5y ago
First, yes, it was impossible: most people in the country were legally ineligible to vote. That aside, though: voting in the 19th century looked nothing like it does today. Most of what we think of as modern Democratic voting (the secret ballot, registration, etc) are Progressive Era reforms.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  None of your comment addresses my actual question. Your first is a failed attempt at a gotcha, which I expected and specifically preempted by asking whether it was possible, not whether US actually had a democracy. Second is a piece of historical trivia, which is irrelevant to my question. So, how is it? Is democracy only possible in heavily urbanized countries, so that the citizens never are in more than walking distance from a polling place? Or, hopefully, it is a more general political systems that can apply to more varied range of human societies?
  - pvg 5y ago
    None of your comment addresses my actual question. Your first is a failed attempt at a gotcha That's a curious characterization given your original question is a gotcha question, someone just replied to it as if it wasn't.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I'm sorry. I didn't make this clear enough. I thought "voter registration was an innovation of the Progressive Era" spelled this out, and that it was sort of also implied by the fact that for much of the 19th century, we didn't even have widespread photography, and certainly not photographic ID, but, to be clear: my point was that in the 19th century nobody had to go to the DMV to vote, because voter identification wasn't a thing. Before I responded to your original comment, I did some poking around about 19th century voting practices. It's an interesting question. If you want to keep talking about it, can I ask first if you've taken the time to do the same thing? This is one of those discussions where we don't have to derive everything axiomatically.

rayiner 5y ago

> But that is not when most polling stations are open. Only a small subset are... because everyone is expected to vote on a Tuesday. Not true. Under the Georgia law, for example, counties are required to provide at least two Saturdays of early voting, and certain large urban counties are required to provide early voting in certain designated locations. Insofar as polling places are often schools and similar locations, obviously there will be fewer early voting polling locations. But in Atlanta, for example, there are typically dozens in key locations such as public libraries accessible by public transit. > Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office. In France you have to apply for your national ID card in person as well. In Germany and most German-speaking countries, you’re required to show up in person to the municipality within 30 days of moving to a new location. People manage. > And I'm sure that financing does not affect availability of these sites, right? Yeah, and more affluent counties typically vote democrat. In Georgia, it’s certainly not the mostly white rural counties that have all the money. > This is HN, not Facebook, I'm sure most here are aware of how systems operate and and have heard of compounding effects. I think there are a lot of people who are willing to make assumptions and believe wild exaggerations about people on the other side of the political aisle.

tptacek 5y ago
Infamously, Georgia provides more early voting access than much of New York.
ghaff 5y ago
On the one hand, the evidence suggests that requiring IDs to vote is a solution in search of a problem in the US. That said, I strongly suspect that whatever reasonable scheme you concocted to get free photo IDs into the hands of people who don't have one would be broadly criticized as requiring too much time, too much documentation that some people don't have, too much of a privacy violation, etc.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > requiring IDs to vote is a solution in search of a problem in the US It's not, you're just failing to correctly identify the problem. Elections must not only be secure as a matter of fact, but be perceived as secure. The security of an election must be apparent on its face, to different groups who have adverse interests and don't trust each other. Watch how people in Taiwan count votes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw. They don't do it this way to address fraudulent elections in the past. They do it so that the vote counting is above question. Election procedures where the integrity of the voting is established by after-the-fact studies or the results of litigation showing the absence of fraud are bad procedures that don't actually satisfy all the requirements for good elections. This is not a republican versus democrat thing. Election denial after 2020 undoubtedly has been especially bad--which in part shows that election procedures should be robust against demagoguery!--but more than a third of democrats believed that the 2004 election was stolen, and about the same percentage of republicans believed the same thing about the 2012 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/04/many-republicans-think-election-was-fixed-thats-what-losing-partisans-often-think https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/04/many-repu.... The numbers for the GOP right now are double that, but it's also worth observing that the 2004 and 2012 elections didn't occur against the backdrop of last-minute pandemic-related changes to voting procedures. Either way, a system where an incumbent wins by multiple points (Bush won by 2.4 and Obama by 3.9) and still one out of three members of the losing party still think they cheated is dangerous to democracy.