10 ms·

Voting from Antarctica

106 points by sklargh 4y ago

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
I'm surprised at how easy it was to vote from the fricking South Pole, I thought it would have been an exercise in voter suppression by remoteness because our most distinguished climate scientists down there are only going to vote one way.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  They voted in SF/California which is very liberal in mail in voting. Would be curious to see a similar experiment with someone living in a more conservative state with strong voter-id laws.
  - mikelward 4y ago
    It looks like there's a process for every state. Not sure if fax is always supported. https://www.fvap.gov/ https://www.fvap.gov/
  - MandieD 4y ago
    Texas counties theoretically email ballots if you send in your overseas voter request each year, but it’s theoretical, because at least my county doesn’t set up their email domain correctly, and thus doesn’t even make GMail’s Spam folder. Email domain is a subdomain of *.co.texas.us, so it’s probably a state-level issue, but the IP address in the ballot download URL (yes, IP address!) is in the same range as the county’s other websites. Oh, and the county’s main website is geofenced, so the only way I can get contact info for the elections office is using my Hetzner VM in Virginia as a Tailscale exit point. Why do I get the feeling that the State of Texas, or at least my home county, is not interested in my vote?
    - vinay427 4y ago
      San Francisco also allows one to generate their ballot and fill it out using an online accessible voting service, which then generates a PDF with your choices and a QR code that you can mail or fax back in place of the “real” ballot. Considering the number of direct democracy items on the ballot in SF, I’m glad they’ve at least made this part quite usable.
      - terinjokes 4y ago
        Although it's not clear they actually count them. I posted mine in several weeks ago, but my voter status never updated.
    - mariojv 4y ago
      Yeah, voting is such a pain in Texas compared to other states. My brother requested a mail in ballot because of a disability and never received it this year. Him and my parents were also out of state for a medical reason, had to stay longer than expected over the early voting period and Election Day, and as a result couldn't vote. You can also only vote by mail with a particular set of criteria - if you're over 65, disabled, or a few other reasons: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/voter/reqabbm.shtml https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/voter/reqabbm.shtml Election officials are also not always the most informed about rules. When my husband was in college, he was still registered in his home county about an 8 hour drive away. He called an elections office in order to verify that he could still vote for statewide and national candidates. They said it'd be no problem. He was turned away at his closest polling site on Election Day and could only vote at 1 polling site in the county, downtown, where he had to pay for parking with some of the very few dollars he had and wait several hours. Another time, I forgot to update my address for a move within the county and had to drive across the city to go to my old polling place. The poll workers at the first site wouldn't even let me cast a provisional ballot or update my address on the spot. I called the state elections hotline to complain, and they were unsympathetic. I can only imagine how hard it is to vote here for someone who moves around a lot or has to rely on public transportation. It makes me wonder how much of the abysmal 27% voter turnout range for ages 18-29 [0], which is still one of the highest turnouts in 3 decades, is due to voting accessibility issues versus plain apathy. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/11/10/1135810302/turnout-among-young-voters-was-the-second-highest-for-a-midterm-in-past-30-years https://www.npr.org/2022/11/10/1135810302/turnout-among-youn...
      - dementis 4y ago
        In Texas, anytime you move and update your mailing address it generally takes 7 to 10 business days for the information to fully propagate. So the timing could make it so that you are unable to vote if you miss early voting(in the same county) before you move or are not able to reach your voting location on the day off the election. https://comptroller.texas.gov/help/manage-account/update-address.php https://comptroller.texas.gov/help/manage-account/update-add... Anytime you update your postal address with the US Postal service, they make sure you have the option to also update your voter registration at the same time. Updating your voter registration is just a checkbox away when you are using the website. https://USPS.com/move https://USPS.com/move >I can only imagine how hard it is to vote here for someone who moves around a lot or has to rely on public transportation. It makes me wonder how much of the abysmal 27% voter turnout range for ages 18-29 [0], which is still one of the highest turnouts in 3 decades, is due to voting accessibility issues versus plain apathy. The die in the wool cynic in me would say plain apathy was the most like culprit for low turnout in that age group. Although public transportation in most of the US is an abysmally bad joke. There are some large cities that have decent public transportation but for the most part I feel like if you don't own a vehicle in the US then your are treated as a 3rd class citizen. Even in some cities with public transportation it can be difficult to get even get a job if you don't have your own vehicle(It's a painful catch 22 that a lot of people struggle with).
- jcranmer 4y ago
  Don't worry, some Republicans in Wisconsin have been trying to prevent military people deployed overseas from voting.
- bacon_waffle 4y ago
  A nit: this blog is from McMurdo Station, which is on an island just off off the coast of mainland Antarctica. Something like 800 miles away is the geographic South Pole, where there is a US research station too. There's dirt, dramatic scenery, and wildlife at McMurdo but not at Pole. Both of these places are mainly populated by people like the blog author who work for one of several contractors, doing the same sorts of things that are necessary to keep a small community running - relatively few are professional "scientists".
- samatman 4y ago
  Hey look, the paranoid style in American politics. So rare these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American...
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    Can you blame us, though?
- burkaman 4y ago
  There are a maximum of a couple thousand Americans in Antarctica, and fewer in November as it's not yet peak summer there, distributing their votes across many different states. Anybody conspiring to suppress votes is not going to waste their time on this tiny population.
seb1204 4y ago
It is refreshing to read something positive about something working well in a extreme situation. Kudos to you to exercise your democratic duty. Thanks for sharing.
dry_soup 4y ago
As a United States citizen, you can vote in congressional and presidential elections from Antarctica or low Earth orbit, but not if you're a resident of Puerto Rico (an American territory with a population of 3.3 million).
- soulofmischief 4y ago
- duped 4y ago
  Voting is a politic process, not a technological one.
  - dry_soup 4y ago
    That's my point
- vinay427 4y ago
  This doesn’t make it democratic, as PR is still bound by many laws made in Washington, but it is at least the one place where US citizens are free from personal tax obligations to the IRS, as far as I’m aware. The actual taxes while living overseas are often negligible or far lower due to the FEIE threshold, but in PR they don’t apply at all.
  - devoutsalsa 4y ago
    Act 60 is fairly limited in scope, and you can only get tax breaks on a couple things. All other income may not be subject to federal taxes, but you will pay Puerto Rican taxes, which may even be higher than federal taxes. https://www.anchin.com/articles/puerto-rico-act-60-how-you-can-lower-your-federal-and-state-tax-rates-under-the-resident-tax-incentive-code/ https://www.anchin.com/articles/puerto-rico-act-60-how-you-c...
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      Residents of states also pay state taxes, and in high tax states those can exceed federal taxes so the "they also pay Puerto Rican taxes" line doesn't get them off the hook in any way.
ispo 4y ago
- mk89 4y ago
  I really don't understand this comment. Where is the colonisation in this case? Did you see what this person had to do to vote?
- kryptiskt 4y ago
  It's Americans voting in American elections, they can do that in here in Malmö, Sweden. That doesn't violate our sovereignty.
  - ispo 4y ago
    They are not embassies or consulates in Antarctica, and operations relating to them should not be performed there.
    - martopix 4y ago
      In what way does this relate to embassies or consulates? You can vote from wherever you have access to the universal postal service, it seems.
    - mk89 4y ago
      Voting has absolutely nothing to do with consulates or embassies. If there is one, maybe they do simplify voting, but the right to vote should go beyond the presence of any office. This is what the US government allows to do: no matter where you are, we (try) to guarantee that you can participate. It's actually awesome that this is allowed.
      - RektBoy 4y ago
        A lot of countries allows remote voting. Some even without using a medieval technology.
        4y ago
filbo 4y ago
mwest 4y ago
Very chill domain name... ;-)
- echoradio 4y ago
  I marvel at it’s succinctness to represent information about Antarctica. Chef’s kiss.
shusaku 4y ago
Voting by fax from a convenient store in Japan and immediately buying a beer to drink on the way home is a fond voting memory of mine. > A few weeks later, I even started receiving political flyers in the mail. I guess you can just buy a voter registration database for this purpose, and it includes temporary addresses. Also spam emails to the address you asked the ballot to be sent to. Either that or an unrelated data leak…
- awirth 4y ago
  Now, I've done it by email! (although still using the convenience store for print/scan) Unfortunately, https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ is geo-blocked for all of Japan (and several other countries AFAICT) "due to cybersecurity reasons", so I can no longer check/update my registration to vote without a VPN. I tried contacting different parts of the MA state government to get it unblocked several times over the past few years, but had no success. I have no idea what the other MA-voting residents of Japan do. Last time I contacted the secretary of state's office via my state representative, they were kind enough to temporarily unblock my home IP address for one week though!
  - harywilke 4y ago
    Indiana is also geo-blocked outside the US. I've tried contacting the secretary of state's office and they sent me a form reply with a link to the geo-blocked site. I wonder how many other states have their voting portals geo-blocked.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Might the embassy be able to assist? Just a thought.
RektBoy 4y ago
FAX in 2022? Ok this made my day, thank you. I didn't see anyone using a fax for about 10 years or more.
- dmd 4y ago
  Here in healthcare (US, Boston area, major hospital) I use faxes every single day.
  - RektBoy 4y ago
    That's weird, I always thought that American healthcare has good money, since you're paying a lot, for everything. I would imagine people in our Healthcare system (Czech) use fax somewhere too. But we have healthcare payed from taxes and whole system keeps going only because of nurses and doctors working ridiculous hours for mediocre pay.
    - dmd 4y ago
      Where do you think that money GOES though?
- dementis 4y ago
  If you deal with any sort of government background investigation for getting a job then the chances are high that you will need to send the documents via fax. My experience has been it's sadly the exception that allows you to digitally upload the required files. Although my experience has only been with Australian, UK and US based companies.
jakuboboza 4y ago
That is so cool.
tumetab1 4y ago
Interest article! Not being American I always confused by a lack stronger identity check in voting but I guess it's not a really big issue specially for less important elections. That being said, I think my country like others, would gain to improve voters access when they are temporarily away by allowing online voting with the already existing electronic ID cards like many EU countries have.
- acdha 4y ago
  The thing to remember about voter ID discussions in the US is that it costs money & non-trivial amounts of time to get IDs, and most of the people calling for ID checks aren’t willing to fund improvements there because most of the affected people are not their voters. This makes these conversations hard to follow because they’re not really about voting but access to government ID. If we had universal ID cards, I doubt any serious number of people would oppose checks.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    Yeah, the GOP has been caught a few times saying the quiet part out loud: Voter ID initiatives are explicitly intended to make it harder to vote for lower-income people, because those people tend to vote for Democrats.
    - refurb 4y ago
      Yet most countries have far stricter voter ID requirements. Weird!
      - acdha 4y ago
        How many of those countries lack freely-available national ID cards?
      - erehweb 4y ago
        Most countries do not have a history of Jim Crow laws and voter suppression like the U.S. does.
Metacelsus 4y ago
I wonder if he'll write about the recent COVID outbreak there.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Link?
club_tropical 4y ago
I didn't know you could do rain dances in Antarctica.
excalibur 4y ago
Brb, I need to mail a potato somewhere.
2C64 4y ago
> A few weeks later, I even started receiving political flyers in the mail. I guess you can just buy a voter registration database for this purpose, and it includes temporary addresses. This is (mostly) public information. The Secretary of State in most cases makes this available in some form or another for raw consumption but the preferred method is to buy a cleaned and collated version of the national voter file from one of the vendors. Usually this is also joined to a consumer file which includes additional demographic and contact data. In California, that would be PDI who also offers a CRM for voter contact. Nationwide, from the Democratic side of things, you're looking at Targetsmart or Catalist - unless you're a campaign or other hard side organization receiving access via the state or national party. On the Republican side it'd be the Data Trust. There are "non-partisan" third party voter file vendors out there too but the data isn't as reliable as the partisan options.

106 points by sklargh 4y ago

I'm surprised at how easy it was to vote from the fricking South Pole, I thought it would have been an exercise in voter suppression by remoteness because our most distinguished climate scientists down there are only going to vote one way.

bushbaba 4y ago
They voted in SF/California which is very liberal in mail in voting. Would be curious to see a similar experiment with someone living in a more conservative state with strong voter-id laws.
- mikelward 4y ago
  It looks like there's a process for every state. Not sure if fax is always supported. https://www.fvap.gov/ https://www.fvap.gov/
- MandieD 4y ago
  Texas counties theoretically email ballots if you send in your overseas voter request each year, but it’s theoretical, because at least my county doesn’t set up their email domain correctly, and thus doesn’t even make GMail’s Spam folder. Email domain is a subdomain of *.co.texas.us, so it’s probably a state-level issue, but the IP address in the ballot download URL (yes, IP address!) is in the same range as the county’s other websites. Oh, and the county’s main website is geofenced, so the only way I can get contact info for the elections office is using my Hetzner VM in Virginia as a Tailscale exit point. Why do I get the feeling that the State of Texas, or at least my home county, is not interested in my vote?
  - vinay427 4y ago
    San Francisco also allows one to generate their ballot and fill it out using an online accessible voting service, which then generates a PDF with your choices and a QR code that you can mail or fax back in place of the “real” ballot. Considering the number of direct democracy items on the ballot in SF, I’m glad they’ve at least made this part quite usable.
    - terinjokes 4y ago
      Although it's not clear they actually count them. I posted mine in several weeks ago, but my voter status never updated.
  - mariojv 4y ago
    Yeah, voting is such a pain in Texas compared to other states. My brother requested a mail in ballot because of a disability and never received it this year. Him and my parents were also out of state for a medical reason, had to stay longer than expected over the early voting period and Election Day, and as a result couldn't vote. You can also only vote by mail with a particular set of criteria - if you're over 65, disabled, or a few other reasons: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/voter/reqabbm.shtml https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/voter/reqabbm.shtml Election officials are also not always the most informed about rules. When my husband was in college, he was still registered in his home county about an 8 hour drive away. He called an elections office in order to verify that he could still vote for statewide and national candidates. They said it'd be no problem. He was turned away at his closest polling site on Election Day and could only vote at 1 polling site in the county, downtown, where he had to pay for parking with some of the very few dollars he had and wait several hours. Another time, I forgot to update my address for a move within the county and had to drive across the city to go to my old polling place. The poll workers at the first site wouldn't even let me cast a provisional ballot or update my address on the spot. I called the state elections hotline to complain, and they were unsympathetic. I can only imagine how hard it is to vote here for someone who moves around a lot or has to rely on public transportation. It makes me wonder how much of the abysmal 27% voter turnout range for ages 18-29 [0], which is still one of the highest turnouts in 3 decades, is due to voting accessibility issues versus plain apathy. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/11/10/1135810302/turnout-among-young-voters-was-the-second-highest-for-a-midterm-in-past-30-years https://www.npr.org/2022/11/10/1135810302/turnout-among-youn...
    - dementis 4y ago
      In Texas, anytime you move and update your mailing address it generally takes 7 to 10 business days for the information to fully propagate. So the timing could make it so that you are unable to vote if you miss early voting(in the same county) before you move or are not able to reach your voting location on the day off the election. https://comptroller.texas.gov/help/manage-account/update-address.php https://comptroller.texas.gov/help/manage-account/update-add... Anytime you update your postal address with the US Postal service, they make sure you have the option to also update your voter registration at the same time. Updating your voter registration is just a checkbox away when you are using the website. https://USPS.com/move https://USPS.com/move >I can only imagine how hard it is to vote here for someone who moves around a lot or has to rely on public transportation. It makes me wonder how much of the abysmal 27% voter turnout range for ages 18-29 [0], which is still one of the highest turnouts in 3 decades, is due to voting accessibility issues versus plain apathy. The die in the wool cynic in me would say plain apathy was the most like culprit for low turnout in that age group. Although public transportation in most of the US is an abysmally bad joke. There are some large cities that have decent public transportation but for the most part I feel like if you don't own a vehicle in the US then your are treated as a 3rd class citizen. Even in some cities with public transportation it can be difficult to get even get a job if you don't have your own vehicle(It's a painful catch 22 that a lot of people struggle with).
jcranmer 4y ago
Don't worry, some Republicans in Wisconsin have been trying to prevent military people deployed overseas from voting.
bacon_waffle 4y ago
A nit: this blog is from McMurdo Station, which is on an island just off off the coast of mainland Antarctica. Something like 800 miles away is the geographic South Pole, where there is a US research station too. There's dirt, dramatic scenery, and wildlife at McMurdo but not at Pole. Both of these places are mainly populated by people like the blog author who work for one of several contractors, doing the same sorts of things that are necessary to keep a small community running - relatively few are professional "scientists".
samatman 4y ago
Hey look, the paranoid style in American politics. So rare these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American...
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  Can you blame us, though?
burkaman 4y ago
There are a maximum of a couple thousand Americans in Antarctica, and fewer in November as it's not yet peak summer there, distributing their votes across many different states. Anybody conspiring to suppress votes is not going to waste their time on this tiny population.

seb1204 4y ago

It is refreshing to read something positive about something working well in a extreme situation. Kudos to you to exercise your democratic duty. Thanks for sharing.

dry_soup 4y ago

As a United States citizen, you can vote in congressional and presidential elections from Antarctica or low Earth orbit, but not if you're a resident of Puerto Rico (an American territory with a population of 3.3 million).

soulofmischief 4y ago
duped 4y ago
Voting is a politic process, not a technological one.
- dry_soup 4y ago
  That's my point
vinay427 4y ago
This doesn’t make it democratic, as PR is still bound by many laws made in Washington, but it is at least the one place where US citizens are free from personal tax obligations to the IRS, as far as I’m aware. The actual taxes while living overseas are often negligible or far lower due to the FEIE threshold, but in PR they don’t apply at all.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  Act 60 is fairly limited in scope, and you can only get tax breaks on a couple things. All other income may not be subject to federal taxes, but you will pay Puerto Rican taxes, which may even be higher than federal taxes. https://www.anchin.com/articles/puerto-rico-act-60-how-you-can-lower-your-federal-and-state-tax-rates-under-the-resident-tax-incentive-code/ https://www.anchin.com/articles/puerto-rico-act-60-how-you-c...
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    Residents of states also pay state taxes, and in high tax states those can exceed federal taxes so the "they also pay Puerto Rican taxes" line doesn't get them off the hook in any way.

ispo 4y ago

mk89 4y ago
I really don't understand this comment. Where is the colonisation in this case? Did you see what this person had to do to vote?
kryptiskt 4y ago
It's Americans voting in American elections, they can do that in here in Malmö, Sweden. That doesn't violate our sovereignty.
- ispo 4y ago
  They are not embassies or consulates in Antarctica, and operations relating to them should not be performed there.
  - martopix 4y ago
    In what way does this relate to embassies or consulates? You can vote from wherever you have access to the universal postal service, it seems.
  - mk89 4y ago
    Voting has absolutely nothing to do with consulates or embassies. If there is one, maybe they do simplify voting, but the right to vote should go beyond the presence of any office. This is what the US government allows to do: no matter where you are, we (try) to guarantee that you can participate. It's actually awesome that this is allowed.
    - RektBoy 4y ago
      A lot of countries allows remote voting. Some even without using a medieval technology.
      - 4y ago

filbo 4y ago

mwest 4y ago

Very chill domain name... ;-)

echoradio 4y ago
I marvel at it’s succinctness to represent information about Antarctica. Chef’s kiss.

shusaku 4y ago

Voting by fax from a convenient store in Japan and immediately buying a beer to drink on the way home is a fond voting memory of mine. > A few weeks later, I even started receiving political flyers in the mail. I guess you can just buy a voter registration database for this purpose, and it includes temporary addresses. Also spam emails to the address you asked the ballot to be sent to. Either that or an unrelated data leak…

awirth 4y ago
Now, I've done it by email! (although still using the convenience store for print/scan) Unfortunately, https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ is geo-blocked for all of Japan (and several other countries AFAICT) "due to cybersecurity reasons", so I can no longer check/update my registration to vote without a VPN. I tried contacting different parts of the MA state government to get it unblocked several times over the past few years, but had no success. I have no idea what the other MA-voting residents of Japan do. Last time I contacted the secretary of state's office via my state representative, they were kind enough to temporarily unblock my home IP address for one week though!
- harywilke 4y ago
  Indiana is also geo-blocked outside the US. I've tried contacting the secretary of state's office and they sent me a form reply with a link to the geo-blocked site. I wonder how many other states have their voting portals geo-blocked.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Might the embassy be able to assist? Just a thought.

RektBoy 4y ago

FAX in 2022? Ok this made my day, thank you. I didn't see anyone using a fax for about 10 years or more.

dmd 4y ago
Here in healthcare (US, Boston area, major hospital) I use faxes every single day.
- RektBoy 4y ago
  That's weird, I always thought that American healthcare has good money, since you're paying a lot, for everything. I would imagine people in our Healthcare system (Czech) use fax somewhere too. But we have healthcare payed from taxes and whole system keeps going only because of nurses and doctors working ridiculous hours for mediocre pay.
  - dmd 4y ago
    Where do you think that money GOES though?
dementis 4y ago
If you deal with any sort of government background investigation for getting a job then the chances are high that you will need to send the documents via fax. My experience has been it's sadly the exception that allows you to digitally upload the required files. Although my experience has only been with Australian, UK and US based companies.

jakuboboza 4y ago

That is so cool.

tumetab1 4y ago

Interest article! Not being American I always confused by a lack stronger identity check in voting but I guess it's not a really big issue specially for less important elections. That being said, I think my country like others, would gain to improve voters access when they are temporarily away by allowing online voting with the already existing electronic ID cards like many EU countries have.

acdha 4y ago
The thing to remember about voter ID discussions in the US is that it costs money & non-trivial amounts of time to get IDs, and most of the people calling for ID checks aren’t willing to fund improvements there because most of the affected people are not their voters. This makes these conversations hard to follow because they’re not really about voting but access to government ID. If we had universal ID cards, I doubt any serious number of people would oppose checks.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Yeah, the GOP has been caught a few times saying the quiet part out loud: Voter ID initiatives are explicitly intended to make it harder to vote for lower-income people, because those people tend to vote for Democrats.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Yet most countries have far stricter voter ID requirements. Weird!
    - acdha 4y ago
      How many of those countries lack freely-available national ID cards?
    - erehweb 4y ago
      Most countries do not have a history of Jim Crow laws and voter suppression like the U.S. does.

Metacelsus 4y ago

I wonder if he'll write about the recent COVID outbreak there.

ubermonkey 4y ago
Link?

club_tropical 4y ago

I didn't know you could do rain dances in Antarctica.

excalibur 4y ago

Brb, I need to mail a potato somewhere.

2C64 4y ago

> A few weeks later, I even started receiving political flyers in the mail. I guess you can just buy a voter registration database for this purpose, and it includes temporary addresses. This is (mostly) public information. The Secretary of State in most cases makes this available in some form or another for raw consumption but the preferred method is to buy a cleaned and collated version of the national voter file from one of the vendors. Usually this is also joined to a consumer file which includes additional demographic and contact data. In California, that would be PDI who also offers a CRM for voter contact. Nationwide, from the Democratic side of things, you're looking at Targetsmart or Catalist - unless you're a campaign or other hard side organization receiving access via the state or national party. On the Republican side it'd be the Data Trust. There are "non-partisan" third party voter file vendors out there too but the data isn't as reliable as the partisan options.