5 ms·

I've heard great things about the way that India votes. It sounds like their Election Commission takes their job very seriously.

phanimahesh 10mo ago
Very. Every voter is guaranteed a booth nearby (<2km away from registered address). Including a monk who gets his own polling booth because he lives so far from everyone and everything else. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/5/8/an-election-booth-inside-a-forest-in-india-for-just-one-voter https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/5/8/an-election-booth... Also https://www.reuters.com/world/india/family-remote-himalayas-gets-own-polling-station-indian-election-2024-05-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/family-remote-himalayas-...
- seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
  As a kid living in Vicksburg MS in the late 80s, this is what irked me about in person voting. We lived in county but in a fairly dense suburban area with some biggish apartments nearby (SFH was mostly white, the apartments were mostly black). Our polling site was way out in the boonies, somewhere you could never get to without driving for 45 minutes...I was shocked when my dad took me with him. There was really no good reason for that, unless they were really against a certain segment of the population voting (a lot of people in the apartments didn't have cars, or were too busy to go so far to vote).
  - autoexec 10mo ago
    Yep. Physical voting places are great, but they're also an easy target for voter suppression. There should be a requirement that there be a nearby polling location, we should also have multiple days to vote there and employers should be required to give every one of their employees at least one of those days off.
    - seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
      Georgia made sure African Americans had crowded long line voting locations with no access to water. It wasn’t hard to figure out why they were doing that. The South is still pretty racist.
      - galago 10mo ago
        I observed this in New England while living in a city with evenly distributed population. The polling locations were more abundant in the wealthier side of the city. This may not have been straight racism; there was no way for me to determine why this was the case. Looking at a map of median income and polling locations made it pretty obvious to me at least that polling location choice was biased.
        the_snooze 9mo ago
        It could be as simple as "wealthy areas get more county services." There are practical considerations when choosing polling places, like the availability of parking and enough space to accommodate a line, check-in tables, voting booths, and ideally separate entrance and exit doors. Public schools and county rec centers are go-to locations because the county (who administers the election) already owns them and they have the space needed. Churches are great too, but they require having an agreement with a private organization.
        seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
        By New England I guess you just mean Boston and the Boston area right? I'm unaware of any other huge concentrations of African Americans in that region. Boston is well known for its racism, I actually had a friend from Boston when I was living in Vicksburg MS and they got along there much better than me.
topspin 10mo ago
> It sounds like their Election Commission takes their job very seriously. A key part of India's system is the Elector's Photo Identity Card (EPIC), required to cast ballots. Similar obligations are present wherever election integrity is taken seriously.
- PaulDavisThe1st 10mo ago
  > Similar obligations are present wherever election integrity is taken seriously. Asserted without evidence, and apparently quite likely to be an attempt to cast aspersions on "election integrity" in the USA and elsewhere.
- slg 10mo ago
  >Similar obligations are present wherever election integrity is taken seriously. The flip side is even more true. If someone is claiming they care about election integrity and isn't willing to pair that with funding of an equivalent ID system that is both free and easy for voters to acquire, they don't actually care about election integrity.
  - mullingitover 10mo ago
    This needs to be said loudly from the rooftops. If your voter ID system isn’t 100% free and absolutely effortless for voters to obtain, it’s a badly disguised vote suppression scheme. It’s pretty much always a vote suppression scheme.
    - xp84 10mo ago
      I’d like to respectfully challenge you on this. There is no chance anyone can ever create an effortless-to-get ID. Even if it was like the census where they sent someone to your house repeatedly to try to find you, take your picture and print an ID on the spot, it wouldn’t be effortless because you might not know where your passport or birth certificate are. Some people probably are so badly organized and/or ignorant that they can’t manage making and keeping one single DMV appointment even once every 15 years so that they could get an ID (I think we can all agree that an “expired” ID would do fine, as long as the picture isn’t so out of date it can’t be verified). Anyway, it’s only those people who would be “disenfranchised” under a voter ID system and I’m not convinced our government would benefit from incorporating the opinions of someone so unserious. It’s ok that some things in life are reserved for people that have invested a tiny amount of effort once in their lives. There’s also not a free and effortless way to feed or bathe yourself. By the way, a state ID costs $15 in Mississippi and $9 for “eligible people” in California.
creata 10mo ago
Maybe, but the election ink stuff feels a bit overboard.

phanimahesh 10mo ago

Very. Every voter is guaranteed a booth nearby (<2km away from registered address). Including a monk who gets his own polling booth because he lives so far from everyone and everything else. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/5/8/an-election-booth-inside-a-forest-in-india-for-just-one-voter https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/5/8/an-election-booth... Also https://www.reuters.com/world/india/family-remote-himalayas-gets-own-polling-station-indian-election-2024-05-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/family-remote-himalayas-...

seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
As a kid living in Vicksburg MS in the late 80s, this is what irked me about in person voting. We lived in county but in a fairly dense suburban area with some biggish apartments nearby (SFH was mostly white, the apartments were mostly black). Our polling site was way out in the boonies, somewhere you could never get to without driving for 45 minutes...I was shocked when my dad took me with him. There was really no good reason for that, unless they were really against a certain segment of the population voting (a lot of people in the apartments didn't have cars, or were too busy to go so far to vote).
- autoexec 10mo ago
  Yep. Physical voting places are great, but they're also an easy target for voter suppression. There should be a requirement that there be a nearby polling location, we should also have multiple days to vote there and employers should be required to give every one of their employees at least one of those days off.
  - seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
    Georgia made sure African Americans had crowded long line voting locations with no access to water. It wasn’t hard to figure out why they were doing that. The South is still pretty racist.
    - galago 10mo ago
      I observed this in New England while living in a city with evenly distributed population. The polling locations were more abundant in the wealthier side of the city. This may not have been straight racism; there was no way for me to determine why this was the case. Looking at a map of median income and polling locations made it pretty obvious to me at least that polling location choice was biased.
      - the_snooze 9mo ago
        It could be as simple as "wealthy areas get more county services." There are practical considerations when choosing polling places, like the availability of parking and enough space to accommodate a line, check-in tables, voting booths, and ideally separate entrance and exit doors. Public schools and county rec centers are go-to locations because the county (who administers the election) already owns them and they have the space needed. Churches are great too, but they require having an agreement with a private organization.
      - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
        By New England I guess you just mean Boston and the Boston area right? I'm unaware of any other huge concentrations of African Americans in that region. Boston is well known for its racism, I actually had a friend from Boston when I was living in Vicksburg MS and they got along there much better than me.

topspin 10mo ago

> It sounds like their Election Commission takes their job very seriously. A key part of India's system is the Elector's Photo Identity Card (EPIC), required to cast ballots. Similar obligations are present wherever election integrity is taken seriously.

PaulDavisThe1st 10mo ago
> Similar obligations are present wherever election integrity is taken seriously. Asserted without evidence, and apparently quite likely to be an attempt to cast aspersions on "election integrity" in the USA and elsewhere.
slg 10mo ago
>Similar obligations are present wherever election integrity is taken seriously. The flip side is even more true. If someone is claiming they care about election integrity and isn't willing to pair that with funding of an equivalent ID system that is both free and easy for voters to acquire, they don't actually care about election integrity.
- mullingitover 10mo ago
  This needs to be said loudly from the rooftops. If your voter ID system isn’t 100% free and absolutely effortless for voters to obtain, it’s a badly disguised vote suppression scheme. It’s pretty much always a vote suppression scheme.
  - xp84 10mo ago
    I’d like to respectfully challenge you on this. There is no chance anyone can ever create an effortless-to-get ID. Even if it was like the census where they sent someone to your house repeatedly to try to find you, take your picture and print an ID on the spot, it wouldn’t be effortless because you might not know where your passport or birth certificate are. Some people probably are so badly organized and/or ignorant that they can’t manage making and keeping one single DMV appointment even once every 15 years so that they could get an ID (I think we can all agree that an “expired” ID would do fine, as long as the picture isn’t so out of date it can’t be verified). Anyway, it’s only those people who would be “disenfranchised” under a voter ID system and I’m not convinced our government would benefit from incorporating the opinions of someone so unserious. It’s ok that some things in life are reserved for people that have invested a tiny amount of effort once in their lives. There’s also not a free and effortless way to feed or bathe yourself. By the way, a state ID costs $15 in Mississippi and $9 for “eligible people” in California.

creata 10mo ago

Maybe, but the election ink stuff feels a bit overboard.