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On July 19 2020 10:04 StalkerTL wrote:
I took at look at France’s voter ID laws.
It’s pretty simple. You’re automatically registered to vote and the people responsible for elections send you a document come election time. You come with proof of address and some form of proof of nationality like a passport or a national ID card, which is free.
The key words being free National ID card and automatically registered to vote. The US voting problems stem from: insufficient places to vote, held on a really awful day for most people rather than a weekend or public holiday, most voter ID proposals requiring the citizen to pay for it as an individual, and some states making it more difficult than it should be to register to vote
Indeed. Similarly in Canada you don't need to have a photo ID. You can instead have some other form of ID (for example, every Canadian has a health card for medical treatment so the only reason you wouldn't have a health card is if you lost it and didn't bother to get another one. It costs nothing to get a replacement if you lose your card) plus a proof of address of some type (mail, a pay stub, anything with your name and address essentially). Having a government photo ID simply removes needing two pieces of identification. In most provinces in Canada from what I remember, non-driver's license photo IDs are available for free or very cheap. There's even a way to vote if you have none of that but have someone with you who can vouch for you so long as they can show who they are with ID.
Voting and registration doesn't need to be difficult. The labyrinthine mess that is voting in the US is how it is because of politics, not because it's a reasonable system. The US system is garbage and I can't see how anyone can defend it.
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On July 19 2020 11:38 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 10:04 StalkerTL wrote:
I took at look at France’s voter ID laws.
It’s pretty simple. You’re automatically registered to vote and the people responsible for elections send you a document come election time. You come with proof of address and some form of proof of nationality like a passport or a national ID card, which is free.
The key words being free National ID card and automatically registered to vote. The US voting problems stem from: insufficient places to vote, held on a really awful day for most people rather than a weekend or public holiday, most voter ID proposals requiring the citizen to pay for it as an individual, and some states making it more difficult than it should be to register to vote
Indeed. Similarly in Canada you don't need to have a photo ID. You can instead have some other form of ID (for example, every Canadian has a health card for medical treatment so the only reason you wouldn't have a health card is if you lost it and didn't bother to get another one. It costs nothing to get a replacement if you lose your card) plus a proof of address of some type (mail, a pay stub, anything with your name and address essentially). Having a government photo ID simply removes needing two pieces of identification. In most provinces in Canada from what I remember, non-driver's license photo IDs are available for free or very cheap. There's even a way to vote if you have none of that but have someone with you who can vouch for you so long as they can show who they are with ID. Voting and registration doesn't need to be difficult. The labyrinthine mess that is voting in the US is how it is because of politics, not because it's a reasonable system. The US system is garbage and I can't see how anyone can defend it.
It's easier to vote in the US. You are not required to have an ID at all to vote (in like 97% (not scientific) of places, but ID laws have been negated by the courts almost everywhere). What is this labyrinthine mess are you talking about? There's early voting, absentee voting, mail-in voting, same day registration at polling location in many places, etc. Like how on earth you can say its "hard" to vote in the US is asinine. There are more restrictions on voting (req. ID) in Canada than in the US.
https://www.usa.gov/voter-registration-card
https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote#item-212645
I have to question where you get your information to make such statements about voting in the US compared to your own countries.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electronic-or-online-voter-registration.aspx#Table of states w/ovr
Dang even backwards GOP places like Alabama, FL, Georgia, Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, etc. you can register online. So hard. Much difficult.
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On July 19 2020 11:47 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 11:38 Ben... wrote:On July 19 2020 10:04 StalkerTL wrote:
I took at look at France’s voter ID laws.
It’s pretty simple. You’re automatically registered to vote and the people responsible for elections send you a document come election time. You come with proof of address and some form of proof of nationality like a passport or a national ID card, which is free.
The key words being free National ID card and automatically registered to vote. The US voting problems stem from: insufficient places to vote, held on a really awful day for most people rather than a weekend or public holiday, most voter ID proposals requiring the citizen to pay for it as an individual, and some states making it more difficult than it should be to register to vote
Indeed. Similarly in Canada you don't need to have a photo ID. You can instead have some other form of ID (for example, every Canadian has a health card for medical treatment so the only reason you wouldn't have a health card is if you lost it and didn't bother to get another one. It costs nothing to get a replacement if you lose your card) plus a proof of address of some type (mail, a pay stub, anything with your name and address essentially). Having a government photo ID simply removes needing two pieces of identification. In most provinces in Canada from what I remember, non-driver's license photo IDs are available for free or very cheap. There's even a way to vote if you have none of that but have someone with you who can vouch for you so long as they can show who they are with ID. Voting and registration doesn't need to be difficult. The labyrinthine mess that is voting in the US is how it is because of politics, not because it's a reasonable system. The US system is garbage and I can't see how anyone can defend it. It's easier to vote in the US. You are not required to have an ID at all to vote (in like 97% (not scientific) of places, but ID laws have been negated by the courts almost everywhere). What is this labyrinthine mess are you talking about? There's early voting, absentee voting, mail-in voting, same day registration at polling location in many places, etc. Like how on earth you can say its "hard" to vote in the US is asinine. There are more restrictions on voting (req. ID) in Canada than in the US.
This is incredibly misleading. We also have online registration in Canada and it is consistent for every Canadian. Though we may have the minimally required ID (which is trivial for any Canadian to produce, and the elections folks have worked to make the system as easy as possible), we don't have the problem of voter rolls being selectively purged (leaving people so they don't know if they are registered or if they need to register again), people not receiving their voter cards in the mail until it is too late, people not receiving mail-in ballots in time despite requesting them (which has been a pretty substantial issue in the primaries so far thanks to the Trump admin fucking the USPS), polling stations being closed so it's difficult to vote in some areas but easy in others (which disproportionally affects POC. See Georgia and Kentucky), resources being disproportionately distributed to certain polling stations so some people can vote in a few minutes while it takes literally hours for others to vote, and many other such issues that make voting a needlessly difficult, complicated, and frustrating process. That's why I call the US system a labyrinthine mess.
You speak as though mail-in voting in the US is some widespread thing when it is not consistently across all states and the current administration is doing everything in their power to stop mail-in voting from being made easier despite there being a literal fucking pandemic (since they know they would lose if voting was easy and mail-in voting was easily accessible for everyone). Not only that, the USPS is being actively harmed from within right before the election by a person installed by the Trump administration and substantial budget cuts have been applied. With how bad it's been getting with the USPS, people will be less confident in mail-in voting, which will cause many to vote in-person (or, as in the primary, they'll have to vote in-person anyway because their ballot didn't show up for them to be able to fill it out and return it in time to have it counted), but it will also cause some people not to vote.
Everything you have mentioned regarding voting in the US so far has been under the assumption that everything is being applied consistently across all states/counties and the system is working properly when that isn't the case. There is little consistency to the US system. Why are deadlines for registration all over the place? Voting itself is a completely inconsistent and unreliable experience. In Canada we don't have needlessly complex voting machines that have a bizarre tendency to break and we don't have ballots designed to be as misleading as possible. Everyone across all of Canada has almost the exact same voting experience, and those who require special help with voting get it from the elections folks (people in remote areas, ex-pats, etc.). Our elections are run by a single independent, non-partisan agency, not by 50 separate states with 50 separate voting systems, 50 separate sets of rules and registration deadlines, and 50 separate opportunities for fuckery. The US system doesn't need to be this complicated and voting doesn't need to be this difficult. It only is because it is politically advantageous for it to be so.
In a perfect vacuum under perfect circumstances with everything running consistently within the rules and no GOP fuckery, yes the US system could be okay. In reality this is far from the case. It shouldn't be as inconsistent and terrible as it currently is. Everyone should have the exact same voting experience and should have no fear that their vote won't be counted or that they won't be able to vote because of circumstances outside their control.
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On July 19 2020 13:04 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 11:47 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 11:38 Ben... wrote:On July 19 2020 10:04 StalkerTL wrote:
I took at look at France’s voter ID laws.
It’s pretty simple. You’re automatically registered to vote and the people responsible for elections send you a document come election time. You come with proof of address and some form of proof of nationality like a passport or a national ID card, which is free.
The key words being free National ID card and automatically registered to vote. The US voting problems stem from: insufficient places to vote, held on a really awful day for most people rather than a weekend or public holiday, most voter ID proposals requiring the citizen to pay for it as an individual, and some states making it more difficult than it should be to register to vote
Indeed. Similarly in Canada you don't need to have a photo ID. You can instead have some other form of ID (for example, every Canadian has a health card for medical treatment so the only reason you wouldn't have a health card is if you lost it and didn't bother to get another one. It costs nothing to get a replacement if you lose your card) plus a proof of address of some type (mail, a pay stub, anything with your name and address essentially). Having a government photo ID simply removes needing two pieces of identification. In most provinces in Canada from what I remember, non-driver's license photo IDs are available for free or very cheap. There's even a way to vote if you have none of that but have someone with you who can vouch for you so long as they can show who they are with ID. Voting and registration doesn't need to be difficult. The labyrinthine mess that is voting in the US is how it is because of politics, not because it's a reasonable system. The US system is garbage and I can't see how anyone can defend it. It's easier to vote in the US. You are not required to have an ID at all to vote (in like 97% (not scientific) of places, but ID laws have been negated by the courts almost everywhere). What is this labyrinthine mess are you talking about? There's early voting, absentee voting, mail-in voting, same day registration at polling location in many places, etc. Like how on earth you can say its "hard" to vote in the US is asinine. There are more restrictions on voting (req. ID) in Canada than in the US. This is incredibly misleading. We also have online registration in Canada and it is consistent for every Canadian. Though we may have the minimally required ID (which is trivial for any Canadian to produce, and the elections folks have worked to make the system as easy as possible), we don't have the problem of voter rolls being selectively purged (leaving people so they don't know if they are registered or if they need to register again), people not receiving their voter cards in the mail until it is too late, people not receiving mail-in ballots in time despite requesting them (which has been a pretty substantial issue in the primaries so far thanks to the Trump admin fucking the USPS), polling stations being closed so it's difficult to vote in some areas but easy in others (which disproportionally affects POC. See Georgia and Kentucky), resources being disproportionately distributed to certain polling stations so some people can vote in a few minutes while it takes literally hours for others to vote, and many other such issues that make voting a needlessly difficult, complicated, and frustrating process. That's why I call the US system a labyrinthine mess. You speak as though mail-in voting in the US is some widespread thing when it is not consistently across all states and the current administration is doing everything in their power to stop mail-in voting from being made easier despite there being a literal fucking pandemic (since they know they would lose if voting was easy and mail-in voting was easily accessible for everyone). Not only that, the USPS is being actively harmed from within right before the election by a person installed by the Trump administration and substantial budget cuts have been applied. With how bad it's been getting with the USPS, people will be less confident in mail-in voting, which will cause many to vote in-person (or, as in the primary, they'll have to vote in-person anyway because their ballot didn't show up for them to be able to fill it out and return it in time to have it counted), but it will also cause some people not to vote. Everything you have mentioned regarding voting in the US so far has been under the assumption that everything is being applied consistently across all states/counties and the system is working properly when that isn't the case. There is little consistency to the US system. Why are deadlines for registration all over the place? Voting itself is a completely inconsistent and unreliable experience. In Canada we don't have needlessly complex voting machines that have a bizarre tendency to break and we don't have ballots designed to be as misleading as possible. Everyone across all of Canada has almost the exact same voting experience, and those who require special help with voting get it from the elections folks (people in remote areas, ex-pats, etc.). Our elections are run by a single independent, non-partisan agency, not by 50 separate states with 50 separate voting systems, 50 separate sets of rules and registration deadlines, and 50 separate opportunities for fuckery. The US system doesn't need to be this complicated and voting doesn't need to be this difficult. It only is because it is politically advantageous for it to be so. In a perfect vacuum under perfect circumstances with everything running consistently within the rules and no GOP fuckery, yes the US system could be okay. In reality this is far from the case. It shouldn't be as inconsistent and terrible as it currently is. Everyone should have the exact same voting experience and should have no fear that their vote won't be counted or that they won't be able to vote because of circumstances outside their control.
You want to give the power to the Feds to mandate uniform election rules across all 50 states, ok, but you then realize that you're also complaining about that same institution/party making the election system a mess. That's a bit of a contradiction. The fact is that the US is a Federated Republic with high-degree of state-level autonomy. This isn't some new thing. It predates the GOP. I don't see how you can blame the GOP for the formation of the Nation, but you do you.
As for the rest of the issues, they are an extreme minority of locations primarily located in urban centers run by Democrats. Like, if you think voter fraud is not an issue this isn't really an issue either. The fact is it is very easy to register and vote in the US. There is no conspiracy with the USPS or withholding ballots, etc. Local electoral bodies deal with those things and in the vast majority of instances you come up with they're run by the Party that is crying disenfranchisement. The only thing you can legitimately point to is electoral roll purging, but I haven't seen evidence that people who were legitimately enrolled have been disenrolled in large numbers. Feel free to give me some citations or evidence though that is happening and I'll happily the concede the point (and no pointing to say, 7% purge to 15% purge is not evidence; it's your implicit assumption that something afoul has happened and not that there were legitimately 15% of say...dead people or people that moved, etc.).
The biggest area of disenfranchisement that is not some conspiracy level argument is the fact that felons are not allowed to vote. That is a huge problem with the proliferation of felony level charges and our horrendous "justice" system that is routinely decreasing the amount of jury trials by use of proliferation of laws to bully suspects into plea deals.
By the way its not hard for people to look up their states electoral rules. You say it's complicated, but it's really not. People living in Montana don't have to know NY's rules and vice versa. You have to know and look up one set of rules - your states, no different than if you had to look up one set of rules - your Nation's. It's not even complicated for traveling workers (absentee and mail-in voting is not difficult). You know what's complicated? The fucking tax code. People have to navigate that shit show, surely they can do something as simple as knowing their states voting and registration rules.
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On July 19 2020 10:57 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 10:12 goiflin wrote:On July 19 2020 09:59 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 09:48 goiflin wrote:On July 19 2020 09:30 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 02:56 Dan HH wrote:On July 18 2020 21:18 Wegandi wrote:
PS: You want to hear something funny - France abolished postal (mail in) voting in 1975. Holy shit, ya'll some fanatical fascists. Mail voting in the US is attempting to solve issues that don't exist in France due to automatic registration, voting on Sundays and virtually no queues outside of foreign consulates. I don't know why there isn't as big of a push for those other solutions as there is for mail voting, but the point of the poster you replied to was that opposition to it stems from not wanting to fix the electoral process by those that benefit from lower/filtered turnout rather than from a lack of necessity as in France. What baffles me about you and Danglars is how you take the appearance of the US more seriously and personally than anyone else here yet at the same time are the most dismissive about fixing the issues that cause those negative appearances. You are more upset with pesky TLers pointing out the willfully broken voting process rather than with the willfully broken voting process existing. I actually don't think the voting process is all that broken outside of felons not being able to vote (and I personally think voting privileges should be much more restrictive (e.g. you should be a taxpayer to be able to vote)). As for your general assertion its very easy in America to register to vote and many places have same day registration you just have to show up to the polling location. I don't think automatic registration does anything significant when to me that just signifies how awful the democratic system itself is where you have to automatically register folks rather than them taking a little bit of effort (like super minimal) to register themselves, but then we give them the power of the vote which has very drastic consequences for not only their fellow citizens but people around the world. Does anyone never connect those two? Like we can't trust people to register themselves, but we can trust them enough to pick folks to wield the power of the USG? Come on. I actually don't care about the appearance of the USG (in fact, I probably have a much worse view of it than everyone here), I just take issue with hypocrits and its especially strong from EU posters who will levy accusations on high from their pedestal when the EU in many cases is worse or has similar problems that they conveniently ignore. It's a bit of a glass house thing. Maybe its just an ingrained reflexive behavior from all your colonizing (and yes that is passive aggressive). As for dismissive about fixing? Lol. I'm a misanthropic anarchist so I find it funny that you'd levy that allegation. It's obvious you're not familiar with my views or posting history. Requiring people to pay taxes to be able to vote would be interesting in the context that many people who have a lot of money would no longer be able to vote, since tax evasion and all. I don't think it would change much in the current field of US politics, since it's mostly about money in politics in the first place, and those individual votes overall wouldn't change much, but it would certainly be interesting to see how much everyone would lose their minds if they had to actually pay their taxes to be able to vote. Now forgive me, since I don't know quite that much about the American taxation system, but does this exempt people who are below a certain poverty line from being able to vote? Because that'd be a questionable act in the first place. I think you want to increase voter engagement, not decrease it, since that's one of the bigger steps towards resolving a lot of the problems that have settled into the system in the first place (not the only one, mind you, but still one of the important ones). I get that you're inherently distrusting of the average voter, but increasing voter engagement through making it easier, paired with a better education system to actually get people to understand what they're voting for, and what responsibilities that entails, would be a good way to actually get people to vote responsibly, no? Maybe people would realize that there's more choices than two and you'd get a lot more independent clout from various regions in the states that could actually push their people's views on the national level. But maybe it's too far gone at this point. Everyone who works in the US gets taxed, those below the poverty line just get refunded their entire tax bill (so their net taxation rate IIRC <12,000$ is 0, in reality those under the poverty line have a negative tax rate as they qualify for all sorts of welfare like EBT, SCHIP, etc.) I would say that as long as you pay taxes you can vote (I'm not basing this on net taxation rates). No, I actually want to decrease voter engagement. Boomers shouldn't be able to force working age people to pay for their existence. They shouldn't also be able to vote in doofuses who are militaristic douchebags who have high likelihood that will start wars they never have to engage with. Same with college folks who pay no taxes voting themselves taxpayer money for things like loan forgiveness, increased welfare and entitlements, etc. Fuck that baloney. I get the idea. Thanks for clarifying. I definitely agree about voter responsibility being pretty bad at this point, however, I disagree with the idea of decreasing voter engagement because I while I agree those who are already out of their formative years are unlikely to change their voting habits (and thus, will tend towards voting selfishly to the detriment to others not only in their own nation but to others outside of theirs), I also think there's no reason to give up on the generations that follow, and that change can happen, however slowly it might proceed, for the betterment of society overall. That there's no point to just letting the next voter generation think that voting for their own self interest is the best way to vote, rather to consider the consequences of giving power to certain people, and to really analyze that choice before they make it instead of voting like it's a fashion statement or simple self concern. Resources are finite, it's important to know how to use them efficiently in a complex machine like modern governments, and voters are responsible for that as well as the people who are in charge of actually dealing with those systems. However, I also recognize that I'm not a US citizen, and thus I understand that there's a lot of differences inherent to our nations that makes my point of view sort of ignorant when it comes to systems like that. So perhaps it's better to simply have less people become engaged so you can focus on making sure those who can are doing so responsibly. I think the vote in democratic societies with universal suffrage (no restrictions beyond say...being a felon or what not) incentivizes the worst human impulses (after all its zero-sum, you win, or you lose). Avarice, envy, pettiness and vindictiveness, conflict, etc. I don't presume the vote to be some natural good that must be protected at all costs or that any significant restrictions means despotism. You're also assuming that the Government wants informed educated citizens, I fail to see why that would be the case. It's more likely they want docile obedient citizens and as Government-education is structured this seems to be much more likelier to me. The population of any country is also a bell-curve when it comes to intelligence. I think its fool-hardy to expect a vast majority of said population to be wise with their vote. The baseline just does not promote this view. Before you mention it, people are much better at identifying their own needs, wants, and desires rather than calculate what is good, beneficial, etc. society-wide as the vote prescribes. Beyond that, incentive structures differ between a system of property rights and the tragedy of the commons that is the vote. All told, the structure of the vote will always devolve into the nastiness of politics and regional conflicts, petty briberies for votes, etc. at the expense of citizen liberties.
I understand where you're coming from. I don't know that one can state that people will always vote for their own personal gain objectively, but I do see the trend that tends to follow what you're saying, so perhaps that's just the way of things. Especially when it comes to those in power wanting those who vote them in to be docile towards their own losses, while they continue to deprive others of resources/rights, and putting the responsibility of educating the masses on how to vote responsibly on the state is ironically an irresponsible decision since it's so easily exploited. There's definitely something to be said for smaller government in the context that it's easier to stop that sort of thing from occurring, but as you said before, it's sort of past the point where you can get rid of the state.
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Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote.
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On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote.
And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that.
Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes.
If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate.
Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this.
And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place.
And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party.
My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly.
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On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote.
I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/
It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go.
Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy.
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It's interesting how the conversation got twist from USA is going fascist to the voting system. Well done Wegandi. Like, US people are convince they have the best democracy in the world, while the rest of the world thinks the opposite. Nothing new here.
I forgot an obvious othe point in my (quickly made, guilty) list before: police brutalizing journalists (last time I saw numbers it was 100+ cases reported? not even an isolated incident). If that's not textbook fascism, I don't know what it is.
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On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly.
I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have?
I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol
Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system.
On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy.
this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to.
(I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.)
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On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.)
Also, you're commenting on a gaming website, and guessing from what you write, there's 100% you belong to a community that has NOTHING to fear about voter suppression / long queues / etc..
Edit: before people bring "small numbers"; the thing is that in your such perfect system, you don't need to massively cheat, you just need to tweak it in the right places.
The simple fact that you can be in power without having the majority is a red flag.
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On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.)
You're glossing over a ton of things while getting really huffy, why? There are literally 50 different voter registration schemes, so automatically the notion that voting in the US is "objectively easier and simpler" needs dramatic qualification, particularly when it is being compared with nationally uniform systems. At the same time, the wide disparities across different states require a heavy discounting of "well in my state its easy and I've never had a problem, so how can anyone of the 300+ million people in the US claim voting is tough here?" Aren't you out of Alaska, for crying out loud?
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So do 95%+ (?) of people in the country so it seems like maybe addressing specific concerns of the <5% the current system doesn't work for within the system might be a solution?
It is utterly ridiculous. Again I am very confident that the voting systems "works' for a higher percentage of people in this country then say the ACA, or the aforementioned tax code, or any number of other things.
The fact that we have atrocious turnout and manage to elect someone like our current president is a function of a lot of things but laying blame at the 'voting system' is both laughable and ineffective.
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On July 19 2020 19:40 Atreides wrote:
So do 95%+ (?) of people in the country so it seems like maybe addressing specific concerns of the <5% the current system doesn't work for within the system might be a solution?
It is utterly ridiculous. Again I am very confident that the voting systems "works' for a higher percentage of people in this country then say the ACA, or the aforementioned tax code, or any number of other things.
The fact that we have atrocious turnout and manage to elect someone like our current president is a function of a lot of things but laying blame at the 'voting system' is both laughable and ineffective.
Your confidence is not a point of fact nor is your desire to turn millions of people into small percentage points that can be tossed aside. At their height, Jim Crow laws only affected around 5 percent or less of the population, so harping on that number is pretty fucking dumb, tons of politically important questions in the US regard less than 5% of the population. That doesn't make them any less important.
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On July 19 2020 19:39 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.) You're glossing over a ton of things while getting really huffy, why? There are literally 50 different voter registration schemes, so automatically the notion that voting in the US is "objectively easier and simpler" needs dramatic qualification At the same time, the wide disparities across different states require a heavy discounting of "well in my state its easy and I've never had a problem, so how can anyone of the 300+ million people in the US claim voting is tough here?" Aren't you out of Alaska, for crying out loud?
Its about equally valid from an argumentation stand point and significantly less ludicrous then the everpresent claims of "i saw a long line on tv, the system is clearly fucked up and disenfanchising voters so we got a moron for a president. The system in <insert european country> is so much better!"
and I have fairly clearly been significantly less huffy then the 4 people who have responded to me, who outside of one offered the convincing argument of 'the US system is bad because its the US and we know it's bad". Wonderful.
My current voting precinct (at my home in alaska) is 20 miles away and somewhat inconvenient because the local legislative district is bigger then some states. It was significantly easier to vote in Iowa for me in fact when I lived there. Sure enough though I only have experience voting in two states. Why is my voting experience irrelevant but every european in the thread can post theirs as a (somehow???) damning indictment of the US. Very nice. I still have not seen any argument one iota more rigorous for why the SYSTEM is so bad.
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On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.)
We're talking with Europeans / Canadians who get their entirety of news from self-selected sources presumably with significant bias. Every day I check MSNBC, CNN, Fox, Reason, The Atlantic, etc. and holy shit what inculcated blubber (Reason is by far the best simply by fact it isn't some mildly-detached arm of one of the two parties).
It's insanely easy to vote in the US. Pointing to small anecdotes does not diminish the statistical and blatantly obvious facts of the matter. You actually have EU people in here stating it is easier for them to vote than here in the US when they have more restrictions placed on them to vote. It's hilarious. You know what, it's compounded by the fact that the areas with supposed highest disenfranchisement due to poor polling place logistics are the places ran by the same mealy-mouths screeching the most about it. They're incompetent nincompoops who either cannot find enough volunteers, space, or just suck at their electoral duties. It's not some conspiracy from GOP Governors or whatever picking polling locations and specifically denying adequate logistics. I'm from FL and the idiot county supervisor of elections (a Democrat) lady from Broward (IIRC) had issues every damn election.
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/19/18102781/brenda-snipes-broward-county-resignation-2018-elections
Since her appointment in 2003 by Florida’s then-governor, Jeb Bush — when she replaced another elections supervisor accused of neglect of duty and incompetence — Snipes oversaw multiple elections in which thousands of ballots were lost or even destroyed mid-litigation, resulting in a flurry of lawsuits each time. And in 2018, during a midterm election that drew more attention (and voters) than any in recent memory, Broward County — and Snipes — once again dropped the electoral ball.
Snipes was right in the middle of the chaos, refusing to answer questions or respond to records requests. In one incident, she even illegally ordered the destruction of 688 boxes of ballots — roughly 6,000 ballots in total — that were the subject of a lawsuit filed disputing the results of the August 2016 Democratic primary in Broward County, in which Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz defeated a South Florida law professor named Tim Canova. That August 2016 primary was full of problems in Broward County — including that results were posted online 30 minutes before polls closed.
Even before ordering the destruction of the ballots, Snipes had refused public records requests from both Canova and a documentary filmmaker who was making a film about election transparency. Canova didn’t even know that the boxes of ballots had been destroyed, only finding out during a hearing two months after the ballots had been thrown out, and one month after Snipes’s attorney had told Canova’s legal representation that they could examine the ballots (which now no longer existed except as digital scans). In her testimony, Snipes only said that “nothing on my part was intentional” about destroying the boxes of ballots, adding that their destruction was a “mistake.”
All this brings us to 2018, when even the design of Broward County’s sample ballot caused problems, resulting in “undervoting” and thousands of people simply not voting in Florida’s Senate race.
But David Brown, who ran against Snipes in 2016 for the elections supervisor position (and lost), told the New York Times that while Snipes had done a great job getting more voters registered, “It’s a very complicated office, with lots of rules and regulations. But I also think she has failed to reach out and get the help or resources she needs when problems do come up, so they don’t get fixed.”
They then attribute stuff like this electoral malfeasance for GOP disenfranchisement. It's hilarious. You want to fix that 1.5%, stop appointing/electing incompetent supervisor of elections. There's no sinister conspiracy afoot to deny Americans their vote.
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On July 19 2020 19:40 Atreides wrote:
So do 95%+ (?) of people in the country so it seems like maybe addressing specific concerns of the <5% the current system doesn't work for within the system might be a solution?
It is utterly ridiculous. Again I am very confident that the voting systems "works' for a higher percentage of people in this country then say the ACA, or the aforementioned tax code, or any number of other things.
The fact that we have atrocious turnout and manage to elect someone like our current president is a function of a lot of things but laying blame at the 'voting system' is both laughable and ineffective. your right, the problem is not the system itself but the people exploiting that system to benefit themselves/their party and suppressing the opposition.
But we're unlikely to change these people and get them to behave.
Instead its more realistic to try to change the system to make it less easy to exploit, that is why so much of the discussion focuses on the system. Because while it is also unlikely to bring about change, its more realistic then expecting people to change.
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On July 19 2020 19:42 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 19:39 farvacola wrote:On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.) You're glossing over a ton of things while getting really huffy, why? There are literally 50 different voter registration schemes, so automatically the notion that voting in the US is "objectively easier and simpler" needs dramatic qualification At the same time, the wide disparities across different states require a heavy discounting of "well in my state its easy and I've never had a problem, so how can anyone of the 300+ million people in the US claim voting is tough here?" Aren't you out of Alaska, for crying out loud? Its about equally valid from an argumentation stand point and significantly less ludicrous then the everpresent claims of "i saw a long line on tv, the system is clearly fucked up and disenfanchising voters so we got a moron for a president. The system in <insert european country> is so much better!" and I have fairly clearly been significantly less huffy then the 4 people who have responded to me, who outside of one offered the convincing argument of 'the US system is bad because its the US and we know it's bad". Wonderful.
You tried to turn this into some awful game of using your US vantage point to belittle the opinions of non-Americans who have identified problems with our voting system and want to comment on it. That's on you, as well as the logical leaps used to diminish the significance of what happens to statistically small, yet nevertheless enormous numbers of people who try to vote.
And no Wegandi, this has nothing to do with some grand conspiracy, the exact opposite is precisely the problem.
To the non-Americans commenting, I hear you and you should know that plenty of people here agree that we make voting too hard for too many people. As you can see, we are in no shortage of people who will come up any number of dumb reasons why that isn't a problem.
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On July 19 2020 19:48 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 19:42 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 19:39 farvacola wrote:On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.) You're glossing over a ton of things while getting really huffy, why? There are literally 50 different voter registration schemes, so automatically the notion that voting in the US is "objectively easier and simpler" needs dramatic qualification At the same time, the wide disparities across different states require a heavy discounting of "well in my state its easy and I've never had a problem, so how can anyone of the 300+ million people in the US claim voting is tough here?" Aren't you out of Alaska, for crying out loud? Its about equally valid from an argumentation stand point and significantly less ludicrous then the everpresent claims of "i saw a long line on tv, the system is clearly fucked up and disenfanchising voters so we got a moron for a president. The system in <insert european country> is so much better!" and I have fairly clearly been significantly less huffy then the 4 people who have responded to me, who outside of one offered the convincing argument of 'the US system is bad because its the US and we know it's bad". Wonderful. You tried to turn this into some awful game of using your US vantage point to belittle the opinions of non-Americans who have identified problems with our voting system and want to comment on it. That's on you, as well as the logical leaps used to diminish the significance of what happens to statistically small, yet nevertheless enormous numbers of people who try to vote. And no Wegandi, this has nothing to do with some grand conspiracy, the exact opposite is precisely the problem. To the non-Americans commenting, I hear you and you should know that plenty of people here agree that we make voting too hard for too many people. As you can see, we are in no shortage of people who will come up any number of dumb reasons why that isn't a problem.
Right there is no conspiracy. It's mostly incompetent electoral supervisors who are often Democrat in urban and metropolitan counties/cities. The idea of GOP-led disenfranchisement has as much fact to it as the GOP saying that voter fraud is rampant.
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On July 19 2020 19:51 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 19:48 farvacola wrote:On July 19 2020 19:42 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 19:39 farvacola wrote:On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.) You're glossing over a ton of things while getting really huffy, why? There are literally 50 different voter registration schemes, so automatically the notion that voting in the US is "objectively easier and simpler" needs dramatic qualification At the same time, the wide disparities across different states require a heavy discounting of "well in my state its easy and I've never had a problem, so how can anyone of the 300+ million people in the US claim voting is tough here?" Aren't you out of Alaska, for crying out loud? Its about equally valid from an argumentation stand point and significantly less ludicrous then the everpresent claims of "i saw a long line on tv, the system is clearly fucked up and disenfanchising voters so we got a moron for a president. The system in <insert european country> is so much better!" and I have fairly clearly been significantly less huffy then the 4 people who have responded to me, who outside of one offered the convincing argument of 'the US system is bad because its the US and we know it's bad". Wonderful. You tried to turn this into some awful game of using your US vantage point to belittle the opinions of non-Americans who have identified problems with our voting system and want to comment on it. That's on you, as well as the logical leaps used to diminish the significance of what happens to statistically small, yet nevertheless enormous numbers of people who try to vote. And no Wegandi, this has nothing to do with some grand conspiracy, the exact opposite is precisely the problem. To the non-Americans commenting, I hear you and you should know that plenty of people here agree that we make voting too hard for too many people. As you can see, we are in no shortage of people who will come up any number of dumb reasons why that isn't a problem. Right there is no conspiracy. It's mostly incompetent electoral supervisors who are often Democrat in urban and metropolitan counties/cities. The idea of GOP disenfranchisement has as much fact to it as the GOP saying that voter fraud is rampant.
Starving state operations is part and parcel with poor administration, and there isn't a voting precinct in the US that isn't tied to a state apparatus that is either starved or run by fools. And sure, the goes across the aisle, but it's dishonest to pretend there's no up from down here.
On July 19 2020 19:42 Atreides wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 19:39 farvacola wrote:On July 19 2020 19:17 Atreides wrote:On July 19 2020 17:19 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. And once again, there are a bunch of systemic reasons for that. Let me give you my experience, voting in Germany: When i moved into my apartment, i registered that move with the government (as you have to do). Since then, whenever there is an election, i get a letter saying "election on sunday bla, go to house bleh, station blub between 10 and 18 o'clock". On that sunday, i take EITHER this letter OR my ID (which i also just have completely unrelated to voting), because every citizen is required to have an ID), go to that place, and can usually vote within 5 minutes. I have been to every election since i was 16 years old and first able to vote in local elections. The absolute maximum waiting time i have had so far was 15 minutes. If, for any reason whatsever, i decide i don't want to go voting on that day, i can just send the same letter i got back to request mail-in voting, and do mail-in voting instead. This system, at least to me, seems designed to put the minimum possible amount of hurdles in my way while still making sure the election is safe and legitimate. Meanwhile, from the US i constantly see reports of hours-long-queues (on a weekday where people have to work), closing polling stations in poorer areas, voter ID laws without mandatory IDs, strange voter registration things and stuff like this. And to me, it is very obvious that every single one of these things reduces the amount of people voting by some small amount. An individual can deal with any of them, but statistically a bunch of people will not vote due to the additional hurdles put in place. And i simply cannot believe that the professional politicians, whose main job is to get reelected, didn't look very carefully at statistics to see if it helps them before making it harder to vote. In a two-party system, this is pretty easy. You just have to make sure that the people voting for the other party are more effected by the voting difficulty measures. And i am sure that the people who make this decisions have lots and lots of statistics telling them which groups of people tend to vote for the other party. My best solution to this problem would be to require supermajorities (2/3) or so for any change to how voting works. That way, it can only be done bipartisanly. I have voted 20+ times in my life and every one of them required less hurdles then this. I registered to vote once when I was 18. I have never brought any document to a polling station besides the driver's license that I have had since 16 and use as generic ID for literally everything (buying alcohol etc.) I have walked up to a random voting station not my precint twice and they let me vote on statewide or national issues. (not local ones for obvious reasons) The ballot is just a 'question ballot' that they have to later verify if counting it is required. You just fabricate some ridiculous image based on preconceived opinions. Which is pretty much whatever, but how do you expect people to take it seriously when you do address the small but legitimate concerns people have? I don't think you understand that having to register ever time you changed address with the government in that fashion would be seen as INFINITELY more onerous then anything the US has in place. lol Every time this discussion happens. People say 'my system is so much better'. People respond with "But the US system is objectively easier..." and it is just happily ignored. There is a massive problem with voting in the US, its not the system. On July 19 2020 17:29 Acrofales wrote:On July 19 2020 16:35 Atreides wrote:
Its very bizarre to me the voter issue because every more 'advanced' voting system I have ever looked at is more complicated/harder to vote "on paper" then the us system in *most* places. There are specific instances to be sure but its not like its some systemic problem in actuality. The disenfranchisement of voters in the US is a huge problem but it's mostly self inflicted. People just don't vote. I think most of the issues mentioned are complicating factors, but the core issue is too few polling stations and no time off work. Registration may or may not make it harder in some states, and mail-id voting makes it easier, but at the end of the day people who would vote if it were just a quick thing to do are not going to take a vacation day to stand in line for hours. And while there are indeed plenty of polling stations where you walk in, vote, and walk out in 5 minutes, there are also too many where you first stand in line for upward of an hour. This article says 1.5% of voters stood in those lines: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/the-2018-voting-experience/It also has some explanations for why, when and where this mostly happens, and why this is bad. The most obvious ones are that it costs these voters money to be standing in that line and causes people to not vote because they see that line. But in terms of disenfranchisement it also has a toll: it makes them less likely to vote in future elections, and with media showing these lines can cause other people (whose polling station may be empty) to expect long lines to vote, and thus not go. Now I'm not claiming long lines are the only reason. Clearly if only ~50% of your eligible voters turn out to vote, there are greater problems. Disillusionment with the two-party system or the general state of politics probably causes many people to stay at home too. I don't know if you can call that self-inflicted. But the fact of the matter is that voter turnout in the US is consistently lower than in comparable nations, and that is a bad thing for democracy. this post is MUCH better, and addresses actual issues. like a shortage of polling place in high population areas (something I have never encountered) is clearly a problem. Fix that for that 1.5% of voters. However most comments on this subject are utterly ridiculous.That doesn't require changing the system, which again is objectively easier and simpler then almost any country it gets compared to. (I have never voted mail-in, I have voted early or out of precint (absentee/question ballot) many times with no issues whatsoever.) You're glossing over a ton of things while getting really huffy, why? There are literally 50 different voter registration schemes, so automatically the notion that voting in the US is "objectively easier and simpler" needs dramatic qualification At the same time, the wide disparities across different states require a heavy discounting of "well in my state its easy and I've never had a problem, so how can anyone of the 300+ million people in the US claim voting is tough here?" Aren't you out of Alaska, for crying out loud? My current voting precinct (at my home in alaska) is 20 miles away and somewhat inconvenient because the local legislative district is bigger then some states. It was significantly easier to vote in Iowa for me in fact when I lived there. Sure enough though I only have experience voting in two states. Why is my voting experience irrelevant but every european in the thread can post theirs as a (somehow???) damning indictment of the US. Very nice. I still have not seen any argument one iota more rigorous for why the SYSTEM is so bad.
No one said your experience is irrelevant, you're adding that gloss to the convo in an attempt at covering your self-important attempt at using your personal experience as a bludgeon against foreign commentators. That was dumb, but it's ok, it is indeed great that you have good access to voting, why not investigate whether that's the case in other wildly different states?
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