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[Maximum Spin]

I'm actually gravely concerned that mail-in voting could be used to increase voter fraud.

Let's leave it at this: If I'm not mistaken, Russia has universal mail-in voting *and* online voting.

[MaxTheFox]

Yeah but we still end up stuffing votes into ballot boxes. Frankly if there's a will to commit voter fraud it'll probably happen. Russia also has universal healthcare, does that mean a country implementing universal healthcare is going down the same path as Russia?

Hitler ate candy, does it mean that everyone who eats candy is a Nazi?

[Eric Blank]

No but if that candy contains amphetamines it becomes significantly more likely.

The biggest issue with voting here is that most people don't vote. Especially if the options are bad, like in 2016 or this year. And it's a two party system. It consistently produces garbage candidates and garbage policies. The biggest thing we can do is change our electoral system. Like, implement mandatory voting for all adult citizens in federal elections, extend the voting period out to 14 12-hour days so everyone gets the chance to go in, and require all states list one candidate in every party* that is running on their ballots for all federal positions, and make those ballot listings public so that voters can look them up and see who is running in every party.

*every party that has at least 100,000 registered members nationwide(or some smallish number, its going to be decades before there are any additional parties with a million members, but you cant change that if nobody knows they exist), or you're going to have a million one-person parties to list

Everyone is going to bitch about mandatory voting, especially conservatives who don't want "criminals" to vote, but you can only tell them to shut the fuck up because thats the only way to end the perpetual "who can we prevent from voting" "debate" of theirs. Ranked choice voting and eliminating the least popular candidates like Australia does would require even longer election periods, requiring parties to conclude their primaries earlier and everyone having to vote multiple times. But we could instead have an "abstain" option, not supporting any candidate on a ballot. Say, if that option wins, or if no candidate gets more than x% of the vote, all parties candidates for that position get shafted (or maybe they can be carried over?) and the parties need to come up with new candidates, requiring at least one second election period with different candidates for that position. We should have separate elections for vice presidents again too, I think.

[Starver]

I'm used to a one-day polling day (godforsaken hour in the morning to 10PM, traditionally on a Thursday...) with applications for proxy/postal voting (not yet online..? I don't think so) for those who are bothered enough to vote but cannot get themselves/their comitments suitable arranged.

Multi-day polling seems... well, useful in some circumstances that maybe just aren't so common over here. A "Wednesday Night Surprise" could perhaps cause a sudden change in fortunes (except amongst those who posted their choices beforehand), but surprises/counter-surprises every other day across two whole weeks of trying to undo/beat the prior gained advantage would probably put off many people from voting (or have everyone not totally welded to a cause to wait until the last day and then weigh up all the tos-and-fros that they cared about).


Ideally, perhaps, everyone should be able to get on with their normal lives and then at a random time[1] get told that they have five minutes to register their current choice[2](s) and dial it in... Needing some sort of electronic-device enfranchisement, which of course needs a lot of 'something' not currently available.

But, of course, it's.... Complicated.

[1] The same instant for everyone? Or spread evenly throughout the day?
[2] Including "Re-Open Nominations", rather than not participating/spoiling the ballot. And I would expect RON to win regularly, until the actual nominees work out how to no longer do so badly.

[Eric Blank]

I actually was thinking like the polls would be open for a 14 day period*, so you can go in at the most convenient time for you and your work schedule, and so that tens of thousands of people aren't trying to get through one building in the space of only 8 hours (with 200+ million voters and mandatory voting that could become an issue wven on the best of years), and like, second or third rounds of voting would see the polls open again for two weeks each. Whicn would extend voting season from September through December though, potentially.

*ive known many coworkers who worked multiple jobs, had work all seven days a week, nursing homes in 2020-21 were particularly bad like we had several periods where each of us was working every day, sometimes morning and evening shifts on the same day for weeks straight, Boss gave no chance to go to the polls. Show up on time and skip your lunch break or get fired kinda deal. Of course the welfare of the residents comes first and we all knew that, we didn't have a choice. Walk out and you put lives in danger, not least because you could bring something back. I at least went to the polls before coming in, but I was lucky i was only scheduled for evening shift that day and could go shower and change before coming in. Not everyone that could have voted got the chance to though.

[Starver]

Boss gave no chance to go to the polls.

That's the issue that needs solving.

In a sane working environment, emergency absences should be allowable (personal health concerns, family problems cropping up, needing to stay in for the washing machine repairman) and even general flexibility for things that become fairly predictable for reasons out of one's control (every other Wednesday, the father can't pick up the kids from school so mum has to trade shifts to get across town. Yes, possibility of abuse (by both sides of the equation, but can still be sympathetically dealt with in an unabusive employer/employee relationship.

Polling day is known far in advance (in the US system, often years in advance, barring extraordinary circumstances to either advance or delay such things). An employer who does not allow for (staggered, where needed) shift-alterations sufficient to allow participation in the democratic process is actually disenfranchising people. There should be no insurmountable problems here.

Even if the four-job single mother arranges with all four employers to rearrange things for that day (prepared to do extra hours elsewhen; making sure there's cover by someone else happy to switch across; if the job needs such constancy) and then just takes the day off, its maybe one day a year (or four) of 'sticking it to the Men', that is exactly balanced with the make-up shifts, anyway, so nobody should have problems with that.

Now, obviously, I know that employer/employee relationships don't always go that smooth - especially, but not exclusively, at the low-pay end of the market - but that is the root of the actual problem. Not the elections themselves. A sensible (and enforcable) employment law clause seems to me to be the answer to that, not "making polling into a weeks-long drag, hoping that everyone isn't on seven-day shifts at the wrong side of town".


Fitting 10k people through a single building would be fixed by both reducing the "early AM/late PM/dinnertimelunchtime rush" by not so many people needing to zoom in prior to/after/during their working hours and just properly provisioning sufficient polling-stations as suited to the balance of the community.

(I mean, so I don't have that perfect, where I am. If events turned out that I was needing to be two towns over for the majority of polling day I'm still registered only to pop into the pop-up polling station that's down on the main road to service my home neighbourhood of addresses. I actually went rolling on in there at something like 21:50 last time, probably the last "customer" of the day[1]. There's always occasional reasons not to have the foresight to rearrange commitments (or switch to some form of more remote voting), but this should be exceptional and not almost an inevibility...)


But don't expect me to wave my hand and fix the system (that isn't even my own), I'm just content to casually point out perceived problems that don't actually seem to be all that unsolvable.


[1] I made a joke of it "Hi, yes, I'm here now. Sorry to keep you waiting, you can go home now...", which seemed to be appreciated in the spirit to which it was intended, but have no idea if someone else had tried that at 21:45. Or someone else even more tardy popped in at 21:50 (with or without the same quip).