Why stop at 100%? Chicago supposedly has gone far beyond before.
It's not exactly 100%; there are dozens of dead people who don't vote.
Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
221–230 of 458 posts
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#222I recently realised that one big advantage of compulsory voting is that it completely kills attempts to suppress voter registration or differential turnout. How do you plan on dealing with voter suppression and gerrymandering?
If you make voting compulsory for registered voters, you end up further suppressing voter registration (specifically suppressing registration of those in situations which leave them disproportionately unlikely to be able to get to vote and poor enough to see the fines as an issue) If you ensure all voters are registered, then making the voting compulsory is redundant. There is no advantage to compulsory voting, unles…
Compulsory voting's advantage is giving people an excuse to vote.
If you are legally obligated to show up at the voting booth, even if you elect to spoil your ballot at that point, your employer can't fire you for taking off work to do so.
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know of studies or other hard data that tracks _why_ people don't vote? The article claims it is the difficulty of the process, but I would have guessed the top reason is voter apathy (which isn't really a technology issue). Here's one thing technology could help with: identify which polling places are facing long delays on Election Day, so additional resources can be allocated to speed them up. Without being…
Don't most areas with lots of college students just see lines at the post office to mail in absentees? When I was in school nobody I knew was registered locally.
Why would one wait in line to drop something into a mailbox?
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#224The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'…
Elections where the polls indicate the race is close, and the candidates have starkly different patterns, have high voter turnout. Where one candidate has a big lead, or the platforms are more or less indistinguishable, there's low turnout. Voters are doing a simple cost/benefit analysis weighing the cost of taking the time to vote vs the impact their vote will have.
The problem is, its extremely rare that all of the elections taking place that day are like that.
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relatively newly-minted American here. A unified election calendar and ballot database would be helpful. The number of local (especially community budgeting, judicial and special district) elections I've missed out of ignorance, despite checking New York City's Board of Elections website, is nuts. Furthermore, there seems to be an expectation that voters blindly vote along party lines. Almost every election there wil…
Ballotpedia helps: https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page
plus 1 to ballotpedia. also +1 to the need for an easy to read calendar. honestly, if someone builds something we can use, we'll put it up at vote.org and promote the heck out of it.
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.
Voter turnout is higher in our presidential elections when a person's vote is generally worth less. People SHOULD be voting at the local level where their votes still matter quite a bit, but generally don't through an interesting combination of apathy and ignorance (e.g. few people actually know who their rep on the city council is and what their basic platform is).
Unfortunately, limited information is an inherent consequence of scale. There's much better media coverage of national issues. If I read The Economist, they may provide insight into the presidential candidates. They do not have news about my candidates for city council.
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#227The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'…
Relatively newly-minted American here. A unified election calendar and ballot database would be helpful. The number of local (especially community budgeting, judicial and special district) elections I've missed out of ignorance, despite checking New York City's Board of Elections website, is nuts. Furthermore, there seems to be an expectation that voters blindly vote along party lines. Almost every election there wil…
Judicial elections are one of my least favorite things about American democracy. I always feel chronically underinformed, and feel weird about voting in line with what the one local newspaper has to say on the matter.
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#228Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-partisan. Partisan questions should be directed to your local political party. I'm especially keen to talk about ways we can use technology to modernize the election process. My current focus is how we can use electronic signatures to roll out online voter registration in s…
Well, first you have to make your site work. Your site says that I'm not registered to vote in San Mateo County, California. But San Mateo County's site, " https://www.shapethefuture.org/MyElectionMaterials/default.a... , says that I am. Also, you collected my email address. That's mandatory before you do the registration check. Why? I don't want to be "onboarded", and if I was, I want to be "offboarded". I just wrot…
if by spam you mean send election reminders, then yes, we are spammers. we're a 501c3 nonprofit. that means we don't profit off of our work unless helping to build a healthy democracy can be considered profit. also, we use a third-party database to power that tool. this probably won't shock you, but aggregating and normalizing voter roll data from 10,000+ election jurisdictions is messy and hard. there will always be the occasional false negative, which is why we encourage you to check again with your state if you think we're incorrect.
as for the privacy policy: it's too heavy on the legalese. our law firm wrote it ages ago, and we haven't had time to update it. we're not spammers. we're election reformers
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#229I would like to see a security discalimer just like the one at the airport regarding if your bag has ever left your possesion: "Has anyone at any time come to you and asked you to cast a vote for them, or otherwise attempted to compromise your individual right to vote"
Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout
#230The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about. Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for the person or party you want, and they'…
I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.
> I believe the stronger reason is your presidential election vote won't matter in most states where the contest is already decided. So a candidate winning 70-30 vs. 60-40 doesn't make a difference.
Your vote, win or lose, also communicates very important messages:
1) 'I vote, and people in my community vote'. If you don't vote then why the hell should the politician care what you want? Does McDonalds care about the opinions of people who don't eat fast food? You think they should put more healthy options on their menu? 'So what? Who are you? Stop wasting my time.' The same goes for your community: If your community doesn't vote, then why would anyone address its concerns? In a world of 50% turnout, imagine the attention a community would get if 95% voted - on every issue, they'd be wondering, 'what does neighborhood X think? how does it affect them?'
2) It expresses a political outlook. A politician who sees their constituents vote 80-20 for Clinton over Trump is going to behave much differently than one who sees a 55-45 vote.