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Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

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Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#321

Post by chiaro »

danieltillett wrote: post #208
labster wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debra, how would you feel about an Australian-style fine for failure to vote here in the U.S.? I assume Vote.org work primarily on technological ways to promote voting, but will it also deal with social structural or institutional ways to increase voter turnout?

Technical you don't have to vote here in Australia, you just have to put a ballot paper in the box at the polling station and have your name crossed off the roll. Of course most peopl (95%) do bother to vote once they are at the polling station. The best part of compulsory voting Australian-style is that it encourages people to show at least some interest in the political process since they know they will be voting.

Yep, people who complain about political apathy here in Aus have no idea how bad it gets elsewhere.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#322

Post by hnamazon123 »

st3v3r wrote: post #246
hnamazon123 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps wealthier whites are more informed on average? Why does race or class matter?

Informed on what, though? Which candidate will be better for getting things like mandatory sick days passed, or which candidate will be better for business?

Those are highly correlated issues so perhaps pick a better example?

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#323

Post by harryh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #319
harryh wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compulsory voting would be a very clear 1st amendment violation and, hence, require a Constitutional Amendment.

Which provision of the first amendment is violated by compulsory voting?

Freedom of speech.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#324

Post by chiaro »

hackuser wrote: post #275
debracleaver wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

labster, compulsory voting would be amazing in the US. i might be in the minority here, but i consider voting a duty, not a right per se.

> i consider voting a duty, not a right per se. Could you clarify? It's somewhat shocking to hear the Vote.org representative say voting is not a right in the U.S.

A duty is stronger than a right, and implies an obligation, not just an option. Countries that implement obligatory voting (or rather, obligatory showing up to the ballot, there is no need to vote once there) are obliged in turn to make voting as accessible as possible. Voting in Australia, for example, rarely takes longer than 10 minutes on the day (a weekend) if you hadn't already visited an early voting booth or mailed your vote in.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#325

Post by jimrandomh »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #138
jimrandomh wrote: post #63

There's a very important reason to do this which no one has brought up. US elections have a lot of vote-suppression shenanigans; in some noteworthy cases (including the 2000 Presidential election), fraudulently removing voter registrations, understaffing and obstructing poll locations changed the outcome. This sort of thing becomes much more difficult to execute and much more difficult to get away with if there's an…

Put a gun to people's head to vote? I can think of few things more morally reprehensible than that. An individual should determine how, and if, they participate in civic life for themselves. The view that sees individuals as simply so much chattel labor existing for the benefit of whichever bureaucrats running the state at a given moment is simply unsupportable by any sort of real logic. To give you warm and fuzzies…

The other parts of the process also have shenanigans, yes. Those are worth fighting against, too. I have no problem with people making protest votes and am genuinely confused by your implication that I would have a problem with people turning in blank or random ballots.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#326

Post by dragonwriter »

harryh wrote: post #323
dragonwriter wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which provision of the first amendment is violated by compulsory voting?

Freedom of speech.

Requiring you to show up at a particular place and put a pair in a box, with the option to actually mark something on it (Australian style mandatory voting) hardly violates freedom of speech.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#327

Post by Retric »

hackuser wrote: post #255
Retric wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting for 3rd party's often has a larger impact than voting for the top 2 party's. Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. But, if a 3rd party gains support one of the major party's will generally add those ideas to the platform. Most recently is probably Libertarian > Tea Party. Not that they really had much impact, but people paid lip-service to the ideas.

> Remember in a 2 party system each side wants to minimize the perceived differences. I don't know that I agree. In practice, it's hardly happening (look at the Republicans and Democrats; at Trump and Clinton), and I don't see why it would happen.

Trump and Clinton are basically still at the primary stage where people have actual choices. You can expect a push to center fairly soon. They don't want to give voters issue whiplash so they generally transition though to more centrist message.

Ideally candidates want to avoid alienating their base, but they also can't pick up more voters by pandering to them. So, everyone tries to appeal to independents and not energize their opponents base. The other strategy to to fight dirty which tends to suppress voter turnout, but that can easily backfire in a presidential election.

This also often results in coded language. Which lets you target messages to people that care about an issue without generally annoying other people.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#328

Post by csharpminor »

debracleaver wrote: post #2

Hey 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…

This is fantastic! Just wondering, how does Vote.org compare/contrast to TurboVote (https://turbovote.org/)?

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#329

Post by harryh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #326
harryh wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech.

Requiring you to show up at a particular place and put a pair in a box, with the option to actually mark something on it (Australian style mandatory voting) hardly violates freedom of speech.

Refusal to participate in the political process very clearly looks like speech to me. And a very important kind of speech. A great many people think "They're all bums. I'm not voting for any of them!" You can find some of these people in threads on this post!

Who are we to tell them otherwise?

I also don't think that the "you're allowed to show up and not check a box, but you've still gotta show up" argument passes muster. That's very clearly an attempt to coerce speech out of someone which is also a 1st amendment violation.

Re: Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout

#330

Post by chiaro »

partiallypro wrote: post #165

Not everyone should vote. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but democracy only works with informed citizens. If you have a bunch of people that are not informed on the issue voting you're probably going to have an outcome that is awful. If you think politicians are bad now, just wait until the populists have the uninformed voting in high numbers (hey, that sounds familiar this year.) To me, if you don't care…

The voting constituency is not, nor has it ever been, made up of informed citizens. Indeed, you could probably say that the more extreme your political views are, the more likely you are to vote. In this case, more 'average' voters would result in a moderation of discourse and alleviate the hyper-partisan gridlock that currently defines the American system.
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