81–90 of 207 posts
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I can't believe it's not either a national holiday or an accepted thing for all employers to give the day off. I know legally they have to give you an hour to vote, but the entire day sends a message that this is an important thing for you to do.
> I know legally they have to give you an hour to vote Are you certain about this?
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We desperately need a national ID card. Social security was never designed for this purpose and it's terrible for it. Drivers license requires having access to a car and some way to learn how to use it.
I'm not particularly informed on arguments for and against this, but shouldn't a national ID require some modicum of trust in the national government? In their ability to keep the database safe from bad actors, including Executives that fancy themselves dictators? A national ID sounds like a terrible idea for this country right now.
It's a very poor system that was never designed for its current use. We have many of the downsides of a poorly implemented national ID and very few of the upsides. We need an actual purpose built national ID.
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The state of Oregon has vote by mail. Its awesome. My ballot gets mailed to me a few weeks before the election. I fill it out, and can either mail it back (I have to pay for a postage stamp) or drop it off at a ballot drop box all over town. there are all sorts of safeguards for things like not getting your ballot in the mail, etc. I was also automatically register to vote as an independent when I got my drivers lice…
If you mail it do you get a confirmation that it was received and processed? How does one know that it wasn't destroyed while en route? Does the ballot come with a tracking number that you can punch in on website to see if your vote was processed correctly?
Aside from that you can't find out much more, of course, because as soon as your ballot is received and the outer envelope is scanned, it is discarded and your ballot (which is inside an inner secrecy envelope) is put in a box with the rest.
With all of this discussion in Washington about Russian hacking and Russian voter influencing, why are these demonstrably vulnerable voting machines hardly mentioned? It would seem to me this should be a number one priority to prevent outside interference.
The short unhappy answer seems to be that the parties are happy with a corruptible voting system.
Staff up the FEC and then make it their job to seek out and provide ID to every single eligible voter in the country. Kinda like the census, be proactive and don't make disenfranchisement a thing. And then make it so polling places are open for days, maybe a week, including a full weekend, so everyone gets a chance to vote.
Or vote-by-mail. We've established it works.
I work for the municipality of Skanderborg, Denmark. We have what we call digital elections, but what’s digitized is the registration process. Basically every adult gets a voting card with their information + a barcode, we scan those barcodes when they turn up to receive their ballot(is that the right word for voting list?), and then they are registered. The actual voting takes place on paper, and while it takes time…
How is the counting done in Denmark? Do they still have to collect all the paper ballots and count them in a central place? If so, how do you avoid all the 'hanging chad' issues?
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> It’s a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process This is part of the problem in the United States. Voting is a chore, and you're often going to lose money (unpaid time off) to do it. If elections were national holidays and voting was treated as a privilege instead of a chore, we would be much better off.
Can’t you vote by mail in month leading up to the election? We can, that’s what I do since I’m working on election days.
The HN consensus seems to be that digital voting is very difficult to do right. I trust the consensus opinion, but this also makes me sad. The bigger picture that I think we’re missing here is the opportunity for huge-scale direct democracy. I know the usual debates against DD, but I think there’s ways to safeguard against those problems. E.g. you can’t vote on an issue without hearing both sides of it and passing a…
https://markorodriguez.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/master-th...
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Believe it or note, requiring ID to vote in the United States is considered controversial.
Because citizens are not required to have ID and those that don't have one are disproportionately racial minorities and/or in lower socioeconomic classes. Democrats would be much more willing to allow ID to be required to vote if there was a national ID card issued to every citizen, but Republicans would be against any system that would try to create a national ID.
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The state of Oregon has vote by mail. Its awesome. My ballot gets mailed to me a few weeks before the election. I fill it out, and can either mail it back (I have to pay for a postage stamp) or drop it off at a ballot drop box all over town. there are all sorts of safeguards for things like not getting your ballot in the mail, etc. I was also automatically register to vote as an independent when I got my drivers lice…
This actually a bad idea: The reason for in person voting is poll monitors there are watching to make sure nobody knows how you voted. There are have been cases of "vote for me or I'll break your legs". When you vote from home someone can come by and watch you mail your vote the "correct" way in.