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World reaction to long queues of voters in US

bbc.com

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Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#61

Post by kawfey »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #41
arethuza wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have either of those things in the UK and I've never had to queue to vote - the whole process only takes a couple of minutes.

> I've never had to queue to vote In live and vote in the US. Never waited in a queue. Just dropped off my ballot at a local ballot box. Not sure why the people in the article can’t do that, but I’ve lived in 4 states and all of them had ballot boxes.

Many states don't have ballot boxes, and a LOT of people are distrusting of mail-in and absentee voting which forces them to vote in person.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#62

Post by emptyfile »

Shocking. I live in eastern europe and we've had a parliamentary election this July during the pandemic.

Two volunteers with disinfectant at the entrance to the local grade school. Political party volunteers to oversee the voting. Paper ballots and temp uni students to count them at the drop off sites.

Literally hundreds of countries do the same with no difficulty.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#63

Post by dawnerd »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #14
cletus wrote: post #4

In Australia we have two things the US system desperately needs: mandatory voting and preferential voting. Preferential voting allows you to vote for a third party without wasting your vote. The standard argument against mandatory voting is people not wanting the uninformed to vote (trust me, they're voting) and the usual US predilection against that infringing "freedom". I was sympathetic to this until I saw the US…

Many people would love to see literally all of these reforms. You correctly identified the problem, though: > If you think one party doesn't make it harder to vote in areas where they have a disadvantage you're crazy. Difficult to enact meaningful reform when the people in power have an existential need to prevent it.

Exactly. Both parties will complain about parts of the voting system that made them lose. Then when they come to power again won’t change what made them win (which is naturally what caused them to lose originally). This is why we’ll never see the delegate system go away.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#64

Post by 0x262d »

wutbrodo wrote: post #45
0x262d wrote: post #21

This article is an incredibly misleading, fake positive framing of what is in reality a rapidly failing democratic system. An 11-hour wait to vote is absolutely prohibitive to many of the people who most need change, on top of being terrible for everyone else; not that that is anything new for the US. It's basically a poll tax, which is one of the most regressively anti-democratic tools, but applied unevenly by locat…

What on Earth are you talking about? The headline, first paragraph, and last two thirds of the article are all about _criticism_ of long voting lines. The fact that they spend part of the article acknowledging that some in the US take pride in coming out to vote in the face of long lines doesn't mean that they're taking this position, especially given that most of the article is dedicated to criticism of the conditio…

Hm, I skimmed this but might have come away with a skewed sense of the balance between reactions to it.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#65

Post by bartread »

Good on them, I say. There's clearly a problem if people are having to wait that long to vote (to my knowledge it's rarely happened here in the UK, and I've never had to queue for more than a handful of minutes when I've voted), but I applaud the fact they're willing to wait and how seriously these people are taking their democratic responsibility as citizens. Well done!

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#66

Post by failuser »

beervirus wrote: post #43
dvtrn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/us/texas-election-ballot-drop... One ballot box per county in some counties means waiting hours in line for that too.

You can also mail them in. That whole thing was a fake controversy.

Are sure the post office is reliable at this point?

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#67

Post by ihuman »

cletus wrote: post #4

In Australia we have two things the US system desperately needs: mandatory voting and preferential voting. Preferential voting allows you to vote for a third party without wasting your vote. The standard argument against mandatory voting is people not wanting the uninformed to vote (trust me, they're voting) and the usual US predilection against that infringing "freedom". I was sympathetic to this until I saw the US…

Some states use preferential voting for local elections, but right now Maine is the only one that does it for the presidential elections. I hope preferential voting will be the next major change to the election, after the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact gets enough members to activate.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#68

Post by alex_young »

I have personally waited in line for more than 6 hours to vote on Election Day in the US. How many could not wait that long and had to leave before their vote was recorded?

This is a real thing that happens in many states and should not be acceptable in a democracy.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#69

Post by dpcan »

I requested a ballot. I received my ballot in the mail. I filled out my ballot. I walked right up to my elections office, dropped it in a box, with no line. Done.

My problem with all of this is that it’s so easy to do it right, there should be no excuse for all these places to be doing it so wrong.

Washington State has perfected mail in voting, and has done it for over a decade. Just do what they do.

My state opens voting locations and makes it easy to get an absentee ballot and drop it off, no lines, no problems.

Locations with these problems should be embarrassed for not simply looking to locations that do it right, and then copying what they do.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#70

Post by LiquidSky »

dawnerd wrote: post #33
james_pm wrote: post #10

I have never in my entire life waited longer than five minutes to vote in any election in a municipal, provincial or federal election. That includes early voting or election day voting. I walk over to a school near my house (or community center, or church) and vote. I can't understand how anyone in the US accepts the status quo of their terrible and flawed election system. Make it a terrible experience, especially in…

I don’t spent more than five minutes voting either, but that’s only because Oregon figures it out and does statewide mail in ballots and automatic registration. It’s stilly the other states are so far behind.

It's not about being "far behind", these delays are intentionally engineered where they're happening.
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