Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

World reaction to long queues of voters in US

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 268 posts

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#111

Post by sumtechguy »

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…

Early voting is always hit or miss on the first day. Did a 4 hour stint once myself years ago. Couple of dudes went the next day and got in and out. Voting on the proper day is usually fairly easy enough. Most employers work with you to do so. One time it was a 1 hour wait on election day. Few years later it took less than 20 mins total from parking going in and driving off. All at the same location. Early voting locations have a secondary issue as they usually have an amalgamation of several districts. So the biggest hold up is making sure you have the correct ballot. As depending on where you are at you may have a different ballot per precinct. I may be in district 'xyz' for this congress man but not on the ballot for the mayor of the city because I do not live in a city. That sort of thing.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#113

Post by singlow »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #28
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…

In the US, one can vote for any party (preferential voting). There are other parties in America but you seldom hear about them. Two examples are the Green Party and the Libertarian party.

Preferential Voting is a system by which you can rank your preferences rather than choosing a single candidate. You might range Green party first, Democrat second. There are various methods of tallying the votes, but it usually means that you can support the less popular candidate without giving up your weight in the choice between two frontrunners.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#114

Post by jakelazaroff »

12xo wrote: post #77

A little out of left field but here is my opinion on why we are here. None of this is possible without the perverted media market that view based advertising has created. The entire political landscape has grown to this mess because of "Click Bait" style ad metrics. Every single news outlet, media outlet and otherwise has been corrupted and perverted to seek instant gratification and has lowered their editorial bar s…

How is this relevant? These long lines and the voter suppression that they cause are both very real. Shining a light on that isn't "sensationalism".

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#115

Post by bpt3 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

The people behind this would tell you it's a "feature": by making it incredibly undesirable for people in densely-populated areas to vote (which almost universally lean Democratic), you ensure that only the "right" people are able to vote.

Long wait times are occurring across the US this year for early voting; I spoke to someone in Texas (a historically Republican stronghold) who told me lines were 2 hours long in his area on the first day of early voting.

US election regulations aren't designed to handle this level of early voting because there has never been this much demand for it. You can debate whether that should change or whether election officials should have been able to forecast this increase in demand (I would say yes to both), but I don't believe this to be as nefarious as you claim.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#116

Post by bennettfeely »

One shouldn't be mislead to thinking these unacceptably long lines are common. From MIT:

> For general elections, the average wait time decreased from 14 to 12 minutes between 2008 and 2012; it dropped again in 2016 to an 8-minute average.

https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/insights-into-voting-wai...

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#117

Post by Jtsummers »

hexadec wrote: post #83
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…

What is the alternative to acceptance? My state has closed hundreds of polling places over the past decade or so. Mostly in poor area, college towns, or cities. What should we do if our option for making our voices heard are removed? I hope we just make voting compulsory and a national holiday, but I won't hold my breath.

NC? GA? Another state that was (prior to 2013) limited in what it could do by the VRA?

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#118

Post by manquer »

bmax20 wrote: post #60
sudeepj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all her flaws, India's elections and its election commission does a stellar job. Just look at the stats for 2019 elections [1] (copying few of them): 1.035 million: The total number of polling booths across India. 2: The maximum distance in kilometres from any given voter’s house to he nearest polling booth 3.96 million: Number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in use this election 1.7 million: Paper trail or…

EVMs have always had vulnerabilities and should not be trusted. They are forbidden in Germany. https://indiaevm.org/

India was doing same scale pre evm as well. Logistics has not simplified all that much because of evms.

There are voting booths for literally for one person.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#119

Post by dawnerd »

LiquidSky wrote: post #70
dawnerd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, some of these are very obviously intentional. But California just now getting on the mail in ballots train does put them far behind. Some 20+ years behind. That’s pretty far if you ask me. (Yes I know they’ve had absentee, I used to vote that way).

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#120

Post by rwmj »

jimbob45 wrote: post #72
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

The people behind this would tell you it's a "feature": by making it incredibly undesirable for people in densely-populated areas to vote (which almost universally lean Democratic), you ensure that only the "right" people are able to vote.

It is a feature but not how you’re describing. The US governing system is designed in such a way as to move at a glacial pace but also to not make mistakes or over correct. The polling systems may seem broken now but will inevitably get corrected over time. Further, the US take states’ rights seriously and allows states to make many key decisions in terms of how they wish to hold elections. The thinking is that you’d…

It's been nearly 250 years.
Post reply on HN