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World reaction to long queues of voters in US

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Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#141

Post by jedberg »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #133
jedberg wrote: post #102

A lot of people outside the USA don’t realize we don’t have an election. We have 51 parallel elections, each with their own rules. For example, you’ll never see long lines like that in California or Oregon. For some reason people are super allergic to having federal standards on how federal elections should be run. Sure, run your state however you want. But it’s messed up that I, a Californian, have no say in how ele…

It's not messed up, and the Framers agreed, hence why every state is allowed to determine how to run its elections. The argument of federal power at that scale was lost long ago. If one doesn't like the way one's state exercises its power, one can move to another state. This is a feature, not a bug.

That made sense in the 1700s when communication was slow and the states ran mostly independently.

It makes no sense in our modern world of connectedness.

It’s only a feature because the framers of the constitution didn’t have the foresight to see a more interconnected world.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#142

Post by tom_mellior »

jdmichal wrote: post #19

So, these lines are not representative of an actual election day. Actual election day is November 3, 2020. Some states are in early voting right now [0]. That typically means that there's a very limited number of polling stations open. For instance, in Pinellas County, FL there's only 5 early voting locations, compared to 301 poll locations during election day. That's a 60x discrepancy! This is for 713,000 registered…

> So, these lines are not representative of an actual election day.

So you claim. And yet we regularly see this kind of pictures on actual US election days. For example, a very quick DuckDuckGo image search for "us elections long lines" leads to this as the second hit: https://www.firstpost.com/photos/world-gallery/us-2012-elect...

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#143

Post by theandrewbailey »

734129837261 wrote: post #8

I've never voted for the POTUS and I expect I never will. From my POV I don't really care who wins but I think my preference leans to Trump. That has mostly to do with the Democrats being overly populistic about all the concerns, without offering any solutions. If you push through the endless barrage of misinformation from both sides, it does seem that the conservatives have a better understanding on how to progress…

> I've never voted for the POTUS and I expect I never will.

Assuming you are a US citizen eligible to vote, your willful self disenfranchisement renders the rest of your opinions moot to me.

> By that I mean, of course, her ridiculous Green New Deal plan. Luckily a plan that Biden doesn't support, his one redeeming quality from the last debate.

I hate to break it to you, he does: https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/

> Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#144

Post by bryanrasmussen »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #107
dvtrn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I eyeballed a few people making that very same argument right here on HN but draped in the typical and disgusting line about “personal responsibility” when someone was lamenting how difficult some states are making it to even get registered.

HN always has these "hot takes" discounting any societal failings, probably because the average user expects their worthless "Facebook for dogs" idea to turn them into a billionaire and want to keep low taxes

hey, once Intel's computerized nose takes off https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-is-teaching-a-computer-c... my facebook for dogs is going to be raking in the bucks!

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#145

Post by arethuza »

jdmichal wrote: post #19

So, these lines are not representative of an actual election day. Actual election day is November 3, 2020. Some states are in early voting right now [0]. That typically means that there's a very limited number of polling stations open. For instance, in Pinellas County, FL there's only 5 early voting locations, compared to 301 poll locations during election day. That's a 60x discrepancy! This is for 713,000 registered…

Do queues like this normally happen for "early voting"?

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#146

Post by jimbob45 »

akiselev wrote: post #109
jimbob45 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Is that what the 3/5ths compromise was about? Jim Crowe laws? Poll taxes? Poll literacy tests? Purging voter rolls? The notion that any of these "features" are necessary for good governance is ludicrous.

3/5 was written into the Constitution - that couldn’t have been helped.

The rest were mistakes, yes, but they make the case for an even higher majority to pass a law, not a lower one. They’re state issues, not federal issues. If you don’t like the distributed governing system of the US, that’s fine, but the system was designed for local majorities to be able to self-govern on internal affairs and, to that end, I would argue that those were successful pieces of legislation. Sure, their intentions were misguided, but the US system was not designed to deal with bad people and I would argue that no system in the world is well-able to deal with bad people.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#147

Post by jakelazaroff »

efa wrote: post #110
thebooktocome wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because where they do exist, it's really hard to tell if that ballot box is real. Because one political party has decided to install fake ballot boxes.

Shenanigans are not limited to one of the political parties. https://nypost.com/2020/09/27/project-veritas-uncovers-ballo...

Project Veritas habitually lies to manufacture controversy, and the subject of the video has said that they offered him $10,000 to claim that he was paid to harvest ballots [1], so I think we can dismiss these allegations.

[1] https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2020/10/man-says-he-was-of...

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#148

Post by 542354234235 »

bpt3 wrote: post #47

I'm not saying this is universally true, but in my area, a large portion of the people standing in these long lines are intentionally doing so to make a political statement (or more skeptically, are virtue signaling). There has been one voting station open in the entire county which adequately supported early voting based on historical trends, while dozens more are opening soon and will reduce (if not entirely elimin…

Isn’t the issue that it isn’t every county, but that it is specific counties that are targeted to suppress specific voter demographics? For a clear cut example, look at Texas.

“Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one… Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott’s order forced them to close most sites.” [0]

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/13/texas-election-ballo...

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#149

Post by cowmoo728 »

jdmichal wrote: post #19

So, these lines are not representative of an actual election day. Actual election day is November 3, 2020. Some states are in early voting right now [0]. That typically means that there's a very limited number of polling stations open. For instance, in Pinellas County, FL there's only 5 early voting locations, compared to 301 poll locations during election day. That's a 60x discrepancy! This is for 713,000 registered…

The history of voter suppression in certain states cannot be ignored. The argument you're presenting is misleading because the intent of the system is clearly to discourage specific groups of people from voting. There's a long history of voting machines not working (on purpose), inadequate staffing, restrictive laws, and all of this malfeasance curiously manifesting in neighborhoods with specific demographics. People are saying the pandemic and high voter turnout changes things but...

> The Clayton County resident, who registered to vote in Georgia when he moved six months ago, showed up at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale, Georgia, at 9 a.m. hoping to cast his vote early. At 2 p.m. Dubose had just reached the front of the line -- that ran hundreds deep and snaked around the senior center into the back parking lot.

https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/28/georgia.voting/index...

> According to a local election official interviewed by CBS News' Phil Hirschkorn, the last "early voter" in line for Saturday's truncated early voting in Palm Beach County finally got to cast a ballot at 2:30 a.m Sunday morning, which means that voter waited in line for more than seven hours. In Miami, another traditional Democratic stronghold, the wait was said to be nearly as long.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/no-one-...

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#150

Post by jedberg »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #133
jedberg wrote: post #102

A lot of people outside the USA don’t realize we don’t have an election. We have 51 parallel elections, each with their own rules. For example, you’ll never see long lines like that in California or Oregon. For some reason people are super allergic to having federal standards on how federal elections should be run. Sure, run your state however you want. But it’s messed up that I, a Californian, have no say in how ele…

It's not messed up, and the Framers agreed, hence why every state is allowed to determine how to run its elections. The argument of federal power at that scale was lost long ago. If one doesn't like the way one's state exercises its power, one can move to another state. This is a feature, not a bug.

Telling someone to move because they don’t like their government makes no sense, because you can’t take your land with you.
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