World reaction to long queues of voters in US • Hacker News Board

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#171

Post by aww_dang » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

0x262d wrote: post #158

leetcrew wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mandatory voting doesn't sound very good to me for a few reasons. winning with 30% of eligible votes is functionally equivalent to winning with 51% (ie, you still get the office), but looks a lot different. forcing people to pick one seems like a way to make the strongest of several weak candidates appear more legitimate. as misguided as it may be, I think individuals ought to have the option to signal their dissatis…

Mandatory voting doesn't preclude writing in nothing if you prefer. And for people who are uninformed, well, having to go through the motion helps that some. More than anything else, this would force the government to make it possible, easy, and routine for current non-voters to vote, which would dramatically shift election results to the left economically.

Ultimately partisans of either persuasion portray opposing voters as uninformed. I'd even suggest that a healthy portion of voters on any side have poorly formed reasoning skills.

What is the standard for being an informed voter?

I can easily imagine the backlash if there were a test for competence wherein voters were required to identify fallacious arguments.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#172

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

cowmoo728 wrote: post #149

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…

> The history of voter suppression in certain states cannot be ignored.

Agreed but mostly orthogonal. Providing early voting at all is a drastic improvement reducing voter suppression. Since it lasts for multiple days, it allows for many more people to vote on days off work and other commitments, when they may not be able to easily vote on election day. Providing better early voting would of course do an even better job of this.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#173

Post by 542354234235 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #135

throwaway4good wrote: post #91

The long queues obviously are there on purpose; incredible your sitting government can get away with it. It is really a sign of a broken system - there are supposed to be checks and balances.

What does voter turnout matter when electors are chosen on a district level anyways? Ie a city got its allocated electors versus a town with nicers ques and higher turnout.

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]

If party A looks at the districts with majority party B voters and targets those areas for polling station closures, that can have a huge effect.

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

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#174

Post by godtoldmetodoit » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

eej71 wrote: post #79

manishsharan wrote: post #9

I think the most worrying aspect is an emerging strain of political thought in the US that USA is merely a republic but not a democracy. I find it quite shocking that it has gained a great deal of acceptance. edit : typo

I'm one of those people. I certainly see America as a republic first and foremost. I appreciate the design of America that incorporates democratically electing one's representives in the House of Representives while balancing the downsides of such a process against other forms of voting. It's necessary to capture the passions of the body politic at large - which democratic voting does! - but it's also necessary to in…

I used to agree with you on this line of thinking, but over the past few years my thinking has been changing quite radically.

What good is protections against tyranny of the majority if it just results in tyranny of the minority? The majority will only play a rigged game for so long - as you are beginning to see with Democrats seriously discussing court packing should they win power.

One party has gotten Presidents in twice over the past 20 years without winning the popular vote. Those two presidents who did not win a majority of support got to pick 4 Supreme Court justices, wildly swinging the ideology of the court in the process towards minority views.

A Wyoming voter has vastly more power then a Californian voter in every federal election. When the Founders set up the Senate, Virginia was something like 15x more populous then the least populist state. California is 66x more populous then Wyoming today.

In my opinion - power has shifted far too much to the minority. On issue after issue you can find things like gun control, climate change, healthcare, minimum wage, paid maternity leave with public support in the 60% plus range, yet nothing happens due to the tyranny of the minority (and a good dose of corruption).

We need massive democratic reforms in this country if we want to be able to solve the problems of the coming century, and yes the minority needs to lose some of its protections. I don't think "but tyranny of the majority" holds up as valid argument against reforms given the context of the last 20+ years.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#175

Post by Larrikin » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

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…

Mandatory voting in the US would simply be an excuse to fine or jail the same people that are targeted for voter suppression.

Also personally I'd just rather people who have no interest in voting not be forced to randomly choose candidates just because they are forced to vote. Along that line, voting in person should universally become optional with mail in/drop off becoming the norm. I'd always had a valid reason for absentee voting when I had residency in my home state and it would take me atleast a day to properly research the down ballot candidates. I now live in a state with judges on the ballot and it took me an entire weekend to actually look through everyone that wasn't in the federal races. Mandatory voting, especially without universal access to absentee voting, would just exacerbate the issue of people just voting based on name or party instead of stance when there are so many people on the ballot.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#176

Post by 12xo » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #163

12xo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its relevant - albeit a little out of the purview, because without the rise of sensationalist based media creating the distractions, none of this is possible. The lies, the distractions, the propaganda, the amplification of issues that simply-do-not exist, allows the power brokers the opportunity to do these types of things without the oversight and regulation that the Constitution and history used to have in place t…

What in this article, specifically, is a lie, distraction, propaganda or amplification of an issue that doesn't exist? Voter suppression is real. It alters election results; look at the Georgia governor's race in 2018 for a recent egregious example. The US is continuing a proud tradition of disenfranchisement — from only giving voting rights to white men at the country's inception, to poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, felon…

I am not. My point is that the reason we are here, that this repression even exists, is due to the media marketplace. Without it, this kind of blatant repression isn’t possible. It is here because of decades of propaganda and distraction by the right that has allowed then to take advantage of I’ll informed people who have become enemies of their neighbors and democracy itself.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#177

Post by eej71 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

thebooktocome wrote: post #121

eej71 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those people. I certainly see America as a republic first and foremost. I appreciate the design of America that incorporates democratically electing one's representives in the House of Representives while balancing the downsides of such a process against other forms of voting. It's necessary to capture the passions of the body politic at large - which democratic voting does! - but it's also necessary to in…

All of those methods for balancing the "madness of crowds" (which is a strange euphemism for abolitionism) have been written out of the constitution. Senators are elected by popular vote now. Almost all the day-to-day legislative actions of both houses require merely a simple majority. The Federalist Papers are centuries out of date. They do not comprehend how modern politics functions. Hamilton could not imagine a m…

I'd like to think we could agree that the Senate has become more politicized in the last few decades.

I think where we disagree is what to do about it.

There seems to be this prevailing cultural view that a democratic election is always good and always produces wise and just results. Where as people like me are fearful of what starts as the wise vox populi devolves into a crowd, transforms into an angry mob, and then the fun really begins!

I always like a line that was attributed to George Washington...

"George Washington is said to have told Jefferson that the framers had created the Senate to 'cool' House legislation just as a saucer was used to cool hot tea."

By directly electing Senators, we have reduced that cooling function.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#178

Post by 542354234235 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #139

aluminussoma wrote: post #100

I get the impression that this is an opportunity to paint a political story that makes your side look better (other side is suppressing the vote, therefore my candidate lost!), or perhaps in this specific case, to poke fun at America as it is a favorite international past time. The data I see shows another possibility: voter turn out has increased by a large amount and the government is struggling to meet the demand.…

According to [1] and plenty of other studies of their kind, closure of voting locations have been a major problem since the Shelby decision gutted the voting rights acts. Summary: > We found 1,688 polling place closures in places once covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Of the 757 counties in our study, 298 (39 percent) reduced the number of polling places between 2012 and 2018. Because presidential electi…

Texas is really going out of its way to suppress voting.

“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

#179

Post by klyrs » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

aww_dang wrote: post #162

leetcrew wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mandatory voting doesn't sound very good to me for a few reasons. winning with 30% of eligible votes is functionally equivalent to winning with 51% (ie, you still get the office), but looks a lot different. forcing people to pick one seems like a way to make the strongest of several weak candidates appear more legitimate. as misguided as it may be, I think individuals ought to have the option to signal their dissatis…

There should be an option for "none of the above" or "withdraw consent" if voting becomes compulsory.

Every ballot I've ever filled out has had blanks for write-ins. Sometimes I've written myself in. Sometimes, I write "no confidence". Sometimes, I simply leave the provided choices blank.

It's different for referenda -- no write-in on those. But you can still leave it blank.

And nobody will know (unless you're the idiot that writes theirself in), because your ballot is secret. Turning in the ballot can be compulsory without making it compulsory to actually fill it out.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#180

Post by bpt3 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #142

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...

Here's hard data showing that long lines like these aren't the norm: https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/insights-into-voting-wai...