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

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#221

Post by zaarn » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #155

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…

> “ And by far, the biggest problem is that election day is always on a Tuesday and is not a national holiday. IMO this would be the best change to make first, to enable more people to be available for voting.“ that would be nice and i’d support such a bill, but it wouldn’t likely increase voting rates drastically, as many (esp. working class) folks still work on (most) holidays. to increase participation materially,…

just make the voting day into 3 voting days and legally require employers to give employees a day off to vote at full pay or face severe punishment up to jailtime.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#222

Post by beervirus » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

dvtrn wrote: post #157

beervirus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opinion issued by the federal appeals court gives a lot more context than any news article I've seen. Even if you read just the first couple of pages, you'll be better-informed than 99% of the people talking about this, and I suspect you'll see my point. http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-50867-CV0.pdf

I’m not sure what bearing a court opinion has on my criticism of your calling the events that happened in Texas “fake”; regardless that said court decided the impact of Abbott’s proclamation was de minimis .

The court opinion explains what actually happened. My point was that the controversy was fake, not that the events were fake.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#223

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

beervirus wrote: post #222

dvtrn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what bearing a court opinion has on my criticism of your calling the events that happened in Texas “fake”; regardless that said court decided the impact of Abbott’s proclamation was de minimis .

The court opinion explains what actually happened. My point was that the controversy was fake, not that the events were fake.

[deleted]

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#224

Post by specialist » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

bpt3 wrote: post #217

specialist wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. The sabotage is targeted. Per that cite, non whites experience longer waits.

Agreed, and that's not acceptable, but no group is experiencing wait times of several hours each election, which seems to be the conclusion drawn by many readers of the BBC article.

There is so much evidence that people are denied the opportunity to vote.

I'm still pissed off about blacks being turned away in Ohio 2004. They literally just closed and locked the doors. Telling the 1,000s of voters standing in the cold rain for hours to piss off.

To cite one example.

And it keeps happening.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#225

Post by DuskStar » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #141

nathanaldensr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And telling people to move is a better counter today than it would have been in the 1700s due to ease of movement and communication.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#226

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

notabee wrote: post #219

0x262d wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It drives me nuts that the "opposition" party is not responding to this with calls for mass action to demand fair elections, including occupations and strikes if necessary, but by exhorting unlikely voters who feel apathetic to vote harder against voter suppression.

This is why, if the U.S. can avoid becoming a failed state in the near future where laws mean nothing for those in power, the most important priority should be to change how voting is done to allow ranked choice and end the duopoly. It's not rational in most cases to try to run third party candidates given how the math works out currently, but we desperately need to make that viable. Perhaps if a single-issue voting…

I'd rather see approval voting than ranked choice. The outcomes are roughly the same, but the system is easier and less disputable. Which is very much a feature in the US; remember hanging chads in the 2000 race? If they can dispute that, then they can certainly dispute any unclear ranking marks.

And also because ranked choice usually comes along with instant-runoff here in the US, which is possibly the only system with worse outcomes than first-past-the-post.

http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

Note that the two weird graphs are always plurality, aka first past the post, and Hare, aka instant runoff. Also note that there's no obvious difference in any of the graphs between approval and Condorcet, even though Condorcet is ranked.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#227

Post by cletus » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #175

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 fo…

"Mandatory voting" is perhaps a misnomer because what it really means is "mandatory attendance". There's nothing stopping you from going to the polling place and putting thee piece of paper with no votes into the ballot box. In Australia some people deliberately place such "spoiled ballots" or only vote on the stuff they care about. It's completely fine.

What you can get fined for in Australia is not getting your name crossed off when attend a polling place, not for failing to supply a complete and valid ballot.

In Australia you can also vote "above the line" or "below the line". Voting "above the line" means you just select a party (and this includes minor parties) and use that party's preferences (which must be filed in advanced).

Voting "below the line" had become sort of involved because there was ultimately dozens of Senate candidates and you once had to number them all. They reformed this so you only have to put in as many preferences as you like (so only numbering 1 to 6 out of 40).

Another detail: in Australia you have two ballots. One for the House of Representatives and the other for the Senate. You can vote above/below the line separately on each.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#228

Post by bpt3 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #224

bpt3 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and that's not acceptable, but no group is experiencing wait times of several hours each election, which seems to be the conclusion drawn by many readers of the BBC article.

There is so much evidence that people are denied the opportunity to vote. I'm still pissed off about blacks being turned away in Ohio 2004. They literally just closed and locked the doors. Telling the 1,000s of voters standing in the cold rain for hours to piss off. To cite one example. And it keeps happening.

Yes, I haven't seen a single person saying that voting in the US is perfect or that no voter suppression takes place.

What I am saying (and others are as well) is that the BBC article seems to be mischaracterising/misunderstanding what is happening with respect to the very long lines for in-person early voting in this specific case.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#229

Post by nadezhda18 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

zapnuk wrote: post #183

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…

713,000 voters for 301 locations. Assuming 356k vote on election day, and voting takes place over 12 hours. That's still about 100 per hour and location. And that's ignoring that most will likely vote on their way from/to work (spices in demand), and that polling locations are most likely not perfectly distributed according to the population distribution. Germany has 73,000 locations for 61,690,000 voters. Germany ha…

So in Germany, the ratio is 845 voters per place. this seems to be quite high compared to North America.

For comparison, here are the numbers in Canada for 2019 [0]:

Registered electors: 27,300,000

Polling places: 20,000

Thus, the ratio is 1365 ppl per polling place.

This is only 60% of the ratio in Germany. I am from Canada and I don't think we have any problems with voer supression.

[0] https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=bkg&do...

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#230

Post by 542354234235 » Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

bpt3 wrote: post #204

542354234235 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the norm and has been happening for the last 8 years. > Across the country, more than 2,000 polling places closed between the 2012 and 2016 general elections… for every 10 polling places that closed in the rest of the country, 13 closed within the jurisdictions once under oversight [of the Voting Rights Act]. Policies that introduce barriers to voting — like Texas’ strict voter ID requirements and North Carol…

Hours-long waits to vote are not the norm: https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/insights-into-voting-wai... Having a single early voting location in an entire county that size isn't the norm either this year. I do not in any way support the closure of polling places or other attempts at implicit voter suppression, but mischaracterising what is happening in the BBC article (which is describing early voting) isn't helpf…

Contextualizing the targeted actions taken towards early voting into the broader actions of widespread voter suppression by the republican part over the last 8 years is not mischaracterization. Saying this isn’t “the norm” because it doesn’t happen in the majority of counties misses the point, since the voter suppression is targeted at specific places. I could have been more clear on what I meant by “the norm”. Of course it isn’t happening everywhere or even a majority of places. I mean that targeted voter suppression i.e. either methods of voting or locations of voting with the highest impact on likely democratic voters, has been the norm.

Your linked article stated “Florida saw a scant 6-minute average wait time in 2016” but at that same time Florida had closed polling places in majority black and Latino areas and showed a statistical decline in their turnout. In Texas, if you can target just two counties, both with huge populations and huge numbers of democratic voters, you can affect overall outcome. You don’t have to slow down every single voter in the state for voter suppression to be the norm in that state.