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

121–130 of 268 posts

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#121

Post by thebooktocome »

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…

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The Federalist Papers are centuries out of date.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 multinational corporation with an unlimited purse and fewer limits on their free speech than an ordinary citizen.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#122

Post by leetcrew »

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…

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 dissatisfaction (or apathy) with all the viable candidates by abstaining entirely.

one final thought: someone who cares so little about voting that they would only do it under compulsion seems like someone I would probably prefer not to vote. this is assuming, of course, that the reason they don't want to vote is not because of procedural obstacles. if you don't know anything about the candidates other than their names, your vote probably does not contribute much to the democratic process.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#123

Post by justin66 »

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…

Are the officials administering the queue part of the conspiracy to create a long line to make a political statement (or more skeptically, are virtue signaling) as well?

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#124

Post by arethuza »

Macha wrote: post #59
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.

In Ireland we don't have mandatory voting but we still provision polling stations to handle the possibility of all voters actually voting. The result is when I lived in a high turnout area, I once had to queue 10 minutes to vote when I had to do it during lunch time, and now I live in a low turnout area 10 minutes is the time from leaving my house to being back having voted in between.

I've voted in the centre of cities and in rural areas in Scotland for ~35 years and I've literally never had to queue - I usually vote in the early evening as well which I would have thought was a fairly popular time.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#125

Post by trey-jones »

I live in a city/town in Georgia USA with a population of about 25k. I have never waited more than 10 minutes to vote. This type of thing (long lines in Atlanta) was in the news last year during our very close gubernatorial election and I don't think it's far fetched to say that it decided the election.

As I recall, the main reason in the news was that there were so few voting machines available in Atlanta. My observation as I walked in to vote instantly (on Election day mind, not early voting) was that we had 3 voting machines at my polling place.

It seems a pretty simple thing to me that if I can vote in 10 minutes or less and people are waiting for hours and hours in Atlanta (taking time off from work, giving up their whole day?), then it seems fair to me that my polling place can do with 1 voting machine and they can take the other 2 to Atlanta. And of course I'm assuming that this strange distribution of voting machines exists in many other polling places as well. If it didn't fix the problem, then it could at least make it a little bit less bad.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#126

Post by thebooktocome »

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 is a famously unreliable source.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#127

Post by bpt3 »

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…

Your experience is the norm for almost all Americans as well, on election day (or with normal levels of demand for early voting). Unfortunately, it's not the norm for everyone, but the lines described in this article are caused by an enormous increase in demand for early voting, not the other more serious issues you're attributing them to.

Basically, people voting now are choosing to stand in these long lines to vote.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#128

Post by komali2 »

jrumbut wrote: post #56

The only long line to vote (and it wasn't anything like the lines in the article, we're talking maybe 25 people) I've ever seen was the one time I voted in a jurisdiction with electronic voting machines. Otherwise they all had paper ballots and it's never been more than (say) 5 people in line. Some of these places with the long lines (and clunky voting machines for that matter) are places with a history of voter supp…

Correct. These are invariably in states where republicans can influence voting procedures.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#129

Post by nicoffeine »

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…

> That has mostly to do with the Democrats being overly populistic about all the concerns, without offering any solutions

> It just took people like AOC to push me all the way over into the realm of, well, not falling victim to populist rhetoric that is based in the realm of fantasy.

> By that I mean, of course, her ridiculous Green New Deal plan

Pick a lane, my friend. There's a big difference between "don't offer any solutions" and "I don't like their solutions." What specifically don't you like about the Green New Deal? What about one of the hundreds of bills that passed in the House but have not been allowed to come to the floor of the Senate?

Trump's GOP is worse than not offering any solutions. They are invested in pretending that racism, a shrinking middle class, and climate change do not exist.

Post reply on HN