21–30 of 79 posts
Before moving to the US, I voted a few times in a different country where the rules were simple: one election day and absolutely no polls/estimations/etc communicated in the media during the last 48 hours before the election day.
I'm not particularly bothered that it might take another day or two for all the votes to be counted. I'd much rather have the devil I know than a bunch of automation and technology that might have bigger issues. Since it's not nationally controlled, and each US state (and county) can do what it wants, a big push to use tech is almost sure to backfire. And backfire in ways that aren't immediately obvious.
I'm not bothered either. I think one reason this comes across as an "issue" is that a majority of the public believes that "election day", the event, or holiday, or whatever you want to call it, is the day on which a new president is elected. This narrative is pushed by tradition, news media, and the politicians themselves (if it's in their interest). I think we need to separate this narrative in two separate days; o…
I'm not going after this individual, but this kind of journalism needs to be considered. ( Flagged or not? You tell me? )
Oregon has a great voting system. Works very well - supposedly the easiest in the country. Everything is by mail. Fraud rates are extremely low.
How do you know that?
Canada is no less of a federal country with devolved decision-making powers, perhaps even more so. And yet we have one system of casting and tallying votes, presided over by one federal electoral commission, which reports to the parliament and not to the government. It was set up in 1920 and worked out very well for us, delivering 100 years of bullshit-free elections.
Sometimes countries adopt different laws and you cannot unequivocally say one is better than the other. But sometimes, like here, one way is clearly, unequivocally superior. This is too important to leave to amateur hour and should be done right, Canada's way.
I'm actually much more bothered by the fact that people can start voting 1 month before the actual election day, or that votes can be counted and communicated before the election day. Before moving to the US, I voted a few times in a different country where the rules were simple: one election day and absolutely no polls/estimations/etc communicated in the media during the last 48 hours before the election day.
Letting people vote is the foundation of democracy.
> votes can be counted and communicated
Where does this happen?
> absolutely no polls/estimations/etc communicated in the media during the last 48 hours before the election day.
For what benefit?
I just worked the polls in Pennsylvania - the new voting machines are pretty great. You get a paper ballot, you insert it, you use a touchscreen to make choices, the machine prints the ballot with your choices on it, shows it to you behind plexiglass, you check over it for correctness. If it's all good, you hit done and the ballot is pulled in to a hopper. If not, you can redo. You get a machine count instantly at th…
I'm not particularly bothered that it might take another day or two for all the votes to be counted. I'd much rather have the devil I know than a bunch of automation and technology that might have bigger issues. Since it's not nationally controlled, and each US state (and county) can do what it wants, a big push to use tech is almost sure to backfire. And backfire in ways that aren't immediately obvious.
I really don't think this is about a tradeoff between time and reliability. Other developed countries have, for decades, reliably given results within hours of polls closing, without "automation or obscure technology". Time to results is a factor in the credibility of the results, just as auditability and transparency. International election observers regularly raise concerns about protracted and drawn out election c…
How do these other countries handle mail-in ballots? In most (maybe all) US states, a ballot postmarked on election day is valid as long as it is received by some specific point (usually Friday) after election day. Thus, in the US there are an undetermined number of valid votes that have not even been received by election officials yet.
If you allow mail in votes that are accepted as long as they are postmarked by election day, you can't certify the counts on election day unless a majority of registered voters' ballots have arrived by election day. It's as simple as that.
The contention is mostly in a small number of states where the Republican party has engineered electoral corruption in order to retain control, combined with the winner-take-all nature of electoral votes in most states. Most states conduct elections with few problems and little drama.
If the president were elected by popular vote at the national level there would be far less contention because the margin in any given local election would be much less meaningful.