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World reaction to long queues of voters in US

bbc.com

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Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#231

Post by specialist »

leetcrew wrote: post #122
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 dissatis…

Compulsory voting would improve election integrity. It'd enable accounting style end-to-end auditing. Closing some attacks vectors, like ballot stuffing.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#232

Post by specialist »

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…

Ya, it's nutty making.

Post 2000, with HAVA et al, the EAC.gov has done some good recommending best practices and codifying rules. It's not nearly enough.

I'd love for USA to have a GATT style body. Then maybe some day our elections could brag about meeting the Carter Center's minimum standards for integrity and accountability.

https://electionstandards.cartercenter.org/

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#233

Post by specialist »

bpt3 wrote: post #228
specialist wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok. We need a "Yes, and..." way to respond to issues, acknowledging the problem while vetting specific reports.

Because I admit I read your responses as denial or concern trolling.

Peace.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#234

Post by jedberg »

DuskStar wrote: post #225
jedberg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that ease of movement and communication have nothing to do with moving one's home, because you can't bring your land with you.

It does however have everything to do with elections.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#235

Post by bpt3 »

542354234235 wrote: post #230
bpt3 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

My point is that the cause of the long lines shown in the BBC article isn't likely to be targeted voter suppression because they are happening all over the US, ranging from areas where generally democrat-voting minorities live and voter suppression has been (and still is) an issue, to republican strongholds, to areas mostly populated by upper income white people (many who vote democrat) who have never waited more than 10 minutes to vote in their lives.

Also, everything you're saying is true (voter suppression is an issue in the US), as is everything I'm saying (wait times like the ones shown in the article aren't normal).

A number of people, yourself included, have decided to take the discussion on a tangent, presumably because it's more important and/or interesting to you.

I'm continuing address the questions of "are lines like this normal for US elections" with "no, it's not" (and here's the data backing that up).

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#236

Post by tom_mellior »

bpt3 wrote: post #201
tom_mellior wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this! "Not the norm" is a bit of an over-interpretation though. That data shows that in many states such lines were indeed the norm until very recent reforms (as in, there is only one post-reform data point to go on). And that the reforms didn't help non-white voters to the same extent that they did white voters.

The data shows that hours-long waits are not and haven't been the norm, as I stated. There is data on wait times from 4 elections in the article, none of which supports a claim that the wait times shown in the BBC article are at all normal. It's obvious that you're looking to draw a very specific conclusion regardless of the data presented, so best of luck with that.

"Not the norm" is a cop-out. Is it the average person's experience? No, and nobody says that it is. The BBC article doesn't say that the average voter needs to wait for hours. But many voters do.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#238

Post by smoe »

Taek wrote: post #2

It's both amazing and terrible. Amazing to see people standing up for their rights and voting in the face of adversity, these voters deserve praise and are role models for the country. Terrible because it means that they are in corrupt districts that are not properly facilitating democracy. Worthy of a federal corruption investigation potentially resulting in criminal charges. Though I am very glad people are willing…

Amazing and terrible I think it is pretty fitting.

As a Swiss I have voted almost every single time (about 4 times a year) since I was able to, but I have never even left the house for doing that beyond dropping it off in the next regular or official mailbox. I don't know what a polling stations look like from the inside after 15 years of voting, and being completely honest, I probably couldn't be arsed for the majority of votes/elections to go stand in line somewhere in the rain for doing so.

Potential manipulation risk for mail in voting in general aside, what I found baffling doing a quick google search on administrative cost of an election is how much more the US seems to be spending per citizen than Switzerland.

Switzerland spends a little less than 2$ per voter whereas the US spends 10$, at least according to this article

https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2019-01/mohr...

What would make it so much more expensive? Staff cost? Much larger geographical distribution of voters? Or just being inefficient?

As a reference, in Switzerland 80-90% of votes are mail-in.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#239

Post by bpt3 »

tom_mellior wrote: post #236
bpt3 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data shows that hours-long waits are not and haven't been the norm, as I stated. There is data on wait times from 4 elections in the article, none of which supports a claim that the wait times shown in the BBC article are at all normal. It's obvious that you're looking to draw a very specific conclusion regardless of the data presented, so best of luck with that.

"Not the norm" is a cop-out. Is it the average person's experience? No, and nobody says that it is. The BBC article doesn't say that the average voter needs to wait for hours. But many voters do.

It's not a cop-out, it's a summary of the facts, as opposed to your claims that "many" voters wait in lines like the ones shown in the article and the random picture you found.

Like many of the individuals quoted in the BBC article, you know nothing about how voting in the US works and don't understand why people are choosing to stand in these lines right now, weeks before the actual election day and before all early voting locations are even open in many areas, but are very eager to make condescending comments.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion that you have no interest in a discussion about anything other than your inaccurate, preconceived notions.

Re: World reaction to long queues of voters in US

#240

Post by apta »

smoe wrote: post #238
Taek wrote: post #2

It's both amazing and terrible. Amazing to see people standing up for their rights and voting in the face of adversity, these voters deserve praise and are role models for the country. Terrible because it means that they are in corrupt districts that are not properly facilitating democracy. Worthy of a federal corruption investigation potentially resulting in criminal charges. Though I am very glad people are willing…

Amazing and terrible I think it is pretty fitting. As a Swiss I have voted almost every single time (about 4 times a year) since I was able to, but I have never even left the house for doing that beyond dropping it off in the next regular or official mailbox. I don't know what a polling stations look like from the inside after 15 years of voting, and being completely honest, I probably couldn't be arsed for the major…

Do you have to provide ID when voting in Switzerland?
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