We always have the election on a Sunday to maximize number of voters.
Also, voting can of course be posted ahead, and voting can be delegated to an ombudsman if you are unable to attend physically at a voting station.
We don't allow voting through any electronic devices, nor voting over the internet.
All votes are placed using anonymous envelopes. This way no one can trace who you vote for, while still securing that only one vote are placed per person (by authentication at entry at voting station, and manually checked of in a list). All vote counting is manual.
And we don't have a requirement for registration for voters. Voters are registered automatically, based on if you are allowed to vote (citizenship etc) or not.
I would not call a country a democracy if they don't make it easy for everyone to participate in the election. Having the voting take place when most people are working, or require them to register ahead for voting is not how a democracy works.
With manual vote counting, using paper ballots, we usually have preliminary results around midnight and it's clear who won the election from those, and 99% of the votes are counted by early Sunday morning.
We may have flaws in our democratic system, but the voting process is something we do right.
Agreed. I'd go one step further and advocate compulsory voting (at least compulsory turning up). Even for the most civic minded, it's not difficult to end up with unexpected other obligations on the day and defaulting to a "oh well, one vote wont make a difference" mindset.
Compulsory voting also forces all employers to accommodate their employees going to vote.
Growing up in Australia, I didn't realize for some time that Australia was somewhat of an anomaly in the developed world in this regard.
I'm curious if anyone has seen any research on what the impact of compulsory voting would likely be in the US with respect to the major parties.
It feels like totalitarianism to me. What if I feel that a certain election is a sham, and prefer not to participate? Democratic regimes should be sane enough so that people want to vote. Too many people not wanting to vote should be taken as a signal that something is seriously wrong.
That's when you turn in a blank vote (void or null vote). If you just don't show up for voting you won't affect the outcome but if there is a large number of blank votes, that will be a signal something is wrong.
I disagree. Compulsory voting is incredibly important, because it ensures that everyone is represented. You can even enter a blank or invalid vote if you think the election is a sham. People who claim that "those who don't care about politics shouldn't vote" don't believe in a true democracy. In a true democracy you don't accept that 30-40% of your population is not represented because they didn't show up to vote.
So let's assume that voting in compulsory in the US this year, and everyone actually shows up to vote. After the election, results come up:
XX% Clinton
YY% Trump
Z% Johnson
AA% Clinton
BB% Trump
C% Johnson
All of this results in a >95% voter turnout. Which I think is pretty damn good.
Apathy and laziness. Plus in the us there have been quite a few states which try to pass laws for the sole purpose of making it more difficult for certain groups, usually minorities, to vote. Making voting voting compulsory would do a lot to solve that.
>It feels like totalitarianism to me.
I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. If anything it's forced democracy and not even remotely close to totalitarianism. There are tons of things citizens are forced to do, file taxes, sign up for selective service, serve on a jury which costs jurors money if they are chosen, etc. Forcing people to go to a voting place once every 4 years is pretty light comparatively.
>What if I feel that a certain election is a sham, and prefer not to participate?
What I've heard from Australians is that a common thing there is spoiling your ballet if you don't want to vote.
>Too many people not wanting to vote should be taken as a signal that something is seriously wrong.
That I heartily agree with. I personally don't vote because I live in Illinois so my vote means nothing. That's a serious problem caused by a horribly inefficient and outdated system. Right now a vast majority of Americans have no power in elections, it always comes down to a very small number of swing states, usually less than 15. Live in 70% of the states? Well tough shit, what you want doesn't matter at all. That imo is the fundamental problem. I think if we switch from possibly the worst voting method to just a straight democratic vote, ignoring all the superior voting methods just sticking with FPTP, we would see much greater turnout.
So you only vote in presidential election years, and only fill out the ballot for the presidential candidate? I think you might be doing it wrong.
Apathy is a valid position. Let them not vote. So what?
> Plus in the us there have been quite a few states which try to pass laws for the sole purpose of making it more difficult for certain groups, usually minorities, to vote. Making voting voting compulsory would do a lot to solve that.
Yes, then make laws to solve the real problem.
> I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. If anything it's forced democracy and not even remotely close to totalitarianism.
It's not only forcing democracy but the current flavor of it, no matter how sick it is.
> What I've heard from Australians is that a common thing there is spoiling your ballet if you don't want to vote.
Right. In my country people always say that too. In the end the media reports mostly on participation levels, while blank votes are a minor footnote at 3am.
Illinois has elections for things other than the US presidential electors.
This is a problem because religious people vote more than non-religious, simply because they're already out for church, while others don't bother to leave the house.
I'd assume that what you would see was more religious voters would rather refrain from voting since it was Sunday?
The reason why people vote more religiously than you would expect could simply be because very many are religious, even if they don't speak loudly about it.
I also think I have a feeling for how at least a subset of religious people think.
If voters can't be bothered to show up for elections every two to four years, then maybe something else is wrong. Maybe voters don't feel like their vote matter, or maybe you're making it to hard to vote (like in the US where you're not automatically a registered voter).
That being said, voting during the weekend might help avoid queue at the polls, though I never experienced having to wait more then 10 minutes to cast my vote.
If, additionally, voting day isn't in the weekend or a public holiday then I'd assume that would decrease turnout measurably.
The day of the week isn't the issue. I would find it hard to believe that an American would choose not to vote, because it would take 30 minutes out of his or her evening.
In the suburbs you'll probably be out in a few minutes though.
So you either give the day off, or you come up with a solution to fix the underlying mismanagement of resources.
When I was a student, I was registered to vote in central London. The polling place was still only responsible for roughly the same number of people as some place in the countryside. There were simply more of them in the centre of a city.
What helps is that it's really easy to vote. The only thing you need to do in advance is not lose the voting card that arrives in the mail, and hopefully pay attention to the positions various parties have on the issues. You have to do a bit more if you want to authorize someone else to cast your vote, or if you want to vote at a different voting station, but otherwise you just walk to the voting station before or after work and that's it.
That's it. No registration in advance, no waiting in long lines, no having to travel to the other side of town. For most people, the voting station in right next door.
https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace
"In some states, the law designates a specific amount of time that workers must be allowed off to vote. ... Some states require your employer to give you time off only if you will not have enough time to vote before or after work, while the polls are open. Most but not all states prevent your employer from firing or disciplining you because you take time off to vote."
In the state I live in, there is no law requiring your employer to give you time off to vote.
In Belgium we have to vote at a designated location (almost always a school building) but it's on a Sunday.
It would be less practical here to let you vote near work rather than home, for there are many minor political offices that cover a small district. In the first few hundred meters on the way to work, I cross from Ward 4 into Ward 1. I couldn't tell you how many Advisory Neighborhood Commission districts I would pass through.
. Early voting and vote by mail have been greatly expanded in the US over the last couple of decades. I believe that Oregon uses voting by mail exclusively now.
I myself had to wait for 45 minutes that afternoon.
I guess my point is, if the government doesn't want you to vote there's all sorts of things it can do, weekends or not.
Australia has 95%. To be fair, we have mandatory voting.
Nearly one third of the American labor force works on the weekend [1].
Also,
Overall the authors note that night and weekend work tends to be less desirable, as it is often performed by people with fewer skills and employers typically offer a premium wage for it.
I love the concept of a "work-free day", but I'm guessing that something like 5-10% of the workforce is doing infrastructure stuff that needs, absolutely needs, to happen every day simply to keep society functioning.
I thought I loved this concept, then I worked in Wellington NZ for a few months, and discovered the only time I could possibly grocery shop was on my lunch break. (In fairness, this was over a decade ago, so things might have changed?)
(Or we could just have multi-day early voting. Like most states already do).
I like putting a piece of paper in a box very much (and elections are always on Sundays in France so you don't have to choose between this and your job).
In Australia I went into a prepolling station and voted a week early.
Of course, compulsory voting definitely means things like these are required, but it never struck me that other countries wouldn't have the ability to prepoll
Some States years ago opened-up absentee voting to literally everybody who simply asks for an absentee ballot. In some counties in those States, the percentage of people voting absentee was so high they just shut down the polling stations and have everybody vote absentee by default.
Now that said, we are the US, and that means we have this thing called "the South", and people in "the South" want to have strict controls over the polling process and require ID because that makes it easier for them to exclude people who have the "wrong" skin color from participating.
The US is a very large and very diverse country, and compared to European countries has very little central control when it comes to things like, for example, how elections are run. That's all State and county level.
Is this you advocating for illegal inmigrant vote or are you saying that IDs are often denied to non-whites?
Anything that makes it logistically easier to vote is resisted in certain states because it would increase the turnout of poor and minority voters.
Though you should be free to submit a ballot of as little as a single mark (the mark being that you abstain from all contests on the ballot). If you vote in any single one you'd need to complete the rest, to ensure you ballot cannot be tampered with later.
Since we have a secret ballot, it would be unenforceable for them to say that you had to submit a valid ballot.
> What you do after that in the little booth with just your conscious and a pen is up to you. (I usually take the pen, that's all I've ever got out of politics.)
Odd, my voting place last election only had pencils. I carried a pen with me (voting with a pencil is asking for trouble).
The US is in many ways strangely traditional.
EDIT: Replaced folk origin with actual researched origin.
[1] I couldn't find any actual numbers so I was just looking up retail and restaurant industry jobs on the BLS website, but WiseGeek claims (without a reference) that the BLS says 35% of Americans work weekends.
I'm sure it wouldn't be popular in States where there's a big push to check photo ID before voting though.
If held on the weekend it would not allow Sabbath observers to vote. Not sure why Tuesday was picked specifically. Turnout is not that great in recent years though, usually around 60-70%.
I'm all for making sure everyone has the opportunity to vote, but I'm not convinced there are very many people who can't make any of those options work but who could vote if election day was during the weekend.
We sit at the dining room table, do research, and vote gradually over the course of 7-10 days. Ballots can then be mailed in (with a signature-bearing outer envelope that's stripped away before votes are counted), or dropped off at a library or designated polling place all the way up until election day.
Having to take time off of work and physically go to a polling place with a handful of notes is insane to me.
If not, weekends and days off aren't a great fix either, because some people have to work on weekends or when other people are free. Generous hours and the ability to vote early or authorize someone else to cast are better to give absolutely everybody the opportunity to vote, I think.
Weekends in the US aren't going to get you more turnout anyway. Plenty of the country works on the weekends so it's not a help there and for those that don't, given taking hours out of your already limited free time or using your weekend for yourself, voting isn't going to win out in a lot of cases.
If you want a more productive political debate in your country, it doesn't help to pigeonhole people before you've got the chance to know them.
The effect of changing voting age, voter registration rules, how new parties are registered, whether voting is compulsory, how voting is combined with voting on other issues and so on can be calculated and predicted quite precisely.
And you will see that all major political parties are working for the changes that will benifit themselves the most.
The question I'm raising is why it can be predicted. The assertion I'm making is that many people vote in accordance with the norms of their societal influences, not necessarily because they're making decisions based on the vision and competency of the people they're voting for, and by stereotyping people you're only furthering this phenomenon.
To put it in other words, I do not doubt that political parties put together statistics on voters to guide their decisions in an election, however there's a difference between doing it publicly and doing it privately, and that difference can be found in how it affects the behaviour of voters. When it comes to predicting in public you should be conscious of the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies. By tying a voting decision to someone's identity within a society you hold back debates based on reason.
No one claims to be able to tell what a particular person is voting based on whether they are in job or not.
No one claims to be able to be completely certain who someone will vote for, but people do claim to be able to predict who someone will vote for. What I'm saying is that making this prediction is not without consequence. In other words, the prediction and the action taken as a result of this prediction can influence the result of an election.
By characterising the 'type' of people that are likely to vote a certain way, you build up social norms. These social norms then have a limiting effect on reasonable debate. In a more robust democracy there shouldn't be such a thing as 'safe' states (in the sense of states that always vote Democrat or Republican), yet those states exist. I'm saying that a large part of that is because people have become conditioned to voting a certain way by the society that surrounds them, and the way that voting along with peers is normalised.
As a light-hearted example, take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3VLqLLWxbQ
It's fairly tame from a political standpoint, and it's clearly done in a light-hearted way, but one of the main reasons it's safe because people vote with their peers, the artist can be fairly certain he's not singing to people who (for the most part) would vote Democrat because that not part of their identity.
Statistical analysis of voters can feed into identity politics, both from the perspective of how parties advertise themselves to would-be voters, and in the case of statistical analysis that is frequently repeated in the mass media, of normalising divisions and guiding people into where they 'fit in'. I don't think these divisions help people engage in politics in a reasoned, respectful way as the moment you bring identity into politics reason and logic can go out of the window. Therefore, whilst statistical grouping may seem innocuous on the surface, it can lead to a fairly sizeable impact over time.
Make it a whole week, allow mail-in voting without jumping through absentee ballot hoops, or (unrealistically) require all businesses to shut down completely.
Barely qualifies as a 'hoop' to jump through, and I fail to see how any other vote-by-mail system could be easier.
Oh, and it's a felony to "make a false statement" on the application form.
[1] http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/download/voting/Absentee0...
Modern!