Startups, let’s act: Make Nov 8 a Holiday
blog.amium.com
blog.amium.com
You can't make this any easier, and half the state still does not vote.
My Washington statistics come from: http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx
Electronic Collection of votes seems very logical, if you then immediately generate a paper record (like a punched card) of the results of that particular ballot. Those paper results could then be tabulated and compared to the electronic results.
There's really no reason every citizen shouldn't vote, but electronic voting would certainly reduce voter suppression and (IMHO) increase confidence in the process. I'd certainly be happier with a cryptography-oriented process rather than one relying on humans, which can be reliable en masse, but are also easily fooled.
>increase confidence in the process >increased visibility into whether your vote actually counts
IMO this is exactly wrong. We've had a LONG time to figure out how to count paper ballots by hand in ways that are resilient to fraud. Each ballot (and its corresponding tally mark) is handled in view of observers representing the opposing candidates. If there is something fishy about the count, at least one of the people who observed the counting process has the information and incentives necessary to attract more scrutiny.
>would certainly reduce voter suppression
Only if people do it from home, in which case there is no paper trail. Unless you mail in the paper trail, in which case you may as well have mailed in your ballot.
Fast results, strong paper trail, failure of the electronic part of the system doesn't hamper voting.
While I understand that voting booths are farm from perfect, moving exclusively to mail-in ballots seems to me to trade convenience for security, robustness and and auditability.
When I go to a polling station, I am relatively well assured that my vote is actually being tabulated, and that I have at least asserted who I am, and that no one has voted in my place.
I don't know what safeguards the mail-in ballots have, presumably there are some but I don't think it's a panacea. In fact, I would say if your participation rate went much higher I would be suspicious.
You mail in two sealed envelopes... You sign the inner one, which is discarded once verified. You get a barcode with your ballot that you can use to verify that your ballot was counted. I remember reading a big 'voting transparency' page years ago, but I can't find anything today that documents everything.
So, knowing that signatures are checked feels good, even if it's a random sampling, they'd be able to gauge whether deeper auditing is required. Fraud would require intercepting mail, which means:
A) Intercepting received ballots.
B) Intercepting sent ballots.
For A: Ballots are delivered across the state in a very tight window. Prior to the ballots, voting pamphlets are sent to everyone, telling them when to expect their ballot. It is assumed that any meddling with the ballots on a large enough scale to affect the election would be reported well before the election.
For B: Fraud would occur in three ways: Trashing the ballots, modifying the ballots, replacing the ballots. Trashing would be identifiable by concerned citizens monitoring that their ballot was counted. Modifying would be identifiable by the security envelope that was signed by the individual. Replacing would be identifiable by matching signatures.
There certainly is an opportunity for Fraud, but the organization to pull off an attack that is wide-scale enough change an election would be big enough that it would likely set off other alarms.
For example - my wife and I fill out the ballot together as a family on the dining room table.
It's certainly possible that one of us influences the other, and that by voting in the open, one of us isn't free to vote their conscience.
The one thing that's now possible is coerced voting, but apparently Washington believes that this is outweighed by the benefit of improved turnout.
EDIT: I actually like Belgium's model - you don't have to vote, but you do need to show up at the polls and register attendance. You can abstain if you'd like.
If anything, I'd prefer a fair voting test, where the person pulling the lever has to have _some_ kind of background knowledge.
The tests were predominant in the South and were designed so that nonwhites would fail them.
Here is a sample: http://www.crmvet.org/info/la-littest2.pdf The instructions alone made my head spin.
More from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/voting_literacy.html
Plus there's the whole freedom thing. We should keep the list of "things the government forces you to to do" as small as possible.
</another unsubstantiated comment>
"I think we probably had a better election. Think about this: We cut Obama by 5 percent, which was big. You know, a lot of people lost sight of that. He won, he beat McCain by 10 percent. He only beat Romney by 5 percent. I think that, probably, voter ID helped a bit in that."
2 Pennsylvania GOP officials (Mike Turzai and Rob Gleason). There you go, it's substantiated!
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/st...
Related, relevant:
"Employees who begin their work day less than 3 hours after polls open and finish less than 3 hours before polls close are entitled to 2 hours leave to vote (or more if distance requires). The employee must give notice the day before Election Day and cannot have pay reduced if proof of voting is provided."
Even as our national unemployment starts to get back to the natural rate of ~5%, underemployment is still a big problem, as is cost of living being too high in many places for the working class. Hence, the rise of the working poor, and multiple jobs to make ends meet.
It needs to be a national holiday with anyone normally scheduled to work that day getting paid for it. Automatic voter registration + mail in ballots easily accessible would be one alternative.
Stepping back to consider the situation, there really isn't a good reason I can think of to not shut it down and let our citizens choose their next leaders. If one paid day for your employees every two years puts you out of business, so be it.
If only there were neighbors one could ask.
If only there were city council meetings one could attend.
If only one could mail a letter or make a phone call to the candidates, to ask them about things one considers important.
You get the information by going out and getting it. If you don't, you're saying "I don't care, at all". And those local candidates will often move on to the next higher level at some point. At which point suddenly "I don't care" turns into "we only have terrible choices".
The last election took me about 1-1½ hour to figure out whom I was going to vote for.
Having said that, in an awful lot of places the primary is the real election for races below the statewide level.
National elections, sure, the Democrat is almost a shoo-in. But it would seem that as we drift down to the state and local level, CA is a bit more conservative than the hype.
Of course that's not going to happen. But it's inaccurate to think that people not voting don't vote because they have no bearing on the election.
https://ballotpedia.org/California%27s_17th_Congressional_Di...
If companies want to give employees an extra holiday then sure, go ahead. But that won't increase voter participation.
In general terms postal voting, and any method for voter-not-present polling, is open to coercion and intimidation.
That's why voting-in-person in booths remains the primary method, even in countries such as the UK where voting papers are logged against the identity of the voter ( it takes a court order to de-seal that information ).
In terms of invalidated votes, in-person seems to have about 1% of ballot rejections, whereas vote-by-mail has about 2% rejections. (No data on how many of those rejections were inappropriate and how many were appropriate that I could find). Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-b...
In any case, I really don't see why this is such an important cause to prioritize:
1) Are there really good policies that are being held up by the voters that don't vote because of the inconvenience?
2) How does that compare with other uses of political capital (alternatives to FPTP, transit, anti-NIMBY policies, tax shifts, etc)?
3) What is the impact of low turnout vs electoral shenanigans in miscounting? Why not focus on having a more auditable system?
This article starts from the premise of "the most important thing to do is increase turnout, regardless of the costs [like those associated with a new holiday], and regardless of whether that improves policy". Sorry, I don't share that premise, and neither should anyone else.
What about something else like a company held half day event that involves voting and doing something else fun (lunch or picnic?) ie. instead of a party bus...a voting bus of some sort?
If that's your view, I suggest owning it.
The fundamental problem of democracy is that people end up believing that the government works for them. Under other systems, people know they are at odds with their rulers. If things get bad enough, they will organize and rebel. But democracy simulates a pressure-relief valve for discontent, actually leaving people convinced that they're responsible for the crappy outcome!
The presidential race is the focus because it's the archetype for the whole system [0]. Regardless of whether the dipshit or the criminal wins this fall, the useful idiots who fell for their revolutionary rhetoric will subsequently be justifying oppressive policies that hurt the losing team more than themselves. They'll receive none of the promised relief, yet they'll reassure themselves that the other skinjob would have been sooo much worse. It's a remarkable system for converting dissent into support, and I would call it elegant but for being its victim.
[0] The exact same dynamic plays out in local races, choosing between the scumbags who raise taxes and create new nanny state regulations, or the asshats who underfund schools and let infrastructure fall apart. The bureaucracy's middle management or the scope of its control is rarely cut back.
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/23/study-early-...
https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace
Combined with early voting:
https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting
And polls being open for 12 hours or more in most places.
http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/voter-registration-d...
In addition, automatic voter registration and easily accessible mail in ballots are needed as well.
Voting over multiple days doesn't mean that partial results are available. (Given that, even in places that don't have all-mail elections, mail/absentee ballots are a significant fraction of ballots, we have voting over multiple days now -- even in the places that don't have "early voting" at actual polling locations. We don't have results before voting closes, though, and this prevents partial results from having an impact [outside of Presidential primaries, which are series of separate-but-related elections, where we have a very big effect of results early in the process].)
Most poor people, even those with a single job must work _at least_ 8 hours a day, 7 days a week to come close, but nowhere near enough, to supporting themselves—let along improving their station in life. And this is simply their job. Add onto this time that must be spent taking care of children and parents.
This class of individual is not going to be able to find time, even on a weekend, to vote because our society is explicitly engineered to put them at a disadvantage in time, capital, and thus political influence.
Your suggestion that most poor people work at least 56 hours a week isn't consistent with what I've read. For example, from The Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis, "Who are the working poor?", first paragraph:
> In 2013, 45.3 million people were poor. The majority of the people who live below the poverty level do not work. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 10.5 million or 23 percent of the poor were “working poor.” [1]
Note that I'm not arguing that there is not problem with voting and the poor.
We should require an oral civics exam before anyone is allowed to vote. If you don't understand basic government functions, you sure shouldn't be allowed to vote on those functions.
That's like asking the marketing department to debug C. Why should the ignorant be allowed to make decisions that affect everyone's lives unless they care enough to actually understand what they're voting for?
Voting is certainly a right, but that doesn't preclude the responsibility.
Who decides what's going to be on the civics test? Half the population or more couldn't pass it now if it were only as rigorous as to require knowledge of the three branches of government and separation of powers.
OTOH, if it had been required in the past, we'd probably have better government officials than we have now...
Make it not seem pointless.
60%-70% of eligible voters sit at home, whining how their vote won't change things anyways. Guess what - it just might, if you actually voted.
The number of non-voters dwarfs actual voters. If everybody voted, they could duke it out with several independent candidates and still trounced the established ones. (Yes, that's an unlikely scenario. But voting has power - if you actually care to do it)
a) All elections should offer a mail-in ballot
b) All elections should be on Saturday or Sunday
c) If you work on those days, you should be entitled to paid time off.
In that order. Alas, c) is the only item our community can affect, so we'll have to do that if we want to do anything.
[Edit: I also think that HN really could do with support for enumerations. We're engineers. We enumerate :)]
1. First-past-the-post/winner-take-all voting system. This essentially guarantees that third party candidates will never be chosen (due to the presence of the Spoiler Effect), and that the winning candidate will rarely represent more than a small fraction of the actual voting population. Even if asses were forced out of seats, they will likely feel unable to vote for the candidate who matters to them. The problem of the voting system must be resolved.
2. "Statistical" insignificance. Not referring to actual statistical insignificance, a reasonable person can calculate the difference between the time/resources spent going to vote and expected rewards from that activity (chance that their vote will decide the election + chance of the outcome having a significant positive impact according to their initial political preferences), and the time/resources spent, for example, playing the lottery. If their resource:reward ratio in playing the lottery is more favorable than the same ratio in a general election, you can be sure many people would feel like the general election is at least as pointless -- if not more so -- for the same reasons. The problem of insignificance must be resolved.
3. Gerrymandering. For huge segments of the US, your vote literally does not matter for the general election even in that tiny statistical sense. This is because the US is divided up into voting districts, where the majority of votes in a district decide the entire district's "vote". This means that depending on how the districts are carved up (which they are, into abominable, exploitative patterns), these majorities can be greatly manipulated. If you're a Democrat in many areas of Texas, or a Republican in many areas of California, your vote will have a net effect of zero by default if you live in a district with a different majority. You could have 40% of a country's population be conservative, and 60% progressive, and as long as the districts are drawn such that this 60-40 ratio is preserved in all of the districts, every district vote will come up progressive, leaving almost half the nation entirely unrepresented. Obviously, if your vote does not even matter because other people in your local area happen to think differently to you, this can and will contribute to a feeling of pointlessness. You have to solve the problem of gerrymandering.
4. Even assuming people aren't dissuaded by the feeling of general insignificance, by the seeming impenetrability of the winner-take-all voting structure, or by the awful reality of gerrymandering, there is still another big problem to overcome, and that is the problem of voter ignorance. There is a real argument to be made that without an amount of education and diligence far outweighing the expected benefits of a perfect democratic election (one which lacks all of the aforementioned issues), voters will still not be able to make a truly rational choice, or a choice in their own best interests. The way to exemplify the reality of this problem is by asking any given person "What are the last votes that your congressional representatives made?" I will be stunned if they could answer for either state or national-level politics unless they work in politics or political media themselves (maybe not even then). But far beyond this, in order to make a decision not out of ignorance, they need solid personal knowledge on a wide variety of topics like economics, technology, ethics/philosophy, many of the sciences, current events, etc. Things which the average person justifiably does not believe they can afford to learn. But if they know just enough to be aware of what they don't know, they will probably feel that it is pointless. You have to solve the problem of voter ignorance.
There are certainly a number of other factors involving the inscrutability of government processes and bureaucracies, impenetrability of hegemonic power blocs, and general corruption that add to this overwhelming sense of pointlessness. Many people simply seem to believe, understandably, that the deck is stacked entirely against them. As an average citizen, the more deeply one examines the government and the political world, the more fruitless it feels.
The fundamental problem with any strain of totalitarianism is that individuals have differing utility functions.
Beyond election day, we ought to to better with primary participation. I read somewhere that basically 9% of the voting public decided that Trump and Clinton would be our nominees. Even if 100% of voters show up on November 8, not enough of the public is in there driving the choices on the ballot that day.
However, primary participation is a bigger issue than a day off. Even if you don't work at all, most people can't afford a day to caucus in the states that do it (I'm in one of those states), and everyone else is probably still hung over from the last election cycle. But 2016 is a banner year to show who we get as our choices when we stop paying attention in the primaries. When I go to the polls on Nov 8, no one on the ballot is actually someone I'd want to lead our country, and I bet a lot of people feel the same.
I want the populace's will represented (constrained by constitutional protections of various rights), but I'll admit sometimes you just wish you had another populace. That's just the cards you're dealt. Other forms of government aren't responsive to the people.
This comic was an amusing commentary on this topic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sword-of-democracy
Also, absentee ballots are easy to do. Contact your County Elections Office (typically under the Clerks office) and ask how. It might just be as easy as that phone call. They will MAIL you a ballot, they might even include a postage paid return envelope and you should receive it 30-45 days before the election so you can fill it out and return it way before election night when it is counted.
I believe the real solution is to stop with the election day concept and move more to an election week or something similar.
But we already know from extensive study of political systems in modern democracies that the biggest reason for low turnout in the US is the fact that very large groups in the electorate see no candidate that represents their interests well when voting, and see no strong basis to select between the viable choices, due to the partisan duopoly produced as a natural result of the combination of majority-runoff and plurality elections for most offices.
If you really want to improve participation in US elections, fiddling with the mechanics, scheduling, and incidental related features of casting ballots without changing the electoral system in a fundamental way isn't going to have more than marginal effect.
Another federal holiday will just be another week day where most people go to work, but the banks are closed and your mail will not be delivered.
Um, aren't Silicon Valley workers more likely to be immigrants? They can't vote.
On the other hand, hey, who doesn't love an extra day off?
Here at least all voting is done on Sundays with reasoning being that this maximises the amount of people that can make it to the stand (since majority of population doesn't work on sundays and most of the others have a part-time schedule). What's the reason US avoids that?
Since your company's workforce likely comes from a bunch of different districts, it's also hard to extrapolate from your own experiences to all of theirs.
Don't you guys have work from home policies? This is a solution looking for a problem.