Hacker News Reader

There is no reason to abstain in Australia because we have a preference system. In the States, when Nader ran against Gore it divided the Democrat vote and Bush won. The same thing doesn't happen in Australia so if you vote for a minor party because you really believe in their policies, although they may still preference a major party that you don't wholly agree with they still get funding based on the number of votes received and if they actually win a seat in parliament (as Adam Bandt did in his recent historic win in the federal seat of Melbourne for the Greens) then those "minor" parties start to have a "major" influence.

All in all I think the preference system and mandatory voting makes for a far healthier democracy.

I have to call BS. This argument that third parties split the vote is nonsense.

Me voting for a third-party candidate is does not imply that I would have voted for any other candidate had they not been on the ballot. Had that candidate not been on the ballot, I would have abstained from that particular position.

It's like the BSA argument that people who steal software (yes it's stealing) would have normally bought the software. No, they wouldn't have.

But if a third party happens to appeal to a similar demographic to one of the main parties (in this case, the Democrats, and the Gore campaign in particular), then it will split the vote. If you don't believe it, then the Bush campaign (Republicans) sure did, since they worked hard to promote the Green party and get them on as many ballots as they could.

> Had that candidate not been on the ballot, I would have abstained from that particular position.

Really? If there were three candidates, one who was 95% in agreement with you, one who was 85%, and one who was 30%, and the 95% dropped out of the race, you would just NOT vote for the 85%?

It depends. I would typically vote for a candidate if his positions on other issues were not repulsive to me or if his stance really didn't matter at the federal level.

But I refuse to vote for a candidate because of a single plank or even 2 or 3 planks. I won't compromise on things like marriage equality or abortion rights. Those, while they should have no federal interferance at all, sadly are determined at the federal level. Same goes for economy.

But if the candidate has an opinion on, say, the Department of Education that I'm opposed to I might let it slide.

The point I was making is that is a case by case basis and more times than not, I've refused to vote for any candidate because I didn't want to send a message that I supported them at all.

The only message that not voting for anyone sends is that you're happy with anyone.

If everyone informed chooses not to vote for anyone, all that does is give more power to the uninformed.

Option B would be pretty interesting, and might provide a decent incentive for people to vote. However, if people aren't likely to vote anyway, why would they care how much representation they have in Congress?

We effectively do have a "none of the above" option: don't select anyone and still cast the ballot. However, it would be better if there was an explicit "No vote" option.

The biggest problem with voting not being mandatory is that a lot of people don't have the opportunity because they can't get off work. If you made voting mandatory (or at least made election day a paid holiday), this impediment might be alleviated.

«The biggest problem with voting not being mandatory is that a lot of people don't have the opportunity because they can't get off work. If you made voting mandatory (or at least made election day a paid holiday), this impediment might be alleviated.»

An alternative, as it's done in Spain, is to give everyone the right to leave their jobs in order to vote. To alleviate things for businesses, all elections happen on Sundays.

Another alternative is to have advance voting. In the recent elections in Sweden about one third of the votes cast were cast in advance, IIRC.

In Washington and Oregon (soon California) this is done by mail.

In Illinois at least employers are required to allow employees to take two paid hours off at the beginning or end of their shift to vote. Also there's "no excuse" absentee vote by mail and early voting available throughout the state.

Why don’t you vote on Sundays like I don’t know how many other nations in the World? It doesn’t make any sense.

It's written in the Constitution as to when voting should occur. Remember, this was written for the late 18th century, so doing anything on Sundays was generally frowned upon. Plus, changing something like this would be far more difficult than just giving everyone the day off.

However, in this country there is a constant struggle between trying to let more people vote versus trying to restrict voting. Hence why a lot of people are up in arms about potential voter fraud. The traditional wisdom is that more voters helps one party, fewer helps another. With this as a factor, you can see how it would be very difficult to change the day of voting to make it more convenient for people.

It’s not in the Constitution as far as I can see. Election day seems to be determined by an ordinary law.

And this is why I'm glad that we don't have to pass a test to vote. I'd fail that question. I blame my third grade social studies teacher. :).

The date is set by an act of Congress from 1845.

http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsl/005/0700/07590721.tif

I think my other arguments still stand though...

Because we need enough time to travel to town overnight via horse. We vote in November because the harvest is over. I believe this is correct, I've heard it several places, but here is one citation: http://www.whytuesday.org/answer/

It's for historic reasons tied to the US being a farming society:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Day_%28United_States%2...

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepoliticalsystem/a/whenwevot...

I point this out to anyone who complains about how archaic some things in the UK or Europe appear to be.

Nevada has an explicit "none of the above" on the ballot.

The biggest problem with voting not being mandatory is that a lot of people don't have the opportunity because they can't get off work. If you made voting mandatory (or at least made election day a paid holiday), this impediment might be alleviated.

That just sounds like a lazy excuse to me. I don't know how long it takes to vote in the US, but where I live in Canada, we just finished our municiple elections. It was one of the longest ballots I can remember, yet the entire process, including walking from my house to the polling station and back, took about 20 minutes after work.

I have to say, I just don't understand this voter apathy or this sentiment that if none of the candidates are any good then don't vote. I really do think it is your duty as a citizen.

I have spent 4-5 hours on more than one occasion.

You're kidding. Why does it take so long?

I'm not mzl, but there are all kinds of reasons why it might be a long project: waiting for public transit (especially if there's more than one connection), waiting in line at the poll (if turnout is much higher than expected), etc.

I've spent an hour and a half before, mainly due to excessive turnout and lack of voting booths.

2 of the 6 machines the precinct received did not verify when turned on. They're an electronic booth with paper printout (yes,what the vote hackers wanted to begin with). However the paper did not agree with the electronic tally, hence machine invalidated.

And they got 4x the turnout they were expecting. Now, usually, it's 20 min in line and 3 min for the vote itself.

The most obvious would be:

  Broken electronic voting machines.
  Higher than expected turn out resulting in a backlog.
  Showing up after work along with a huge group of people doing the same thing.

And I suspect some state level manipulation because my area (Northern VA) does not vote for the same party as the rest of the state. Other polling stations with 1/5th the population have the same number of voting stations.

It's quite common for both of the main parties in the USA (Democrats and Republicans) to try to disenfranchise voting districts that vote predominantly for the other party. This can be done by sabotaging voting machines, resulting in long wait times that will discourage people from voting (as mentioned by another comment); or intentionally underestimating voter turnout and delivering too few machines in the first place; or by spreading rumors that it's a landslide and they don't need to vote; or spreading misinformation on how to fill out the ballot, resulting in failed votes; or intentionally putting polling places in the bad part of town to scare away voters; or putting polling places far away from public transit and/or sufficient parking space; or any number of underhanded tactics designed to prevent people from. None of it is ever really proven or investigated, but you tend to get a lot of highly significant p-values on election day, indicating that most of these events are probably intentional, and not accidental.

And don't forget Gerrymandering, in which the party in power redraws the voting district lines to ensure that every district has a majority of their party (though that happens before election day): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

Edit: I added a few more examples from other replies that represent common methods of intentional sabotage.

Option (b) would mean that voting for party A can instead reinforce the power of party B.

I think your idea (part b, anyway) is based on the idea that people vote for parties, but that's not the way it works. True, some states allow you to vote a straight party ticket rather than having to vote for each office individually, but not all of them.

In the US each elected official, whether they were a Democrat nominee, a Republican nominee, or a member of one of the other parties chooses who they will caucus with. That's why people like Arlen Specter can change parties freely.

And allocating seats based on the percentage of people who voted in each state ignores those who don't have the right to vote - whether they're children, foreigners, or people in other categories. Once someone is elected, they're supposed to serve their entire constituency, not just those who voted for them.

And finally, the US (and no country that I can think of, really) is not a democracy, it is a democratic republic. The many elect a few to govern, and those elected to govern are supposed to do what is right - and what is right is not always what the majority wants.