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Comment by socialdemocrat | Hacker News Reader

Can't say I fully got it. Probably because at this point I am tired of paying attention to train wreak American elections are. Why, why oh why are American elections ALWAYS screwed up in some way? How come every other rich country manage to run elections fine, but not the US? They can send a man to the moon, but they cannot run elections: Either ballot boxes go missing. The lines of voters go around the block, it closes before people can vote or the voting machines are broken, hacked, failed or whatever.

It is almost morbidly fascinating how there is some new way every election where things get bungled somehow.

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The vast majority of electoral voting in the US works basically as intended. Most polling places don’t have long lines except perhaps right when they open because people lined up ahead of time. Most states have some sort of paper ballot that is machine counted to save time (which IS a legitimate concern in a general election with 130mm votes or so cast). Before yesterday every state has for many election cycles run primaries or caucuses without this sort of snafu.

I’m assuming you aren’t American based on your comment. You only read about the snafus because “everything went well yesterday in our city’s/state’s election” isn’t news for us. It’s normal.

I would also add in the complexity of US elections. Depending on the year you have multiple federal, state, and local positions. Add to that ballot initiatives and it’s not difficult to have a ballot that is both sides of an A2 sheet of paper.

Even with all that, I’ve never had to wait more than 30 minutes.

Also, while Election Day isn’t a federal holiday, ~40 states have a legal requirement that employers give employees time off to vote. (Not in the OP’s initial list, but something people generally bring up without knowing the facts on the ground)

I assume it goes fine in most states. That is not the point. The point is that you simply don't get these stories from other developed countries. While in the US there are stories about election irregularities almost every election.

I saw a documentary about Cory Booker running for Mayor in New Jersey. That was epic in how screwed up it was. I was quite shocked that elections could be so corrupt in a modern democracy.

> The vast majority of electoral voting in the US works basically as intended. Most polling places don’t have long lines except perhaps right when they open because people lined up ahead of time.

Areas with minorities seems to quite frequently have it. Voter suppression is done quite widely in the US judging by reports, statistics and observations.

And lets not forget machine politics. Listen to Richard Ojeda of West Virginia tell how corrupt the whole political process was there. I mean he got physically attacked because he was going up against the establishment.

Of course it does not mean every place in the US is like that. But the frequency of extreme cases points to larger underlying problems.

The problem IMHO is that Americans are so used to this and think it is like that everywhere so they don't see the problem. I have many American friends at home and many tell the same stories about how so many things from home got normalized that they did not realize how screwed up it was until they lived outside the US for an extended period. Unless you lived in different countries you cannot view your own country through an objective lens.

There were also "app problems" and late results in the 2016 Iowa Caucuses.

Linked from the article:

https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-low-tech-high-stakes-iowa-... https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/how-iowa-democrats-co...

True. And yet... I see news photos from various other countries where there are soldiers guarding the polling places with guns. In the US, the polling places are guarded by grandmothers.

I suppose I'm comparing the US to third-world countries, which is not a standard that the US should have trouble meeting. You're comparing it to first-world countries, and while the US should also be able to meet that standard, it seems to have trouble doing so...

I think the US is the only country in the world where you don't need ID to vote.

Banking? Need ID. Getting a job? Need ID. Doing anything with the government? Need ID. Driving? Need ID.

But voting? No way, we'll take your word for it because one party has convinced everyone that asking for ID would be racist.

I mean even if there were some conspiracy to make sure one group does not get ID, the solution is to get that group ID, not cripple them in society by leaving them ID-less but able to vote.

The US is such a weird place.

The largest factor in this continual chaos is that US national elections are actually 50 (plus territories and the military) separate elections, all run completely independently without any real national standards and with only state-level (or sometimes only county-level) funding.

> They can send a man to the moon, but they cannot run elections

Well, we could send people to the moon 50 years ago. Today, I doubt it.

> Why, why oh why are American elections ALWAYS screwed up in some way?

Because the people currently in power benefit from making it harder for people to vote.

> Because the people currently in power benefit from making it harder for people to vote.

Interestingly, this is usually an attack leveled at Republicans, but in this case the Republican caucus went off without a hitch and it was the Democrats that messed up.

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