Comment by mos_basik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mos_basik | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" of research [during the days/weeks before election day] to decide which candidate to vote for in the down-ballot races. They said this to support their proposition that it might be easier to sway voter's down-ballot votes with poll gifts because it takes a lot of personal time to research the policies of low-profile candidates (i.e., candidates who aren't Trump/Biden). Voters who haven't spend that time might plausibly sell those votes for a free water bottle.

Sounds like you may have interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" to fill out the ballot [on election day]. So, you gave a rundown of your ballot's mechanics as an example of how a ballot can be designed in a way that doesn't take "many hours" to complete.

Oh, no, I actually took it to mean that time-consuming research was required before turning up to the polling station -- but acknowledging that 4 pages of ballots could be onerous, especially as one of the votes is clearly way more momentous than the others.

I guess the argument is that because it's a weekday, you want to aggregate many into the one event.

In addition to some obscure offices, 3 of the 4 pages were taken up with various bond issues, like this:

An Act enabling the County to borrow money and issue bonds in an amount not exceeding $38,134,000 to finance the design, construction, reconstruction, extension, acquisition, improvement, enlargement, alteration, renovation, relocation, rehabilitation or repair of Public Safety Facilities (including Fire Department Facilities), as defined therein.

I think very few people actually bother to research such questions. They just either reflexively tick Yes or No.

Researching a better answer requires a lot of questions. Does the county actually need to repair its Public Safety Facilities? What new construction do they plan? Have they been spending their money well in the past?

Answering all that would take a fair bit of time. And there were a dozen items like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com