Hacker News Reader

Comment by travisgriggs | Hacker News Reader

But isn’t there something poeticly sound about this? It’s kind like “the family that eats together stays together” and other platitudes like that. A nation that requires a heavy involvement in the whole process is going to value it more. In the states, we worship money and automation, so we automate it true point where very few are involved. And then we’re surprised when “win at all cost” incidents start to rise over “determine the public will.”

View on HN

It almost guarantees that the electorate won’t be consulted often, though. That’s something you can afford to do every 4 years, but not every 6 months.

I don’t know. Switzerland works the same way and they have votes more often than every 6 months. (Also the average German will vote more often than just every 4 years due to European, national, state-level and regional elections.)

In France it is done four times in a row every five years (presidential + parliament) and also two times in a row every six years (municipal elections, a few places have two simultaneous elections for the city mayor and "associated city" mayor) and I think once every five years (European elections, not sure of the modalities in France as I was never in France at this time).

It has a cost but most people involved are not paid. Referendums are uncommon but that has more to do with political culture than costs I think.

I just checked, France has 70000 polling stations and 280000 volunteers for each election, so it’s rather 0.4% of the population.

We just had presidential elections and are electing representatives for parlement next week, we had local elections in 2020, nation-wide elections are not that rare.

Similar to Australia. We have mandatory voting, with paid staff, most being hired just before elections, and from my experience working there, it is well organised, with plenty of redundancy, in case of challenges and recounts.

I love the mandatory voting. Back the day I barely ever voted, that did change. Mainly because I saw political parties rise that I fundamentaly disagree with, meaning that the outcome all of a sudden actually did make a difference for me.

Having mandatory voting would mean that non votes don't screw up the results when one side manages to mobilize morw voters than others. And intentionally voting blank actually sends a pretty strong signal.

Yeah the volunteers you’re talking about here are the all-day (7am to 9-10pm!) volunteers, not the counting people who come for just the evening the day of the vote. They outnumber volunteers by a factor of 3-5 where I am.

And yet they do it, not every 6 months, but regularly. There are presidential elections (2 rounds every 5 years), general elections for the parliament (2 rounds every 5 years), elections for local (2 rounds every 6 years), department (2 rounds every 4 years), and regional councils (2 rounds every 6 years), and European elections (1 round every 5 years). Plus the occasional referendum. This year there will have been 4 voting days.

Sure, they don’t vote for judges and sheriffs and stuff, and it’s a system that’s more representative than participative as in, say, Switzerland. But it works.

One of the things that helps is that voting happens always on Sundays, when most people do not have to take a day off work to vote or to help counting.

It's a lot easier when you have:

- substantial social services that don't directly require individuals to have disposable income and aren't tied directly to employment

- humane policies for vacation days in general, and

- national holidays for things like election day.

In the USA, we teach our children that civic engagement is important, but then corrupt politicians at all levels make civic engagement as hard as possible, abetted by moralizing reactionary conservatives.

No wonder Americans are generally cynical and don't participate in politics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com