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Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

I think federal elections should be run by the federal government, not the states. Dramatically increase the number of voting locations, and have the federal government manage all of that under federal rules. That would be the safest and most secure way of doing federal elections. This thing of leaving it up to states and local communities introduces to many opportunities for fraud and mismanagement. Countries the size of California seem to have no problem counting their votes in one night. Delays are not healthy for democracy and there is never enough transparency.

I guess Congress could pass a law that every state must have their votes counted within 72 hours, or votes after that will not count.

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>I guess Congress could pass a law that every state must have their votes counted within 72 hours, or votes after that will not count.

Other than Delaware, literally every state would fail this standard. Delaware takes two days to certify results. The next-fastest is seven days. https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results_certification_dates...

There are many legitimate reasons why it takes time: voter accessibility (e.g., mail and overseas voting), risk-limiting audits, and making sure the paperwork is properly organized in case of recounts or legal challenges.

We get unofficial results and projected winners on election night, assuming the margin of victory is large enough. But those are just media creations. Proper legally-binding results need deliberate time and effort to get right.

There is no such thing as a "federal election"

Representatives and Senators are elected by the people in the states or districts they represent.

Presidents are elected by the Electoral College.

You are asking for a change in the Constitution, which takes more than Congress passing a law.

That was great when we were a loose confederation of states. That's not the case anymore. Elections to Federal office have a direct effect on everyone in the country. It's time to modernize past the 1700s.

Multiple independent systems cooperating to provide operational robustness is modern.

The Founders got this one right.

> I think federal elections should be run by the federal government, not the states.

While I happen to completely agree (I'm old enough to remember the "butterfly ballot" that resulted in George W Bush winning over Gore), your suggestion would require a constitutional amendment.

I agree with you, but I would hope they would enforce California's rules, not Florida's. California's rules are designed to make voting as accessible as possible to the greatest number of people, and to make sure every vote is properly counted.

States that finish counting in a day are throwing away and disenfranchising a lot of voters.

Having served as a poll worker in California, I've seen first-hand that there are real trade-offs in making things easy for voters vs. making the election resolve quickly.

In California, you can vote in any polling place in your county. You just have to fill out a provisional ballot if you're not in your assigned precinct, and you're limited to voting for statewide races and ballot measures. But this paperwork can slow down the line, and each provisional ballot needs to be reviewed for eligibility before being counted. Those are real costs on the back end for making voting convenient on the front end.

Sure, but that's the sacrifice we're willing to make so that everyone gets a chance to make their voice heard.

I'm not making a value judgment here. I'm just pointing out that desirable properties like "making voting easy" and "get results quickly" are often in direct tension with one another. You can't have it all, as a practical matter.

This is what I don't understand. In Spain you can only vote in your assigned precinct. Otherwise, you have to vote by mail.

Every mail vote collected by the Postal Service gets delivered on the election day to the assigned precinct. At the end of the day, all those votes are mixed in the ballot box and then counting starts. It takes no more than three hours to get the 99.5% of the votes counted nationwide.

In order to vote by mail, you have to walk into any Postal Service office with your valid government ID and explicitly ask for it. The PS agent will verify your identity and will send you the voting papers to the address you register into. Then, you do your choices and go back to any PS office and send the vote to your electoral precinct by certified mail.

From the moment you ask for mail voting, you get marked in your precinct as a mail voter, so you cannot go in person and vote anymore. You can, though, on the election day go to your precinct and verify that your vote is there.

I don't see the difficulty on this.

In Poland, you can only vote in your assigned precinct too - there's a list of eligible voters there and you show up with an ID and get ticked off the list - but you can effortlessly change it online, up until a few days before election. The change can be permanent (requires some proof of residence) or temporary, just for this single election (doesn't require anything). You can also get removed from the lists entirely and get a piece of paper that certifies your eligibility to vote instead, with which you can go vote anywhere - this way you don't even need to know where you're going to be on the election day beforehand, but if you lose it, your vote is gone, as it's your token that ensures you can only vote once.

There's also mail voting, but I never even felt the need to figure out how it works. I understand it as an accommodation for people who are disabled or otherwise ill that can't go vote in person. I always lived in cities or suburbs, so voting booth was always within a 10 minute slow walk and I've been always voting in person so far (even when away from home).

Also, in the context of US election, it's probably important to note that voting is always done on Sundays.

We usually get the official results in a day or two.

Each state in the US runs their own elections. Some states (like California) err more on the side of increased voter accessibility by offering many options to vote. This makes things convenient for voters but increases the complexity of administering election. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to do it---just different value judgments on what trade-offs are worth it.

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