Parthenon: Except when you’re too lazy to be informed.

It’s still a responsibility. Just one the lazy person isn’t living up to.

In our neck of the woods, it might be because the poll workers looking up my name and address are around 130 years old.

Except when you’re too lazy to be informed. Then stay home. We can do without your write-in for Donald Duck, thank you.

There’s just not enough booths. Denver for example has doubled its machines from 2004 – up to 2700, which sounds good except there are about 600 thousand people in Denver and we’re looking at historic turnout. At 60% participation, that 130 people per machine. If they take an average of 5 minutes each, that’s 13 hours if everything goes perfectly and people stagger themselves precisely through the day.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17715201/detail.html?rss=den&psp=news

Note that the Denver ballot is FOUR PAGES long.

Not every county has had the resources to double their machines. And the distribution of machines is totally up to the partisan chairpeople, so they aren’t necessarily allocated to the most heavily-populated areas.

So how much longer does it take to make 6 or 7 or even twelve marks on a piece of paper?

The only reason I can think of for it taking so long for people to vote is that far too many are not making up their minds until they are in the booth so they stand there and think about it.

CSS is right, voting isn’t just a right, it’s a responsibility. And it should be treated as such. People, even in countries where the campaigns don’t run for two years, have plenty of time to find out what issues are on the ballot, determine how they will vote and then, on the day, come to the polling place prepared.

“Frankly, I think a lot of people who feel “disenfranchised” by the EC are simply lazy. Do your homework and participate, regardless of where you live.”

I agree. My vote didn’t matter, the person I was voting for wasn’t going to win. I don’t know if they finished second or third, I didn’t bother to check the results. But I did bother to vote.

Voting is not a right, it is a responsibility.

That goes for all voters in every election in each state.

A Always
B Be
C Closing

Always Be Closing.

Speaking of fringe parties, in my district the Marijuana Party is no more; it’s been replaced by the Radical Marijuana Party. Don’t like the sound of that.

The only time I’ve ever waited in a line was for a municipal election, and even there it was less than five minutes. (It also pays that I did my research and had a list of the people I was voting for so I didn’t have to sit in the both and make up my mind at the last second.)

Finally, I think Senators should be elected based on the popular vote within each region. That was each vote matters, but we don’t have to add another layer of campaigning to the process.

Actually, the reason we have low turn-out (which has actually gone up tremendously over the past ten years) is because most Americans are lazy and don’t care. Frankly, most Americans couldn’t tell you what the Electoral College is in the first place. Doesn’t make it a perfect system, but it’s silly to think people stay at home to “spite” the Electoral College system.

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Even if you live in a blood red or deep blue state, you’ve still got down-ballot choices to make, referendums, etc. I voted absentee in WA, which will clearly go for Obama, but the down-ballot races mattered to me as well. Frankly, I think a lot of people who feel “disenfranchised” by the EC are simply lazy. Do your homework and participate, regardless of where you live.

We don’t have to vote for a President and VP separately; our Prime Minister is the leader of the party that gets the most seats in Parliament. We don’t vote for Senators, ours are appointed. (Heh. For now.) All we vote for is an MP (Member of Parliament) for our riding (= US Congressional District). And we most certainly do NOT vote for provincial (state) Governors, Senators, Legislators, or any other offices, or any county offices, or any Propositions or Referenda on the same ticket.

We make one, count it, one mark on one piece of paper, fold the thing and pop it in the box. We are selecting one name from a list of five or six, maybe eight if there are a lot of fringe parties in the riding. And that’s it.

That’s why it’s so quick, and why we can do it with paper and pencil and hand-counted ballots.

Our provincial elections work the same way as the federal. Municipal is different, since there are more people to elect: Mayor, Councillors, School Board, in some places Parks Board, and there are always referenda. In municipal elections, in my province anyway, we’ve been using optically-scanned ballots, with the original paper ballots kept inside the machine in case of a recount. No touch-screens that I’m aware of, except in one Ontario municipality. And many places still use paper and hand-counting; it’s slower, but reliable.

One thing the USA could consider is splitting the federal election away from state and local contests, have them at different times of the year. Because you’ve got everything rolled together into this one huge event, you almost force yourselves into some kind of machine counting just to get the thing done in a reasonable length of time. Split ‘em up, and you could go back to simpler counting methods that are less open to abuse.

Last thing; when a Canadian gets all puffed up about how easy it is to vote up here, remember all this. And when an American wonders how come we up here can get it all done in one short evening with pencil and paper and hand-counting, well, now you know. It’s apples and aardvarks.

If we wanted to build up a system that still gives smaller states slightly more sway we could give States the same number of votes as they have now but split them up by percentage, still weighting things slightly towards small states. I’m not in favor of this as it still under values city dwellers. Empty land doesn’t deserve more of a vote than people.

Finally, people are capable of caring about more than one issue at a time. I think we should start working on electoral college reform AND work to protect people from being disenfranchised. It don’t understand how one precludes the other.

Why? In terms of face-time, why bother with rural areas at all? You’d be minimizing your resources by going anywhere but cities.

And let’s face it — rural voters are going to tend Republican anyways.

Again, I think the Electoral College is a good thing. Tactically, arguing for its abolishment strikes me as silly anyways because 1) it will never happen, even with a Democratically dominated Congress and 2) it takes away from a fight that is worth the trouble — decent national standards for voting (and telling Diebold to go fuck themselves).

Too expensive to make it a national holiday. Those ain’t cheap. Either we kill one of the existing holidays (personally, I’m OK with taking out Veteran’s Day, which is derived from WWI, a war that the U.S. kinda punked out on in some ways, and just focusing our celebration of veterans on Memorial Day, which is a solely American holiday and not something we share with Canada, UK, etc.), or we vote on a weekend. I prefer the latter, as most private sector employers don’t give Veteran’s Day as a holiday anyway. My state has no early voting, so I’m going to have to get up in my jammies and slouch to the polls at 5:45am next Tuesday so I won’t have to take time out of the workday. But that’s OK, because this is the first time I am excited rather than simply lesser-of-two-evils resigned to be voting for the Democratic presidential ticket.

I have always thought that it was a disservice to the citizens to have an election on a work day. I think it should be a national holiday in celebration of democracy.

Why? While it might make sense for the candidate to maximize his face time in metropolitan areas where he could be seen by the largest number of voters, you’d still be getting his affiliates (e.g. Jill Biden) in the areas with less concentration of population. And your issues still would be important. But frankly I feel like the Supreme Court covered this in Baker v. Carr — the rural voter’s vote should not count for more than the urban voter’s.

I mean, voting Dem in Utah these days might feel kind of pointless (although I hope you voted in down-ballot races as well). But if we only had the popular vote, the entire _state_ of Utah wouldn’t really matter that much.

Now, I have no doubt that if the lines are long, Democrats would be more determined to wait than Republicans (most of em need to get home to take their medication). But I would expect the places that would have the big lines would be the cities, Pittsburgh and Philly. And those are the heaviest democrat areas.

Yeah, a national holiday and/or voting over a weekend or over two or more days including at least one weekend day is good for democracy.

Run-off elections are good too, but not as critical and would be harder to sell.

And as other have chimed in, the Electoral College is significantly less democratic than a national popular vote. Get rid of it 100 years ago.

I’ll echo Michael Over Here and ask why? What purpose does the Electoral College serve that facilitates democracy?

As far as I can tell, the only thing it does is make it convenient for candidates to focus on those states that are “Swing states”. Consequence: The vote of an Ohio or Florida resident carries significantly more weight in determining who is President than the vote of a resident of Massachusetts or Kansas.*

(*The limits of my electoral knowledge may show here. I’m assuming MA and KS are pretty solidly blue and red.)

I’m curious those who are in favor of the electoral college: do you have any reason beyond legacy for keeping it in place?