As a non-American, I don’t know exactly how your polling works, but why am I seeing “plan your voting day” or “set a voting strategy” like they’ve done on the Cards Against Humanity voting campaign?
Where I live, it’s just show up on voting day and cast your ballot, or ask for a mail in ballot, or go to a special voting station if you need (or want) to vote early. Is it the same in the US, and this is just getting people to gather those last pieces of information early and put a reminder in the calendar? Or is there more to it than that?
Thanks!
Studies have shown that if you ask people to make a plan for voting, they are more likely to actually go out and vote. It’s even cited in the FAQ of cards against humanity.
So we ask people to make a plan because it’s an efficient way to make them more involved and more likely to actually go out and vote when the day comes. Not because it’s so hard that they need a plan (unless you live in certain states of course), but because it forces you to think actively about it rather than just passively.
Lines can be long, polls have limited hours (often conflicting with work hours), a person may need a ride to the polling location, etc. Some states have stupid rules like you can’t give people in line to vote food or water, which makes standing in line for hours more challenging.
Wait, you can’t give people food or water if they’re standing in the line? Why the hell not?
And hours in line?? What? Why!
As many have mentioned the real reason is to suppress votes by making the experience miserable.
The cover story for the rules is to prevent campaigns or other groups from “buying votes” by giving people in line food/water in exchange for a promise to vote for their candidate.
…which is so dumb because I can tell everyone I’m voting for <candidate> then go in there and vote for <other candidate> instead. 😒
Sure, but they’re not asking you before they do it. If one candidate has gone on record saying a certain demographic should have their rights stripped, and there’s a district that is populated by mainly that demographic, they don’t need to poll the area to guess who’s going to lose that district.
I was responding to:
prevent campaigns or other groups from “buying votes” by giving people in line food/water in exchange for a promise to vote
I’m saying that it’s dumb that this is illegal when they have no guarantee the person being offered food/water will vote for the candidate they want.
To discourage people from voting. As was pointed out elsewhere, the Republicans only really flourish when a small number of people vote. So they make it as inconvenient as possible for people who are lower income, usually people of colour.
Wait what? And that sort of things is legal? Are you serious? You know, there are countries where voting is obligatory, and others where it is made as easy as possible.
Wait til you learn about Gerrymandering. I’ll not get into it in depth, but essentially the local/state government in the US will set up voting regions to guarantee that one party has a massive advantage.
I like how I vividly remember learning about this in middle school and being told it’s illegal, then as an adult I just see it happening???
It’s only illegal federally to gerrymander to dilute minorities. Otherwise it’s up to the individual states.
Bruh the shit going on in Ohio this election cycle where LaRose has reworded (see also the abortion amendment where his “summary” was longer than the actual text of the amendment) the ballot to obfuscate the actual intent of Issue 1 to make people vote No which helps consolidate the Republicans grip
It’s ridiculous. My wife is relatively intelligent and she doesn’t understand the wording on the ballot and I explained to her that despite the reading, a No vote will continue the status quo. Like I’m a free speech kind of guy but just put the damn text on the damn ballot like don’t bullshit us Frankie!
Fuckin schmucks
But if they don’t do everything they can to obfuscate the ramifications of voting No then everyone would vote Yes!
They know what they’re doing is against the wishes of the majority, otherwise they would put the choices in plain language, or weight the obfuscation the other way…
Wait what? And that sort of things is legal?
Technically no, if it can be proven that the goal is racial discrimination specifically. Every so often there’s a lawsuit claiming just that. Problem is, it tends to get resolved by the Supreme Court which is two-thirds chosen by the “let’s make it harder to vote” party.
Reading this discussion has made me understand a little bit better why America seems to be always on fire…
“We hate that poors get to vote in our country. Don’t they know that this was a country founded with the ideals that only landowning white men could vote? Apparently they changed that law at some point, so we just make new ones to make the poors not want to vote. Like depriving them of things they need to live if they choose to do so. It’s what they get for being poors. Johohoho!”
- American lawmakers in poor, conservative states
In all honesty, it’s fucked. It’s so fucked.
I’m guessing you might be from Canada (Hello up there friend)!
Because certain groups in power are total pieces of @#$_&-+/!
Which States Ban Giving Food and Water to Voters at Polling Places?
Elections in the US didn’t used to be so controversial, but in the last 10 years certain groups/parties have been crying foul (baselessly I might add) about illegal voting.
You are supposed to be able to go to the polling place on election day and vote. There are limited voting hours (generally about 12 hours), it is not a national holiday (should be), your employer does not have to give you time to vote (paid or not). You might be able to vote via postal mail (but it varies by state what “valid reasons are” to do that).
The US really needs election reform nation wide.
A holiday could help but it’s not a real solution. Think of how emergency services will have to stay operational as an essential entity. Now think of the shitty retail companies that will call themselves essential businesses. You may get some compliance from some retail, but not all. Probably not most. Look at every other solemn non-denominational holidays like memorial day or labor day. Not only do stores stay open, but they have sales for those. People work the hardest on labor day! And that is the group least likely to vote and most likely to swing.
12 hours is usually long enough for people to not be at work at some point, but I’d much rather see a 20-24 hour window. Cover those stuck on double shifts. Cover super commuter workaholics. Cover the person who needed to catch a movie first.
Or do literally anything else to improve our archaic system. It’s intentionally kept obtuse and atrocious to keep out the people struggling the most while the other end mails a vote from Aruba.
Recent changes in Michigan extended it from 1 day to over a week, joining several other states offering early voting options.
“The early voting period begins the second Saturday prior to Election Day and ends the Sunday before an election. However, communities may decide to provide additional days of early voting. Under state law, communities can offer up to 29 days of early voting.”
https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/voting/early-in-person-voting
Or Cancun (heard that from someone named Ted).
I agree (and realize) that a simple holiday wouldn’t fix the many ills of our “election system”. Just thought it would help. I’ve heard that England has at least a week to vote [hope that’s true]. Anything that would make it easier and more convenient to vote would be a great help (not suggesting making the process less secure).
It’s voter suppression. By limiting the number of voting locations and understanding them you make long lines where people will wait for hours to vote. By not allowing food or water to be handed out they hope people will get discouraged and leave the line. The official reason is that it could be construed as a bribe to vote a certain way.
Because certain people with power find it advantageous to make it difficult for the people in certain areas to vote. If you know that district isn’t going to vote for you, and morality is a thing that happens to other people, you could make the polling place too small with too few workers.
Because the people making those rules don’t want those people to vote. They figure, if it’s that much of a hassle, they won’t turn out. Meanwhile, in Republican-strong areas, they have multiple voting locations and very short lines.
Yikes! And I thought that gerrymandering was playing dirty. This is just next level stuff…
Because it might be seen as bribery to get them to vote one way. This country has pulled every piece of bullshit in every direction when it comes to voting
In Nebraska, I get my ballot by mail way in advance. I fill it out at my leisure, doing research on candidates as needed. I can then either mail the ballot back or drop it off at one of several locations around town (including any of the public libraries). I haven’t voted in person in years. This method is so much better.
The American political system will do everything it can to prevent poor people from voting
So they won’t wait long enough to vote. The excuse used to ban is that they’re being “bribed” with food and water. It’s just pure voter suppression, but who are you going to complain to? The mayor and the police who watch Fox every night?
Wow. That’s a stark contrast to where I live. I don’t have to register or anything. Just bring that notice I got in the mail. And I’ve never waited in line for more than 15-20 minutes. And we germans keep all the supermarkets, shops and most businesses closed on sundays, so voting will just take place on a sunday and it won’t collide with work either…
Does anyboy know why it’s a tuesday in the USA? I guess sunday would at least help people with a regular office job? Malice? Something that was important in the 18th century when you had to travel by horse to the voting place? Or some mundane reason?
It is Tuesday for some outdated reason that no longer matters and it is kept as a tradition because it conflicts with working days where minorities and other lower income folks will find it harderr to vote.
The lines are long in places where Republicans want to suppress the vote, by not providing enough staffing, minimizing voting stations, and throwing in other hurdles. They also oppose early voting snd mail in voting to make it harder for everyone to vote, because their angry voters are more likely to stick it out through those barriers.
I live in a Republican state that hasn’t gone Dem for president since Nixon, and of course I have never waited more than 5 minutes in line and started voting early when that option was added. I don’t vote Republican, but most of the people do so they haven’t gone as malicious on voter suppression like in the states that have a chance of going Dem.
Americans talk so much about democracy, and this is how they treat their voters… Reading this thread just makes me sad.
It’s a well known phenomenon that the more people self-compliment about some great quality they have, the less that is the case.
A similar thing seems to happen at a political level - the countries were politicians just harp on and on about how great their Democracy is (in the case of the US) or how old it is (in the case of the UK) have the most flawed Democracies (if they even count as Democracies given how far they stray from the “all votes are equal” criteria) whilst in the best Democracies out there (like The Netherlands where they have Proportional Vote) they never talk about how great a Democracy they are.
I believe it’s called Overcompensation.
Personally ever since I figured this out I treat such self-complimenting boasts (both at an individual and at a nation level) as big red flags and so far that rule of thumb hasn’t failed me.
Makes you look at Democratic Republic of the Congo in a new way. If it’s in the name, it has to be important to them, right?
Personally the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the one I find that really beats all others in this.
As an American: Me too 😮💨
How is thay even legal, wtf?
Because the same party doing it is good at repeatedly testing the barriers to discrimination and dismantling laws against it.
Texas and some other states were not allowed to change voting practices without approval for years due to this kind of thing under the Voting Rights Act. Then SCOTUS overturrned that law…
Within hours of a U.S. Supreme Court decision dismantling a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Texas lawmakers announced plans to implement a strict voter ID law that had been blocked by a federal court. Lawmakers in Alabama said they would press forward with a similar law that had been on hold.
The ruling continues to reverberate across the country a decade later, as Republican-led states pass voting restrictions that, in several cases, would have been subject to federal review had the conservative-leaning court left the provision intact. At the same time, the justices have continued to take other cases challenging elements of the landmark 1965 law that was born from the sometimes violent struggle for the right of Black Americans to cast ballots.
Thanks for the explanations. I think the Unites States should embrace being founded on the principles of democracy, and once being amongst the leading countries with that… And return to being a democracy. Every time I read about some more details, I’m more convinced that one of your major parties doesn’t like democracy, or the original idea behind the USA.
The US was founded on wealthy white male landowners who mostly owned slaves being able to vote, just like their Greek and Roman inspirations.
Expending that concept to the general population took a couple nearly two centuries, and we still haven’t embraced it. We have sucked at being a democracy the whole time.
Also, the parties traded the racists in the 60s and 70s. Republicans were the equal rights party prior to the Southern Strategy while the Dems were the racists up to that point, but Republicans have been on the wrong side of history since then.
I think democracy as a concept is alright, though. It has some flaws baked in… But I don’t think there is a casual relationship to humans being humans and needing centuries to realize women are people, too. And so are people with a different skin color, poor people… Deciding if slavery is a good or a bad thing also has a very prominent place in US history. And we here in Europe also didn’t do much better.
I’m proud that we left lots of that behind and we’re doing much better now. We’re certainly not done yet, there is still quite some way to go… I think it’s just a shame that we can’t do any better. Or that it’ll take decades to get anything productive done, because of the way politics is set up to work. And meanwhile we also have to fight populists, corruption and all the usual annoyances of giving power to people.
I’d expect some equality be ensured on federal level for at least federal level stuff. Just… wow. I knew US was fucked up, but I somehow always learn there is yet another level to it
I love seeing people realize the USA is only a Democray for a very specific group of people weather it’s concerning the Judges or the Election process. On top of that thanks to the electoral college if you dont live in a swing state you don’t really get a say. The election will boil down to a few hundred thousand people in a couple states just because of where they live.
The swing state thing really makes my blood boil mainly because moving from my shithole red state with the same population as the city I live in now (Los Angeles) my vote means nothing. In fact, I always chuckle when I get political mail here because it’s like “why waste your time?”
Wouldn‘t it be the best thing to make election day a nation wide holiday? Could keep the tradition while also actually allowing people to vote. I doubt that productivity is high on these days nevertheless.
Has this ever been discussed?
Poor people voting isn’t good for profits and it’s literally that simple. Neither party care, a few progressive dems do, at least until aipac tries to get rid of them while the most powerful dems stand behind aipac.
It has, but there are some people who do not like the idea that everyone can vote.
Also it being a holiday doesn’t mean everyone gets off work. There is no federal law that says your business can’t be open 365 days per year, nor is there any law that mandates paid time off.
National holidays don’t apply to private companies, apparently.
Wait? What?
The trick is do you want ANYTHING open on the holiday? Grocery, train station, etc? In America, if anything is open, then the cats out of the bag
Private companies are not obligated to provide any amount of leave, paid or unpaid as a general requirement. Some states may have requirements, but there is no federal requirement and many states have none.
The one requirement that I know of is allowing an employee two hours to vote on the one voting day every two years if necessary to make it to the polls. I am fairly certain this only applies if their shift is the entirety of the time the polls are open, and it is not required to be paid time.
Your second paragraph lines up with state law in California.
Federal holidays can be observed by private companies, but then who will run the movie theaters on Christmas for us to go watch CGI robots fight each other? Or serve us fast food on Labor Day? Etc etc. It’s stupid.
Here’s an idea: Have a few weeks of early voting for people who need to work during the actual voting day, which is on Sunday. Yeah, I know it’s radical and this sort of thing will probably start at least one civil war and a century of chaos and destruction.
Federal election times are set by 2 U.S. Code § 7 as 1 day after the 1st Monday in November (of even numbered years). The law is from 1875 and from what I can tell is indeed nominally motivated by the voters’ need to first observe rest day on Sunday and then travel to their polling place. Keeping it and not having a federal holiday coinciding with it is largely aimed at keeping voter turnout low.
The reasons I was given for first Tuesday in November are:
- After “pay day” at beginning of month (not everyone gets paid on the first of the month though).
- So you will be sobered up from your weekend drunk.
The idea behind #1 is that it should be harder to bribe you if you have recently been paid. The reason behind #2 is that you will be sober when you vote.
Also, in my state at least, alcohol sales are prohibited while the polls are open for voting.
one of the two main parties knows that if ‘everyone’ voted, they would no longer hold any power whatsoever. so they actively prevent democracy by making it harder to vote.
You generally register when you get your license with new address here but the Crux is this gets complicated if you move from state to state…there is no federal voting registry, you register to your state.
In contrast, in Oregon, we just vote by mail. Fill out you ballot at your leisure, drop it off in the mail box or ballot box by the due date, and you’re set. Also the ballot boxes are all over the place. City Hall, the post office, the library, etc.
America has been turned into a dystopia by republicans where in order to vote, you have to provide birth certificate, social security card, a signed permission slip from your late parents, a blood sample, a piece of the Shroud of Turin, a moon rock, and 75 thousand dollars in unmarked non-consecutive bills.
I’m in Texas. The serials on the bills have to follow the Fibonacci sequence.
In Ohio you can’t use a rock from our moon. Neil might’ve loaned you one from ours
Damn it, I thought they had to add up to avogadro’s #
If you’re a conservative however, all you need is a drivers license or state ID, and the names of all your dead relatives who are also voting.
And then they save you time by giving you a ballot with all the Republican candidates already checked.
i vote in every election and ive never even seen a polling place. i don’t know why people would need to go to one
How does a country like the US have hours long lines…
One thing that I think non-USians don’t understand is that our elections are not ran by some non-partisan agency that has a goal of running an efficient, fair election. Our elections in general (although it varies by state) are ran by partisan actors who know which areas vote for their party and which ones don’t. They intentionally try to make it easy for their supporters and hard for their detractors to vote.
I live in Ohio if you couldn’t tell, and our chief elections officer (the Secretary of State) is not afraid to tell people that he wants Donald Trump to win the election. He is not neutral. That’s just the way it is here.
Don’t forget that the Ohio Supreme Court let the GOP just… Keep submitting shit district maps after being ordered to draw fair maps multiple times. We still haven’t drawn a new district map, that’s what Issue 1 is about.
The Ohio General Assembly has a long history of ignoring the Supreme Court. See the DeRolph decisions.
republicans are anti-democracy and have for decades put in place many obstacles for voting. they know that they only exist as a minority, and true democracy would limit their ability to fuck the rest of us over.
It really depends on location and turnout.
Here in my town, the longest I’ve ever waited was a minute or two. Small population, and plenty of booths.
When I lived in a city, I only voted twice, but both times I was waiting maybe ten minutes plus a little. That was, as I was told, average for that polling place. It was a church basement (not in the dank and drippy way lol), so it was a tad small for the number of people in the district. But, over at a school gym that was a polling place, I had a friend wait nearly a half hour. Despite the bigger space, the turnout was huge, and not typical for that specific polling place.
They try to make sure a space is big enough (when everything is working right) for the district, but it doesn’t always work perfectly.
Then, you’ve got locations where the voting organizers are willing to fuck over a specific district and the polls will be under staffed, have too few booths, and may have other impediments to getting things done efficiently.
So it’s not really a single factor that goes into the crazy wait times. Nor is an hour in line the default.
Tx… makes sense.
Because pubs like to deter voting
(Hey, non-Americans: “pubs” means “Republicans.” Bars and pubs don’t care whether we vote or not.)
I’ve been to a couple bars where you get a discount on a drink if you have an “I Voted” sticker.
This is uneducated speculation but what if more people are going to vote as elections get crazier and voting centers aren’t used to the higher volume?
You get even longer queues?
I mean to explain the current longer wait times
Ah I see. Well technically yes but that would be easily preventable with a modicum of planning so it’s much more likely that it’s a deliberate decision.
If you live in a swing state there might be a lot being done to make voting difficult.
And if you don’t live in a swing state your vote doesn’t matter enough for any party to try and sabatoge voting efforts. If this is Democracy then democracy doesn’t work.
There is plenty of sabotage in poor and minority districts in non-swing states. There is more on the line than just the presidency.
Yup, down ballot races matter just as much, if not arguably more. This says nothing of ballot issues or tax levies as well.
Ehhm, you call the US a democracy??
Some do, I don’t think so though.
The US has had a long history of restricting who gets to vote. Originally it was only white land owning males, then it has gradually progressed into what it is today. Some states are cool with who gets to vote, others are still upset there are certain groups of people who get to vote who they wish didn’t (and actively work towards restricting or removing their rights), so those upset states constantly create as many barriers as possible to disenfranchise groups of voters they don’t like. If you’d like to see how awful it has been before, I suggest reading about Jim Crow laws.
Anywhere you’ve got decades long republicans in office you will find it extremely hard to vote in America. Elsewhere it’s relatively easy. In Colorado I literally don’t do anything, a booklet explaining all the laws shows up in the mail a few weeks before the ballots do, then the ballot shows up and I can either drop it off in one of the numerous drop boxes, put it in the mail, or ignore it and go vote in person where the lines are short because nobody votes in person.
Not always. I live in Alabama. Usually in and out in 20 minutes. But then I do live in a more suburban area.
Americans are lazy and kinda dumb so voter turn out mostly driven by drama, feel good messages, and rage. A lot of the “go out and vote” messaging is genuine, but all politics becomes scum and strategy. They can target certain demographics that are likely to vote in a certain way. The goal is to get a demographic with a statistical likelihood of voting for Asshat-A to go out and vote as the Asshat-A voters in that demographic out number Asshat-1 voters.
Voting varies by state law but most of it comes down to mail in a ballot, check a box in person, or click a button in person. The problem is speed bumps. There are major corruption issues that plague US elections as the guys elected are trusted to not be self serving pieces of shit. The voting process can be potentially changed by the people getting voted in, so naturally corrupted groups make voting as inconvenient as legally possible to dissuasive a demographic that is likely to vote against them. (Past efforts:ID checks, reading test, checking if you’re a white land owing male, checking if you are brave enough to walk past the KKK, long lines, stupid rules, de-funding the post office to make ballots late.) Gerrymandering manipulates voting by changing districts on a map to change outcomes of votes. Actual voter fraud is rare in the idea of stuffing a ballot box. The corruption game is payed on a map and spreadsheet, with the threat of bribes not showing up.
Voter turn out is generally a good thing as it can offset corruption and is widely pushed, but each group has people they do and do not want participating in the vote. A single Asshat-1 voter staying home because the line is too long, or too dangerous might as well be a vote for Asshat-A and that can be enough to change the outcome of a district. Lower turnout makes corruption easy and leads to a shitty outcome, and everyone is trying to move things in their favor or win the game.
We don’t have these issues here in Minnesota. Plenty of polling places, short lines.
Here in Duluth I live right across the street from the church that is a polling station. Never taken me more than ten minutes including the walk there and back.
This, however, is not the case in many more densely populated areas that tend to be more blue. There are often long lines for few polling stations. In some places you really do need a plan to be able to vote, especially if you are balancing it with other responsibilities like work or childcare.
For anyone who hasn’t waited hours in line to vote - your democracy sounds nice, the rest of us have to work real hard to make sure our (often less impactful due to the EC).vote counts.
Definitely, my situation would not be normal in Minneapolis, where I was born and grew up. There it was a little more chaotic, longer lines, but still not terrible.
Minnesota hasn’t been one of those states desperately trying to keep people from voting, thankfully.
And we are trying to keep it that way.
