15% of youth voted in Mass. vs 47% in 2008 elections

[Knife]

I don't have a problem with compulsory voting, but I do think that it would require either vote by mail or more polling places/longer hours. In the last presidential election, I had to show up at the opening time, and I still was late to work.

I don't get why this is the case in the USA. Having to wait more than a few minutes to vote is unheard of in Europe (as far as I know). It seems odd that it can't organise itself any better.

Not enough money spent to staff polling places, not enough polling places, not enough voting machines, stupid ass voting procedures that make you go to three stations (at least here in my county) before you can get to vote, so even if you have enough voting machines, the bottleneck is at the stupid sign in sheet.

Basically, we don't devote enough money to the process, so we can't do it right. And throw in Hawaii's issue (not having enough money to run the election) and you have a REALLY stupid system that actually does better the lower the turnout.

There is no reason (from the perspective of the election organizations) to have a better turn out, in fact, I suspect they privately want more anemic ones than the Mass special election. I would be interested to see turnout results for special elections in the state where everyone votes by mail.

You can take all that and wrap it up in a present by just saying voting is done by county or district and not a national thing or even a state thing; it is local. Hence, as local, if you live in a wealthy part of town you have low lines and lots of help (volunteer or not), but if you live in a poor part of town you have shit for voting services.

[Questor]

You can take all that and wrap it up in a present by just saying voting is done by county or district and not a national thing or even a state thing; it is local. Hence, as local, if you live in a wealthy part of town you have low lines and lots of help (volunteer or not), but if you live in a poor part of town you have shit for voting services.

The real irony is that I live in a relatively wealth suburb, and the last close ballot item in my precinct was a parcel tax almost a decade ago.

I really think that while local rules have a lot to do with it, we also have other problems. The voting machines can't be trusted because Diebold is the dumbest company in the world. They basically had a license to print money, as there were very few competitors, and they screwed it up by creating an insecure system. At least part of the rigamarole comes from the stuff CA put in to deal with the perceived insecurity of electronic voting. (The truth of the matter does not have anything to do with it, as these procedures did very little to actually affect the security of the vote. Stuff like verifying every page of the printed ballot - that won't be counted unless the election is contested, and a good voting fraud system will keep the election outside the automatic recount window, but close enough that it doesn't look stupid - are pointless.)

[GuppyShark]

I have sometimes mused that the US should outsource their elections to the Australian Electoral Commission.

The AEC do a fantastic job of making the whole process painless and simple. They even called me when I moved to make sure I was still on the electoral roll.

[Lusankya]

It seems to me that compulsory voting would actually help to alleviate the long lines on polling day. With an inconsistent voter turnout, the organisers have no way of actually knowing how many people will actually turn out for the election day, whereas with compulsory voting, they would know that it was approximately the same as the number of people in the polling district and be able to plan accordingly.

Aly, don't be an ass. Australia's system makes a null vote a deliberate act of protest, not an act of apathy. Can you honestly say that you believe the category of 'can't be arsed going to the polls/can't make it to the polls because the US can't be bothered to put it on a weekend/make it a holiday' has 100% overlap with the 'hate all candidates' category?

If you allow people to make a null vote while maintaining the guise of mandatory voting, its a fucking joke. It is not mandatory voting. It is mandatory polling. And I still don't support it. I consider voting like free speech. You are not required to exercise it, but you still have it.

People should vote, but I will not force them to.

Fucking hell, you sound just like the anti-healthcare people, and I bet you don't even realise it.

[weemadando]

I have sometimes mused that the US should outsource their elections to the Australian Electoral Commission.

The AEC do a fantastic job of making the whole process painless and simple. They even called me when I moved to make sure I was still on the electoral roll.

Not to mention that they do it all for ~130 million a year. That's a department that conducts Federal, State and Local elections, as well as managing and policing electoral legislation at all these levels. Plus, I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes to vote (and that has always been when I've been out of electorate - which makes it a bit longer).

Oh yeah. And I don't think that we've ever managed to have an election where people's votes where able to be misinterpreted wholesale because our voting process was overcomplex and retarded, leading to lengthy legal proceedings to determine the election's victor.

But hey. Y'know, I'm sure that the yanks could find a way to fuck up that system as much as healthcare.

[Simon_Jester]

Why should young voters even give a damn, when they know full well that any progress that gets made will just be amended into nothingness or completely blocked and trashed by the massive rich-wing geriatric vote? With the gigantic block of bleating voters that is the boomer population, theres no point. May as well just keep working to keep your head above water and hope for an early mass die-off.

Because this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and is far less true if it isn't believed by everyone?

The boomers aren't a monolith; they aren't even a majority of the population. Pretending that your vote is irrelevant because of the Dreaded Boomers is foolish, and guarantees that you will be right, because the boomers are the only ones who won't believe that nonsense.

Of course, it still explains young voters not showing up- they believe it even if it's stupid and self-destructive.

[Master of Ossus]

What's the point of mandatory voting, now? We give few enough advantages for people who bother to care and educate themselves about the issues. I see no reason to go out of our collective ways to get other people voting.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What's the point of mandatory voting, now? We give few enough advantages for people who bother to care and educate themselves about the issues. I see no reason to go out of our collective ways to get other people voting.

Well, then everyone reaps what they sow....

[Alyeska]

Fucking hell, you sound just like the anti-healthcare people, and I bet you don't even realise it.

The two are not even remotely the same.

[Knife]

What's the point of mandatory voting, now? We give few enough advantages for people who bother to care and educate themselves about the issues. I see no reason to go out of our collective ways to get other people voting.

It eliminates the voting block power, which ever voting block you wish to talk about, and thus lowers special interest money pouring into that voting block. Less special interest money means less corruption in my book.

[Uraniun235]

Not enough money spent to staff polling places, not enough polling places, not enough voting machines, stupid ass voting procedures that make you go to three stations (at least here in my county) before you can get to vote, so even if you have enough voting machines, the bottleneck is at the stupid sign in sheet.

Basically, we don't devote enough money to the process, so we can't do it right. And throw in Hawaii's issue (not having enough money to run the election) and you have a REALLY stupid system that actually does better the lower the turnout.

There is no reason (from the perspective of the election organizations) to have a better turn out, in fact, I suspect they privately want more anemic ones than the Mass special election. I would be interested to see turnout results for special elections in the state where everyone votes by mail.

The November 2007 special election in Oregon saw 70% of the eligible voters registered to vote, and 60% of those registered voters cast a vote. For additional statistics you can look here.

In our case I would suspect that, unlike other states where people may have bigger obstacles (unreasonably long lines/wait times, work schedules that make getting to the polls onerous), the vast majority of Oregonians who don't vote really are the result of voter apathy. There are free drop boxes for ballots in just about every town, postage is dirt cheap if you want to actually mail your ballot, there's a wide window in which to vote and turn in your ballot, and even homeless vagrants are legally eligible to vote.

[Questor]

The November 2007 special election in Oregon saw 70% of the eligible voters registered to vote, and 60% of those registered voters cast a vote. For additional statistics you can look here.

Wow, those numbers are high for a general election.

This just goes to show that the system Oregon has is the one that should be the model for the coming decades.

[bobalot]

Fucking hell, you sound just like the anti-healthcare people, and I bet you don't even realise it.

The two are not even remotely the same.

Yes, you do. You are against compulsory voting because.......? Well, you never really say. You make some vague allusion to free speech and how making something compulsory is bad.

The concept of a democracy, especially a free democracy is built upon that of choice. Compulsory voting is not a choice. I want to vote, but I do not wanted to be forced to vote. I would strongly consider not voting if it became mandatory. That is how much compulsory voting disturbs me.

Let's just reword that a bit.

The concept of a democracy, especially a free democracy is built upon that of choice. Compulsory taxation is not a choice. I want to pay tax, but I do not wanted to be forced to pay tax. I would strongly consider not paying tax if it became mandatory. That is how much taxation disturbs me.

Your argument is basically "anything that I am forced to do is automatically bad". God forbid the concept of voting being the one of the responsibilities of citizenship.

[adam_grif]

I dislike compulsory voting on principle, but I'd still vote even if it was optional. Voting was one of the things I was most excited about when I turned 18, bizarrely.

Even leaving aside informal votes, I know a lot of people who just donkey vote (number the boxes 1,2,3,4,5,6... until they get to the end). They randomize the order of participants on ballots so that this doesn't have a statistically significant effect on the outcome of the election, but it's just the same as an informal vote / absenteeism in terms of non-participation, it's just harder to spot. 5% absenteeism and 5% informal voting doesn't equate to 91% of people who think about their vote carefully and choose somebody they want to put into power.

[Stark]

Compulsory voting (aside from being a responsibility of citizenship, etc) also ensures that everyone is jointly and equally responsible for decisions made. Everyone MUST participate in the democratic process. Yes, that participation can be 'lol captain planet party', but you participated and are thus a part of the decisions made, every single time, and not just because a lobby group or priest 'got you involved'. You don't get stuck at work because your ridiculous laws put voting on a working day and get forced to live with decisions you had no realistic role in forming as in other so-called 'democratic' countries I could name.

Shit, don't Americans have compulsory civics classes?

Now if only we could actually enforce the whole 'no voter influencing near polling places' I'd be a happy man. No, I don't want your motherfucking 'we trick you into voting for our political allies whom you hate' card, you democracy-distorting bastard.

[Mr Flibble]

I dislike compulsory voting on principle, but I'd still vote even if it was optional. Voting was one of the things I was most excited about when I turned 18, bizarrely.

Even leaving aside informal votes, I know a lot of people who just donkey vote (number the boxes 1,2,3,4,5,6... until they get to the end). They randomize the order of participants on ballots so that this doesn't have a statistically significant effect on the outcome of the election, but it's just the same as an informal vote / absenteeism in terms of non-participation, it's just harder to spot. 5% absenteeism and 5% informal voting doesn't equate to 91% of people who think about their vote carefully and choose somebody they want to put into power.

Donkey voting is usually between 2-3% of the vote, and last election was less than 1%. It also tends to be lower in South Australian elections where they have signs saying you are allowed to put in a blank ballot. Given it is so low, I don't think it has that much of an effect on the result.

Personally I think the electoral reforms America should take from the Australian system, is as Weemadando said, an electoral commission like the AEC, and the adoption of preferential voting, which should enable "protest votes", without people having to "throw away their vote".

[adam_grif]

Yeah, but lets be realistic here. The only thing on your Federal ballot that matters 99 times out of 100 is whether you put Liberal above Labor or vice versa. It's not like it's done anything to get rid of what is effectively a two-party system.

Only 2-3% Donkey Votes? Strange, I thought it would be much, much higher than that based on personal experience. Oh well. I suppose there would also be a minority who randomly put numbers down, just not in any specific order. Perhaps down to up etc. I typically put the person I want to vote for as my 1, put the person I want to keep out as my last preference, then just fill in the rest as they appear.

[bobalot]

Yeah, but lets be realistic here. The only thing on your Federal ballot that matters 99 times out of 100 is whether you put Liberal above Labor or vice versa. It's not like it's done anything to get rid of what is effectively a two-party system.

Let's be totally honest here. The reason why there is two major parties is because the other parties suck balls or are one issue parties. It's not some sort of systematic stranglehold.

Only 2-3% Donkey Votes? Strange, I thought it would be much, much higher than that based on personal experience. Oh well. I suppose there would also be a minority who randomly put numbers down, just not in any specific order. Perhaps down to up etc. I typically put the person I want to vote for as my 1, put the person I want to keep out as my last preference, then just fill in the rest as they appear.

Keep in mind your personal experience is a rather small sample size. I personally don't know anybody who has ever done a donkey vote in my rather large family.

[adam_grif]

I'm perfectly aware that statistical anomalies creep into small sample sizes and can't be generalized to populations as a whole. I am doing science, yeah? I'm just saying it surprised me because I'd never seen the statistics before and I had assumed the people I knew were fairly typical.

Let's be totally honest here. The reason why there is two major parties is because the other parties suck balls or are one issue parties. It's not some sort of systematic stranglehold.

Perhaps, but if switching to preferential voting is something you're doing to prevent the whole "I can't vote third party, I'll be throwing away my vote" phenomenon, it's not exactly an ideal solution because you're still left with the political dichotomy between the two big boys.

[Uraniun235]

The November 2007 special election in Oregon saw 70% of the eligible voters registered to vote, and 60% of those registered voters cast a vote. For additional statistics you can look here.

Wow, those numbers are high for a general election.

This just goes to show that the system Oregon has is the one that should be the model for the coming decades.

I'm for it for multiple reasons, but one of the biggest is this:

Can the public watch the election process?

All steps of the process are open to observation by the public. The major steps include:

* Preparation for mailing (about one month before the election).
* Ballot reception and signature verification (during the two weeks before the election).
* Opening envelopes and preparing ballots to be counted (usually starts 5 days before the election date).
* Counting ballots (election day).

This kind of public oversight didn't seem to be happening with the new voting machines in other states.

[Master of Ossus]

Compulsory voting (aside from being a responsibility of citizenship, etc) also ensures that everyone is jointly and equally responsible for decisions made. Everyone MUST participate in the democratic process. Yes, that participation can be 'lol captain planet party', but you participated and are thus a part of the decisions made, every single time, and not just because a lobby group or priest 'got you involved'. You don't get stuck at work because your ridiculous laws put voting on a working day and get forced to live with decisions you had no realistic role in forming as in other so-called 'democratic' countries I could name.

That's not a very good response, IMO. How are people not "jointly and equally responsible for decisions made" without mandatory voting, provided that voting is available for the same group of people now? Some people may choose not to exercise their right, just as they can still do so by not casting an actual vote with their ballots in mandatory voting countries, but that doesn't absolve them of the same responsibility that voters bear. Moreover, not "get[ting] stuck at work?" What? America allows for absentee ballots to be cast, and many work places and big businesses allow time off on election day specifically to allow voters to get to the polls (not to mention that, except in service businesses like law firms and hospitals, you can't possibly be stuck at work for the entire length of time that polls are open unless there's a violation of labor laws going on). Moreover, when people complain about having "no realistic role" in the voting process, they're generally referring to the sheer numbers of votes that are cast in typical elections, which make the odds that any one vote will change anything essentially negligible. To the extent that you find that problematic, it would be made worse by a scheme that increased voter response rates.

Shit, don't Americans have compulsory civics classes?

Now if only we could actually enforce the whole 'no voter influencing near polling places' I'd be a happy man. No, I don't want your motherfucking 'we trick you into voting for our political allies whom you hate' card, you democracy-distorting bastard.

I don't even know what you're talking about, here. Do you mean the free rides that parties frequently offer to help voters get to polling places? How inconsiderate of them. Also, I'm guessing that your response was a sort of canned answer that was spooned to you by a "compulsory civics" teacher? If so, you may have wanted to think about the lessons you learned in civics more carefully.

[Phantasee]

I think he's referring to something local with his second paragraph out of your last quote, MoO. Something along the lines of candidate signs or campaigning near the polling places.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I don't even know what you're talking about, here. Do you mean the free rides that parties frequently offer to help voters get to polling places? How inconsiderate of them. Also, I'm guessing that your response was a sort of canned answer that was spooned to you by a "compulsory civics" teacher? If so, you may have wanted to think about the lessons you learned in civics more carefully.

What are you talking about? Those are partisan efforts to get their own people to vote. Hardly "civic" in the altruistic sense.

All these ranting about compulsory voting come across more like whining and wishing that so and so doesn't vote because either he doesn't support my views or something else. It's almost as if there's a nefarious hope somewhere that this would happen so that elections can be hijacked by select groups, which has happened from the way it looks.

[Mr Flibble]

Shit, don't Americans have compulsory civics classes?

Now if only we could actually enforce the whole 'no voter influencing near polling places' I'd be a happy man. No, I don't want your motherfucking 'we trick you into voting for our political allies whom you hate' card, you democracy-distorting bastard.

I don't even know what you're talking about, here. Do you mean the free rides that parties frequently offer to help voters get to polling places? How inconsiderate of them. Also, I'm guessing that your response was a sort of canned answer that was spooned to you by a "compulsory civics" teacher? If so, you may have wanted to think about the lessons you learned in civics more carefully.

Stark is talking about Australian issues here. He is referring to our how to vote cards. These are essentially a form of political advertising that has developed in response to Australia's preferential voting system.

Yeah, but lets be realistic here. The only thing on your Federal ballot that matters 99 times out of 100 is whether you put Liberal above Labor or vice versa. It's not like it's done anything to get rid of what is effectively a two-party system.

Only 2-3% Donkey Votes? Strange, I thought it would be much, much higher than that based on personal experience. Oh well. I suppose there would also be a minority who randomly put numbers down, just not in any specific order. Perhaps down to up etc. I typically put the person I want to vote for as my 1, put the person I want to keep out as my last preference, then just fill in the rest as they appear.

Speaking of how to vote cards, I suspect that they are responsible for the low donkey/informal vote numbers. What the people who don't care tend to do is go to which ever party the voted for last time and grab their how to vote card and vote according to that. It allows them to mindlessly vote without actually doig nothing or donkey voting.

My reasons for suggesting the preferential system in America are not to break the power of the two party system (though you do underestimate it, we do have third parties in our senate, our system is not as tightly dual party as America. Hell we actually have three parties in the house, remember the nationals aren't always lock stock with the liberals). The point of it is that it removes the dilemma many of the democrats here have mentioned. They want to send a signal to the democrat party that they are unhappy with their policies/actions, but in a way which doesn't had the seat over to the republicans (or in other cases vice-versa). The preferential system allows them to vote for a third party, but also allows them to put (in my example case) the republicans last. The result if many people feel the same is that the democrat primary vote will fall, but they will retain their seat. Then the democrats should get the point that the problem is not that they are not republican enough, but whatever reason the electorate may be upset with them (or vice-versa depending on what people are voting for).

*edit: Fixing my broken quote tag

[Master of Ossus]

What are you talking about? Those are partisan efforts to get their own people to vote. Hardly "civic" in the altruistic sense.

I never described getting people to drive voters to the polls as "civic," but I don't really have a problem with it. There's a gap, IMO, between making it easier for someone to vote and requiring them to vote.

All these ranting about compulsory voting come across more like whining and wishing that so and so doesn't vote because either he doesn't support my views or something else. It's almost as if there's a nefarious hope somewhere that this would happen so that elections can be hijacked by select groups, which has happened from the way it looks.

I do worry that the portion of the electorate that currently doesn't vote isn't sufficiently interested or educated to cast informed ballots, yes. Compulsory voting strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. The arguments in favor of it strike me as being basically circular, like the ones that I responded to above. I also don't see that compulsory elections will prevent they election process from being coopted by "select groups." The select groups may change, but the problem will still exist. The real issue with groups like the NRA, NAACP, and AARP is that they consist of large groups of people whose voting is strongly responsive to a single issue or definable set of issues. I have no idea how that problem is solved by compulsory voting--you'll still have large groups that determine their votes largely because of a small part of a candidate's platform. Frankly, I don't really have a problem with that--if people feel strongly about something, they should be able to express that. Indeed, diluting their power with large blocks of otherwise apathetic voters strikes me as being unreasonable, since it gives equal power to people who otherwise wouldn't have felt strongly enough about the issue to vote--people I would characterize as having views that should be taken less strongly into account (since they don't even care enough to vote in absence of a law requiring them to--even if it's really easy).

Edit: To make this concrete, let's use an extreme hypo: suppose that you had someone who was completely indifferent to the election results, but would vote if voting were compulsory, and would check off one of the boxes if you put them in a booth and told them they couldn't leave. Is society better off for having this person vote? I would argue that the answer is "No." While that person isn't harmed or helped, no matter how the election turns out (they don't care), other people might feel very strongly about the results. Why shouldn't people who would significantly prefer that one candidate won over another, or that a proposition was passed or rejected, be given additional "voice" to the extent that they care sufficiently about the issue to vote?

The counter-argument, which I responded to above, was that the apathetic voter isn't "responsible" for the voter decision, but I disagree with that claim, as well: he's equally responsible in either case, it's just that not requiring him to vote allows him to register his indifference to the proceedings while, arguably, avoiding a bias that would harm the collective psyches of the voters by preventing people who feel very strongly from having any additional voice on the basis of their passionate feelings.