Election Day May Go Away... In Florida

That's Unpossible! writes "The Orlando Sentinel is reporting about a proposed change to the way Florida will run future elections. Due to the popularity of this year's 'advanced voting' trial run, it seems likely that the voting process can be streamlined by spreading it out over two weeks, allowing people to vote when and where they can. 'Fewer polling places would reduce the number of voting machines and would require fewer poll workers, which could cut salary and training costs. It also would reduce the chances of human error and electronic glitches, supervisors said.'"

Comments

Weird

[SmallFurryCreature]

Is democracy damned when people don't vote? The damned view believes that non-voters don't have fate in the system. On the other hand perhaps these people think everything is just fine.

But would spreading voting out over more then a day really help? Those who "forget" to go would still forget and you would also miss the effect of having voting day. One clear day on wich everyone knows that today is the day to vote with everyone remembring people around them.

Sure sure economic effect of people taking an hour of to vote (or even a day). So what? Cost of doing business. If a company really really needs all its people there let it open a polling boot inside.

Also would candidates still be banned from campaigning during the entire two weeks?

As for mistakes and cost of salaries. Well now the ballot boxes have to be guarded for 1 day. The staff needs to be paid for 1 day and only take 1 day of from their day job. You just increase the cost because now the polling station has to be guarded for 14 days and nights. The cost for foreing volunteers to observe the elections also goes op (hmmm might US elections not withstand foreign scrutiny?)

Few polling stations? Oh goodie, means longer distances to travel. No problem for the rich and middle classes but poorer people might have to spend more money they don't have to get to their polling station. Isn't the entire idea of having so many stations to make them easily accesable to everyone?

Lets review

• Increase distance to polling station wich affects the poorer people most.
• Decrease public awareness of "voting day".
• Give the postponers more excuses to not vote because they will just do it tomorrow until it is to late
• Increase security risks because the ballots have to be guared for far far longer.
• Increase costs to volunteers because of time of needed
• Increase likelyhood of failure in machine and electronics.
• Impose a 2 week gag order on parties OR have campaigning during voting.
• Cuts in staff are unlikely because you would have more people coming to the station and therefore more of a chance of a rush at peak times (like me who votes before going to work like all the other people in the que or is that just in holland?)

Is it really that much of a problem to go and vote?

Reducing electronic glitches

[trevdak]

Explain to me how running the electronic voting for a longer time will reduce glitches. Try running a windows machine for two weeks. Now run the same machine for one day. Which period do you think is more likely to have bugs arise. Sure Diebold machines aren't windows machines, but the point is the same. If a computer gives buggy results over a short period of time, running it longer won't smooth things out. Human error, on the other hand, will probably be reduced dramatically. I agree with that.

Re:Reducing electronic glitches

[schmink182]

Bad analogy. Try keeping a Windows machine running for two weeks working on not-so-intensive computations. Now try keeping the same machine running for 1 day with very heavy workload for the entire day. Which is more likely to crash? Probably the latter. Plus, if there's a bug in the former early on in the process, it can still be fixed and run without much disturbance. An hour of downtime is much less critical in a two-week setting than a 1-day setting.

Fewer Polling Places? WTF!!

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

After having to wait in line for nearly 3 hours to vote early in FL, and delivering water to other early voting places where people were waiting just as long... WTF?

In Ohio, some people waited up to 9 hours to vote. We need more polling places, more machines and more poll workers, not less. While I'm all for a 2 week voting period, using one as an excuse to reduce the number of machines and locations is insane. What about people who have a hard time with transportation? Will they no longer be able to go to their local polling place? Will we just cut out polling places in poor areas or rural areas, tell those folks they've got 2 weeks to go stand in a long line miles from home to exercise their Constitutional rights?

This is only a solution if it increases overall availability of the polls to all voters, anything less smells of poll taxes and literacy tests.

Re:Hmmm

[Enrico Pulatzo]

I think that voting is truly an example of a quantum reality: attempting a measure affects the outcome.

Re:Hmmm

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Actually, the bigger issue is not "voting for the winner," but voter discouragement when it looks like the candidate you WANT to win is behind. If you think your guy is going to lose anyway, why go out and vote?

Funny, I'd have the opposite reaction "hey he's losing, he NEEDS my vote more than ever".