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How We Used To Vote
Mr. Slippery writes "Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad? The New Yorker looks back at how we used to vote back in the good old days: 'A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party's Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis's victory was upheld on the ground that any "man of ordinary courage" could have made his way to the polls.' Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail." The article notes the American penchant for trying to fix voting problems with technology — starting just after the Revolution. This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century.
Granted this was only way back in 2000, but I lived in St. Clair County, IL. It was a small township called French Village. At 8am, the mayor knocked on my door and informed my wife and I it was time to vote. We marched down to the fire station with him and twenty other poor people. They passed out leaflets stating which democrats we should vote for and why. There were no republicans running in our little township, so good luck dissenting. They also explained how important it was to vote democrat and how we should not consider ourselves welcome in the community if we failed to vote. We cast our votes and all went well. However, you had to fill your ballot in at a table with everyone else who could fit in the room at the time and the mayor literally acted as a monitor!!!
In Australia, we have the AEC (Australian Electoral Comission)
They run both state and federal elections.
As far as I or anyone else can tell, they are efficient and accurate.
In one day, 16million votes are cast and counted throughout the country with results known before bed time that same night.
How is it that our little country can manage this while there are lines around the block in the USA days before the election?
There's nothing that the Americans do that appears to be efficient or accurate.
I dont think in the entire history of Australian voting that anyone has questioned the validity of a vote.
There have been a few recounts, but they were shown to be surprisingly accurate the first time.
Time to sit up and look around at the world in which you live America. The world has far surpassed your technical and proceedural level. As harsh a blow as that might be to the collective ego over there, it's true.
This is part of what's costing your country so dearly in so many ways.
Somehow you're clinging to the superpower status, but just because our old uncle can still knock anyone out in a fight, doesnt mean the world doesnt laugh at his diminishing abilities.