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.

Comments

not the worst

[Brian Gordon]

in before scarlet letter, salem witch trials, etc

Re:not the worst

[Anonymous Coward]

You slavery and jim crow laws (apartheid).

Re:not the worst

[electrictroy]

>>>"The United States was founded as an experiment in eighteenth-century republicanism, in which it was understood that only men with property would vote, since they were the only people who could be trusted to vote with the common wealth, and not private gain, in mind."
>>>

This is the flaw with today's system. Too many people are voting for their own personal gain (free food, free housing, free money, or free replacement organs/pills at your local U.S. government-run hospital).

There is no other description for this desire to take money from neighbors' wallets, except as a way to increase your own private gain. Voting has become the enabling mechanism for thieves to ply their craft.

Re:not the worst

[AndersOSU]

That's funny, I frequently argue that the problem with people today is that they vote against their self interest, a la What's the Matter with Kansas, having fallen for a bait-and-switch that promises some pie in the sky morality based culture but delivers tax policies that favor the corporate executive over the line worker.

Personally, I have more respect for people who can put together coherent arguments about supply-side economics than I do for people who prattle on about how letting gay people share benefits undermines the sanctity of marriage. (I won't, however, hesitate to point out how the current financial situation is the direct result of the laissez faire, deregulation-is-always-a-good-thing mindset of people like Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan.)

From where I sit if your neighbors are gaming the economic system for their personal gain at others expense, voting to take some of their money for your gain is an appropriate response. And lets not kid ourselves, since any tax policy is, by definition, redistributive people who rail on redistribution really just want a tax policy that favors them or that they perceive will favor them in the future (e.g. "Joe the Plumber".)

Re:not the worst

[electrictroy]

Riiiight. Because if a politician named Barak McCain (I) promised to provide a free car for all families earning less than $30,000 a year, and the voters rallied to elect him president, clearly it's okay to suck money from the working class in order to give "free" cars to the poor.

Bzzz.

I consider that theft. I work; somebody else gets the cotton I picked... ooops, I mean the car I bought for them. That's a human rights violation. ----- I prefer what the Constitution says, which limits taxation strictly to COMMON welfare, not just welfare for a few individuals. For example: National defense (benefits all).

Re:not the worst

[AndersOSU]

Witness the strawman.

For the sake of argument I'll grant that the difference between building roads, providing public transportation, and giving away free cars is a difference of degree, rather than one of kind. Even still, it is in fact possible to avoid going over the slippery slope from common good to full blown communism, as a country we've been doing it for more than 200 years.

I'm sorry, but "common welfare" doesn't mean it has to be good for everyone individually, it just means it has to be good for society as a whole. The taxpayer funded establishment of Washington DC didn't benefit everyone, nor did the establishment of the post office, nor the first and second banks of the United States, and the people who wrote the constitution were directly involved in those endeavors.

Regardless of whether you believe if we should have welfare, social security, public education, public roads, universal health care, pollution regulation, a minimum wage, or national parks, any (reasonable) argument will center around whether the benefits outweighs the costs, since they all address common welfare in one aspect or another. You can bloviate about taxation being equivalent to theft, and rail about how all government projects are unconstitutional until the cows come home, and no one will take you seriously, when you call it a human rights violation you look like an ass.

Re:not the worst

[Reziac]

"Democracy: That ultimate triumph of quantity over quality." -- Peter H. Peel

Congress

[baffled]

If only Congress voted with secret ballots, too..

Re:Congress

[Neoprofin]

Wait, what?

Last time I checked more accountability for elected officials is always better.

Re:Congress

[Zontar The Mindless]

You mean so they can be held accountable even *less* than they're getting away with already?

Or did I miss some <sarcasm> tags in your post?

Re:Congress

[Idiomatick]

the pro side would say that its hard to buy the house if they are secret... exact reason we have secret voting...

Re:Congress

[baffled]

There'd be no incentive to bribing a Congressman..

..except to make corrupt proposals, which no one would have incentive to vote for.

Re:Congress

[isorox]

You mean so they can be held accountable even *less* than they're getting away with already?

Or did I miss some <sarcasm> tags in your post?

How can big business buy votes if they don't know who voted for what?

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you smoking!!!

If they could do this in secret then that allows them to be bought out more and nobody ever knows!!!

Last i heard they were voting for ME, not them so i better get to see how they vote.

Re:Congress

[amRadioHed]

Then on what grounds would you be able to judge if your congressperson should be reelected or not?

Regardless of any possible benefits this is a terrible, terrible idea. A legitimate public financing system would be more of a step in the right direction.

Re:Congress

[baffled]

One could judge them on their speeches before Congress and on their proposed legislation - particularly if it was adopted by a fully anonymous vote.

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way they buy them now: they wine and dine the pol, and make them think that X Corp are swell guys. Just like managers choosing IT products over a golf game.

Give the politicians a little credit. Most of them aren't corrupt, just ignorant as bricks.

Re:Congress

[thetoadwarrior]

Well to be fair the UK's House of Lords is an unelected body that holds no accountability to anyone and they've looked out for the "average Joe" way more than the elected and accountable house of commons.

You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.

Re:Congress

[rjmx]

You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.

... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.

Re:Congress

[jonadab]

> Well to be fair the UK's House of Lords is an unelected body that holds no accountability to anyone
> and they've looked out for the "average Joe" way more than the elected and accountable house of commons.

Only in recent years, since most of the real power was vested in the House of Commons. It's not accountability that corrupts, but power. (And no, I don't have a solution. Well, I do, but it's worse than the problem.)

Re:Congress

[Golddess]

Just because Company X can't be sure that Congress Critter Y didn't vote for Proposal Z, doesn't mean they won't still try and bribe them.

Re:Congress

[mewshi_nya]

Actually, it *would* make it harder. "We can't be sure he'll *actually* vote our way... why bother..."

Re:Congress

[thetoadwarrior]

True having zero accountability and only unelectable people would probably lead to a dictatorship which would likely lead to something that's not favourable to most but like anything it's a case of not going to either extreme.

The UK has a situation where it sort of has both extremes and, imo, when you do that the unaccountable ones will always win out in the end because the Lords are human too and have the same needs as the rest of us. Having the threat looming over that they could lose that position probably helps but relying on people within power that are 100% accountable to the public through election would end up in some sort of pro Daily Mail government that bases its laws on Littlejohn, the immigrant, with anti immigrant rubbish rants and other laws based on rubbish the common masses read from the guy who sits comfortably in Florida.

It's unfortunate but most people aren't capable of voting in their best interests. In an ideal world Reagan's trickle-down economics were correct if you'd rework them to make them less extreme. It's a fine balance that needs constant adjustment to ensure no one gets too much power.

That's where the problem lies. To get things right requires constant thought and evaluation. People don't want that. They want to press a button and then it's sorted but that won't happen ever. Constant fluctuation to keep people on their toes and thinking is uncool and will never win. The house of common / house of lords setup, as it's currently working, is probably the best people will get.

Re:Congress

[thetoadwarrior]

You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.

... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.

True.

Having 3 equal groups within a government and one that isn't accountable to the uneducated masses works best. It keeps thing balanced.

Re:Congress

[DigiShaman]

... which is an excellent argument against electing judges

You have it all wrong.

All judges get elected or put into their positions through some political process be it vocal or non-vocal. Ascension to such a job still will pass through other human beings with opinions of their own. It's an undeniable fact of life.

The correct question you should be asking is this. "How and by whom should judges be put into power?

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in the last few years with the accession of appointed peers; the old hereditary chamber was a bastion of reaction.

Re:Congress

[whiplashx]

I'm going to guess that the reason it works is because the House of Lords acts as a check and balance against the House of Commons. I'd imagine the House of Lords is sort of like a random sample of the rich and educated. Which isn't necessarily the group you'd want ruling you, but perhaps as one of the groups representing you they aren't so bad.

Re:Congress

[rjmx]

All judges get elected or put into their positions through some political process be it vocal or non-vocal. Ascension to such a job still will pass through other human beings with opinions of their own. It's an undeniable fact of life.

The correct question you should be asking is this. "How and by whom should judges be put into power?

I agree. The point really is, I suppose, that once a judge is appointed, he/she doesn't have to worry about being re-appointed. Doesn't have to worry what the average dimwit thinks about an issue, for fear of not being re-elected.

The law is the law, and shouldn't be controlled by current community opinions.

Re:Congress

[charlieo88]

They already edit the congressional record. What would be the point of secret ballots?

Re:Congress

[jonaskoelker]

The law is the law, and shouldn't be controlled by current community opinions.

How is that not counter to "by the people, for the people"?

If enough fucktards want to change the law, move elsewhere and watch them get their just deserts.

Informed decisions based on public debate that includes experts on subject matter will probably lead to better decisions than the will of the average mob. But the law is the people's, not the elite's.

It's easy us to look down on people. But consider this: there may be smarter people than us who govern us. Would we want to be cut out of the loop because we weren't elite enough?

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with public financing is it would put the government in charge of who gets the money. Otherwise you would have to fund every party, no matter how crazy. Would you support the public financing of a pary dedicated to making the life of the Slashdot user amRadioHed miserable?

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they're not voting for you.

You voted to elect them, so the implication is you found them to be a worthwhile representative.

But they do not have to vote how you (or even the majority of their constituents) would have voted.

They may not get elected again, but that's not the point. You can't fire them. You can just choose not to pick up the option on their contract.

Re:Congress

[cayenne8]

"Having 3 equal groups within a government and one that isn't accountable to the uneducated masses works best. It keeps thing balanced."

Hmm...too bad then, that here in the US, we switched to allowing the populace to vote for our senators, rather than having them appointed.

Re:Congress

[Gavagai80]

By buying the whole congress at once: if the law is passed/failed as desired, everybody gets more bribe money. If the vote shows the wrong result, the company reduces funding.

Re:Congress

[laddiebuck]

Where does this magic number 3 come from? Is it just because you're American/French? Most democracies get by fine with anything between 2-5 groups. (Calling the groups "equal" is, of course, ridiculous and meaningless in any government.)

Re:Congress

[Free the Cowards]

How is that not counter to "by the people, for the people"

Maybe it is, but who cares? This country isn't built on the idea that anything that 51% of the people can agree on should happen.

Ever notice the Bill of Rights? That sort of thing would be pointless, indeed obstructionist, if the intent was to let the populace do whatever they felt like.

True, direct, 100% democracy does not work. Democracy is two lions and a lamb voting on dinner. The US is not set up as a direct democracy and this is a feature, not a bug.

Re:Congress

[Dekortage]

From the article...

"Voting, Mill insisted, is not a right but a trust: if it were a right, who could blame a voter for selling it? Every man's vote must be public for the same reason that votes on the floor of the legislature are public. If a congressman or a Member of Parliament could conceal his vote, would we not expect him to vote badly, in his own interest and not in ours? A secret vote is, by definition, a selfish vote. Only if a man votes 'under the eye and criticism of the public' will he put public interest above his own."

Re:Congress

[westlake]

Well to be fair the UK's House of Lords is an unelected body that holds no accountability to anyone and they've looked out for the "average Joe" way more than the elected and accountable house of commons.

.

The modern House of Lords has only the power to delay legislation.

The representation of heritary peerages in the House of Lords was more or less extinquished in 1999. House of Lords Act 1999

When the House of Lords had the power to veto legislation it was very different institution and far less friendly to the "average Joe."

Re:Congress

[Eskarel]

The creation of the law is "by the people, for the people"(legislative branch), the enforcement of the law is "by the people, for the people"(executive branch), these groups must be elected and for the most part are(we don't vote for everyone who creates or enforces the law, but we do vote for their bosses who are responsible for these activities). Whether that process is working as intended is another question, but it's set up correctly and should in theory provide the appropriate represenation.

The application of the law is not "by the people, for the people", nor can it ever be. The application of the law, is by the law for the law with a smattering of justice thrown in depending on how just the law is in the first place. The people can(in theory) change the law, they can certainly change the people who made it, they can change the people who enforce it, and they can even change the constitution if enough of them want to.

They can't decide how the laws which have been written will be applied(without rewriting them at least), and should not be able to. It is the judiciary's job to decide whether the law is in violation of the constitution, and whether everything has been done according to the law. We have juries to decide facts, but we need independent and ideally impartial judges to decide the law.

We need this because neither the mob, nor the government can be trusted to protect the rights of those it believes guilty of a crime. If either group had complete control of the application of the law then anyone who the public(or government) believed was guilty of a crime would have no protections under the law. No judge who has to face reelection will ever throw out evidence against someone accused of a crime which the public finds particularly heinous because it was illegaly obtained. No judge who has to face reappointment by the government will protect the rights of someone who speaks out against that government.

The law must presume that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and must protect the rights not only of the innocent, but also the accused, and even the guilty. It must do this because the protection of those rights is what makes the USA what it is, it is, or at least was, the shining light of our society, it's what allows any degree of fairness in our legal system whatsoever, and allows us the freedoms which construct our lives.

The people have the right, and the ability to determine what those rights are, they have the right and the ability to determine both the content and the enforcement of the law, but they cannot control its application, because they cannot(at least as a group) be trusted to treat everyone, even the guilty, as equal before the law.

That doesn't mean that judges are perfect, or that they are always capable of the impartiality which they are charged to uphold, but an educated, reasoned individual has a lot better chance than a mob. If you want to continually reelect/appoint judges then you can kiss you rights goodbye if anyone ever accuses you(guilty or not) of anything which gets the mobs blood boiling.

Re:Congress

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The point that grandparent is trying to make(I think) is about rule of law. In order to have rule of law, law must be uniformly applied, as written, to the greatest degree possible. Allowing popular opinion to sway particular cases is anathema to that. This doesn't mean that "the elites" get to make law(The people directly or through representatives make law.) But it does mean that the people cannot be allowed to decide to apply or not to apply the law they have written in a given instance.

In essence, by having the people write the law and making its application as rigorous, uniform, and automatic as possible, we uphold the rule of "the people" with as little as possible of mob rule. In specific instances, with emotions running high one way or the other, "the people" are fantastically unreliable(generally aided, these days, by the shrieking emotion peddlers of the press). The best compromise we can strike between some sort of nonrepresentative rule and mob rule is a mechanism where the people write the laws first, to address society in the abstract, and then the laws are executed without regard for the emotions of the mob in any particular instance.

Re:Congress

[jonaskoelker]

The law must presume that everyone is innocent until proven guilty

As we all know (no?), in criminal cases "proven guilty" means "beyond any reasonable doubt", whereas in civil cases the standard is merely "preponderance of evidence" (i.e. greater than fifty-fifty).

Re:Congress

[Eskarel]

Well yes, but for the purposes of this particular argument I was talking more about criminal cases.

The independent judiciary is slightly less important in the case of civil trials as, generally speaking there are far fewer decisions of law in civil cases, and the jury(the people) are more heavily involved in the process anyway.

There probably would be few disadvantages and possibly some advantages to elected judges for civil trials(presuming you put a stop to being able to sue someone for damages caused by a crime they were found not guilty of), generally the mob doesn't care much one way or another in civil cases, and when they do it tends generally to be anti-corporate which fits the slashdot ethos fairly well.

That said, unless we want to have two systems of judges(and never the twain shall meet), then it's important that the judiciary be independent, because it's the only way for criminal trials to have any hope of being fair. They're still not generally fair because fairness isn't a particularly common human characteristic and juries are generally chosen based on their stupidity, but they're fairer than they would otherwise be. The police are nearly always "absolutely" convinced that the person they think is guilty is guilty even when there's no real evidence, and the mob is pretty much out for blood against anyone they believe committed certain kinds of crimes(particularly involving children), without independent judges all the problems of the modern jury system would be multiplied ten fold.

Re:Congress

[Alex Belits]

Yes -- if it will be a party with a few thousand members (on Slashdot it's entirely possible), and if Republicans and Democrats will not be allowed to spend more than Anti-amRadioHed-ians did.

Re:Congress

[TapeCutter]

Baseball? - Like the "3 strikes and you're out" thing is the foundation of the judicial system. /ducks.

Re:Congress

[dryeo]

Here in Canada, the public funding is divided based on how many votes parties received last election.

Re:Congress

[arminw]

...How can big business buy votes if they don't know who voted for what?...

Simply promise the political critter that he/she will get the money only when the bill the monied sponsor wants becomes law.

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, it doesnt work very well. The Lords can reject bills and have them sent back to the Commons for a rethink, but if (IIRC) after 3 back-and-forths the Commons can invoke the Parliament Act and ram the bill through regardless.

Its even worse because Labour have a majority government and can simply send back the same bill unaltered (by out-voting any ammendments). They did it with ID cards, "extreme" porn and other laws no-one but Labour wants.

Re:Congress

[Anspen]

Hmm...too bad then, that here in the US, we switched to allowing the populace to vote for our senators, rather than having them appointed.

Well, if I remember correctly back then senators where quite dependent on the state legislature. So they were wiimply accountable to a different kind of fool.

Re:Congress

[Hognoxious]

Are you using groups to mean political parties? The person you're replying to isn't.

Re:Congress

[Hognoxious]

They did vote against the poll tax. Maybe even twice.

If you consider that to be only a few years ago, then I'll get off your lawn right now.

Re:Congress

[tripdizzle]

That would be horrible, no accountability, and we would be left with empty suits and lofty meaningless feel-good speeches.

Re:Congress

[sorak]

You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.

... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.

I think the argument against electing judges is that they should be chosen based on their understanding of the constitution, and not on how well they wooed the audience on their talk show circuit.

Re:Congress

[dajak]

The remarkable thing about the UK house of lords is that it is a representative body that represents something other than the general population. This is nowadays a rarity, even in Europe.

In the US however, also a lot of individual office holders, like the president, are elected. This is less common in Europe.

Here in the Netherlands we elect five representative bodies (European, national, provincial, municipal, and water county), all by proportional vote. A sixth one, the senate, is appointed by the provincial parliaments. With reference to the US system of electors, one could say the senate is indirectly elected.

All relevant individual office holders (ministers, judges, governors, mayors, etc) are appointed by "the Crown". In the end it is obviously the parliament, as the formal legislator, that decides what the procedures for nominating candidates and appointment look like, and whether the appointment is limited to a term. The monarch signs every law and decree, and in that limited sense has a veto over everything.

We recently conducted an experiment with nomination of mayors through a referendum, but this ended tragicly with voter turnout below 30% and the political party that introduced it loosing two thirds of its parliament seats. People are not interested in voting more often and don't take democratic mandates based on a tiny voter turnout seriously. Skeptics will in addition question how an individual can represent a community: the diversity in opinions is immediately lost.

In my view the length of the term (judges until retirement, mayors and governors for 6 years, ministers for 4, etc.), the position of the office in the career path, and the prospects of having one's term automatically extended (mayors and governors can often stay as long as they wish) seem to me most determinative in how "political" an office is here.

The big problem of parliamentarians is that they are ambitious and generally want to end up as either a minister, mayor, or governor, or as a board of directors member or something similar in business. This makes them generally risk averse, easy to influence by lobbyists, and overly loyal to the party. The senate (only veto) on the other hand is usually an endpoint in one's career.

Judges, small town mayors, and the senate easily steal the show with integrity and honesty because they have nothing to fear from the people, from business, and from the party.

The obvious way to make parliament more independent is to make sure it is the endpoint of one's career, but any proposals of that nature would be terribly hard to get through parliament, as parliamentarians, modest as they are, would immediately argue that if parliament were to become an unattractive career choice, it would no longer attract the best people.

Re:Congress

[anothy]

that change had more disastrous consequences than almost anyone today realizes. it fundamentally altered the balance of power between the state and federal governments far more than anything since the civil war (and one could plausibly argue which was a bigger effect). compare the growth of our military before and after that change, and notice particularly the progressive, gradual federalization of the state's National Guard units. the states no longer have any direct, systematic method of checking the federal government, and instead have to rely on ad-hoc and after-the-fact methods.

Re:Congress

[kabocox]

You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks. ... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.

I don't know. I think that they picked the wrong branch for that. I'd almost have liked our president to be unelected except by the house/senate. Lately, I've really, really been thinking that I'd like any control over those damn federal supreme court judges. There is a part of me that thinks that they need elections to get in, and if large enough percentage of folks dislike how they've been judging crap, we need to be able to kick them out.

Of course, I think that if any elected official gets out of office with a 60% or more disapproval rating that they need to spend at least the same amount of time in jail for when they were in office. (Actually, that's kinder than what I really think.)

Re:Congress

[anothy]

three is significant, in that it's the minimum needed for a robust system. in a two-group system, if one gets "uppity" there's nothing to be done about it; it now has the upper hand. in a three-group system, there's more avenues for keeping the balance.

having more groups doesn't make the system less robust, although it likely makes it simply larger.

and it's true that they aren't "equal", but the point is that they're not subservient and that each has some checks over the others.

Re:Congress

[vertinox]

If enough fucktards want to change the law, move elsewhere and watch them get their just deserts.

The United States was never intended for the people or by the people but rather to limit government to protect the majority from a powerful minority or powerful majority from a weak minority.

Historically, democracies with no limits on its power tended to be oppressive to its minorities.

Secondly, just picking up and moving is not always a solution especially when the majority puts restrictions on movement on said minorities.

Not to godwin this thread, but the Nazi's were technically legally elected by a democratic process which they dismantled from the inside once they go to power. The minorities such as the social democrats, socialists, communists, and others were made short work of shortly thereafter.

Many persons (especially those of the Jewish ethnicity) attempted to move but as the government increased its restrictions on them, those who had not moved early on could no longer escape the country after a certain point.

The key is that the best government is not one that simply empowers 51% of its population to rule, but to also protect the other 49% from being being treated as second class citizens (or worse).

Re:Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.

Yeah. You can see how well that's working with eight years of Bush appointees.

We did well for a long time without such asshole decisions as the one that said seizing private property and turning it over to a private developer was "for the common good". Too bad that the "common good" was that the developer would make millions while returning a pittance in sales or real estate taxes to the local municipality.

This is no different from an older practice of taxing property "at its highest and best use". That made sure that business interests always trumped the interest of a homeowner or farmer who couldn't afford to build a tax-producing multi-story commercial building on his property.

For a while, this was mitigated by exempting agricultural land (at least in California) from unreasonable tax hikes. The intent was to preserve productive farmland. In return, the owner had to make a commitment to keep the land in production. Then they gutted the intent (and benefit) of the law by allowing a "window" of a year or so when the landowner could back out of the agreement and sell the land without penalty.

Naturally this happened at a time when CA property values were rising steeply. So the landowners, having been shielded for years from taxation, could now sell the land to developers fo many, many times what it was worth as a farm.

The least the legislature could have done was to have soaked the sellers for annual back taxes at the current value of the land.

Re:Congress

[JAlexoi]

Well... Direct democracy does work. But it does not scale and has both upper and lower bounds. Communism, does not scale up, but thrives at a family level. While almost all democracies on this planet are representative democracies, Switzerland is the only country that comes close to a direct democracy.

Voting the Open-Source Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote early and often! :)

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chicago (and lately, the Ohio) way! Until we get a handle on voter fraud, we'll never have free and fair elections. What's so wrong with voter ID?

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[EGSonikku]

Nothing, as long as the state pays for the ID, and provides transportation to get the ID. Otherwise "Voter ID" essentially becomes "Poll Tax" and you have people with little or no income unable to vote because they can't afford an ID or the local DMV is two cities over.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[Mr. Slippery]

Until we get a handle on voter fraud, we'll never have free and fair elections.

We do have a handle on voter fraud. It is so rare as to be practically non-existent. Between 2002 and 2005, the Department of Justice convicted just two dozen people for voter fraud. Eight a year. Not exactly a pressing problem.

What's so wrong with voter ID?

I know it's difficult for many middle-class suburban Americans to grasp this, but millions of people - mostly poor - don't have identification cards. They don't drive, they don't ride on airplanes, they don't have bank accounts. If they wanted to get an ID, they might have to take a day off of work (already an impossibility for many), travel to the other side of the county (without a car), and pay a substantial (to them) sum.

Until such time as IDs can be obtained easily and for free, requiring them to be displayed to vote is nothing more than a subtle form of poll tax.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[schnikies79]

In Indiana (where the voter ID started and ended up with SCOTUS), we have free ID's and transportation if you need it.

There are really no excuses and no reason to not have to prove who you are.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[jonaskoelker]

Nothing [wrong with voter ID], as long as the state pays for the ID, and provides transportation to get the ID.

Or send it in the mail. That's what we do in Denmark. ISTR voter turnout at 85% in the last election; WikipediaIYF.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[Mr. Slippery]

In Indiana (where the voter ID started and ended up with SCOTUS), we have free ID's and transportation if you need it.

Interesting about the transportation, I'd like to see more information about that. Have a link?

The ID itself might be free, but one has to provide copies of various documents to get it. Obtaining these documents can be difficult and expensive. When a mother of seven has to choose between paying bills or spending $50 to get a copy of her out-of-state birth certificate in order to get a "free" voter ID card, there's a problem.

Not everybody even has a birth certificate, you know. I had a housemate who didn't; as I recall, she had to go back to her home state and obtain some affidavits attesting to her existence before she could get a driver's license.

There are really no excuses and no reason to not have to prove who you are.

There are really no excuses for throwing obstacles in the way of people's exercise of the franchise, when the claimed problem of "voter fraud" is non-existent.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[TimSSG]

Indiana supplies at no cost to voter IDs, but no idea if locations are friendly to non drivers. Tim S. Note: Various groups have helped people get the Free ID card needed to vote.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[schnikies79]

After looking into it, it's a county (transportation) thing. Not state mandated.

http://www.in.gov/sos/photoid/howdoi.html

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[cayenne8]

"Nothing, as long as the state pays for the ID, and provides transportation to get the ID. Otherwise "Voter ID" essentially becomes "Poll Tax" and you have people with little or no income unable to vote because they can't afford an ID or the local DMV is two cities over."

Ok..so, put the free ID places near where the polls are. If they can make it to the poll to vote, they can make it there to get an ID.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[TimSSG]

I just wish I could vote for the best candidate instead of the least worse. Tim S

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[Free the Cowards]

How is such an ID kept secure if you can just get one through the mail?

Serious question, here. If they are in fact done securely, I'd love to know how it actually works.

Keep in mind when considering applicability to the US that the US does not have any national identity card, national identity number, or indeed any sort of national citizenship registry on which such a thing could be based.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[Dravik]

Lucky for them, most of the people that destitute don't have jobs. They can get the ID on the way back from the welfare office.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[globaljustin]

I'd like to see more information about that. Have a link?

you won't, b/c grand parent is full of shit. I live in Indiana (Madison County to be more specific) and the Voter ID law is purely to suppress votes.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait my ass. Single mother prostitutes make their own hours.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[mOdQuArK!]

As much as I enjoy the convenience of vote-by-mail here in the U.S. state of Oregon, it completely violates one of the tenets of anonymous voting: there's no way you can protect the vote process from intimidation or bribery with a vote-by-mail system.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[schnikies79]

If you read the above comment, I said the transportation thing was specific to my county.

As for the free ID, here is the link. http://www.in.gov/sos/photoid/howdoi.html

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[globaljustin]

good link, but if you read it, unless your are 65 or older you need a birth certificate, and that isn't free to get.

So no, it's not 'free' like voter suppression people are trying to make it out to be...it's only 'free' if you have your birth certificate or are older than 65.

The Indiana law (i live here, remember) is to suppress voters plain and simple.

Re:Voting the Open-Source Way

[schnikies79]

Read it again. You don't have to be over 65 to get it free.

I voted in this manner...

[vil3nr0b]

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!!!

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't make any sense. No one thought to call the state police, FBI or the media?

More importantly, these statements don't add up:

There were no republicans running in our little township

They also explained how important it was to vote democrat

If no republicans are running, then why go to all the effort?

Something smells in your story.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is absurd!

You should have shit your undies and flung the poo at the mayor's fuckface head until he pickin' corn kernels out of his nostrils. The nerve of some motherfuckin' mayors like Marion Barry and Kwame Kilpatrick. Git off my astroturf, ya god damn niggas!

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't make any sense. No one thought to call the state police, FBI or the media?

More importantly, these statements don't add up:

There were no republicans running in our little township

They also explained how important it was to vote democrat

If no republicans are running, then why go to all the effort?

Something smells in your story.

Because there were still Republicans running for Congressional seats and the Presidency, as well as state seats?

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are secret ballots a legal requirement?

My impression has always been that voting was (except for in the case of discrimination) purely a state matter since your vote doesn't actually count--it's the state's vote who counts.

That's what we forget in America. Your vote is just a hint to the state representatives of how you want *THEM* to vote.

So if a state wanted to carry out its election by a counting of raised hands in assembly halls they could.

From what I understand in the story this sounds like a legal albiet questionably ethical means of carrying out an election.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Kid Zero]

From what a quick google search pulls up of the area, I'm not stunned.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[bigbigbison]

The last presidential election I voted in back in the town I grew up in there were 9 positions on the ballot where people were running unopposed. No one was looking over my shoulder or told me who to vote for but if people are running unopposed it doesn't make for much of an election.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - maybe it smells like your obvious (and religious) choice in parties isn't always as clean-running as you like to believe.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also no township called French Village. There's a place, but it's not a township.

It's a rather important distinction politically, and yet another reason this story smells. Back when I was living in a suburban hellhole, I knew damn well which townships were in the area. It determines school districts, taxes, etc.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Neoprofin]

I know how you feel.

I had to register as a Democrat so that I could vote in the primaries because if I waited till the general election to get involved I'd already have all of my choices made for me.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[bjourne]

Your story appears to be made up. If it isn't, could you please provide more details so that someone could identify who this scumbag mayor is? He should be in jail but may still hold some official position which is why it is important to identify him.

Granted this was only way back in 2000, but I lived in St. Clair County, IL. It was a small township called French Village

According to wikipedia, there is no French Village township in St. Clair County. However, google maps finds a park called French Village in East St. Louis in St. Clair County in Caseyville township.

At 8am, the mayor knocked on my door and informed my wife and I it was time to vote

The mayor in Caseyville at that time seem to have been George Chance. So that is the guy that came knocking on your door 8am 2000-11-07 dragging you out to vote? Didn't you have to work or something?

We marched down to the fire station with him and twenty other poor people

Also fishy. The townships population is 4300, why did he choose you and 20 other people? Also, must have been quite a walk. There's not that many fire departments in Caseyville...

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

>This doesn't make any sense. No one thought
>to call the state police, FBI or the media?

Why? Is there a problem?

>More importantly, these statements don't add up:

>There were no republicans running in our little township

So. It isn't unusual for a position to run unapposed, but an election is still required.

>They also explained how important it was to vote democrat

The only thing unsual here could be campaining too close to the polling place, but if they're all democrat, what's the diff? Or were they just saying how important it was too just vote? Every voter gives the township a little more oompf. BFD.

>If no republicans are running, then why go to all the effort?

That's often how the rules are written. It varies, but like I said it isn't unusual for someone to run unopposed.

>Something smells in your story.

No really, unless this is a urbanized area. I can think of hundereds of rural areas where this might be going on.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

[T]hese statements don't add up:

There were no republicans running in our little township

They also explained how important it was to vote democrat

If no republicans are running, then why go to all the effort?

Surely you understand that there is a huge difference between "He ran unopposed and won" and "He was elected unanimously*"

*he ran unopposed

Re:I voted in this manner...

[vil3nr0b]

sorry, the story is not made up. i understand the guy might not have been the mayor..he could have been our alderman. when you are the one young, white couple living in the neighborhood, are you going to say no to the twenty people going with you? you are right about french village being on the outskirts of east st. louis. didn't i have to work? of course i did ass. i worked all fucking night the day before. the fire department was not in caseyville, it was french village fire department. sorry for not having a fucking videocamera to prove the rest of you wrong. if i was going to make up the story, i would have done so as an anonymous coward. check out my other posts if you don't believe me...especially about linux networx going under. i paid a nice professional price for that one.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[narcberry]

Either you made the story up or you let 20 other people vote for you. Which one makes you look better?

Re:I voted in this manner...

[skam240]

Wow, way to fly off the handle at polite scepticism. It's not as if the poster said "You're full of shit". The poster merely pointed out that parts of your story seemed funny to them and politely asked you to explain them.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[LurkerXD]

Yeah, especially given that its a crime to have any political discussions within 100 feet of a polling place. Such an area is designated as a political neutral zone. Poll workers are also required to aggressively log anytime a person views a ballot that is not their own. As far as "no republican candidates" are concerned, you have heard of the write-in concept, yes? Or have we forgot that little detail in our story?

Re:I voted in this manner...

[kickdrop]

Don't take it personal. People here obviously take voter fraud very seriously. Some things in your story did not match the available facts. Just clarify the points & we move on from there. If things check out, perhaps we can take matters seriously.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Anonymous Coward]

if people are running unopposed it doesn't make for much of an election.

That's why you should have the option they had in Soviet Russia - none of the above/no confidence. Much more democratic!

Re:I voted in this manner...

[SETIGuy]

The last presidential election I voted in back in the town I grew up in there were 9 positions on the ballot where people were running unopposed.

If you've got a problem with people running unopposed, maybe you should have considered running for one of those positions.

Re:I voted in this manner...

[Reziac]

I've seen something similar when I poll-watched. In a union town that was overwhelmingly Democrat, the only fraudulent votes were from -- Democrats. (Dead Democrats at that.) It makes no sense, but that's how it was. You'd think since the Republicans were the side that was going to be short on votes, they'd have more incentive to stuff the ballot box -- but it didn't work that way.

no excuses

[Digitus1337]

Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad?

Yes.

Re:no excuses

[The Redster!]

In Soviet America, vote for Gore and Chad hangs you!

Re:no excuses

[kitsunewarlock]

Exactly. A worse evil does not justify evil. Hitler doesn't justify Manson.

Re:no excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Only on Slashdot can a one word answer to a rhetorical question get modded up to 5, insightful.

Re:no excuses

[Dr. Hok]

Exactly. A worse evil does not justify evil. Hitler doesn't justify Manson.

Or, more contemporarily: 9/11 doesn't justify Guantanamo Bay.

Re:no excuses

[jez9999]

And Manson doesn't justify Metallica.

Re:no excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent Funny, not Interesting...

Looks Like The "Good Old Days"

[jmichaelg]

If card check legislation gets signed into law by the next administration, we'll see a return of the "good old days."

Re:Looks Like The "Good Old Days"

[eldepeche]

The article you link to is inaccurate. The EFCA would provide card check as an alternative means of certifying a union, not as a replacement for a secret ballot.

Re:Looks Like The "Good Old Days"

[jmichaelg]

Funny. That's not what the labor law websites are saying. For example,

Card Check Process: Section 2 of EFCA would establish a mandatory card-check recognition process under which an employer would be required to recognize a union as its employees' exclusive bargaining representative once the union presents signed authorization cards from a simple majority of the employees in the work unit the union seeks to represent. The card-check process would take the place of NLRB-supervised secret ballot elections currently used to determine whether a majority of employees want union representation.

Perhaps you'd be willing to provide a citation? And while you're at it, who gets to elect whether a secret ballot or open card signature will be the process used?

Re:Looks Like The "Good Old Days"

[Anonymous Coward]

"... who gets to elect whether a secret ballot or open card signature will be the process used?"

Read your own quote: "The card-check process would take the place of NLRB-supervised secret ballot elections currently used to determine whether a majority of employees want union representation.

If the EFCA passes, the secret ballot elections are gone. Even George McGovern is opposed to this.

Re:Looks Like The "Good Old Days"

[Anonymous Coward]

Read your own citation. "The card check process would take the place of NLRB-supervised secret ballot elections currently used...", and EFCA is what makes that so. So to help you answer your own challenge, the US Congress, in passing EFCA, elects that open ballots 'take the place of' secret ballots, and according to the first sentence in your own cited area, it's "mandatory".

So if the secret ballots say 'no union', but two weeks later a bunch of open ballots say 'union', well, welcome to the union.

We fixed this after a few people got beaten up in the 20's when they didn't play ball with the unions. Now we're heading back in that direction.

Voter registration

[photonic]

Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all? In my country (Netherlands), everyone above 18 is registered by default. I assume this is similar in most of Western Europe. The only caveat is that you have to be registered with your municipality, which you have to do anyhow for various different reasons (municipal tax, getting passports/ID/driving licence ...). A few weeks before an election, you simply get your 'voting ticket' in the mail. You typically take this to a neighborhood school to cast your vote, usually electronically.

Making everyone eligible to vote by default would save a lot of those voter-fraud claims and a lot of effort by the campaigns to get the people registered.

Re:Voter registration

[s.bots]

It's pretty much the same in Canada. After I turned eighteen I just got voting cards in the mail for Federal, Provincial, and Municipal elections. Where I vote isn't electronic, I'm not sure if there are any plans to move that way.

Re:Voter registration

[93 Escort Wagon]

Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all? In my country (Netherlands), everyone above 18 is registered by default. I assume this is similar in most of Western Europe. The only caveat is that you have to be registered with your municipality, which you have to do anyhow for various different reasons (municipal tax, getting passports/ID/driving licence ...). A few weeks before an election, you simply get your 'voting ticket' in the mail. You typically take this to a neighborhood school to cast your vote, usually electronically.

Making everyone eligible to vote by default would save a lot of those voter-fraud claims and a lot of effort by the campaigns to get the people registered.

Bottom line - we have to register to vote because only U.S. citizens (without a felony criminal conviction) are allowed to vote. It's a different mind-set in America. People would rebel if they had to "register with their municipality" for no compelling reason, even after several years of Homeland Security.

Registering to vote is a snap, though. When my daughter turned 18, she went to the local county auditor's website and filled in a form that basicaly just asked for her name and street address. A few days later she got her voter registration card.

So the difference between us and you appears to mainly be when we register - you DO have to register, but you do it much earlier and for a broader purpose.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting ID is done through the state, as is paying municipal income tax. Your municipality has no way to even know you exist unless you're paying property taxes. Not to mention the complication of voting precincts crossing town/county lines...

Fortunately in most states you can register to vote while you get your ID/drivers-license.

Re:Voter registration

[rnelsonee]

I feel it's largely due to the nature that all Americans are subject to two major governments at all times - state and federal. Our system is set up so that states control voting on election day, and like most other issues (education, driving, licensing) there is little communication between the states. So if you move from one state to another, you need to tell you new state that you're there and you want to vote.

Voter registration really is more about your state knowing where you are so you can vote for the right people. Certainly, if the federal government handled it, it would be automatic, but we just don't have the federal government in charge of elections (which is fine, we are, at least in theory, more about a collection of states rather than citizens of one large federal government).

Re:Voter registration

[photonic]

But don't tell me that you are not already in 10 different databases from the moment you are born. I assume you guys also have to register for a birth certificate, you need to pay taxes at some point so you have a social security number, etc. I really don't see the point.

Re:Voter registration

[unixan]

Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all?

The U.S. does not have any (official) national citizen database (despite attempts to change that), and the various U.S. states do not have them either. As a result, to be able to vote, voter registration is required.

When registering, a citizen typically has to prove their eligibility to vote (which varies by state law), the most popular method being proof of citizenship and the location of your residence.

Of course, don't take my word for it. There's a more thorough discussion of the issue and how it is implemented in various countries around the world (with references) on Wikipedia.

Re:Voter registration

[chill]

The U.S. does not have any (official) national citizen database (despite attempts to change that), and the various U.S. states do not have them either. As a result, to be able to vote, voter registration is required.

Two words. Selective Service.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty much the same in Canada. After I turned eighteen I just got voting cards in the mail for Federal, Provincial, and Municipal elections.

You must register to vote in Canada. But, many years ago, they made it very easy: there is a tick-off box on your federal income tax form to register to vote. The federal elections agency also shares information with provincial elections agencies, who get updates from medicare cards & driver's licenses changes.

More importantly, since being a convicted murderer doesn't deprive you of your vote, you don't get the wholesale purges that occur in the USA. These purges are prone to error and manipulation.

There are only a few reasons to deny a voter in Canada:

1. They aren't a Canadian citizen.
2. They haven't reached the voting age.
3. They don't live where they are trying to vote.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

As a fellow Canadian, I hope things don't move that way. Our 'mark the X' pencil-and-paper system seems to work just fine, even with recounts. I never understood the urge to have electronic voting, all it says to me is a chance to eliminate paper trails and to change the records without any evidence.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Except only males have to register for the draft.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. does not have any (official) national citizen database (despite attempts to change that), and the various U.S. states do not have them either. As a result, to be able to vote, voter registration is required.

Two words. Selective Service.

Unless you are a woman, then you don't have to register for selective service. So, the government only has half of the population over 18 in that database.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

So the difference between us and you appears to mainly be when we register - you DO have to register,

In Norway, you enter this register (folkeregistret) by default at birth and stay in it until you die. If you move, you need to update the address in order to be able to receive any official mail or mail from the bank.

Re:Voter registration

[blueg3]

Who is in charge of these other registrations and their standards for proving things like where you actually live differ a lot.

You mention you have to be registered with your municipality. In my municipality in the US, you do not. You don't have to have any other ID either, though I happen to have a passport and driver's license. Frequently when filling out forms for things like driver's licenses that have a higher standard of proof than a voter registration, you can at the same time register to vote with minimal additional paperwork (likewise for draft registration).

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

The act creating social security specifically stated that the SSN would not become a form of identification. To preserve this illusion, (see the uproar over "REAL ID") we have to register for things in an inefficient manner. I don't know about other states, but mine has registration along with driver's license renewals.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are a woman, then you don't have to register for selective service. So, the government only has half of the population over 18 in that database.

Yes, an excellent reason to use it! Women should be too busy cooking for their men and raising children to bother their pretty little heads with subjects beyond their God-given abilities like politics.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words. Selective Service.

The selective service is male-only.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the US gets itself into a few more stupid wars, yes.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone above 18 is registered by default. I assume this is similar in most of Western Europe.

Not everywhere in Western Europe though, here in Belgium everybody over 18 is required to vote. I get a letter telling me where I need to go vote and if I don't show up I can get fined 500 euros or theoretically can even get sent to jail.
I would prefer the American system over ours, even if I would go vote anyway.

Re:Voter registration

[elgatozorbas]

People would rebel if they had to "register with their municipality" for no compelling reason, even after several years of Homeland Security.

So in the US one can just "arrive" somewhere, move in a random house and everything is ok for the Government? They don't need to know where to send your tax letter or anything? Strange.

Re:Voter registration

[Wyatt Earp]

From my experience, as an adult having lived in South Dakota, Oregon and Colorado, its fine to just move around the country.

It is your responsibility to have your mail forwarded to your new address, the Government doesn't know where you are unless you tell them and for general things (mail/taxes/bills) there is no checking up on if your address is accurate.

Re:Voter registration

[Wyatt Earp]

Selective Service is not universal as it only applies to one gender.

Re:Voter registration

[chill]

That could easily be fixed in the name of "equality". As is, it is a good start -- to a bad end.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

So in the US one can just "arrive" somewhere, move in a random house and everything is ok for the Government? They don't need to know where to send your tax letter or anything? Strange.

Strange? Really? I'd think this is how it should be. For as much as we whine about how the U.S. is turning into a totalitarian state we really do have an incredible amount of freedom. You're still free to come and go and live and work where you please. You're not even legally obligated to get government ID, though it certainly makes life more difficult. But if you don't drive you could easily get by with just a passport, no state ID needed. As with everything the more you want-- driving rights, property ownership, etc-- the more you have to go "on the grid."

As far as a "tax letter", It's your responsibility to file your taxes, the IRS doesn't send you notices (though of course your employer is telling them what you were paid, so it's not that difficult to track you down.)

I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect, but you're not making a case for Europe being much better.

Re:Voter registration

[MindlessAutomata]

As an American, I would throw a fit I was required to vote. I suspect those laws are passed to get people that think it will benefit them elected again.

Obama vs. McCain... I do NOT want to justify either of their campaigns and I do not want to vote for them (or any of the ridiculous third party candidates).

Re:Voter registration

[jonadab]

> Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all?

Long story short? Because we let people vote who aren't registered for anything else. There are a lot of details, some of which I discuss below, but it all boils down to that: we let people vote who aren't registered for anything else.

> In my country (Netherlands), everyone above 18 is registered by default.

I don't know how it is in the Netherlands, but that system would be impractical here because the people here are free to move around (and often do, across voting district lines, state lines, you name it, without a second thought) without informing anyone. There's no central registry of all citizens in the first place, and there's *certainly* no central registry of where everyone lives. Other than the voter registration, there isn't any other registry that could be used for determining where people can vote and whether they've already voted (possibly in a different polling location) and so forth. The thing most people immediately think of to use instead is the Bureau of Motor Vehicles database of licensed drivers, but that would exclude substantial categories of people on unconstitutional grounds.

Note that it does matter very much which voting district people vote in, not just for determining whether someone has already voted in another polling location, but also because you vote on different stuff. For example, school taxes are voted on by the residents of each school district (and while I suspect you don't here anything much about it overseas because of the inherently local nature of it, people at the local level are often more concerned with the outcome of these local elections than with the state and national ones). US Representatives represent not just the people of a specific state but more particularly the people of a specific congressional district within a state, so for voting purposes it matters which district you're in. And so forth.

Among other things, the Board of Elections has to know *where* to expect you to come and vote, so they can have your name on the list for that location. (Having a list of who is going to come and vote, and checking them off, is the only realistic way to enforce the limit of one vote per person, i.e., to prevent ballot-stuffing.) So you have to let them know where you live ahead of time, so they can put you on the list for your precinct. If you move, you're still registered, but you have to update your registration with the new address if you want to vote in the new polling location (and, thus, on the local issues in your new place of residence).

> The only caveat is that you have to be registered with your municipality, which you have to do
> anyhow for various different reasons (municipal tax, getting passports/ID/driving licence ...).

So you can't vote if you don't live in a municipality? That wouldn't go over so well here. Also, while it varies from one municipality to another, most municipal taxes in the US are levied on either income or property ownership (land, specifically), so no, not everyone who lives in a city, town, or village has to register for tax purposes, or any other reason for that matter. There's a census every ten years, but while participation is encouraged (and there's really no downside), it's not actually mandatory, and I think the privacy nuts (ironically, including a lot of the sort of people who read slashdot) would go bonkers and start filing lawsuits if the government tried to make the census mandatory or give it any legal force.

As for the passports, most Americans don't have them. (Before you react too strongly to that, bear in mind that from here I can travel for two thousand miles in any direction, or three thousand miles to the west, without a passport. This is mostly a very good thing, though it would be nice if it were somewhat easier to find people who speak a foreign language fluently.)

As noted above, the driver's license is something whole categori

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is/was in order to keep Selective Service (aka "the draft") information up to date.

Re:Voter registration

[zmooc]

Hey, I'm from the Netherlands as well and I think our system if not perfect either. I believe in the US, there's no requirement to be registered with any municipality at all. In the Netherlands, you will eventually get legal problems if you don't register. Effectively, the only ones that are not registered, are the homeless, and I'm afraid even our databases of the homeless are pretty much complete. So our system may be more convenient, but it is so at the expense of some freedom.

Re:Voter registration

[Goldsmith]

It's a method of distributing power away from the central government. It's ultimately up to the local voter registrar to make the list of eligible voters living in their district. From a very cynical point of view, imagine if the kind of purges (or illegal additions to the voter rolls) which are sometimes seen on a local scale were done on a national scale from a controlling centralized office? What safeguards do you have the Netherlands to ensure that the central government cannot purge the voter rolls of... say, anyone with a foreign passport?

Of course, it's naive of me to think that the central government and parties here don't abuse the voter lists (and the registrars), and have some sort of control over them; but at least there is the appearance of a separation of powers.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I really don't want to waste a mod point on this, but it is the only reply (so far) that is not just a defense, but an affirmation of Individual Freedoms in the USA.
Damn it! I'll give him a mod point anyway.

Re:Voter registration

[maxume]

It isn't about privacy, it is about your caveat. There are 50 state level jurisdictions and then thousands of local jurisdictions within the states. It might make sense to compel people to register with the government whenever they move as you indicate is the case in your country, but it would be an enormous hassle for little gain (because the voter registration process is already easy).

Re:Voter registration

[WDot]

It was my experience that registering to vote was already pretty easy, at least compared to some other government-run license-registering (the DMV comes to mind). My college had students all over campus with big signs that said "REGISTER TO VOTE NOW" and clipboards with voter registration forms. It was a matter of taking a minute to fill out the form and they'd take care of the rest. Sure you had to do it 60 days or so before the election, but the campus-wide campaign to get everyone to vote had been going on for quite a while, anybody there who wanted to register probably did.

Re:Voter registration

[Mr. Slippery]

Two words. Selective Service.

Which only registers men, and only 18 to 25, and only the able-bodied. And of course many do not register out of religious or philosophical objection.

Re:Voter registration

[jonadab]

> Registering to vote is a snap, though.

Indeed, I forgot to mention that, but it takes less time than composing a reply on slashdot. My twelfth-grade US Government teacher brought in the voter registration forms and let us all do it in class and still managed to teach a full lesson that day. The main people who complain about voter registration are the people who object on principle to any form of registration whatsoever, and politicians who want more people to vote for them and apparently don't realize that people who don't bother to take thirty seconds to register *certainly* aren't going to bother to vote (which takes much longer, because there are a lot more slots to fill in, unless it's a special election for just one thing, such as a school district levy).

Re:Voter registration

[jonadab]

> I assume you guys also have to register for a birth certificate

Yeah, but after you're born you can move to a different state, let alone voting precinct.

> you need to pay taxes at some point so you have a social security number,

Technically, it's unconstitutional to deny the vote to people who opt out of social security for religious reasons. Also, again, after you register for the social security card, you can move to a different voting precinct, possibly in a different state.

Re:Voter registration

[dwye]

> The act creating social security specifically stated that the SSN would not become a form of identification.

You could also have several, and separate accounts. Plus, at one time many people "shared" a number, as a wallet company had included a sample one, shortly after they were introduced, and many buyers just assumed that it was their number.

Plus, it is a lousy form of identification. Mine has one signature, from years ago, and no picture, let alone fingerprints/retinal scans, tricorder readings/whatever.

Re:Voter registration

[jonadab]

> Two words. Selective Service.

It's unconstitutional to deny the vote to conscientious objectors (e.g., the Amish).

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good talking point for women who demand 'equal' rights...
(not saying they shouldn't, just that they seem to be very selective)

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Voter registration really is more about your state knowing where you are so you can vote for the right people.

This is the biggest reason, I think, for 'having' to register. If a student is from state A, but living in state B to go to college, they probably still want to vote on issues in their home state and city. But let's say after college they move to state C instead of back to A - now they want to vote on issues where they are living so they register there.

Plus, in the US (I don't know if it's all states), you usually register under one political party - then you get to vote in the primary and decide which candidate will represent your party in the main election. If you think Obama, Hillary, and McCain are ALL evil and don't care which of them makes it to the main election (or the office), you can register as an independent. If you register as an independent, you do not participate in the primary election (deciding if Obama or Hillary will run for the Democrats).

That's a second, and lame, reason for registering. You can change which party you are registered under at any time.

If you're smart, though, you'll vote third party and keep all the greedy politicians out of office.

***
Keep the Federal Government constitutional - Ron Paul for president! :D

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

The Netherlands government banned the use of electronic voting devices on the 16th. of May 2008.
This was after strong action by privacy groups and geeks.
One of the biggest worries was about the proven possibility to wirelessly eavesdrop on the computers whereby the privacy of the voting booth would be affected.

Teun

Re:Voter registration

[dwye]

> I feel it's largely due to the nature that all
> Americans are subject to two major governments
> at all times - state and federal.

You forget county and local. Also that US Representative Districts and state government districts do not follow town boundaries (so as to allow for one-man/one-vote in theory, and gerrymandering by both parties in practice).

We can ignore other juristictions for now, to avoid appalling Europeans with the idea of sewerage districts, school districts, water districts, etc., none of which necessarily align, since they do not affect voting.

Re:Voter registration

[Neoprofin]

How is this insightful?

Everyone is registered once they register with the local municipality which they have to do anyway? Well we don't have to register with the local municipality, most people don't have passports, plenty don't have drivers licenses, only property owners pay local taxes.

Your solution to people not being registered is that they should be, well that's my solution too but it doesn't change anything. You're asking why we have one form or registration based on your system having a different form.

Re:Voter registration

[Sapphon]

Some of the replies to your question have been correct; many haven't.

The reason is that the USA Government does not have standardised records detailing which of their citizens lives where. That's pretty much it. Individual branches may have some information – one poster pointed out the Selective Service, in which the US Army tracks males eligible for drafting – but that's only for men. And it doesn't keep track of where they live. All the other branches each have their own little bits of information, but they're not combined into anything vaguely comprehensive.

This missing system drives social statisticians nuts, and causes problems like this, but, as one poster said, it's simply "a different mindset".

Re:Voter registration

[dwye]

> Except only males have to register for the draft.

And only some. I, for example, never had to, as did men born a couple years earlier or a few months later.

We will ignore burned draft card records, for now, and that once you aged out of eligibility a lot of draft boards just chucked your records as too much work to keep.

Re:Voter registration

[Tacvek]

The U.S. does not have any (official) national citizen database (despite attempts to change that), and the various U.S. states do not have them either. As a result, to be able to vote, voter registration is required.

Two words. Selective Service.

Unless you are a woman, then you don't have to register for selective service. So, the government only has half of the population over 18 in that database.

Even that statement is a bit weak. Women are forbidden from registering with the SS (even if they want to for whatever odd reason). Yes, they can fill out the form but unless they lie about their gender, the SSA simply discards their registration.

Re:Voter registration

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Wow! You certaintly do your userid justice. Mindless indeed!

Re:Voter registration

[Tacvek]

No, all men must register with the SS, even if they are not able-bodied. They can get excused at the time of the draft if they are not able-bodied, but they must register.

Re:Voter registration

[Neoprofin]

Even forwarding your mail is more or less a formality. As long as you update everyone's records and know you don't have anything on the way you're just fine just handing out the new one and never telling the government a thing.

I've had 6 different addresses and the only thing the government knows about it is that I'm still registered to vote in the ward I grew up in.

Re:Voter registration

[Tacvek]

All men must register with the SS (in the legal time range), even if they are conscientious objectors. They can get excused at the time of the draft if they are conscientious objectors, but they must register.

Re:Voter registration

[Neoprofin]

I would not only throw a fit, I would vote completely at random. If they can't trust me to choose when I have an opinion they surely can't trust me choose who's running the government.

Re:Voter registration

[Tacvek]

Part of your concern is justified, but not the part you raise. A Blank ballot has and will continue to be a legal vote, although it is an invalid vote, meaning that it will not be included with the tallies. Casting a blank ballot may make more of a statement than not voting, since a likely interpretation of not voting is that you were too lazy, or have absolutely no interest in politics at all. Neither sounds like it is your case. A Blank ballot can be interpreted either as "absolute idiot", or "does not support any of the given choices". That last one is apparently the correct message you want to send, no?

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

3. They don't live where they are trying to vote.

Unless you have a good reason (like school), in which case all you need is proof of your temporary residence and your permanent residence (drivers license, health card, etc) and you're good to go. Or you can even do a mail in vote for your home riding.

@s.bots: I haven't heard anything about electronic voting, I think we're staying with paper.

Re:Voter registration

[jonaskoelker]

A few weeks before an election, you simply get your 'voting ticket' in the mail. You typically take this to a neighborhood school to cast your vote, usually on paper.

nl2dk'ed that for you :)

Re:Voter registration

[fm6]

You've already had several answers. Here's mine.

The current bureaucratic status quo has many origins. Basically, it's been slow to change because a lot of people have a vested interest in limiting the voting pool. So whenever anybody advocates measures to make it easier to vote, they talk about "fraud" and other hot-button issues.

That situation is beginning to change, because the internet generation has developed a healthy interest in actually participating in democracy, and don't have a lot of use for rules that are basically designed to make it hard for them to vote. But it's going to change slowly.

Re:Voter registration

[dontmakemethink]

My problem is I'm always on the move, and rarely receive my card. However I have voted at every election by going to the proper poll for my neighborhood and presenting them with my driver's license and a current cable or phone bill.

I have also acted as an election scrutineer representing a candidate or party, who can challenge the validity of a voter, ballot, or the registration list. I've also done enumeration, where Elections Canada has people go around to every residence to update the list. Great way to meet chicks.

Re:Voter registration

[dwye]

> though it would be nice if it were somewhat easier
> to find people who speak a foreign language fluently.)

Travel to NY, NY, where there are over 1 million Russians, and used to be more Yiddish speakers than the current total population of Israel. Or, to most Indian reservations. Or to Louisiana to find some Cajun French, or Hawaii to talk to its natives.

BTW, I think that you could, until recently, go to either Canada or Mexico without a passport, as well, although it would be needed if you wanted embassy help (bailed out of the Tijuana jail, frex). That would get you another couple European languages, and who knows how many Indian ones (sorry, but if Russell Means wants it American Indian, who am I to disagree?).

> As noted above, the driver's license is something
> whole categories of people don't have (the Amish,
> the blind, Native Americans living on the reservations,
> many married people from the older generation who
> never saw the point in having multiple cars and
> multiple drivers per family, ...),

Or live in a city with good bus, subway, and/or taxi service. I had a coworker who didn't get his driver's license until in his forties, amazingly enough.

Anyway, I think that the idea is that we can register people accurately enough in large enough numbers, using another mechanism. Which idea, any discussion of people evading the consequences of drunk driving will disabuse you of. It is like suggesting that one cannot get weapons in prison; violation pays off too well and the checking is too easy.

Re:Voter registration

[ConceptJunkie]

Because the kinds of people making these decisions are usually technology-illiterate to the point where they still probably say, "Computers are the wave of the future!"

Re:Voter registration

[rnelsonee]

Well I didn't forget them, that's why I wrote "major governments". Europeans also have to deal with local municipalities and neighborhood covenants like us Yanks, but the concept of, say, being tried multiple times for a capital crime (as is the case with the DC sniper) warrants an explanation to non-Americans.

Re:Voter registration

[Wyatt Earp]

Yep, exactly, and even if you tell the USPS, that doesn't mean even with the databases in place the Feds or Local Governments are going to know where you are.

Re:Voter registration

[CrimsonAvenger]

So in the US one can just "arrive" somewhere, move in a random house and everything is ok for the Government? They don't need to know where to send your tax letter or anything? Strange.

The reverse sounds strange to me - you can't move around without letting the government know? Sounds nasty to me. I've moved a dozen times or more without bothering to notify anyone but my family. And would find it strange to have to notify anyone.

Re:Voter registration

[CrimsonAvenger]

And only some. I, for example, never had to, as did men born a couple years earlier or a few months later.

Ditto. I was also born in the window where I didn't ever have to register for Selective Service, unlike my brothers.

Re:Voter registration

[Skye16]

It would be rather annoying, but if that's the case, vote for yourself.

You don't HAVE to vote for anyone you don't want to. Or hell, vote for "/dev/null" on the ballot (though you may have to improvise with symbols if it's on a computer).

At the same time, I'd throw a fit with you. I vote every November, but if you don't want to cast a vote, that's your fucking right, goddammit.

Re:Voter registration

[cayenne8]

"Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all?"

1. To help make sure only US citizens vote

2. To make sure you are voting in your local county/parish, etc. We have tons of elections, and very often there are different public offices all up for once, not to mention some referendums and laws and taxes and the like can be voted on directly by the people. You want people voting there to be the ones being affected by these laws and local elections. (This presidential election, I'll be voting all at once for Prez, at least one of my senators, representative, and I don't know what all local items).

3. To help prevent voter fraud.

Those are some of the reasons off the top of my head.

One of the main things to remember, in the US, you are a citizen FIRST of your state, and then a citizen of the United States. You don't want tons of people flooding in from other states to possibly skew the votes of how those in your state feel things should be.

Re:Voter registration

[Lars T.]

but it would be an enormous hassle for little gain (because the voter registration process is already easy).

It's so easy, even a dead person could do it!

Re:Voter registration

[iris-n]

Voter registration really is more about your state knowing where you are so you can vote for the right people. Certainly, if the federal government handled it, it would be automatic, but we just don't have the federal government in charge of elections (which is fine, we are, at least in theory, more about a collection of states rather than citizens of one large federal government).

It's fine, really? I think that it only makes sense that federal elections are handled by the federal government. That way, you can simplify the candidates registration process (somebody remember ron paul and ralph nader not showing up in some ballots?), and have some uniformity in how citizens cast their votes. Believe me, it only boosts transparency. By having everybody following the same public guidelines, it's harder for some state have some shady process that discriminates against some minorities.

At least, it's how it happens here in Brasil. Even the most obscure candidates show up in every ballot, and we don't have to vote J.F. Kerry to stop Bush from winning, as we hold runoffs.

Re:Voter registration

[iris-n]

Gerrymandering, really? An old Magic player, are you?

Re:Voter registration

[Bartab]

Millions of illegal aliens. More than enough to swing elections.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Voter registration also tags you in case they reactivate the military draft during times of war. It also tracks where you are allowed to vote, to help prevent individuals from casting votes in multiple locations ("Vote Early, Vote Often"). Since our ballots have no identifying information on them once cast, there is no other way to prove you voted other than saying you can only vote at one location, and vote only once.

Re:Voter registration

[Lumpy]

It's a way we can discriminate.

Discrimination is a way of life here in the USA.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

There always was talk of making sure everyone got registered when they had to sign for selective service at age 18, but then someone remembered that was male only, so things are pretty much in a holding pattern regarding that until they decide what's the most politically correct thing to do.

Re:Voter registration

[jonadab]

> I believe in the US, there's no requirement to be registered with any municipality at all.

That's correct. In fact, the idea of everyone being registered with a municipality would be completely alien here and would probably meet with widespread resistance. It's not just that we're not *required* to register with a municipality. I've never heard of anyone doing it. Honestly, to me it mostly sounds like needless paperwork, the sort of thing the Japanese would come up with. But there are plenty of people who would see it as Orwellian.

Re:Voter registration

[laddiebuck]

Wish I could mod you up, but I'd already posted. As usual, don't forget that you shouldn't lump the UK with them; after all, it's the daddy of individual liberties.

Re:Voter registration

[narcberry]

This is a good talking point for women who demand 'equal' rights...

(not saying they shouldn't, just that they seem to be very selective)

I think you've been victimized by a female mod.

Re:Voter registration

[TapeCutter]

Canada sounds similar to Australia, both run their elections via a central statatory body and the people staffing it actually do understand the process and the importance of simplicity and transparancy. If I'm not mistaken there are at least 50 different bodies in the US running the national elections?

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Then there are the people who are simply unaware they are required to register with Selective Service, as well as those who are aware of it and simply choose not to register (myself being one of the latter). Since they don't actively prosecute people who willfully fail to register, the only "stick" is that you become ineligible for most Federal jobs if you have not registered by the cutoff age of 25.

Re:Voter registration

[missileman]

In Australia we have only two rights under our constitution. The right to a trial by Jury and the right to vote.

Voting is also compulsory here, you have to register to vote when you turn 18, whereby you are added to the electoral role. This role in paper form is present at the polling booth. When you vote your name is checked off and you add a paper vote to a ballot box... *geek mode on* Just like in Battlestar Galactica *geek mode off*

If your name has not been checked off your role on election day you are fined for not voting.

Of course you have to be citizen to be registered to vote in the first place.

Criminals in jails are required to vote just the same as anyone else. I personally think thats a good thing.

Re:Voter registration

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The only caveat is that you have to be registered with your municipality, which you have to do anyhow for various different reasons (municipal tax, getting passports/ID/driving licence ...).

In America you don't have to register with you municpality to vote. However, when you get a license (at least in my state), there's a box you check that registers you to vote on the forms without any additional paperwork. Or the mail in forms are freely available, free to post, and just need name, address, social security number and a signature asserting it's all true.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

2 words wo man.

Re:Voter registration

[Free the Cowards]

The birth certificate does not say anything about where you are 18 years later.

Social security numbers are optional. You don't receive benefits and will have a very difficult time working without one, but benefits and working are also optional. Taxes are likewise optional, you only have to pay those if you actually make money.

Bottom line, it's feasible to be essentially off the grid. Unpleasant, as you'll probably be a street bum, but feasible. And such people still have the right to vote.

Re:Voter registration

[Free the Cowards]

Not to mention that a significant number of males do not register either. It's technically mandatory but not really enforced.

Re:Voter registration

[amirulbahr]

You can't, you just posted.

Re:Voter registration

[droopycom]

I see your point: How come the (dumb) Americans cannot solve those issues that us (smart) Europeans do not seem to have.

I'm not American, but I'm still going to try and explain it to you and the rest of the class:

In America, you are also automatically eligible to vote when you turn 18, just like in your country.
Sure you need to get your name on a list of voter, but so do people in your country.
Its not automatic if you have to register with your municipality in the first place.

In the US state where I live, you keep receiving your voting packet every year without needing to register again. You only need to register when you move or change your name. Just like in your country.

I have to pay taxes in two US counties, yet I am not eligible to vote in any of those because I'm not a citizen (or maybe because I am a convicted felon). So being taxed and eligible to vote are not related. Maybe in your country its different and they can use one registration for multiple purposes but not in the US.

The thing is in the US, people dont like to be "registered" by the various governments (Federal, State or Local). They dont even have a National ID. So you can forget about any database that would be used as cross purpose.

Cases of people being registered to vote in two places, or dead people voting are still known to happen in my Western European Country.

Maybe now you can explain to all of us how your country deals with purging the voters rolls when people move, people die or people become ineligible for various reasons ? Or how homeless people get their voting ticket ?

And then for next week, you might want to look at the difference between voter fraud and registration fraud, and share your finding with the rest of the class.

Re:Voter registration

[Blakey Rat]

So in the US one can just "arrive" somewhere, move in a random house and everything is ok for the Government? They don't need to know where to send your tax letter or anything? Strange.

Strange how? Why wouldn't it be ok?

Given, I'm a pretty red-blooded American, but I think it's not ok to have to tell the government about every little thing you do. There's not a lot of difference between that and "papers please, citizen."

Of course, that all said, from a *practical* point of view, you'll need to tell the post office where you are so they know where to send your mail. You'll probably have to register with various local government entities, like the school district (if you have kids) or your city's water/utilities service. If you stay longer than, I think, 3 months and you drive, you'll need to get a driver's license with the new address probably, or you can get ticketed.

Of course, if you're hard-core, you could not drive, not receive mail, teach your kids at home, not use any city services, and you're not breaking any laws. Go for it.

Re:Voter registration

[Mr. Slippery]

No, all men must register with the SS, even if they are not able-bodied.

According to the Army, those who are "incarcerated, or hospitalized or institutionalized for medical reasons" or "continually confined to a residence, hospital, or institution", are not required to register.

Re:Voter registration

[Technomancer]

Lets see
When you move, you don't really need to notify anyone.
* Except the DMV.
And the DMV change of the address form already contains voter registration.
* And except your utility companies
* And except the company you work for
* And you probably will fill out USPS change of address form so they forward your email
* And if you are registered for draft (selective service) (applies to all males between 18-25), US government also wants to know where you are. https://www.sss.gov/RegVer/wfAddressChange.aspx

* And if you are an alien, you should send your AR-11 Alien's Change of Address form

So really, when you move, the US government has completely no idea that you moved, Really.

Re:Voter registration

[MindlessAutomata]

The only message it sends is one to the guy that has to throw it out. Nobody else knows about it.

Re:Voter registration

[MindlessAutomata]

Obama supporter spotted.

Re:Voter registration

[TheLink]

"spoilt" votes aren't counted? Seems like "write-ins" are counted.

In 2004 there were about 62 million voting for Bush and 59 million for Kerry.

Turnout was 60.7% so that makes it 73 million who didn't vote.

73 million > 62 million

While it'll never happen, it would be interesting if 70 million showed up.

Politicians have more to fear from a 70 million that actually bothered to vote.

And at least some of the media interviews would be worth watching ;).

Re:Voter registration

[Spugglefink]

Passport? You can go over 3,000 miles in a straight line in this country without leaving it. Who needs a passport?

Re:Voter registration

[54mc]

But for unknown reasons, there is still a gender box on the registration card.

Re:Voter registration

[MindlessAutomata]

I don't think write-ins are actually counted...?

Re:Voter registration

[rabbit994]

In US, we don't have the right to vote contrary to some US citizens inability to read their own Constitution. It's been parroted enough but if some states said only people who owned land, it would be completely legal (Poll tax amendment might bugger it up). Remember, your not voting for president, your voting for state to appoint people to vote for president. Personally, I think a poll tax is excellent idea that got bad rap because southern states had introduce racism into the mix.

Re:Voter registration

[GXTi]

If you register as an independent, you do not participate in the primary election [...]

Like just about everything else concerning elections in the US, this depends on the state. In my state (North Carolina), Independents can vote in any party's primary (though only one party per year), which makes it a very attractive option.

Re:Voter registration

[rnelsonee]

Unless the issue involves interstate disputes, providing for a national defense, or upholding constitutional rights, I'm just fine with the federal government not being involved (the above reasons were the primary reasons our federal gov't was created in the first place).

I say this because Americans don't vote for the President - we vote for electors who do. It's a minor point, but an important one. With our representative gov't, we vote for people who then represent us in the national legislature.

Americans never vote for federal legislation - but we *do* vote for state legislation (like for gay marriage, gambling, etc.) So I want the states to run it. Also, while I personally disagree with many states on this, states are also free to choose disenfranchisement rules (I consider this a constitutional right, see above). For example, convicted felons on parole cannot vote in my state, whereas they can in most others. But the fact is that citizens of my state chose that, and those that disagree are free to move and live in another state which allows parolees to vote if it's that important to them.

And yes, I know instant run-offs have their advantages, I wish we used that here too. But every system has its disadvantages and IRV is no exception.

Re:Voter registration

[LurkerXD]

This actually came up in my government class once, and there are some logistics concerns. In California at least, people have the right to demand a paper ballot instead of an electronic one. Therefore, each polling place has to have enough paper ballots to supply each person registered to that precinct. There's no way to know how many paper ballots to issue to each polling place without there being some vague count of how many people are in the precinct in the first place. That's one reason why we have voter registration.

As far as the "voting ticket" idea, how do you get tickets to those who don't have a permanent address? What if someone has multiple addresses, do they get multiple tickets? (the issues with that should be obvious)

Re:Voter registration

[TheLink]

They were in 2004.

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/federalelections2004.pdf

W = Write-In

Re:Voter registration

[dryeo]

It is the same in Canada, you can move around all you want and don't have to register or anything. Only exception is if you have a drivers license, then legally you have to update your address within a certain time.
Of course the government does have quite a few carrots to encourage you to keep your info up to date such as tax refunds, even if you didn't pay tax and I'd guess the States also has various carrots as well as the weird idea that all young males have to register for selective service as a stick.

Re:Voter registration

[Dravik]

There is no national election. There are 50 state elections. Each state has a vote equivalent to its total representation in both houses of Congress. Each state decides how it will allocate those votes (proportionally, winner take all, or some compromise between the two). Whoever wins the votes of the electoral college becomes president.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

You're required to notify the DMV if your address changes in SC. That's why they always ask you first thing at safety checkpoints (because it's illegal to pull you over for no reason) if the address on your license is current. You don't really get in trouble if it's not.. as long as you are cooperative? And still - you don't have to notify someone when you move if you don't have a drivers license I suppose.

Re:Voter registration

[Dravik]

All the things you mention are voluntary. The only people you might have any actual obligation to is the DMV, but as long as you pay your tickets they don't care.

Re:Voter registration

[arminw]

... I think that it only makes sense that federal elections are handled by the federal government....

In a sense, there are no federal elections in the United States. For president we have the electoral system and each state elects and sends two senators and some representatives in Washington. Because of the electoral system, a president can be elected even though not voted for by the majority of the population in the United States as a whole. The founders of the United States were quite distrustful of a powerful central government. Many states internally mirror this system of government. The system makes it more difficult for the highly populated cities of the country or of the state to steamroller the rural areas.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have to tell my government (Canada) when I move. They'll just dutifully mail it to my last known permanent address (i.e. the last one they had from driver's license or whatever).

However, I think you're still pretty naiive if you think you don't notify anyone?

Had to transfer your internet connection?
Phone service?
Television?
Health insurance?

And for the government:
Driver's license
Taxes

Also, the health insurance for us is run by the government, so that actually falls in the latter category.

Re:Voter registration

[bar-agent]

Gerrymandering, really? An old Magic player, are you?
There is a "Gerrymandering" Magic the Gathering card, but term gerrymandering predates it.

Actually, what the card ought to do is let you choose which lands each player gets, so long as they get the same number of lands. :-)

Re:Voter registration

[HybridJeff]

"You must register to vote in Canada."

You do need to register, but its extremely easy and you can do it at the polls. The past two federal elections have seen my registration being sent to my parents house in another city. All that I have needed to do to register (on election day) at my current location was to show two forms of photo id (drivers license+health card) and some mail with proof of address to some people working a desk at the polling station.

Re:Voter registration

[Tacvek]

The offical website (sss.gov) though notes the following:

Young men in hospitals, mental institutions or prisons do not have to register while they are committed. However, they must register within 30 days after being released if they have not yet reached their 26th birthday.

The key is while they are committed. If at any point from age 18-26 they are not committed for even a single day, and they fail to register, they can be denied certain government "benefits".

Re:Voter registration

[Smauler]

If I was a convicted felon in the US, I'd refuse to pay taxes - remember that old saying, no taxes without representation?

Re:Voter registration

[Smauler]

Yeah, that Anonymous Coward is such an idiot - I bet he's got loads of mod points now, but because he posts to every discussion, he can't use them!

Re:Voter registration

[Smauler]

People don't realise how much freedom we have in the EU either. If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to go live in Slovakia, I could hop on a flight, go down there and buy a house. All I'd actually _need_ would be my passport, you shouldn't be taxed if you're not earning or living in the UK. Any member of the EU can buy anything anywhere in the EU. See the Four Freedoms and more specifically the freedom of movement for workers, which makes it illegal to discriminate against foreigners from the EU.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

...But if you don't drive you could easily get by with just a passport, no state ID needed.

So the US does not confirm anywhere to whom they hand out passports? There is a possibility of a lot of non-US citizens and other "illegitimate" people carrying legimate US passports entering our countries?

 

Re:Voter registration

[Smauler]

Women are forbidden from registering with the SS (even if they want to for whatever odd reason).

Well, of course they are forbidden. As are blacks and gays. I never saw any in Castle Wolfenstein, anyway. Oh, wait... you don't mean that SS... gotcha....

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect, but you're not making a case for Europe being much better.

I think the problem with an attitude like yours is that you somehow think Europe is "different" -- and in a worse way. I am an American and this kind of talk disappoints me, and it's more and more common from a certain side of the electorate. More Americans need to understand that people outside the United States have largely the same sensibilities we do. They live their lives much in the same way. They're not "bad". Sometimes their governments are better than ours, and sometimes they're worse. In the end, they want the same basic things we do for themselves and those we care about.

But when the Sarah Palins of the world start talking about "over there" as if it's something we should be ashamed of resembling... That disappoints me, that someone can be so ignorant.

The fact is, as someone pointed out, if you live in the US your name is in a bunch of "big brother" type databases just as it would be in Europe. This whole thread is a bit disappointing because its originator somehow tried to make the point that Americans are special, because they love freedom. That's bullshit.

Oh yeah. And if I can say something a bit more controversial... Lots of non-US-citizens pay US taxes. That's taxation without representation. You know, that whole thing we fought a revolution for. So why then is it so imperative that we keep those people from voting...?

Re:Voter registration

[BradMajors]

Because it would mean the government has a database of the current address of everyone over 18 in the country. For many reasons some of us think that is a bad idea.

Re:Voter registration

[DerWulf]

I find your post really funny but it's nothing personal. Europeans can get so snobbish about America (not saying you are) but often fail to comprehend how much their state/government actually owns them. What's it like to be just free? To not have to register every time you move? To have police that can't search or arrest you without probable cause? Have a look at your laws sometime, you'll be suprised how much of a subject you actually are ..

Re:Voter registration

[TBoon]

Oh the other hand again, having an offical address in a database can (not saying it always does) also help prevent fraud/identity-crime, and make moving easier. For instance phone companies will only send new SIM-cards to my registered address. Tax-returns and study loan can only be paid out to my registered accounts. And when you move, quite a few "important" databases (banks/etc) is automatically updated. As stated elsewhere, they know a lot about you anyway, so might just as well admit it, and make it easier for everyone...

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Just not a dead person who's against any of the laws of your country presently.. vote for us, or we'll prosecute!!

Welcome to the land of the freeee... where anyone can be president, even without a vote!

Re:Voter registration

[bagsc]

Not to mention they only want able bodied young males of fit mind and morals...

Re:Voter registration

[Anspen]

I find your post really funny but it's nothing personal. Europeans can get so snobbish about America (not saying you are) but often fail to comprehend how much their state/government actually owns them. What's it like to be just free? To not have to register every time you move? To have police that can't search or arrest you without probable cause? Have a look at your laws sometime, you'll be suprised how much of a subject you actually are ..

While I do agree that many Europeans (myself included) sometime fall too easily into snobishness, I'd say you're displaying the reverse here.

First of all, the police isn't allowed to arrest or search you any more in European nations than it is in the US (European convention on human rights Articles 5 and 8 respectively). What's more, pretty much *all* rights that are guaranteed in the US constitution (and a few others which are not, such as privacy) are guaranteed in Europe as well. Either in the constitutions of the different countries or by European convention on human rights. The main differences between the EU and the US is the relative balance between different rights, and even there the difference are mostly small (Yes, some countries outlaw speech inciting hatred, but only is extreme cases and even the US places some restrictions on free speech as well: libel, the fire in a crowded theater thing).

Also, while I can appreciated the underlying sentiment (if you want to, you can move without having to tell anyone in the US) the reality is that you must let the State/local government know when you've moved in the US as well; it's difficult to function without doing so. How much difference is there between a de facto requirement and a legal requirement?

Personally I'd argue that often it's better to have the legal requirement. It simplifies the access, error and abuse issues and it keeps things in the open. The Dutch (and German, Belgian, etc.) requirement to register when moving may be a bit more restrictive than the US example but the real test for me is in what happens if you don't do it. And the answer is: very little. While you are required to register moving there, no people are punished for not doing so (unless it was part of a fraud, like collecting double unemployment benefits, in which case you're persecuted for the fraud, not the failure to register). Of people where jailed or seriously fined for not registering their new home quickly enough you would have a point. However this is not the case.

While the USA certainly offers more freedom (and thereby less security) than most European nations, I think the differences are often overstated. On both sides of the Atlantic.

Re:Voter registration

[stinerman]

If I'm not mistaken there are at least 50 different bodies in the US running the national elections?

Ha! That'd be nice.

A great deal of the election is run at the county level. Ohio alone has 88 counties.

Our Secretary of State is in charge of the election and gives local boards of election orders as to how the law should be carried out. However, our Secretary of State is a partisan elected position. In 2004, our SoS was a co-chair for President Bush's re-election campaign. This time around we have a Democrat who isn't as bad as the last guy, but is still doing her best to help our her team whilst still obeying the letter of the law.

Re:Voter registration

[rve]

Americans don't trust the government to know exactly where they are living, and don't want the government to take care of everything for them.

Re:Voter registration

[rve]

It's not quite the same. As an American voter, you register your party affiliation: Republican, Democrat or Independent. This registration is a matter of public record. A potential employer or a reporter of the government can find out what party you (most likely) voted for in a given election.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

In America the people don't elect the president. The electoral college does.

Re:Voter registration

[dasunt]

How many parties in the EU run the elections? Is there one transnational body, or does each member state run the election for members of that state?

Re:Voter registration

[NocturnHimtatagon]

I'm from belgium too and the fine is _not_ 500 euros. it's 25 euro or a verbal reprimand from the judge. (kieswetboek art. 210). And that's only if they bother to prosecute you in the first place. The last couple of elections I didn't bother to vote and never got prosecuted.

The 500 euro fine is when you are required to count votes.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a national election in that you are picking people that represent you on national issues. The same goes in Canada - I think what you are trying to say is that America doesn't have proportional representation - and in that case, neither does Canada. We can still manage to organize and have a standard way of 'voter registration' and a country as rich as the US should have no problem instituting an efficient way of letting everyone vote (unless ofcourse, the country enjoys discrimination and doesn't want everyone to vote...)

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

The original idea was that this would be a check on federal power. The state legislatures would elect the federal representatives, and obviously the states would try to keep power for themselves and not let the federal government take too much. That was the theory, but of course as soon as the federal elections went to popular vote instead that went away. It's not something that happened all at once, either.

Nowadays I hear and read so many complaints about the electoral college, but so few people seem to have even the smallest understanding of why it was put in place. No big deal coming from people outside the US; no reason for them to know that kind of detail on our government. But the number of US citizens who don't have even the most basic understanding of our government and its history is truly depressing.

Go, go, public education.

Re:Voter registration

[marcosdumay]

Well, not american, but we have voter registration at Brazil. Here, it has two major reasons why it makes sense, the first is that it is the only registration that reliably tracks on what city a person lives, second, it is the most relaible register of who are the brazilian citizens, since it is checked every 2 years at the municipal, state and national levels. Being the most reliable registration, it is used to verify every other kind of registration, including the ones used for taxes.

The downside is that there an entire new level of boureocracy, but most of it is necessary (keeping track of residence), the unecessary parts requiring quite less interation (registering is done only once, for example).

Re:Voter registration

[DerWulf]

* The police in germany ( and I'd think in netherlands as well) CAN and DO search you whenever it pleases them. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

* there is a huge difference! If I want something ( vote, drivers-license etc) I'll go someplace to make it happen, no problem but having a legal obligation to do so is something else entirely (mind you, 'public servants' work from 10 to 4 here, so you usually need to take a days leave ...)

* "no people are punished for not doing" ... I WAS punished with fines and even threatened with jail for refusing to register simply on principle, no fraud involved.

Re:Voter registration

[sorak]

But don't tell me that you are not already in 10 different databases from the moment you are born. I assume you guys also have to register for a birth certificate, you need to pay taxes at some point so you have a social security number, etc. I really don't see the point.

In my case, I was in eleven different databases, twelve spam-lists, and, some how, signed up for Troll Book of the Month Club...Go figure.

Re:Voter registration

[sorak]

You can register with the post office, so that they forward your mail to the new address. Most people wouldn't consider filling out a change of address form as "registering with the government", but it sounds a great deal like what you're talking about.

Re:Voter registration

[CrimsonAvenger]

However, I think you're still pretty naiive if you think you don't notify anyone?

Had to transfer your internet connection?

Transfer it? No. Just get a new one. Yeah, whichever ISP we pay knows where we are. Course, they don't know (or care) where we came from, or where we go, so long as we pay the bills before we leave. Or after we leave. We pay online, so they don't have to know where we are when we pay.

Note that we have a domain of our own, so we don't need to change anything for our email and such, just for the connection. And if I wanted to go down to Starbucks to get on the net, I'd not even have to bother with that much of a trail.

Phone service?

My cellphone service works pretty much anywhere, and doesn't need to be transferred when I move. It hasn't, in fact, been transferred during my last five moves. And I pay the bills online, so they neither know nor care where I live.

Television?

I assume you mean cable? When we bother with cable, we have to tell the cable company where we live. They neither know nor care where we lived before, or will live next. Most of the time, we don't bother with cable, since we don't watch TV, so no.

Health insurance?

Comes through employer, so the old company neither knows nor cares where we live, and the new one doesn't know or care where we used to live, or will live next time.

BLOCKQUOTE>And for the government:

Driver's license

I have to get a new DL if I live somewhere a year. Theoretically. In practice, I have to get a new one when the old one expires, which may be five years down the line.

Taxes

Federal taxes and State taxes are handled through the employer - he notifies the government that I'm working for him. I don't. And while my address is part of my tax information, it's not terribly relevant - not like they're sending me a notice of taxes due or anything. I use tax software, so I don't even care whether they know where to send me a copy of the 1040 forms.

Local taxes are usually Sales taxes, which I pay at the till, so they neither know nor care where I live, have lived, or will live.

Note that I understand that the government knows where to find me if they really want me. But the notion of having to let them know when or where I'm moving is a bit bizarre. The closest I've ever come to that in all my life is leaving a forwarding address when I move. And I don't even have to do that anymore, since the people I care to get mail from know where to send it, and my bills are paid online, so I don't have to (and don't) get bills in the mail.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

See, we have these pesky problems - the US Constitution and each state has their own constitution. They outline the requirements to vote. Those requirements need to be met. We are a nation of immigrants. My grandfather wasn't born in the USA, so he needed to be a "naturalized citizen" before he could vote.

There's no local government registration in the USA for anything other than voting. I don't have to tell the government that I live anywhere. I'm free to move around from city to city, state to state without telling anyone.

With that said, there are a few requirements to vote which have to be met.
- be an adult - some states require 19 , not 18 years old
- live in the location for a specific period of time. Some states, it is 30 days, others it is 1 year.
- not be a felon, criminal. Criminals aren't allowed to vote here.
- actually be citizen. The USA has many, many foreign nationals living here. Some with proper immigration status and some without it. Our colleges have about 10% international students. They aren't allowed to vote.

I'm supposed to register my car and get a new drivers license when I move, but there's nothing forcing it unless my license expires. Those are usually good for 4-5 years at a time. After I moved to my current city, I didn't formally change my address for about a year - car registration expiration was the main reason I bothered.

When you purchase a home, that causes all sorts of government paperwork to be tracked. Property taxes, school taxes, city, locality taxes. But before you own property, all that stuff generally doesn't find you. The owner of the property is responsible for those taxes.

I think when you are a male 18-30 you have to register with the Selective Service - for the military draft. You're supposed to keep this current with your address, but I'd bet after the first registration, less than 20% do. After age 27, I didn't. That has nothing to do with voting. By law, most of our government agencies cannot share information.

Anyway, my place to vote has been a church around the corner from me for years. But schools and libraries are often used too. I show up with a government picture ID, get in the line for by my last name and wait for the old ladies to find it in their voter role - a paper binder about 2 inches thick. They cross off my name and another worker verifies it and hands me the ballot or computer card. I punch, mark, or touch vote somehow and get a sticker as I leave saying that I voted. I usually have no proof that what I voted was actually what the machine counted. Last time we used the Diebold touch machines and there is no paper produced that can be audited later. No recount is possible.

Ah, most people in the USA don't have a passport. Passports have little to do with anything here. I'd have to hunt to locate mine and I've used it 8 times this year. My mother doesn't have a passport and never has.

We are a very mobile society in the US. I've lived in 15 different states in my life. That means they need to clean the registered voter roles. The way that my state does it is by only keeping you active automatically if you vote in 1 of the last 2 "big" elections. If I miss voting twice, I need to re-register. I suspect all that you hear about registration makes you think it is required for each election or you can't vote. That isn't it. I registered in 1998. Since I haven't moved since then and voted in every election, no re-registration is needed. I'd bet that most of those people filling out registration cards are doing it "just in case" because they don't know the law.

Re:Voter registration

[CrimsonAvenger]

Oh the other hand again, having an offical address in a database can (not saying it always does) also help prevent fraud/identity-crime, and make moving easier. For instance phone companies will only send new SIM-cards to my registered address. Tax-returns and study loan can only be paid out to my registered accounts. And when you move, quite a few "important" databases (banks/etc) is automatically updated. As stated elsewhere, they know a lot about you anyway, so might just as well admit it, and make it easier for everyone...

I don't hide my address. I just don't bother notifying people of it unless I have a good reason to. And that doesn't include letting someone know I've moved, unless I want to receive mail from them (the postal service is nominally private here, by the way).

As to your specific points...

SIM cards - I don't bother. When I need a new phone, I go to the cellphone office and get one, without telling them anything other than my name. They can look me up by name without knowing or caring where I live, so long as I pay the bills. Online, so my address doesn't matter much.

Tax returns get direct-deposited to my account. When I get one, which isn't more than half the time. I try to avoid giving the government no-interest loans. But they don't need to know my address to send me my refund. Any more than my bank needs to know where I live. Not like I don't get my banking information online, which I can do from anywhere. And no, I don't change banks just because I move. Why should I?

So, the banks update my new address when I move, eh? I wonder how, since I've moved five or six times since I opened my account at my current bank, without ever telling them that I've moved, much less to where I've moved.

As I said, I understand that the government can find me if they want me. But I still find it odd that I'd have to essentially ask their permission to move. Or notify them when I did so.

Or even that I'd have to notify any private companies that I'd moved, for that matter. Only reason I could think of that I'd want to bother doing that is if they mailed me things I wanted to see. And most of that sort of thing I can get online. Yes, mailorder needs an address to mail to. Which doesn't actually imply that they know or care where I lived before, or where I'll live next.

Re:Voter registration

[Anspen]

The police in germany ( and I'd think in netherlands as well) CAN and DO search you whenever it pleases them. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Well, yes and no. In Germany, depending on the 'Land' the police is allowed to conduct stop and search operations on motorways and other important cross border traffic roads within 30 km of the German border, in international transport facilities (harbours, train stations, airports) and in trains. In the Netherlands the police can only search you in specific "High risk areas". These can be assigned by the justice department on the request of the mayor and are valid for a maximum of 12 hours. So no they can't search you always and everywhere but they can stop and search a lot more people in more cases than a few years ago.

While I agree this is bad, and probably worse than in the US, I do think it's a matter of degree and of implementation. After an early highpoint search actions in the Netherlands are rare; the German searches are more common, but mostly in checking ID's (trains, cars) and not in complete searches. And while I haven't traveled enough in the US to know for sure, aren't similar rules in effect in large public places like trainstations, airports (outside of the security zone) federal buildings etc.? I though I'd read something like that.

* there is a huge difference! If I want something ( vote, drivers-license etc) I'll go someplace to make it happen, no problem but having a legal obligation to do so is something else entirely (mind you, 'public servants' work from 10 to 4 here, so you usually need to take a days leave ...)

But if almost everyone is going to do it anyway (and do it multiple times without a central administration) doesn't it make more sense to let them handle most of it? They know where you live anyway, and in the Netherlands at least the registration exist only on a municipal level (that is: there is no big central administration for the whole country).

I can see how a 10-16 opening time could make the job somewhat more difficult. In Germany times are similarly restricted, but they do tend to open early (7:30) and often have a once a month Saturday opening to accommodate working people. In the Netherlands opening times are generally 9-17 Mo-Fri and 9-21 on Thursdays. But even beyond opening hours, one central registration means the ability to do more stuff online, since you don't have to prove you're you every time you try to do something.

* "no people are punished for not doing" ... I WAS punished with fines and even threatened with jail for refusing to register simply on principle, no fraud involved.

If you're going to explicitly taunt them obviously you get the appropriate fine. My point was that there isn't a crack team of enforces, working tirelessly to ensure everyone registers immediately after moving. I am curious though: when was the chain of events? You moved and refused to change your registration? They threatened jail so you paid the fine and registered anyway? (Not trying to annoy, just curious)

Re:Voter registration

[corbettw]

Different governmental bodies handle different taxes. With Federal income tax, your employer will notify the IRS that you're on their payroll (they have to, to get certain tax incentives for themselves). If you are self-employed, you'll need to register your business with your local government (city at least, possibly county or state depending on type of business). Regardless, you'll need to file your income taxes after the end of the year and before April 15th. If you fail to do so, the IRS will contract with a collection agency to find you. It might take awhile, but unless you're in a cabin in the woods, they'll find you eventually (and stick you with the tab for having to find you in the first place).

Sales taxes are levied on everyone who buys something in the state, no need to register for that.

Property taxes are levied on all property owners, but since you have to register your title to your property, anyway, it's not a big step to tell the county assessment office you now own a given parcel of land. But if you're just renting, the government has no need to know where you live (and doesn't particularly care, either).

And utilities are billed each month to each residence. You'll need to have them turned on in your name (and they'll probably do a credit check, to determine if you need to make a deposit before activation).

You have to remember that the US has more in common with the EU, as a political body, than it does with the Netherlands, or France, or even the former USSR. The 50 states are all quasi-independent, so there's really no central database for every American. And we (most of us, at least) like it that way.

Re:Voter registration

[Zcar]

Bottom line - we have to register to vote because only U.S. citizens (without a felony criminal conviction) are allowed to vote. It's a different mind-set in America. People would rebel if they had to "register with their municipality" for no compelling reason, even after several years of Homeland Security.

There's no Federal requirement I can find that requires voters to be US citizens. In fact, historically, several states have allowed some aliens to vote. For example, Wisconsin allowed immigrants who had lived in the state for one year and stated their intention to become citizens could vote from 1848 through 1908.

Also, how is getting your driver's license from the local country clerk/DMV not registering with your municipality?

Re:Voter registration

[iris-n]

Well, we have history classes here too, and we wish it or not, the US is an important country. Anyway, from here what I heard is that the electoral college was put into place to avoid the more populous agrarian south rule the north colonies, and stop things like the abolition of slavery. Now, the situation is inverted, and the scarcely populated rural area gets a disproportioned amount of power relative to the cities.

And I don't think that it is a bad thing that the cities ruled the country, the idea of democracy is the will of majority, isn't it? And, at least in Brasil, it's where the most educated parcel of the population lives.

What I didn't know is that nowadays there still existed people that supported this system, thought that the electoral college was kept only due to inertia. The concept of the president not being elected by the majority of the population is very alien to me. My bad.

Re:Voter registration

[corbettw]

As for the passports, most Americans don't have them. (Before you react too strongly to that, bear in mind that from here I can travel for two thousand miles in any direction, or three thousand miles to the west, without a passport. This is mostly a very good thing, though it would be nice if it were somewhat easier to find people who speak a foreign language fluently.)

Actually, you can travel much further than that to the west (I'm assuming you live on the West Coast and were referring to Hawaii). American Samoa and Saipan are several thousand miles further, and more to the south, than Hawaii; Guam is even further. Travel by US citizens to all of those territories does not require a passport, even after the increased passport requirements institutde by the Gestapo^WDHS last year.

Re:Voter registration

[DerWulf]

sure, there isn't a crack team but the municipalities are quite motivated because they get budget according to how many people life there. So actually it goes like this: your landlord tells the municipality about you ( he has to) and they bug you until you register. I wasn't taunting them, I was simply ignoring their requests until they threatened me with jail ... Then I registered (for this I had to unregister in my old hometown 200km away ... this was changed recently) and payed the fines, of course. It might make more sense to have this registration but it shackles me right from the get go .. I'm not a subject or a servant, I shouldn't have to tell anybody where I am ...

Re:Voter registration

[jc42]

Because the kinds of people making these decisions are usually technology-illiterate to the point where they still probably say, "Computers are the wave of the future!"

Well, you're probably right with that. But I've been noticing that lately, when the media has articles about "electronic voting", they now usually include a comment about the widespread objection to the idea by "computer experts", whatever they think that means.

The summary seems to be that there are two different objections to computerized voting equipment. One comes from the Luddites, who think that paper ballots were good enough for their grandparents, so they should be good enough for us, while ignoring all the ways that paper ballots can be subverted by insiders. The other objections come from the computer geeks, who observe that the current crop of equipment seems designed to lack any sort of audit trail or security precautions, making it exceedingly easy for an insider to subvert the results. ("You can train a chimp to change the election results.";-)

We probably can't do much about the Luddites except wait for them to die off. We can do something about the insecure, easily-subverted electronic voting systems. We just make it illegal to use any system that's not completely open to inspection by the public. It's easy to see the resistance to this suggestion as strong evidence that the lack of security and auditability is not an accident, but is intentional design,.

We'll probably have good electronic voting systems in a few decades. But it'll take the usual extended fight to overcome the political system's general desire to use an easily-subverted system. Stay tuned.

Re:Voter registration

[Mike_Entropian]

Well, it usually works in a way that you stay registered at your parents' address until you settle for good. Just renting out a place does not mean you HAVE to register. Then you have to go back to your hometown, visit mom and pap and vote there when election time comes.

Re:Voter registration

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well, it usually works in a way that you stay registered at your parents' address until you settle for good.

I'm sure that'll help my grown children deal with the issue. Doesn't apply to me. I've moved around all my life, childhood and adulthood. I still find the idea of having to tell the government I've moved strange.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - if you combined drivers' licenses, tax returns, Social Security, Welfare and Old Age Pension databases - that would pretty much guarantee 98% coverage. Canada uses the income tax returns, which simplifies enumeration greatly.

We also have the ability for a **pre-registered** voter to vouch for a limited number of unregistered voters at the polling booth.

We also use paper ballots, but then you are only voting for 1 person (Member of PArliament, or Member of Legislature) so the choices are simpler. The longest I've ever waited to vote was maybe 3 minutes. Counting is done at most polls in an hour or 2.

Electing your judges??? Never heard of anything so stupid in my life. Not to mention dog catcher, state treasurer, etc. The most complicated elections are municipal - pick 1 mayor, pick 1 or more councillors depending, pick 1 or more school board trustees depending. No counties, no sherrifs... The joke in Canada is that Americans even elect their dog-catchers.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the constitution does mandate the census. It's not voluntary. Many of the questions are, but the census itself is not.

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Same in the UK. I've moved around a lot here and have had no obligation to register with anyone (except for tax purposes).

Re:Voter registration

[IchNiSan]

And the DMV change of the address form already contains voter registration.

Not in every state. Virginia has that system. To the best of my knowledge(last year or so) Massachusetts does not.

Re:Voter registration

[Draconius42]

I'm trying to figure out the justification of modding this a troll, and honestly nothing is coming to me. What is wrong with people?

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, from here what I heard is that the electoral college was put into place to avoid the more populous agrarian south rule the north colonies, and stop things like the abolition of slavery.

I misread this at first as you claiming that the south not having power would stop the abolition of slavery. I had this whole snarky reply typed up. Then I re-read it, and realized what you probably meant, which is that the south being in power would stop things like the abolition of slavery. Mainly what I was going to point out, and I still will, is that a lot of how the US was created was geared towards the eventual freeing of the slaves. Political tensions at the time made it impossible to abolish slavery from the outset. Of particular amusement to me is the fact that the "3/5s compromise", which is so often brought up to illustrate, supposedly, that blacks were once thought of as 3/5s of a person, was actually a victory for abolitionists, as having blacks treated as "whole people" would give the south more power, ironically making it harder to abolish slavery. ... And I realized now I've gone horribly offtopic, so feel free to mod it as such, but I can't bring myself not to post now that I've typed all this up. :P

Re:Voter registration

[Anonymous Coward]

we have to register to vote because only U.S. citizens (without a felony criminal conviction) are allowed to vote.

NO.

We have to register because in the old pen/paper days it made it faster, easier, and provided a better system for validating votes.
With currently technology we don't need any kind of registration.

Registration exists primarily (now & always) as a mechanism to prevent 'undesirables' from voting, or at least making it so difficult to vote that most of them don't. You know, like minorities, the poor, etc.
Example:
Let's say you are homeless. You have to have a 'permanent' address to register. Homeless may use a local civic address or homeless shelter. However, once you register they send you a mailer, and if it gets returned (bad address, etc.) then you lose your registration.

There are a few states that will let you register at the polls, but every year there is a huge push to ban same-day registration.

Personally, I think that for a democracy to hold ANY weight, ALL citizens should be able to vote, regardless of criminal history, etc.

Re:Voter registration

[Chandon Seldon]

At least, it's how it happens here in Brasil. Even the most obscure candidates show up in every ballot, and we don't have to vote J.F. Kerry to stop Bush from winning, as we hold runoffs.

Hold runoffs, as in "go back to the polls if there wasn't a majority winner the first time"? Unless you have one runoff per candidate (drop the worst one each time) that system still requires strategic voting and still has a spoiler effect. It's just a bit more complicated than in a "plurality wins" system. The key idea is that you still have to vote for your favorite candidate among the top few, so that they make the runoff.

After looking at voting systems a bit, only Condorcet methods and range voting schemes seem to solve the spoiler problem in a fixed number of trips to the polls. Among those, I think that Approval voting does the best due to its simplicity - "vote for any number" is something that pretty much anyone should be able to figure out.

Given that, I wonder if a system of explicit runoffs where each round dropped the bottom half of the candidates would be good enough...

Re:Voter registration

[Reziac]

Your post triggered this synaptic cascade:

If people are registered by default just for being born, what do you do about the system's tendency to leave dead people marked as "still alive"??

Also, it follows that the easiest way to determine who is voting in their proper district is by exact tracking of every person's movements.

Why, yes, I am a disturbed person.. thoughts like this disturb me!! I should have other, less paranoid thoughts. ;)

(I've poll-watched. I've caught a few dead people voting.)

Re:Voter registration

[elgatozorbas]

I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect, but you're not making a case for Europe being much better.

To be honest, this doesn't strike me as such an invasion of my privacy. We are also free to come and go and live and work where we please. The government knows where I live. Big deal. Compare this to the hassle foreigners need to go through just to go on holiday to the US (fingerprints etc).

Re:Voter registration

[cas2000]

> For example, convicted felons on parole cannot vote in my state,
> whereas they can in most others. But the fact is that citizens of
> my state chose that, and those that disagree are free to move and
> live in another state which allows parolees to vote if it's that
> important to them.

is that true for parolees themselves? are they free to move at will to another state if they want?

personally, i think that barring from voting felons is inherently unfair and undemocratic - it makes it possible, AND provides political incentive to disenfranchise large segments of the population by making new classes of felony crimes, e.g. making it illegal to be black, or white, or an atheist, or a socialist, or a roman catholic, or a nazi, or to prefer certain intoxicating drugs over others.

Re:Voter registration

[Lars T.]

Your post triggered this synaptic cascade:

If people are registered by default just for being born, what do you do about the system's tendency to leave dead people marked as "still alive"??

It isn't that easy to conceal a death, and when a death certificate is issued, the register could be informed.

Re:Voter registration

[Reziac]

Right, but the fact is that sometimes the notification just doesn't happen...

Hmm. One wonders if some of the occasional tales of "But she's dead, dammit, so cancel her credit card [or whatever] already!" are sometimes side effects of such failures that were originally meant as voting stuffers.

I agree it's not the most efficient route. :)

Tch tch

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot doesn't seem to have adjusted for Daylight Savings. Tch tch.

Re:Tch tch

[The Iso]

Get an account and adjust it yourself in Preferences > Index > General. I won't; all my clocks are set to UTC.

We have the reliable scan cards

[codepunk]

Fill a circle in run it through a scanner, nothing could be more simple and foolproof. I am
really unsure why any voting district would want to use anything other than the scan card system.

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[AuMatar]

Did you fill in the circle correctly? Does it work with this type of ink? Is the machine calibrated correctly and did it feed the paper correctly so the circle is where the machine is looking?

Don't get me wrong, I love scan cards- fast count and a paper trail for the double check. But it can still fail and has a greater than 0 failure rate even when working. It still needs to be hand checked.

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[blueg3]

You obviously haven't ever given a Scantron test. You might guess, incorrectly, that everyone could fill out a bubble sheet properly, but no. Worse, the scanner can't always score properly-filled-out sheets correctly all the time (and it usually fails on incorrectly-filled-out sheets).

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Morten Hustveit]

Fill a circle in run it through a scanner, nothing could be more simple and foolproof.

Acutally, the Norwegian system is even more foolproof. A voting venue consist of a single box and multiple booths. Inside the voting booth, you find several stacks of paper, one for each voting alternative. You pick up a pice of paper from the correct stack, fold it, walk outside, and hand it to the person standing next to the box. He ensures that you are only casting a single vote, and drops it into the box for you.

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Chep]

+ France. Very similar. You take one ballot paper from each of the stacks, plus you are handed out one single envelope. Go into the booth, put your single ballot paper into the envelope, discard the rest. Then go to the ballot box; they then check your ID again, while the envelope is sitting on the closed input slit. When all officiers agree you are who you say, registered and didn't already vote, the ballot box officier pushes a lever and your envelope falls.

Whichever envelope contains more than one ballot paper, or altered paper, or anything else gets discared (I wish those incidents were counted and part of the official record). Not perfect, but pretty good still. Counts are usually wrapped up 3 hours after ballot close time. WTF one needs to "fix" that non-broken system with electronics?

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[MoonBuggy]

I'd say an optically scannable print-out from the electronic voting machines would be the solution to a whole lot of problems on both sides.

Touch the screen, the machine records your vote in its memory and prints out a clear form (both human and machine readable) stating how you voted. This is then placed in a box just like any normal paper ballot. The paper forms are optically scanned, and if that tally disagrees with the machine's internal database then a hand recount is automatically undertaken.

It's fast, there are far fewer potential problems with incorrectly filled forms, there's a paper trail, there's on-the-spot evidence that the machine did indeed record your vote correctly and the votes are all counted twice by design.

It's an idea that's been floating around my head for a while, and it seems workable - anyone have any ideas on where it could fall down?

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[AuMatar]

No, this sounds like a solid idea. The only thing I'd add is have the scanners and the electronic machines come from separate companies, to make the possibility of electronic tampering more difficult.

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Chep]

Yup. Plus, make absolutely sure every speck of ink on the paper ballot is human-readable (no magic QR-code in the corner etc.); the ballot shall be as truly anonymous as possible

(yes, no funky yellow dots...)

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Mr. Slippery]

Inside the voting booth, you find several stacks of paper, one for each voting alternative.

On my ballot here in Baltimore County, Maryland, in addition to the presidential race (6 candidates), there's a Congressional seat (3 candidates), four judges, two statewide ballot questions, and 10 county ballot questions. There are 7*4*4*3^15-1 = 1,607,077,583 possible ways to fill out a ballot, not counting write-ins and assuming that you're not going to show up and cast a completely blank ballot.

That's a lot of stacks of paper.

Even if we had separate stacks for each of the 18 contests, it gets pretty unmanageable.

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Several? When I vote (in the US), there are usually 10-20 different things to vote on. Some are Yes/No, some are pick X out of Y, and others are pick 1 of N. I can't imagine how all those stacks of paper would work, and they would be impossible to count correctly.

dom

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Skye16]

I think you underestimate the fear of hanging chads, Chep.

Hanging chads are an abomination, and must be thwarted at every turn. And like the God-fearing, proud, patriotic Americans that we are, we turn right to the fanciest gizmos and gadgets we can to make our lives better.

Why buy a jump rope when you can buy a motorized running treadmill with incline, heart-rate sensors, mp3 player, and toaster oven? That's what a communist would do!

[/sad truth]

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Chep]

You, sir, owe me a keyboard

Re:We have the reliable scan cards

[Anonymous Coward]

The ballot this year is fill in the arrow (if you do a paper ballot like in Colorado).

== == Just use a #2 pencil to fill in the space between the arrow ends to cast your vote for that candidate.

Competition

[glaeven]

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.

I'd like to see Karl Rove top that.

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

shit - i just blew my mod points!

Re:Competition

[achurch]

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.

I'd like to see Karl Rove top that.

Please, don't give him ideas . . .

Re:Competition

[bruce_the_loon]

So that's what Cheney was practicing for when hunting the lawyer.

Re:Competition

[adf92343414]

Oh, but he already has. Once the guy is on the way to the polls, it's too late. The trick is to keep him from going to the polls in the first place. That's what the voter purges, ID requirements, restrictions on felons voting, etc. are for. All in the name of suppressing the turnout ^W^W^W preventing voter fraud, of course.

Re:Competition

[dogmatixpsych]

I thought he was doing humankind a service. :)

Re:Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Please.. if he could Mr. Rove would be out there 'weeding out' those people he thinks shouldn't vote.

Why do you feel like a wuss?

[Krishnoid]

Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail.

In the face of something between malfunctioning and fraudulent electronic machines, aren't you a wuss if you accept the lack of such a trail? I think that complaining/protesting something like that is a sign of conviction, strength, and frankly just giving a crap about something beyond yourself that you stand for.

We sort of accept the rule of law in this country (bear with me), so complaining in its various forms -- soap, ballot, jury ... let's stop short of ammo -- is the way you assert your constitutional rights. While it isn't storming the gates, isn't it a modern counterpart?

Re:Why do you feel like a wuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen! :D

We need to stand up for stuff, like we used to...
America, GET OFF YOUR FUCKING ASSES!!!

Not exactly true

[codepunk]

The states actually determine who is a eligible voter. Some states deny voting privs to convicted felons, some can vote reguardless even in prison and others can vote if there imposed sentence has been served. Personally I think once a mans
sentence has been served he should be eligible to vote else it imposes (taxation without representation) on the individual.

A great many states have poll day registration you walk in with a utility bill, drivers license or something of that sort and
you can register to vote right then and there.

Re:Not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I don't think it makes sense to deny anyone their voting rights for any reasons.

Honestly, I don't feel it's fair to make anyone subject to the decisions of a legal system based on the voting system, if they can't affect that process.

It does make sense to not allow infants to vote (because the parents would likely misuse that) but with that exception anyone who can be punished under a countries laws should have a right to vote.

Re:Not exactly true

[TempySmurf]

Besides the simple moral objections to making someone a half citizen, we can just do the math and see why this is a bad idea. Around 7 million in prison, Kerry lost by 3 million and Gore from even less. Which doesn't include those who got out of prison but can't vote. Simply make laws that target certain demographics and you've got yourself an election. Whether or not this has been done, it's an obvious flaw in the system.

Re:Not exactly true

[MindlessAutomata]

Don't forget, who knows if they are even in prison for a good reason?

Re:Not exactly true

[forsey]

This is a great point! If you were thrown in jail because you broke a that you morally disagree with, shouldn't you be able to vote against those who brought the law in? Allowing felons to vote seems like a safe guard against corruption to me. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make a law to turn a group of people who you didn't want to vote into felons so they couldn't. Make sleeping on a park bench a felony if you want to stop homeless people from voting, for example.

Re:Not exactly true

[Ironchew]

Allowing felons to vote seems like a safe guard against corruption to me. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make a law to turn a group of people who you didn't want to vote into felons so they couldn't.

Sounds like the War on Drugs to me.

Re:Not exactly true

[davolfman]

Similar thought is why the voting age is now 18. It used to be higher but people got real pissed when they could get drafted for a war they couldn't have voted for.

Re:Not exactly true

[Lars T.]

Do you actually believe it's a good idea to give people who don't even have the power to decide at which time to brush their teeth - or rather the people who do control their lives - a vote? "Vote Sheriff Lobo, and we won't beat you up."

Re:Not exactly true

[forsey]

If there are enough people in jail to impact the turnout of a vote over something like that then we probably have bigger issues.

Re:Not exactly true

[19thNervousBreakdown]

More than 1% of the US voting-age population is in prison. If you count those on parole or probation, you go up to 3.2%. We do have bigger issues.

Re:Not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of exception is that? Infants can't generally be punished in the first place, so no exception needed.

Re:Not exactly true

[mqduck]

Honestly, I don't feel it's fair to make anyone subject to the decisions of a legal system based on the voting system, if they can't affect that process.

Felons are disproportionately impoverished. It's the same reason there used to be a poll tax, although by very different means.

Re:Not exactly true

[JimboFBX]

Kerry lost by 3 million electoral votes? Wow!

Or maybe you are under some strange impression the system works using popular vote...?

Re:Not exactly true

[TempySmurf]

And of those 7 million incarcerated some still get to vote and some are simply in jail and haven't been convicted of felonies. Of course, that wasn't really my point, neither was the electoral college. Don't be a dick.

Re:Not exactly true

[JimboFBX]

To be honest your point isn't very clear at all. I assumed you were referring to the fact that convicted felons are more likely to be minorities, and minorities are more likely to vote democrat. But there's a few flaws in the logic that you can decide an election by allowing / disallowing felons to vote. It's not exactly the same thing as the literacy tests that certain states used to have to prevent blacks from voting.

So I dont see what is the obvious flaw in the system that your pointing out.

Re:Not exactly true

[TempySmurf]

It had nothing to do with minorities and who voted which way. The number of people who have had their ability to vote taken away is greater than the difference between the presidential nominees of the past two elections. Which means that the outcome of elections are directly affected by this. Statistically, one could make laws that would imprison whatever type of demographic one wanted to with certain accuracy. Whether it's race, financial status, religion, culture, whatever. I'm not implying that it has happened, rather that it could happen. This is a process of selection or deselection. This changes it from being elected by the people to being elected by the people you allow or want to vote. So it's exactly the same and that's why it's a flaw in the system.

Re:Not exactly true

[93 Escort Wagon]

A great many states have poll day registration you walk in with a utility bill, drivers license or something of that sort and
you can register to vote right then and there.

Admittedly my answer was a touch sloppy. Even in my state - Washington - we have "motor voter" registration, meaning when a person signs up for a driver's license they can choose to register to vote then and there.

However the point stands that, for the vast majority of people, signing up to vote is pretty trivial (and I understand you weren't arguing against that point).

Re:Not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean what we call "The war on (some) drugs"

Re:Not exactly true

[rprins]

"The degree of civilization a society exhibits is best determined by how it treats its prisoners." - Dostoyevsky

The U.S. is one of the worst in the world. Abu Ghraib was no fluke.
U.S. handles prisoners based on punishment, not help.

Re:Not exactly true

[jez9999]

Gore WON the popular vote by ~100k. I say scrap the electoral college system, but that's just me.

Re:Not exactly true

[jez9999]

Trouble is, if those in jail for narcotics convictions had (or had been able to) voted for candidate(s) that were opposed to this crap years ago, it wouldn't be in place now. Apparently they couldn't be bothered or there were no popular candidates that supported their position. :-(

Re:Not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

so you've not been keeping up to date with what they already DO (both parties)

Re:Not exactly true

[sorak]

That may be true, but if the number of people we have in prison is large enough for politicians to risk being accused of "pandering to convicts", then doesn't that say something about our prison system?

Re:Not exactly true

[psychicninja]

Kerry lost by 3 million and Gore from even less. Which doesn't include those who got out of prison but can't vote. Simply make laws that target certain demographics and you've got yourself an election.

Only if you make the false assumption that all the people who voted for Kerry or Gore would have done so anyway if they hadn't campaigned toward them at all.

Re:Not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately a issue predominately with the African-Americans and the lack of a working family doesn't help it at all when most of these young men in prison have been fatherless.

Very deep issues, but unfortunately the African-American community needs to stand up to this and the gangs in their neighborhood. The 'Don't snitch' policy only digs them deeper into their graves.

Re:Not exactly true

[mOdQuArK!]

That's exactly what all of the procedures of anonymous voting are designed to protect. You have to make sure that the people running the election aren't connected to the people running the prison of course, but if the procedures are solid, then all the prisoners can lie right to the warden's face about how they voted, and there's no effective way that the warden will be able to verify anything.

Re:Not exactly true

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistically, one could make laws that would imprison whatever type of demographic one wanted to with certain accuracy.

We've already done that. The demographic is drug users.

Re:Not exactly true

[Lars T.]

That's exactly what all of the procedures of anonymous voting are designed to protect. You have to make sure that the people running the election aren't connected to the people running the prison of course, but if the procedures are solid, then all the prisoners can lie right to the warden's face about how they voted, and there's no effective way that the warden will be able to verify anything.

You mean apart from telling the prisoners in advance you will be beating up as many prisoners randomly as those who voted "wrong". Which will make sure the mob of prisoners will beat anybody who they expect to dissent, with promises of more beating if they get punished by the boss.

BTW, the boss isn't necessarily the warden.

Re:Not exactly true

[KovaaK]

The flaw that he is talking about is pretty obvious to me. Note that TempySmurf also said "Whether or not this has been done," so he wasn't referring to any facts about demographics - he was just saying that this system (as is) can be abused.

Honestly, I was going to take snippets of this until I realized that I was going to end up quoting the whole whopping 5 sentences that he wrote. It's clear and very to the point. Perhaps you should read it again and tell us what was unclear. If you want it to be reworded, that's also no problem.

I don't know why anyone modded your response as insightful. Sure, the electoral college picks the president, but how they use their votes is determined by how citizens vote.

Re:Not exactly true

[suggsjc]

How many "votes" more or less decided the last Florida Presidential election (and therefore the final outcome)?

I don't know where I actually stand on this issue, but even a 1% swing in either direction can actually make a huge change.

Re:Not exactly true

[mOdQuArK!]

Your scenario completely sidesteps the high likelihood that if your society is "enlightened" enough to have a independent organization responsible for properly running elections, then it is highly unlikely that large-scale beatings are going to be allowed without someone noticing & investigating such behavior.

For the sake of argument, I'll assume that your scenario is possible (and there is still an independent agency able to hold a reasonably corruption-resistant election process). So you make a big deal out of wanting to vote "the boss's way", and still vote however you want. As long as the voting procedures aren't compromised (which I acknowledge can be difficult to achieve), nobody is still going to be able to figure out exactly who is voting the "wrong" way.

Because the random beatings are being targeted randomly & will be catching people who really ARE voting the boss's way (which means that it doesn't really help to vote the boss's way), eventually the # of people being beaten will increase until everyone is going to decide that they'd better cooperate to beat the crap out of/kill the people who are ordering the beatings (since the people being beaten will have nothing to gain by voting the boss's way anymore, and it will be clear to everyone that they will be much better off by taking out the boss). (And it doesn't really matter who the boss is, as long as the "boss" can't be sure who voted for what.)

Anonymous voting really does do a good job of making it hard to intimidate or bribe voters with any degree of certainty. Its main weakness is when its implementation is broken (kind of like cryptography).

In any case, I hope you'll agree that it doesn't make much common sense to have an agency which might have a vested interest in the outcome of an election be responsible for actually running that election.

In for a penny, out for a pound.

[Ostracus]

"This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century. "

Thanks Australia! We'll return the favour.

Re:In for a penny, out for a pound.

[Anonymous Coward]

No wurries Mate! Ermmm.. BTW Thanks for the Brady Bunch :(

This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".

[khasim]

So the various Congress Critters would all agree to vote "yes" for pay raises ... except for one who would vote "no".

Then, while campaigning, they can ALL claim to have voted against it.

And so on with every important issue.

Re:This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".

[baffled]

Yes, it seems pay raises or other issues directly affecting Congress as a whole is a problem. Only the sponsor of that bill would feel the heat.

However, without any incentive for bribery in Congress, it's likely those in office would be less likely to vote themselves a pay raise. That is, the greedy types would have a different job.

Re:This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".

[Cassius Corodes]

Why no incentive for bribery? It would be much easier now that they are not held accountable for how they vote to take money from however is willing to give it and vote all kids of outrageous bills as their constituents would never find out.

Re:This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".

[vux984]

Why no incentive for bribery? It would be much easier now that they are not held accountable for how they vote to take money from however is willing to give it and vote all kids of outrageous bills as their constituents would never find out.

Also no way for the people bribing them to know if they got what they paid for. He could just take the money, and vote however he was going to vote anyway... how are they going to know? Hell, if he's particularly corrupt he can even take bribes from both sides...

So, while it doesn't remove the incentive for bribery, it does make it riskier for the people doing the bribing.

Re:This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".

[AvitarX]

yeah, because people doing the brining are too dumb to tell them "you will get this check when the bill passes".

Re:This week it is YOUR turn to vote "no".

[Hognoxious]

because people doing the brining

Well I'd heard of government pork, but are you tring to say it's actually bacon?

2008 presidenta election

[FudRucker]

what i wonder is, if obama loses will the black people riot? and if obama wins will the black people riot? (either way it goes i wonder if the black people will riot)

Re:2008 presidenta election

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm more worried about stupid racist white people rioting when he's elected. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Ejf5UCn0Y

Re:2008 presidenta election

[FudRucker]

that is possible, there are plenty of those too.

Re:2008 presidenta election

[tompaulco]

This is why I hope that the election is heavily weighted one side or the other. If it is close and has to be decided in the courts again, I do fear that people will start flinging the race card. Of course, I think that the race card DOES figure heavily in the election in that many black people are voting for Obama simply because he appears to be black, with no thought to his policies, which completely oppose the ideals that conservative Christian blacks believe. Not to mention the fact that Obama is really just a rich white dude in black skin. If he saw a homeless black (or white) guy walking down his street, I'd bet he'd draw the shades and peak out between the slats until the guy went away. No, Obama does not represent the black man. But his party knows that America is so politically correct that they would be afraid to be called racist by voting against a black man and they are playing to that big time.
There's some racist bigots on the white side too who will vote for McCain simply because he's white, but the most racist whites are usually poor, and Obama's got those guys drinking the kool-aid, too. Yeah, he's gonna take all the money from the guys earning 300k, I mean 250k, uh, 200k, that's right 150k, and give it all to the poor working man. Well, heck, suddenly race goes out the window, because now we're talking about money in the pocket.
As for me, I don't care about race. If the candidates switched skin colors and kept their same policies, I'd switch my vote in a heartbeat. Not that I'm swooning over the guy I'm voting for, I'm just sort of neutral toward him, but the other guy basically stands for everything I'm against. So I'm not voting FOR someone this election. I'm voting against someone who opposes my views.
Just to clarify, I'm voting for the guy whose momma was white.

Re:2008 presidenta election

[thebigmacd]

So which is it? Both of their momma's were white.

Re:2008 presidenta election

[tompaulco]

(in best McBain voice)"Dat's da joke"

Articles like this reinforce why I read /.

[Faizdog]

This was a really fascinating article.

Interesting articles like this, that I may not find on my own (Don't read the New Yorker) really exemplify why I love slashdot.

That was a great use of my day to read that, thanks /.

Utterly irrelevant.

[fishtorte]

Not everyone can kick the shit out of fascists trying to steal their vote. Nor are they necessarily aware that it's happening.

Punchscan

[pilsner.urquell]

Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail.

There are about four groups of people working to rectify this problem. The one I've been following is Punchscan which looks like they have everything covered except fraudulent registration. Slashdot covered Punchscan here.

Re:Punchscan

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the punchscan method, just checked it out. Indeed, why don't we use that?

Re:Punchscan

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the punchscan method, just checked it out. Indeed, why don't we use that?

We don't use it because bureaucracy is entrenched into our government and will make changing the system hard to do. Also, most people don't listen to someone who posts on Slashdot as Anonymous Coward.

It was not always so

[symbolset]

But don't tell me that you are not already in 10 different databases from the moment you are born.

The database is a relatively recent innovation. Its use in government for the purpose of tracking citizens even more recent. A lot of citizens feel that a government that tracks the location of each person from birth to death is inviting abuses of government. That notwithstanding, that's what we have today, and the tracking is getting ever more thorough. In some places they install tracking devices in every auto, presumably to "more fairly" assess road taxes. The emergency services telephone operators have access to a cellular phone's GPS equipment to precisely locate a caller, and phones without this equipment are generally not available. More and more public cameras observe the comings and goings of citizens about their daily chores.

A tyrant with this much information would not find it challenging to silence dissent, discreetly.

Re:It was not always so

[photonic]

Let them call the FBI/CIA, I would be surprised if they didn't already have the technology to connect every available database 20 years ago. To think that you can stay anonymous from the government is an illusion. Which of course makes it all the more important to have proper privacy laws and check-guards. Let them search around all they want, but not without a court order or (in case of national intelligence) a high official signing off.

Founding fathers

[philspear]

The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections. Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today. Some of our founding forefathers thought that slavery was alright. Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.

It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.

I usually run up against this when the constitution seems to disagree with my liberal leanings (I'm sure someone will want to get into a pointless discussion of the second amendment, but we've all been down that road), but it's not limited to just that, and I'm sure it runs both ways.

More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections.

Or... They did anticipate it but expected it to work out both ways. On some areas one side uses such tactics, on others the other side. Technically it should still work out the way that the majority wins. Unless other side is less willing to use such tactics but then they might just not support their side enough, they might be too cowardly, etc... Remember that pacifism wasn't common in the time we are talking about. Maybe they were just assholes.

Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.

Wait, what? Don't your bills state "In god we trust"? Is it not correct that religious organizations don't need to pay taxes like others? Is it not true that people can get married in certain churches but not in some? What you have is nowhere NEAR separation of church and state. Because that would be too marxist or something. (As you all should know, the "In god we trust" was added during the cold war to make separation to the communism)

It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.

I know. When talking to americans about politics, founding fathers seem to be held as godlike figures. One person says "That works as the founding fathers intended..." and other responds "Yes, but they specifically warned against this other thing that is happening"... WHAT DOES IT MATTER WHAT THEY THOUGHT? It only matters if it works well or not.

Re:Founding fathers

[MindlessAutomata]

I agree with you on the fact that people treat what the founding father's said as gospel too much, however, the constitution can be amended AND, well, do you really want the ultimate law of the land to be whatever the government says it is at the time? It's bad enough as it right now with the current flagrant abuses.

I suspect it's that pesky 2nd amendment you want to get rid of the most.

Re:Founding fathers

[symbolset]

People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I wonder where they got that idea? Maybe from the founding fathers themselves?

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

How about elaborating on your proposed constitutional amendment and how there's "clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around."

While I don't think that we need to vote for "electors", I do see real value in the original federalist principle of state-based government instead of a straight popular vote.

Frankly, if you want to disagree with the Founders, at least attempt to reason at a similar strength as they did. The i-pod in your pocket doesn't give your ideas any extra merit.

Re:Founding fathers

[Jonas the Bold]

They're regarded as they are because the freedoms in the constitution weren't exactly meant as a means to an end. Freedom and rights aren't a means to achieve a prosperous and safe society, they're ends unto themselves. So if free speech is dangerous to prosperity and safety, it's not enough of a reason to restrict it. The same with the right to bear arms.

Although it is all a matter of gray areas, since although the founding fathers referred to the US as an experiment (there were much safer ways to have a government), they also said the constitution isn't a suicide pact.

But if it seems like we care about preserving the constitution even when certain parts seem to be harmful, it's because we believe in carrying on this experiment. I agree that the founding fathers have no place in a debate about what the optimal permitted level of gun ownership is, but they do have a place in the argument about whether or not it's a right- something like speech that shouldn't be restricted for the sake of safety.

They were also political geniuses, especially the likes of Jefferson. It turned out that result of their grand experiment was the most prosperous nation on earth, which ended up having a natural aversion to communism, monarchy, theocracy and fascism, all of which are now relegated to the garbage can of history. So speaking on a practical level, that now even if the experiment is over and proven it may be advisable to allow their foresight to guide us a while longer.

Re:Founding fathers

[j. andrew rogers]

More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around.

If you read the US Constitution, you will realize that it is the States that vote for the President, and that the President represents the States, not the People. That would seem to be an obvious legitimate reason to keep the electoral college around. To get rid of the electoral college, you would have to get rid of the States. The popular vote theater is a 20th century invention, and arguably one of dubious value at that.

One of the big problems in the US is not that we do not elect the Federal President by popular vote, but that so many people who insist on offering their opinion on how we should change the system have no bloody clue how it currently works. The level of ignorance on this topic makes the argument for why the Federal elections, outside of the House of Representatives, have traditionally been firewalled from the popular vote.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

Frankly, if you want to disagree with the Founders, at least attempt to reason at a similar strength as they did. The i-pod in your pocket doesn't give your ideas any extra merit.

It's actually a nomad jukebox, the discman-sized one, thank you very much.

The strongest reason is that the primary reasons I've heard for it's existence in the first place are no longer concerns. One idea was that you needed an electoral college because someone could get the nomination of a party and fool the nation, especially since back in the drafting days, most citizens wouldn't ever see a speech by the canidate. As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened.

The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.

So their reasons appear to have no strength and are based off of false predictions.

Against the electoral college is what is for me the most convincing argument: that it makes the "One citizen one vote" ideal a joke. Citizens in less populated state have more of a vote than citizens in more populated states. Three times now, that has meant the candidate who more citizens voted for did not get the presidency.

This is a good visual presentation of counties distorted by population and how they voted in kerry V bush
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/countycartredbluelarge.png

I can see advantages of the electoral college, but none that justify why one citizen should get a bigger vote than another.

Re:Founding fathers

[Neoprofin]

They rarely switch their votes because in something like 36 states they're legally bound to vote with the popular vote, and in every state I'd ever heard of the electors are chosen by the party that wins, who obviously have no reason to vote against their own party.

The point of the electoral college at this point is not the safeguard against the uneducated masses that it originally (partially) was. The other half of the formation of the Electoral College was that it balanced out the political power of the states to prevent candidates from neglecting entire section of the nation, something that was a very real possibility then and remains one now.

Truth be told, it rarely makes a difference, but just as you think there's little reason to keep it I think there's absolutely no reason to get rid of it.

Re:Founding fathers

[Junior J. Junior III]

The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections.

Then why would the founding fathers consider secret balloting cowardly? Clearly, they must have anticipated violence, and just felt that not standing up to it and casting your vote written in your own blood if necessary was cowardly. If they hadn't considered the possibility of violence, then they wouldn't have been able to arrive at any sort of conclusion that secret balloting was cowardly.

Re:Founding fathers

[jonaskoelker]

isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote?

While you're at it, could you please fix--kill off, that is--the two-party system? Have a look at Condorcet voting and the Schulze method.

If you're a math geek, read wikipedia's proof of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Election theory is an interesting subject.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.

It always strikes me as predictable that you arrogant wankers are willing to compromise all of the rights you don't want. No, the constitution wasn't handed down by god, and Yes, it should be updated from time to time, but not as casually as you suggest.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

To get rid of the electoral college, you would have to get rid of the States.

That's absurd nonsense. It never actually worked out that way, again because the founders' crystal ball didn't work. They foresaw presidential elections as always being decided by congress only because they didn't foresee parties and a clear majority every time. By your standards, the states are already destroyed because they don't actually elect the president because with the two party system, there's always a majority.

The reality is that the people are voting for the president, but indirectly, through a system that distorts the value of their vote based on geography.

I personally don't see much wrong with destroying states anyway, as they tend to be made up of even worse politicians. In practice, there's less scrutiny on them and more room for them to engage in corruption and incompetence. Keep in mind that state legislatures were the ones that passed the Jim Crow laws, are where women's rights are being peeled back the most effectively, and are one of the places creationists have had sucesses in their attack on evolution. But that's beside the point. Popular vote will not change anything as far as states go.

One of the big problems in the US is not that we do not elect the Federal President by popular vote, but that so many people who insist on offering their opinion on how we should change the system have no bloody clue how it currently works.

Keep in mind that faithless electors have played a very trivial role, especially in recent times. The only real difference between a popular vote and the current system is that each citizen's votes will be equal. A Wyoming citizen should not get a better vote than a Californian citizen.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

I suspect it's that pesky 2nd amendment you want to get rid of the most.

Surprise! It's actually the 3rd one. People SHOULD be forced to quarter troops in their houses! It's UNPATRIOTIC to deny soldiers room and board!

Re:Founding fathers

[Whiteox]

because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates (sic)
and
Citizens in less populated state have more of a vote than citizens in more populated states. Three times now, that has meant the candidate who more citizens voted for did not get the presidency.

Firstly, what is wrong with Party Politics is a lack of choice. If you vote for Bush - you vote for Republican policies, even though you may disagree with a minority of them.
If you vote for Kerry, then you vote for Democrats policies in toto. Why? Many voters have to take the bad with the good. Voters also has to accept the endorsed vice presidential candidate as well. Maybe nothing can be done about this.

Secondly, 1 vote/citizen is possible and works very well in Australia. There are problems like Preferential voting and Proportional voting that skews figures, but not as bad as the electoral college system. That isn't transparent at all.
For example, if Obama, Clinton, McCain, Paul, Palin and other candidates for the presidency were run independently (no party politics involved, no set policies, no electoral college), then who will win?
Who's the best person for the job?
I always go back to the democratic foundations of ancient Athenian Greece where it was one vote per citizen and there was true debate in the town forum and citizens voted on potsherds with the mark of the person they wanted. Simple and effective.

Re:Founding fathers

[dwye]

> While you're at it, could you please fix--kill off, that is--the two-party system?

You don't want that. You want to kill off those who would vote for either of the two parties (assuming that you REALLY don't want to kill off just one of the two).

Face it, if you get two small parties who agree enough, they merge, eventually producing just two or three, and all the weighted/repeated voting schemes in the world then produce the exact result as now. The only way to avoid that is to elect one of the losers, not the winner, so that some parties must act as "spoilers" for others.

The USA has had a one party system at times, and a couple parties arose, which then merged back into the Democratic party or among themselves to reform a variation of the Federalist/Whig/Republican Party. There are lots of small parties claiming to be the "third" party, but none gets much traction for long, and they stay as jokes for the major parties and Jay Leno. The states without such usually are places where they fell below the point that their presence would have mattered in the first place.

We had four "major" parties in the 1860 election, by 1868 we were back to the exact same two as ran in 1856. We had NO parties at the start, yet it quickly coalesced into just two big parties. Alas for you, it appears that two is the bottom of the "energy" slope, not ten, so people shift parties rather than make new ones (e.g., see the original definition of "neocon", which was Reagan Democrats who later changed registrations, like Jeanne Fitzpatrick, while retaining a belief in Wilsonian Intervention For Their Own Good).

Re:Founding fathers

[orzetto]

Citizens in less populated state have more of a vote than citizens in more populated states.

Worse than that, only battleground-state citizen count at all. When is the last time California, New York, Utah or Texas got some attention from a presidential candidate? Instead, Ohio, Florida, Missouri and a few others steal all the show. I was reading on Obama's website for the state of Alaska, and I found out that their activism is *gasp* calling people in Colorado and Nevada!

The absurd thing is, I heard arguments going like "with the electoral college the candidates have to consider the countryside, not just the large cities"! But obviously, when campaigning in Florida and Ohio, candidates do concentrate on cities—that's where most people are. Plus, sparsely populated states like Idaho, Wyoming and Kansas will never get a visit because they are so skewed for one side.

Personally I find the electoral vote insulting: it makes the votes of the majority of the population of the US almost useless, since they already know who is going to win their state: this makes their vote useless not just in a predicted landslide (as the current election), but also in elections where it comes down to a few votes, like 2000 and 2004. And people wonder why so few Americans bother to vote at all?

Re:Founding fathers

[dwye]

As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened.

The Electoral "College" never meets anywhere; electors from each state meet somewhere IN that state to vote, and then the results are passed up, probably to the Secretary Of State, or perhaps originally to the Speaker Of The House.

The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.

Well, this is clearly nonsense, as they never did that, and given that all the Signers of the Constitution *knew* that Washington would be elected, never would have, even from the start. Further proof that Vox Wikipedia Non Est Vox Dei.

Re:Founding fathers

[Whiteox]

To get rid of the electoral college, you would have to get rid of the States
I'm no expert on USA constitution and voting structure and I'm not ignorant, but many democratic countries don't have an equivalent to the electoral college.
I can't see the problem in each State voting in a Govenor, giving the ability for each elected Govenor to be a presidential candidate. That's one option approaching 1 vote/citizen.

Re:Founding fathers

[Boronx]

"they also said the constitution isn't a suicide pact."

I don't think anyone as long ago as the founders said this, and it's a detestable sentiment since it cheapens the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in service to the Constitution.

Re:Founding fathers

[dwye]

I always go back to the democratic foundations of ancient Athenian Greece where it was one vote per citizen and there was true debate in the town forum and citizens voted on potsherds with the mark of the person they wanted. Simple and effective.

Voting on potsherds (ostrakon) was for something else. I will let you guess what.

The voting population of Attika never exceeded 200,000 out of about one million, and probably never reached 150,000. That is well exceeded by any US Representative's district. Also, try getting the total population of Alaska, or any other one House member state, to meet in one place. Attika could do it because it was the size of a medium-sized US county, and had lots of women, slaves, and resident foreigners to keep the place running while the Assembly met.

Re:Founding fathers

[Petrushka]

I always go back to the democratic foundations of ancient Athenian Greece where it was one vote per citizen and there was true debate in the town forum and citizens voted on potsherds with the mark of the person they wanted. Simple and effective.

Just FYI: that's not quite accurate. (I take it that you're thinking of democratic Athens, rather than any other state in Greece.) The only state officials who were elected by the populace were military generals; all other posts -- council-members, various kinds of representatives and bureaucrats, juries, etc. -- were appointed randomly. The Athenians regarded voting for representatives as fundamentally undemocratic. Voting in the assembly was done by a show of hands; writing names on potsherds was only for ostracisms (i.e. imposing a 10-year exile on any citizen if it was decided that political affairs were being unduly dominated by one individual).

Before idealising that system, it's worth bearing in mind that the Athenian democratic regime was extremely fickle and responsible for some appalling atrocities.

Re:Founding fathers

[Whiteox]

Oops! My goof. I was ostracized from my Ancient History class.
As for the rest? I hate that practicalities often ruin a great concept.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea was to help prevent populist movements and keep with the idea the US was a democratic republic, not a democracy.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

Well, this is clearly nonsense, as they never did that, and given that all the Signers of the Constitution *knew* that Washington would be elected, never would have, even from the start. Further proof that Vox Wikipedia Non Est Vox Dei.

And it's striking that Washington was the ONLY president who was not part of a political party (wiki tells me Tyler was expelled from his party, so that's technically another one, but that's a strange event and from wiki anyway). I doubt the forefathers expected that there would always be one clear choice like washington, which is why they weren't expecting anyone to get a clear majority of the votes and were expecting the senate to pick the president usually.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

The Electoral College is present for the same reason there are 100 Senators, yet 438 members of the House of Representatives. Your Civics textbook from 6th grade should have covered that.

Re:Founding fathers

[Bartab]

More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote?

No, but feel free to try. Get right on that constitutional amendment.

It should be noted, that in this election cycle the popular vote currently makes it a statistical tie between McCain and Obama. Obama may be slightly ahead, but not enough to beat the margin of error. However, when you sit down with state based polls and an electoral calculator, it's a complete washout.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

No, but feel free to try. Get right on that constitutional amendment.

Well, I never said it was GOING to happen anytime soon! Maybe if Obama loses the popular vote but wins the electoral vote...

Who am I kidding? The right and left would just call each other hypocrites once more and nothing would change.

Re:Founding fathers

[jonadab]

> More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished
> the electoral college and go right to a popular vote?

That would have... consequences.

Right now, elections are decided in the swing states, which tend to be populated with a fair percentage of moderates, so both parties sort of temper their views and stay away from the extremes. This leaves both conservatives and liberals somewhat dissatisfied, but it also leaves us able to live in the same country without killing one another most of the time.

Consider that moving to a strict popular vote system would *instantly* transform election politics from the current tactic (of trying to win over the moderate swing voters) into an all-out get-out-the-vote campaign in the areas that are solidly one way or the other (urban versus rural).

It is my considered opinion that abolishing the electoral college would start us down the path toward, eventually, a second civil war.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

I don't buy that logic, it assumes that there are more votes to be gained by convincing your own base to get up off their lazy asses than there are by convincing independants that you're their guy. I don't think that's very realistic, I would hypothesize that it would still be more effective to get the moderate vote than to just get all of your own party to vote for you.

It's also worth pointing out that the electoral college focuses the emphasis on state VS state, and the only civil war we've had thus far is state VS state, not right VS left.

Re:Founding fathers

[Max Littlemore]

It turned out that result of their grand experiment was the most prosperous nation on earth, which ended up having a natural aversion to communism, monarchy, theocracy and fascism, all of which are now relegated to the garbage can of history.

I'll accept communism and monarchy, but the US has definite fascist and theocratic undertones. The Bush administration has shown that neo-conservatism is really just fascism++, as evidenced by wonderful legislation like the patriot act.

The power that religious groups wield, the abortion debate, same sex marriage, etc, are indicators of the theocratic elements - the large demographic that believes that their religious dogma should be enshrined in law. Even the fact that "In God we trust" appears on stamps.

I'm certainly not saying the entire population of the US are fascist/religious nut jobs, but there certainly are represented well enough to destroy any claim to a "natural aversion".

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

The President doesn't represent citizens, he represents the States. That is why only the States were granted the power to elect him.

Re:Founding fathers

[j. andrew rogers]

At no point in your incoherent rant did you actually string together a reasonable objection, and so I will take it to mean that you really do not have one. You also prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are one of those people that really does not understand the structure of the US government. Ironically, it was State governments that gave women and non-whites franchise *long* before the Federal government did, some since before there was a United States, but if we did things your way we would have taken the vote away from women and blacks, sacrificed on the altar of Federal power. Maybe that was your desire.

As a practical matter, I would point out that State governments are more accountable than the Federal ones, and that many States have *lost* a considerable amount of freedom and sane policy because they were over-ruled by idiots at the Federal level. The protection State power (nominally) provides is that it is a firewall from political stupidity, allowing a diversity of policy that allows people to escape foolishness that offends them. Centralization of power seems like a good idea at the Federal level until morons seize control of it for a while, which seems to be a frequent occurrence. One would have to be grossly inadequate in one's history education to think strong central power will not eventually fall into the hands of less than savory folk. And it is at those times that you wish the firewall of State power had not been eroded by idealistic ninnies such as yourself.

Re:Founding fathers

[McNally]

they also said the constitution isn't a suicide pact

They never said that, nor does it make any sense to believe that the men who pledged "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor," to the revolution in the Declaration of Independence would, by the time the Constitution was adopted, have concluded "you know, this freedom stuff's OK, but it's not worth dying for.."

The "not a suicide pact" meme is pretty close to the antithesis of the spirit that moved the founders of this country, and like the previous commenter I consider it a detestable sentiment.

Re:Founding fathers

[bar-agent]

I can't see the problem in each State voting in a Govenor, giving the ability for each elected Govenor to be a presidential candidate. That's one option approaching 1 vote/citizen.

Each state already has a governor that is the head of that state's executive branch. If I've voted in a governor I like, I don't them to leave and run for president! I'd rather have them running my state.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

One would have to be grossly inadequate in one's history education to think strong central power will not eventually fall into the hands of less than savory folk. And it is at those times that you wish the firewall of State power had not been eroded by idealistic ninnies such as yourself.

One would have to be pretty immature to stoop to that level of personal attacks just because someone else disagreed with them. Where's all this anger coming from? Sure, you may deeply disagree with me, but this is just empty discussion. There's really no need for name-calling.

Anyway, your argument falls apart when you realize state governments are already populated by idiots because there is no scrutiny. Voters barely care what their national representatives and senators are doing. Oops, am I ranting incoherently again?

Re:Founding fathers

[James_Duncan8181]

"It should be noted, that in this election cycle the popular vote currently makes it a statistical tie between McCain and Obama. Obama may be slightly ahead, but not enough to beat the margin of error. However, when you sit down with state based polls and an electoral calculator, it's a complete washout."

what

Weighted averages: Obama 51.5%, McCain 44.3%. Just how big do you think the margin of error is?

Re:Founding fathers

[Anspen]

,i>The point of the electoral college at this point is not the safeguard against the uneducated masses that it originally (partially) was. The other half of the formation of the Electoral College was that it balanced out the political power of the states to prevent candidates from neglecting entire section of the nation, something that was a very real possibility then and remains one now.

It happens just as much *with* the electoral college. How much attentions is payed to the interests of Texas or New York in this election? How much add dollars are spend on South Carolina or Rhode Island?

Without an Electoral College candidates might not give a lot of speeches in Wyoming or Iowa, but they'd still try to woo the farmers, the blue collar workers or veterans. And those are the ones Presidents actually can help or hinder. And if a group was ignored by one side, you can bet that the other side would be quick to woo them.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anspen]

While you're at it, could you please fix--kill off, that is--the two-party system? Have a look at Condorcet voting and the Schulze method.

I'd settle for a runoff if no candidate gets > 50%. That should give third parties a fighting chance without changing the system too much (other solutions would be better, but Concordet voting and the likes would run into "too complicated" objections and any kind of proportional voting would require a complete overhaul of the system; very unlikely).

Re:Founding fathers

[Anspen]

For me *the* most convincing argument is the 2000 elections. No, not the Florida farce, the popular vote thing. If you accept Bush won Florida, he still lost the popular vote by a significant margin. In many ways it's unfortunate that the hanging chad thing got in the way of that issue. (strangely enough, before the election there assumption was that the result would be reversed, EV win for Gore, PV win for Bush and the Bush camp had a whole argument planned for why Elector should therefore choose Bush or turn it over to Congress).The idea that the *second* most popular candidate becomes president hard to accept as being democratic.

The same, but to a lesser degree, goes for elections like the 1992 one. Clinton winning with 43% of the vote against 57% for a combined Bush/Perot total seems less than just.

One man one vote (a opposed to a Wyoming vote being 4 times as important as a Texas vote) is a good second though.

Re:Founding fathers

[garett_spencley]

"The power that religious groups wield, the abortion debate, same sex marriage, etc, are indicators of the theocratic elements"

While the abortion debate obviously has many people from religious groups on the "pro-life" side, I don't think that particular issue has much to do with religion. You can be an atheist and still consider a fetus to be a human being deserving of all the same rights that fully born and matured human beings are afforded.

I'm not trying to argue my side. I happen to be more liberal on that issue. I just don't think it's fair to blame religious groups for the issue existing since it has nothing to do with religion.

The same sex marriage debate on the other hand, I'll give you that one. What really bothers me is that if there is a separation of church and state, and Obama's position (to take a more liberal view) is that the government should not be "re-defining" what "marriage" is since that's best left up to the states and faith groups, then why is it a legal institution ? Why does the government define it at all ? Why do marriage licenses exist and why does the government have anything at all to do with marriage ?

Re:Founding fathers

[kabocox]

More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.

It may be a great thing for large states, but for small states the current system is better. Heck that's why we have the senate; it was a comprise because otherwise we wouldn't be the US. The constitution wouldn't have been ratified without smaller population states having equal power to larger population states in some form. I find it funny that everyone that wants to change things in that way comes from a large state.

I'm alot less impressed with the founding fathers than the average person, but I'm not sure it's a great idea to change stuff willy nilly. We've been changing stuff since just after it was ratified. Look how much we've bent alot of pieces of it and have tried our hardest apparently to put as many rules and regulations up as to gut a few of them. The 2nd is the obvious target lately, but really the 1st is also taken alot of pounding. Of course alot of people don't if really note the rest. There is a part of me that thinks that we need to add a few more. Like a right to data privacy and a right to use various drugs (be it beer, smoking tobacco, or harder stuff). Even if got something like that passed, it would take less than 10 years for someone to try to gut them with rules and regulations.

Re:Founding fathers

[jc42]

The same sex marriage debate on the other hand, I'll give you that one. What really bothers me is that if there is a separation of church and state, and Obama's position (to take a more liberal view) is that the government should not be "re-defining" what "marriage" is since that's best left up to the states and faith groups, then why is it a legal institution ? Why does the government define it at all ? Why do marriage licenses exist and why does the government have anything at all to do with marriage ?

Mostly because there are legal effects of marriage, easily found in such places as laws on taxes, property ownership, responsibility for children, etc. And note that in most US states (and in a lot of other countries), there is a distinction between a "civil" marriage (registered with the state) and a "religious" marriage (registered with a religious body). You can be married in either sense or both.

For example, I've lived in Massachusetts for about 25 years now, and this state legalized same-sex marriage 4 years ago. But I attended same-sex weddings years before that. These were religious marriages, but weren't civil marriages. In one, two women friends were married in a (very liberal) Jewish synagogue. At one point in the service, the rabbi commented that the state may not know about or recognize this marriage, but God is present and knows, and that's what's important.

This is nothing new in American society. One of the reasons is that, before the Revolution, most of the Colonies had an established church, and that church usually wouldn't perform marriages for non-members. Thus in most of the Colonies, Quakers (or Jews, Muslims, slaves, etc.) couldn't legally marry. They did marry, in their own church, but this was usually not recognized by the legal system. This often caused problems. Thus, in some states, a couple's property was legally owned by the man, and when he died, his property went to his relatives. They could evict his widow, claim all his money, sell his property, whatever, and she had no legal recourse.

One of the reasons that the "separation of church and state" was put in the US constitution was an attempt to end such practices and allow anyone to marry. The eventual result was that most states now just define a "civil" marriage (and a registration fee ;-) without need for a religious service. Most Americans still have a religious wedding service, but it's common to point out that a couple is legally married as soon as the state's marriage registration is signed and notarized. A wedding ceremony is a social custom, but not required by law for the marriage to be valid.

There are some interesting anomalies that result from the civil/religious distinction. Thus, the Catholic church often doesn't recognize divorces, and refuses to recognize a second marriage, so Catholics may have a religious marriage to a different person than the state considers their spouse. The Mormon church outlawed plural marriages, but only in civil marriages; a Mormon man may still have several religious marriages ("marriage in heaven") with several women. A similar situation exists among American Muslims. In both cases, plural marriages are actually rare and aren't widely publicised, but they reportedly exist and would be recognized by the appropriate religious courts.

As often happens, the legal system's handling of marriage is complex and messy. Especially when married people move to a different jurisdiction than their original marriage was registered with.

Re:Founding fathers

[Explodicle]

We already have "a strong central power in the hands of less than savory folk" because of the electoral college you support. Let's not dance around the issue: George W. Bush would not have been elected if not for the electoral college. Your theory is based on on strawman arguments(1), elitism(2), and ad hominem(3), and is completely disproven by the reality we have faced since 2001.

(1) "...we would have taken the vote away from women and blacks, sacrificed on the altar of Federal power. Maybe that was your desire."
(2) "One would have to be grossly inadequate in one's history education to think..."
(3) "...idealistic ninnies such as yourself."

Re:Founding fathers

[Chapter80]

To get rid of the electoral college, you would have to get rid of the States.

Not so. There is a very creative plan to work around the Electoral College, and use the popular vote, that is a real bill in many states right now. The way the STATE bill reads, it says that, by state law, if enough states pass a similar law, ALL of the Electoral College votes for that state be cast to the winner of the NATIONAL popular vote. Read about it here.

Re:Founding fathers

[corbettw]

As someone else pointed out, if you want to abolish the electoral college, then push to amend the Constitution. We're not just going to start ignoring parts of it because you don't like them.

Re:Founding fathers

[FiloEleven]

Anyway, your argument falls apart when you realize state governments are already populated by idiots because there is no scrutiny. Voters barely care what their national representatives and senators are doing.

Americans on the whole don't care about politics. The presidential election is like another Superbowl or a horse race, only the winner is the one who makes the most exciting promises to the majority of the people.

I agree with the GP that state governments are very important and should be considered more important than the federal government. The individual states should (and often do) have a lot of control over what goes on inside them. There are even variances at the county level. This is a good thing! What works for Philadelphia may not work for Pittsburgh, and is even less likely to work for Dallas or LA -- and those are all urban centers, arguably more similar to each other than to the rural areas next door to them.

The real problem is that we have been trained to ignore local politics in favor of the national horse race. This is the reason for state governments being "populated by idiots." Voters barely care what their national representatives and senators are doing because they don't have the celebrity draw of presidents, and because we are given only the highlights that the media wants us to hear -- if it doesn't make for a sensational 30-second synopsis, it doesn't get reported.

Now, with the Internet generation this can change and I believe it is changing. The fact that Slashdot added a politics section shows that people are more interested. They're talking about another record turnout for the election tomorrow. The remaining cultural hurdle is the idea that the federal government is the only one that matters.

This idea exists because in the current environment it's mostly true. A lot of social laws (abortion, drugs, etc.) are either directly set by the federal government or are ostensibly left up to the states but with the caveat that passing a law that the federal government doesn't like leads to the federal money teat drying up (in any other circumstance we call this "blackmail").

The idea also exists because local politics aren't really discussed or reported often. The structure for doing so used to be "chatting with the neighbors," but many people don't know their neighbors anymore. In the next 5-10 years, once all these new voters realize that Obama has nothing new to offer, we will see a growth of third party political sites and discussion groups. Due to their lack of big media christening, these organizations are necessarily grassroots in nature. When you have a grassroots movement that is more than a "get out the vote" campaign, a focus on local politics is almost always present. Once people are paying attention, the quality of their local elected officials will improve by leaps and bounds.

The times, they are a-changin'.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

it makes the votes of the majority of the population of the US almost useless, since they already know who is going to win their state

The only way to change this is to stop being the silent majority. Get out there and vote for a 3rd party candidate. It doesn't matter who, because they won't get in this year, but you can probably find one who matches up with your values pretty well. The duopoly has lasted too long and is a major cause of most of the problems we as a country face today, from terrorism to the erosion of recognized rights, from the economic collapse to <shit, I got nothing for a fourth>. Power has been leaking from the states to the federal government for a hundred years, and the only way to keep even the nominal existence of two parties for another hundred is to force them to recognize at least a third.

Be silent no more.

Re:Founding fathers

[sac13]

The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections. Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today. Some of our founding forefathers thought that slavery was alright. Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.

It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.

I usually run up against this when the constitution seems to disagree with my liberal leanings (I'm sure someone will want to get into a pointless discussion of the second amendment, but we've all been down that road), but it's not limited to just that, and I'm sure it runs both ways.

More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.

I agree... to an extent. The electoral college is a joke and the founders were far from perfect in creating the system. However, I'd have to say they did fairly well for their time period.

Personally, I think we should do away entirely with the election of POTUS. We place way too much emphasis on what can be done by the president. The position is really just about running government from day to day. The real power of our system lies in congress.

I'd prefer to see us switch to a parlimentary system where the president is chosen by the Congress. Then, people would actually take note of their congress critters and do a better job (I'd hope) of keeping them in line. They're really the ones that can screw us. The president is mostly a figure head bureaucratic position. He doesn't make laws. He is responsible for enforcing them. However, he doesn't even have the power to decide who's guilty of breaking them or not. That's left to the Judiciary.

The entire president pop show really just distracts people from paying attention to those that have the real power. The re-election rate for Congress is somewhere near 90%. That's because we've been fooled into thinking that they aren't as important as POTUS.

What we need to get is a proper perspective on where REAL change (not the bumper sticker/empty platitude kind) can occur. Keep sending the same old politicians back to Congress and nothings going to change except what specifics they use to keep the people distracted.

Re:Founding fathers

[IronChef]

I don't want to get into a conversation about the Electoral College (we've all been down that road!) but I do want to point out that getting rid of it would take an amendment to the Constitution.

In other words, to do it legally, you would have to convince many states to give up some of their power. And that's what the EC is for--it provides a disproportionate amount of power to smaller states, making their will count for more than their population size alone.

Getting those states to give up that power will be difficult, to say the least!

Re:Founding fathers

[dwye]

> And it's striking that Washington was the ONLY president who was not part of a political party

Only formally. His actions were obviously those of a confirmed Federalist.

> (wiki tells me Tyler was expelled from his party, so
> that's technically another one, but that's a strange
> event and from wiki anyway).

John Tyler was expelled from the Northern branch of the Democratic Party for becoming a Confederate Member of *their* House, but this occurred long after his Presidency ended.

Note, I never said that Wikipedia is *always* to be disbelieved.

Re:Founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today.

And why do you suppose that is? Was it just a fad of that era? Or is it not an issue today precisely because the Bill of Rights did make it illegal?

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

Right, which is just one of many reasons I'm not running for congress! Idly talking about "Man, someone should change that" is, of course, much much much easier. I'd vote for someone who was all about getting rid of it, but yeah, I can't see any realistic circumstances in which the electoral college is going away, and it's a darn shame.

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

Cause and effect is clearly an issue, but let's be honest, if they got rid of the third amendment today, nothing would actually change, the military has no interest in making or even asking you to give soldiers room and board. My point was merely that the forefathers did not give us a plan that would remain 100% relevant forever, as today it has only historical significance.

Re:Founding fathers

[mattsqz]

a six pack, at least here in the states, is 6x12oz=72oz, or more beer than a 40 ;)

Re:Founding fathers

[philspear]

And also more $$$, it's an economy joke.

Re:Founding fathers

[Cowmonaut]

"As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened."

Funnily enough, the first time Bush was elected people thought he was 'just the same' as Gore would be. The second time he was elected a lot of Republicans still hadn't realized just how a bad job he was doing.

Now you have a LOT of Republicans, and hardcore Republican states, jumping ship and voting for Obama.

Oh and don't get me wrong. Bush isn't evil (Cheney *might* be). He's actually a nice guy according to most everyone that meets him, even people that are political enemies of his, but he's totally out of his depth.

The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.

The electoral college was put there because mob rule is a no win situation for everyone. The entire idea was to distill votes down so people can have a reasonable debate about it and elect the best candidate.

Also, your supposed to be able to throw up any party you would like, or create one on the spur of the moment. Every time nowadays when someone tries that, every single media outlet tells you its a bad idea and you should vote Democrat or Republican, no matter what.

A lot of people think that Democrat and Republican parties are mentioned in the Constitution!

Anyways, no system is perfect. Pushing Amendments is hard. It is best to have an idea of what to replace it with before suggesting we do, even informally. People tend to get touchy about important things.

Re:Founding fathers

[mattsqz]

and here i thought you were saying you drank more under bush ;) i know i am/was

witch trials and letters would be better.

[tjstork]

You know, they really should bring back the scarlet letter and witch trials. I mean, if someone sitting next to you got a promotion that you didn't, you would be able to start the whispering campaign that your rival cut a deal with Satan.

Re:witch trials and letters would be better.

[Anonymous Coward]

But once everyone's wearing a letter, how would we ever manage to shame everyone into obeying the will of the clergy?!

Re:witch trials and letters would be better.

[Elranzer]

"If smoking hot chicks that put out had to wear a scarlet letter, what's really so bad about that, if you are a guy?"

True. I'd personally like to easily know who all the sluts were.

Re:witch trials and letters would be better.

[Dr. Cody]

The scarlet tribal tattoo?

Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[tjstork]

Republicans in the USA tend to believe that not everyone should be allowed to vote. Specifically, we would ultimately prefer that only people who own property should be allowed to vote in order to prevent the socialist idea of masses voting themselves wealth transfers from upper classes. Therefor, voter registration would be a separate process as it was a different set of people.

However, we lost this debate utterly to the Democrats, and so, more or less, have this idea that everyone should be allowed to vote, but with the vestiges of a separate process until such time that we Republicans can really get back into power and repeal that god-awful Constitutional amendment.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[dwye]

As opposed to Democrats, who believe that everyone's vote should count (as long as they vote the right way, and then, ideally, count several times). They, therefore, like registration as long as it does not involve extensive checking or purging the rolls as people die or move, because it lets us shuttle people around to vote in multiple precincts as multiple people, either imaginary, moved, or dead.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[tjstork]

I was actually serious in my post. Republicans -don't- believe that everyone should have the right to vote. I mean, imagine how much less entitlements there would be on the budget if you had to a certain net worth to vote?

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[narcberry]

Fun facts:

Republicans supported black suffrage (being targeted by the KKK after the 15th amendment, and had greater support, as a percentage, for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than democrats)

Republicans fought womans suffrage.

If women could not vote, no democrat would have served as president of the United States in the previous 50 years.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Free the Cowards]

Everybody I've ever met believes that not everyone should have the right to vote.

I've never met anyone who thinks that a 6-year-old child should be able to vote, for example.

Perhaps you think this is facetious, but what is so magical about the age of 18 that suddenly makes you competent to vote? Is it really that different from owning property, having a certain amount of money, or being male?

Limiting the franchise is pretty much universally agreed upon. It's just a question of where to draw the line.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bush administration started a crackdown on such activity after claims of voter fraud emerged. In a five year period only 120 people were accused of actual election fraud, and only 86 of those were convicted. Nationwide. That simply is not enough to sway elections. Unless you have some other evidence...
Article

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bush Administration Department of Justice made it a priority to prosecute exactly this type of crime. They found something like 100 prosecutable cases, with maybe 80 convictions. Despite your fantasies to the contrary, actual voter fraud, at least committed by Democrats (the only kind the Bush Administration Department of Justice would care about) just doesn't happen in any significant amount.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

Fun facts:

Republicans supported black suffrage (being targeted by the KKK after the 15th amendment, and had greater support, as a percentage, for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than democrats)

Republicans fought womans suffrage.

If women could not vote, no democrat would have served as president of the United States in the previous 50 years.

This was a completely different Republican party doing those things then today. If you know your American history then you know that at a few points in our history the major party's ideologies have changed in drastic ways. The Republican party you're referring to has quite a few similarities to our modern Democrats.

The modern Republican party, to which you seem to be trying to bolster the image of with these claims, really only took shape after Southern Democrats (of which the majority of them were given that they wanted nothing to do with those darn Republicans freeing the slaves and giving them the right to vote) left the Democratic party in droves because of their support for the civil rights movement. They merged with Northern economic conservatives and bam, you have the modern Republican party.

Kind of a shady history for the current manifestation of the party if you ask me.

 

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

I've never met anyone who thinks that a 6-year-old child should be able to vote, for example.

Perhaps you think this is facetious, but what is so magical about the age of 18 that suddenly makes you competent to vote? Is it really that different from owning property, having a certain amount of money, or being male?

Yes actually it's actually incredibly different. A six year old does not have the mental capacity to even understand politics. Meanwhile, an adult who does not own property, is poor, or is a women generally has the cognitive abilities to form a decently educated opinion in regards to how they should vote, assuming they put the effort into it.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Free the Cowards]

Lots of people over 18 do not possess the cognitive capabilities needed to understand politics. Lots of people aged 17 do. If cognitive capability is your marker then that's what you should require, not how many times the Earth has gone round the Sun since you popped out of a vagina.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[dryeo]

Why would there be less entitlements if only the rich were allowed to vote? I think that there would be tons of entitlements, just that the flow would be from the poor to the rich.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

I will agree that 18 is an arbitrary point but the line has to be drawn somewhere given that age should, for obvious cognitive reasons, be a factor in determining who votes. Your point certainly doesn't disprove your own statements that six-year-olds should not vote. Perhaps the age limit should be 16? Perhaps it should be 20? Small details on the subject of who should vote given your broader implications on the subject of who should vote.

Furthermore, none of what you state changes the fact that using property ownership, wealth, or gender (all examples of yours) as a means of determining who votes is not only illogical but immoral.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Free the Cowards]

Age is no more logical and I'd question as to whether it's really any more moral.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

So you're not refuting what I said in that you are essentially claiming that outlawing a six-year-old from voting (your own example) is the moral and logical equivalent of outlawing a women from voting?

How completely apaling.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Free the Cowards]

No, I'm claiming that age discrimination is essentially the same as all these other kinds. If you want to predicate the vote on cognitive ability then you ought to test for that. Otherwise you end up with intelligent 17-year-olds being denied the vote (try to tell me that is not the moral and logical equivalent of disenfranchising women!) and idiotic 18-year-olds voting for the guy with the better hair.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

Yes but the average cognitive ability of a six year old versus a non-land owner, a poor person or a women is vastly different. A very solid majority of the later group is well equipped for voting while aside from perhaps some extremely rare prodigies, the prior group is exclusively ill-equipped for voting.

As said before, yes the age limit is arbitrary but to say it's on par with denying women the vote is completely fucking outrageous. How can you possibly equate denying all children the vote with all women?

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Smauler]

If women could not vote, no democrat would have served as president of the United States in the previous 50 years.

Wow, that's odd... in the UK it's the other way around. I heard that if women could not vote, we would not have had a majority Conservative government in the last 50 years. Conservatives are right wing, Labour left wing (very approximately - see this page for a really interesting analysis of the UK's parties, and Labour's movement in the last 35 years). Of course, this is just what I read somewhere, but it was vaguely authorative otherwise I would have dismissed it out of hand. Definitely treat with a pinch of salt, especially since even the best sources rely on exit polls which are never 100% accurate.

From that previous link : Voter turnout is highest when ideological differences are most significant. This helps explain why the voter turnout is lower in the US than in all other western democracies , most of which have a multiplicity of parties and proportional representation. In the UK, voter turnout may continue to fall to US levels. Lowering the voting age isn't likely to excite participation in elections when the choice is less and less to do with a clash of visions than mere managerial competence. And without those traditionally big choices, one might well wonder where this is going to ultimately leave democracy.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Smauler]

I know, bad form replying to myself, but here's the Political Compass for the US elections tomorrow.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. The Republican party has always been the party of equal rights for all men and women in the United States, and that has not changed. The only difference is that today, modern Liberals (big "L") believe that if you're not willing to create laws that benefit one race over another (affirmative action, hate crime laws, grant money), that you're a racist bigot. That if you don't vote for Obama, you're a racist bigot. That if you don't vote for hand outs to people who are capable of working, that you're a racist bigot.

That's what the party was founded on and that's where it's at today. The only thing that has changed are Liberals' interpretation of reality.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[lordmage]

I hate to burst your bubble but you do not own any property. There is a reason its called "Real estate" as it comes from "Royal Estates". The government can take it at any time. A real definition of ownership is that you do own it and pay nothing to continue to own it.

Also, many good, hard workers would not be able to vote. Maybe, a history of a job? maybe.

I for one welcome my republican overlords.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Free the Cowards]

Because when you examine 17-year-olds instead of 6-year-olds it becomes much less clear-cut.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Anonymous Coward]

How falsified registrations become votes

Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. "It's ludicrous to say that fake registrations can't become fraudulent votes," she told me. "I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots." MonCrief, a 29-year old University of Alabama graduate who wanted to become part of the civil rights movement, worked as a strategic consultant for ACORN as well as a development associate with Project Vote and sat in on meetings with the national staffs of both groups. She has given me documents that back up many of her statements, including one that indicates that the goal of ACORN's New Mexico affiliate was that only 40 percent of its submitted registrations had to be valid.

MonCrief also told me that some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials. Nate Toller, who worked on ACORN registration drives and headed an ACORN campaign against Wal-Mart in California until 2006, agrees. "There's no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances," he told me.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Anonymous Coward]

not how many times the Earth has gone round the Sun since you popped out of a vagina.

I was born via cesarean section you insensitive clod!

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[SETIGuy]

Why would there be less entitlements if only the rich were allowed to vote? I think that there would be tons of entitlements, just that the flow would be from the poor to the rich.

In other words, things would be exactly the same as they are now.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Black-Man]

Oh... and what about the Democrat's shady history? You know... the party that SUPPORTED SLAVERY??? Can't live that one down, can you?

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Fwonkas]

An arbitrary minimum age is probably unfair, but it's much less prone to abuse than an I.Q. test (or something similar).

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[dwye]

> You know... the party that SUPPORTED SLAVERY???

Not to mention electing the ex-KKK senator from West Virginia

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[dwye]

You also said "we would ultimately prefer that" (emphasis mine).

Prove your it, else be shown Democratic (or farther left) plant that you seem to be.

Republicans -don't- believe that everyone should have the right to vote

Yes. Newborns and toddlers will be unfairly influenced by their parents. Convicted felons have proven themselves unable to meet the demands of citizenship, and should be glad that we longer use outlawry. The retarded and insane are obviously not fit for voting. Otherwise, any sane free adult should be capable of handling the franchise.

Which of those do you want voting? The too young, major criminals, or nutcases?

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[FredMertz]

OK, it is worth pointing out how we got to this threshold age of 18 for voting in the U.S.

It was the 26th Amendment that changed the voting age from 21 to 18 in the U.S. This was passed during the Vietnam War era (specifically, 1971) when 18 year old males could be drafted into and forced to serve in the military, but were not allowed to vote.

The crux of the argument to lower the voting age was: If you are old enough to fight and die for this country, you should be old enough to vote in this country.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[suggsjc]

...not how many times the Earth has gone round the Sun since you popped out of a vagina.

I was born via a c-section, you insensitive clod!

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[wolfemi1]

The reason for this is that the age discrimination a) applies to everyone uniformly, and b) is temporary. No matter what, eventually each person will reach voting age and be enfranchised. With the women's suffrage issue, it was a problem because women NEVER got to vote.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Pollardito]

a simple inspection of history will tell you that we can't ever allow there to be a test to determine "who is qualified" to vote. the line has to be drawn fairly concretely into the sand so that there is little chance of a dispute about who can and who can't, otherwise people will abuse that line to marginalize the vote of people who are likely to disagree with them. 18 is as good of a line as any, and if we even tried to make a fair voter test cognitive ability isn't even necessarily a better voting criteria than plain old been-there-seen-that experience

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

Yeah, I covered that when I agreed with you in my last two posts that the line at 18 is ambiguous. It doesn't change the fact that children are ill-equipped to vote and given this fact, the line has to be drawn some where.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[Free the Cowards]

Many adults are ill-equipped to vote too, but we don't stop them.

I'm not particularly opposed to age as a criterion for voting, but my original point was simply that you'll find very few people who think that everybody should be allowed to vote, with the near-universal acceptance of the age criterion as proof.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

Incorrect. The Republican party has always been the party of equal rights for all men and women in the United States, and that has not changed.The only difference is that today, modern Liberals (big "L") believe that if you're not willing to create laws that benefit one race over another (affirmative action, hate crime laws, grant money), that you're a racist bigot.

So please explain the massive movement of Southerners from the Democratic party to the Republican party during the civil rights movement of the 60's and 70's.

Modern Republicans like to hide behind their party's proud history and point out the Democratic party's shitty one but any blue stater who has taken the time to do some extensive traveling around the South (solid red state territory) will have some stories to tell about some jaw dropping in moments in listening to how some people, still to this day, talk about Blacks. Coming from California I was appalled by some of the things coming out of people's mouths about Blacks when I cruised around the South. I've also heard plenty of accounts from a few black friends and acquaintances who are from the South who tell some stories that are so bad I feel like they should be coming from the 19th century.

Of course I am not saying all Republican's are racist but I am saying their political home turf is pretty sketchy when it comes to race relations.

That if you don't vote for Obama, you're a racist bigot. That if you don't vote for hand outs to people who are capable of working, that you're a racist bigot.

Yes there are jerk Liberals who believe this just like there are jerk conservatives who believe that Palin bullshit about them being "the real Americans". Both sides of the fence has its crazies but to claim that said crazies represent the ideological mainstream of either group is ridiculous.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

Did you just decide to ignore everything I wrote in my post about ideology changes for the parties (which was pretty much my entire post)? Yes, the Democratic party's pre Great Depression history sucks but that doesn't change a thing I stated above.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[skam240]

And then you went on to state that not allowing children to vote wasn't that different from requirements based on land ownership, wealth or gender.

Perhaps you think this is facetious, but what is so magical about the age of 18 that suddenly makes you competent to vote? Is it really that different from owning property, having a certain amount of money, or being male?

I then suggested that it is very different.

Re:Oh, its us evil Republicans!

[ultranova]

A six year old does not have the mental capacity to even understand politics. Meanwhile, an adult who does not own property, is poor, or is a women generally has the cognitive abilities to form a decently educated opinion in regards to how they should vote, assuming they put the effort into it.

More importantly, a six year old is incapable of staging a revolution, while an 18-year old is capable of it.

The point of representative democracy isn't to make the best possible decisions, but to end the cycle of bloody tyrants and equally bloody revolutions that is the only known alternative. The various limits to voting eligibility - demonstrating intelligence or political knowledge, for example - that elitists suggest from time to time utterly miss it.

aus

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:aus

[EGSonikku]

The state I live in (California) has more people than your entire country, to say nothing of the other 49 states, so logistically it's more of a nightmare.

So you have to co-ordinate between local, state, and federal agencies on election day.

Obviously our system is far from perfect regarding recounts and what not, but it usually works out (ignoring 2001 anyway...)

Re:aus

[PenGun]

Canada too. If you count em' by hand it's pretty well impossible to cheat. We too return our results the same day. Sometimes close ones will be recounted but apart from that it's all done in one day by hand.

  Works well but I suspect the American character is not happy with something that cannot be spun. Playing fair is regarded as pussy. You need to think that through as it does not produce the results you think it does.

Re:aus

[PenGun]

Counting ballots by hand scales infinitely. Makes no difference at all how big the set is if it is counted by a scaling subset ... eh'.

  Now you are crazy people and stuff all kinds of crap on your ballots when voting for president but I think that is mainly because it allows more spin and confusion. Cynical bastard for sure, but then I've been here a long time.

Re:aus

[ceoyoyo]

Yeah, that would suck if one person had to count all the votes. Actually, it would suck if one person had to count all the 10 million or so votes in my country too. Fortunately, the system is distributed, and so easily scalable. The same basic procedure is used for mayoral elections in my home town of 800 people and in federal elections.

Re:aus

[Neoprofin]

Oh it gets crazier, we don't even limit our elections to every four years, it's every two, and there's no limit to the amount of things that can be voted on. Referendum, amendments, three levels of government.

On the other hand it also means we get to leave local issues to the direct hand of those it effects most, I think it's a pretty fair price to pay.

Re:aus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Well why do I cringe when some dumbshit polly stuffs around with 'preferences'?
I don't want my vote to count towards anyone else except the person I voted for!
How's that fair????
And what about proportional voting?
I vote for some candidate, then I find that my vote has passed down to get some dickhead into local government that I didn't want? How's that fair?
And why do I get fined for not voting? Ballot papers should have a box that says 'ABSTAIN' and it doesn't. So much for the Westminster system.

Electoral reform is what USA needs. It's plainly obvious and has nothing to do with any of your other crap that you sprout so freely.

Re:aus

[Whiteox]

So you have to co-ordinate between local, state, and federal agencies on election day.

If you mean do Australians vote for State and Federal governments on the same day? No.
All GP is saying is that the Electoral Commission is responsible for counting votes for all levels of government, but not on the same day.
It's an administrative department responsible for the bread-and-butter functionality of everything to do with elections from registering candidates, finding polling officials, polling places, setting equitable rules for 'How To Vote' cards, examines political donations, collects and stores electoral rolls for the whole nation etc without preference to candidate. They are totally transparent.
They also count the votes.

Re:aus

[Blakey Rat]

The state I live in (California) has more people than your entire country,

Also: amusement parks

Re:aus

[swordgeek]

I'm in Canada, and we've got about the same population as California, spread out over more land than the entire US, which is a logistics nightmare in its own right. We manage as well as Australia. The thing about hand-counting is that it scales. Ten times the population means ten times the number of people to count--which is the same percentage of the population, conveniently enough.

I think part of the problem is that your federal elections aren't federally controlled. Voting in California isn't necessarily the same as it is in Utah or Florida or New England, and that's just mind-boggling!

Another issue is that the US has been pursuing 'better' voting technology for decades instead of simply using 'correct' voting technology. Put an "x" in a circle beside your choice. Nothing easier to understand, and nothing easier to count correctly. Touch screens, levers, punch cards, etc., are simply the WRONG technology for the task!

Re:aus

[SuiteSisterMary]

Nonsense. It's almost embarassingly parallel; one district or ten thousand doesn't really matter.

Unless, of course, you're assuming that 'number of election officials' remains absolutely constant regardless of 'number of voters' increasing.

He did

[copponex]

Isn't the greatest trick the devil ever pulled convincing the world that he didn't exist?

He helped steal an election, out an undercover CIA agent, formulated lies that led our nation to war, may not see one day of jail for it, and can continue to deny that he was involved (of course, not on record). He can now join G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and many others of the faithful party who have broken US and international law, and yet are somehow immune to the legal system.

Re:He did

[jo_ham]

"This is America! Rich people don't go to jail!"

In all seriousness, Mr Rove is one of the most despicable people who will never even have to worry about facing charges for his actions.

I don't believe in any sort of afterlife, so it's not even like he'll get his comeuppance when he dies either. I can only hope that one day maybe a gypsy will curse him and give him a soul and a conscience and that only then will he be able to feel remorse for what he has done.

Oh well.

Re:He did

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is America! Rich people don't go to jail!"

Slightly correct. For a big enough price, they get Bill Clinton to pardon them.

Re:He did

[dogmatixpsych]

Those are all opinions no matter how much you believe them. Democrats were the ones trying to steal the 2000 election. We were not lied to about Iraq http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,4808346.story and http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007540, etc.

Re:He did

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry too much. This injustice can only go on for so long. If he isn't put in jail, he'll likely face mob justice at some point, probably shortly after the worldwide economy collapses and we have violent revolution in this country.

Most of the members of the current administration deserve nothing more than to leave office at the end of a rope. Here's hoping.

Re:He did

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, G. Gordon Liddy spent four years in prison (and the only reason it wasn't twenty is that Carter commuted his sentence). If you want to look for above-the-law people, try Bill "guilty as sin, free as a bird" Ayers.

Re:He did

[jo_ham]

"This is America! Rich people don't go to jail!"

Slightly correct. For a big enough price, they get Bill Clinton to pardon them.

Or, y'know, they could get Gerald Ford to pardon them..

Re:He did

[Anonymous Coward]

You've gotta love it when partisan politics takes over what we laughingly call "thinking" in this country.

1) The only reason you call the election "stolen" is because Gore didn't win. Had he won using the same tactics used against him (and he was, you blithering idiot), you would laud it as justice. Hypocrite.

2) The idea of "lies" is you following the partisan spin of a political party with a vested power and monetary interest in discrediting the other party. The fact that you follow along with *any* political spin marks you as a poster child for why some animals eat their young.

3) Liddy served time. Moron. Seriously- you're an idiot. Like, the kind that short bus kids can laugh at to feel better about themselves.

4) North was a fall guy for Poindexter and Co, and was convicted. Ironically, it was the ACLU that got his conviction overturned.

Do you even bother with checking facts before spouting drivel? Reading you're brand of "thinking", and seeing that some /. asshole marked it as "Insightful" kinda makes me think that abortion ought to be more common. Sadly, your parents were out of coat hangers.

Re:He did

[SETIGuy]

There is speculation that GWB will pardon himself before leaving office.

Just the hot women...

[tjstork]

I mean, the chick in the scarlet letter was smoking hot. If smoking hot chicks that put out had to wear a scarlet letter, what's really so bad about that, if you are a guy?

Blame Clinton!

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew this was all Clinton's fault, but I wasn't sure how.

Elections Canada

[johnkennethhunter]

You guys should come up to Canada and see how we do it (essentially an Austrailian ballot). The thing is, Elections Canada is really on the ball. They could teach you guys a thing or two about how to run an election.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ha! Even Back Then...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democrats couldn't figure out how to vote.

You need to take a government class

[Sycraft-fu]

This is one of the problems we have these days, and one of the things that has lead us down this road of abuses of freedom of speech and so on. You, like many others, have this idea that the Constitution is just some document that we should ignore when convenient. Well, that's not how it works. Our legal system is such that the Constitution is the highest law of the land. All other laws must conform to it. It isn't just something to be disregarded when convenient. That's how our legal system works.

So for example if you want the electoral college changed or abolished fair enough, however that requires a constitutional amendment. In case you don't know what that requires, I'll tell you: 66% of both houses of congress need to pass it, then 75% of the states. It isn't easy to amend the Constitution, and that was done on purpose.

Also you might want to learn more about it because you might come to respect it as more useful. Barring a Constitution, any of the crap the Bush administration wanted to pull would be perfectly legal. If federal law was the be all end all, then so long as congress said "ok, it's legal." Now if you are ok with the government just trampling on rights, well then fine. However I don't want to hear bitching when they trample on the first, but silence when they trample on the 2nd.

I can make a compelling public safety and order argument for trampling on/abolishing ANY amendment.

The Constitution isn't just some quaint little document, it is the very foundation of the US government. It is what united the states in to a union, it is what defines the limits of the federal republic we live in (the US is a republic, not a democracy, there's a difference) and so on. It is also the document on which just about every other free nation has based theirs on. So it is something important to understand, especially if you live in the US and are thus subject to it's law. This idea that it is just a quaint piece of paper to be ignored at various times is extremely ignorant.

Re:You need to take a government class

[jc42]

This idea that it is just a quaint piece of paper to be ignored at various times is extremely ignorant.

It's especially ignorant, since the US Constitution wasn't written on paper. It's a very quaint piece of parchment. Several pieces, actually. It's sorta hard to find a thin-skinned animal that's big enough for that much text, especially if you want to have nice-looking rectangular pages.

(Yeah, I know; picky, picky, picky. ;-)

Re:You need to take a government class

[natoochtoniket]

The Constitution isn't just some quaint little document, it is the very foundation of the US government.

According to our last Republican president, that Constitution is "just a damn piece of paper."

If we are lucky, he will be our last Republican president.

It is simple, really

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that public voting opens the door to bribery is a problem.

Having a secret government, in which the people do not know how their congressmen voted, would be a much bigger problem.

So we pick the lesser of two evils.

There's a machine that checks

[Sycraft-fu]

In Arizona at least, we do the "fill in the circle" voting. When you are done, you go run the ballot through a machine that checks for you. If there's a problem, like you voted for too many people in a certain section, you get to go correct it. When you are done, the ballot is accepted.

I suppose there is a slight risk with early voting, but not a big one. So long as you actually read the directions, it isn't a problem. Goes double since it isn't as though a machine's count is taken as final. People still check over the result. So if one of your bubbles happens to not read on a machine, no problem so long as a human can recognize it and count the vote.

I don't think the grandparent meant that they are perfect because machines do all the work. He meant that they are easy, and there's not any of this bullshit about "Oh there's a hanging chad, what does it mean?" or "I'm too confused by the ordering to figure out who I'm voting for." It is a clear, easy system that is easy to use, easy to verify, and easy to count.

Single page link...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_lepore?printable=true

Too Many Bodies / Optical Scanner

[Kenshin]

The problem is that each state, and even districts within states, appear to have their own election laws and bodies. In Australia, and here in Canada, federal elections are all coordinated by one single federal body.

As for voting methods, I like Ontario's way of doing it for Provincial and Municipal elections. You fill in an arrow next to your vote (or votes, depending on how many things are up for vote) on a very easy to understand legal sized piece of paper, hide it in a folder, and then it's fed into an optical scanner that looks like a photocopier, and stored in a safe inside the unit. Instant tabulation, and a paper record of votes under lock and key.

Federal elections are pretty simple: One candidate, one vote. You put an X in a circle on a simple as hell paper ballot. That's it.

You young punks ...

[PPH]

... have it easy.

A man carrying a musket rushed at him

Back in my day, we had to run at people on foot, with muskets. We didn't have any automatic weapons, or low riders. There was nothing like the fancy drive-bys you kids have today.

Just stay the hell off my lawn!

Re:You young punks ...

[narcberry]

When I was younger, we had to walk through the cold and stand in the freezing rain to threaten people at the voting booths.

Re:You young punks ...

[Dravik]

Ha, your cold freezing rain. Back in my day we had to wade across a freezing river before standing on a windy hill top during hail storms, and we had to beat the voters with sticks. None of these fancy firearms.

YOU need to take a reading comprehension class

[philspear]

I was saying two things. One: it's not infallible, and does need to be changed occasionally. Two: one of the things that should be changed, now, is the electoral college system.

Nothing about how we should junk the whole thing. Nothing about it being trivial. Nothing about it should be easier to amend the consitution. Nothing about getting rid of the second amendment.

Calm down.

Re:YOU need to take a reading comprehension class

[Anonymous Coward]

philspear: This is the 2nd or 3rd time in the comments for this story alone that someone has supposedly "misunderstood" you.

I suggest you figure out what you want to say and say it clearly. You keep having to rebuttle because your arguments aren't made clear. Then get upset when someone reacts to what it appears you said.

Intriguing...

[denzacar]

Both PP and GP are making jokes about secret ballot as if it is a bad thing.

ID

[Anonymous Coward]

Since many years ago now you have to show ID to become legally employed in the US. If someone hasn't shown it, the employer just fudged something. If they are working a job and didn't show any ID, they are working illegally and off the books most likely and not paying taxes. In other words, shouldn't be eligible to vote. All states provide non driver's licenses picture ID for free or very cheap, if someone can't be arsed enough to go get it, who cares? It isn't *that* hard. If you can't do the bare minimum to establish your legal bona fides, it isn't the states lookout to do it for you. Really, why not come out and say it out loud, why be a chickenshit about it, here's reality: the people claiming it is hard to prove you are a legal citizen over age of 18 and eligible to vote want to shoot the vote to 20 million ILLEGAL aliens. You know I am right, doncha? C'mon, admit it, that's the real scam here, amnesty for the illegals. And I worked hard back in the day (a long time ago probably before you were born) to help black folks and poor white folks get to vote, because they had a *legal* right to do so, and that was wrong, so this isn't racism, it's just reality, illegal aliens do NOT have a right to vote here and nor should they, and trying to run some scam claiming all the legal folks are having a hard time coming up with ID is just that, a scam.. And it has nothing to do with being middle class or not, even homeless *legal* folks can vote if they have ID, a recent court case affirmed the right of some dude to use a park bench as his legal address, but he still needs an ID to vote. Anything beyond that you are talking about completely crazy/insane/mentally incompetent people and...oh well, no vote, and do you really want those folks to vote? It wouldn't be those folks voting anyway, it would be their "handler" voting for them in the booth. Fail. People who can't establish a really low threshold of adult competency..well..we will always have some cracks to fall through, for 99.9999% of everyone else, it just isn't that hard to go get some three dollar picture ID.

Re:ID

[Mr. Slippery]

Since many years ago now you have to show ID to become legally employed in the US.

You don't need a photo ID. In fact a voter registration card, plus a birth certificate or Social Security card, is sufficient documentation for employment.

And since when has employment been a requirement to vote? Stay-at-home parents and retirees are still entitled to cast their ballots, as are self-employed people.

All states provide non driver's licenses picture ID for free or very cheap

"Very cheap" is relative. And irrelevant - NO poll tax can be charged.

if someone can't be arsed enough to go get it, who cares?

Anyone who thinks equality under law for all is a good idea, cares. I'm sorry that you apparently aren't part of that group.

the people claiming it is hard to prove you are a legal citizen over age of 18 and eligible to vote want to shoot the vote to 20 million ILLEGAL aliens. You know I am right, doncha?

No, I know that the last thing someone here illegally is going to do is expose themselves by committing voter fraud. This paranoia about illegal aliens voting is simply batshit crazyness and it's a shame you've bought it.

Re:ID

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, why not come out and say it out loud, why be a chickenshit about it, here's reality: the people claiming it is hard to prove you are a legal citizen over age of 18 and eligible to vote want to shoot the vote to 20 million ILLEGAL aliens. You know I am right, doncha? C'mon, admit it, that's the real scam here, amnesty for the illegals.

Straw man arguments are lies.

Adams

[aarongadberry]

Don't feel too bad about complaining. You're in good company.

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections."
        -- John Adams

etc

[copponex]

Your head is either in the clouds, or in the sand. If you think Bush pushed an Iraq invasion for any purpose but the acquisition of their oil resources, you're doing a great job of ignoring nearly one hundred years of history. This is the fifth time the US and/or Britain have invaded Iraq since oil became the most necessary component of the modern military. You may think it's a coincidence, but I urge you to read something besides opinion pieces.

The Bush White House may be saving him face for the moment, but I haven't seen any compelling argument against the dozen or so books that provide good evidence that he not only ordered the manufacture of the famed letter about Nigerian yellowcake, but went out of his way to have the CIA discredit all evidence - and there was a lot - to the contrary. Defending the president because he's the president is the sincerest imitation of soviet era politics, but so is destroying human rights for the sake of security.

James Kirchick is the former Ralph Nader supporter who couldn't land any writing jobs until he unabashedly began parroting neoconservative talking points, right? Who graduated Yale barely two years ago? What are you, part of the McCain campaign?

And your other source, Norman Podhoretz, is a member of the PNAC. The bias is so deep and obvious I can't even come up with a witty analogy for these two. Bravo.

Re:etc

[sac13]

Your head is either in the clouds, or in the sand. If you think X pushed X for any purpose but the acquisition of power, you're doing a great job of ignoring nearly all of history. Defending X because he's your political party is the sincerest imitation of soviet era politics, but so is destroying human rights for the sake of security.

There... fixed that for you...

Don't expect the Democrats or their supporters to act any differently than the Republicans and their supporters...

Sure but...

[TheLink]

Also no way for the constituents voting for them to know if they got what they voted for.

He could just take their votes and letters and vote however he was going to vote anyway... how are they going to know?

So while it doesn't remove the incentive for voting, it does make it riskier for the voting constituents.

Thing to keep in mind is in theory (barring a good Diebolding) just beause you get lots of $$$ doesn't mean you get reelected. You still have to get votes.

If the constituents are actually voting those who get the most $$$ from companies, they're rewarding that sort of behaviour. They shouldn't be surprised then if they get "representatives" who don't actually represent them.

ripped from Wikipedia

[copponex]

"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches." -G Gordon Liddy, 1994, on his radio show

"It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." -McCain, 2007, on Gordon's radio show

Oh, hypocrisy! Does your comedy know no bounds?

Re:ripped from Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches." -G Gordon Liddy, 1994, on his radio show

"It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." -McCain, 2007, on Gordon's radio show

Oh, hypocrisy! Does your comedy know no bounds?

What's wrong with that? BATF (or BATFE or whatever they are now) thugs should be shot on general principles. I just wish McCain actually agreed with the G-Man on that....

Congrats

[KingAlanI]

" View as a Single Page"
Congrats, no depending on a convoluted "Print This Article" button. :)

In all seriousness, nice article.

Yes, I RTFA'ed...it helps when the article was of reasonable length, rather than being a blurb.

I do come around to /. to read comments; it's gotten to the point where a great article is proverbial icing-on-the-cake

bias anyone?

[ricoder]

Um...can you tell me why its tagged REPUBLICAN and not DEMOCRAT?

Seriously? Like the Republicans are the only ones trying to mess with the vote?

Disagree on Judges

[DesScorp]

You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.

... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.

I disagree, because the mindset of an upper-chamber Lord/Senator and the mindset of Judges are totally different. Even with our current system, Senators tend to be more concerned with getting things passed by consensus than Judges. Judges tend to be motivated by ideology more (on both sides). Witness the near-century long struggle in America between strict-constructionists and "Living Constitution" adherents.

In the US Senate, even Ted Kennedy or John McCain will eagerly cross the aisle to get something they deem important done. In the US Supreme Court, eh, not so much. It was not for nothing that Oliver Wendell Holmes described SCOTUS as "nine scorpions in a bottle".

I've come to the conclusion that A) perhaps electing Senators was a mistake... we simply turned them into Congressmen with longer terms, and B) perhaps court appointments, if not elected, should perhaps be limited. Set the terms to 10 years, perhaps. Because you're never going to know what you'll get in a judge, and some really do have a "God in black robes" mindset once they're in place, and essentially, untouchable. I think there were very few weaknesses in the design of the Constitution, but I think untouchable, lifetime judicial appointments may have been one of them. While there are checks and balances on the power of Congress and the Presidency, there aren't really on the power of federal judges, especially SCOTUS. Once SCOTUS rules on something... even if 90 percent of Americans absolutely disagree... that's it, unless you care to remove them by force. I don't know how the power of the SCOTUS should be balanced (perhaps a 3/4ths vote of Congress to override a ruling?), but I do think we should consider some kind of check.

Re:Disagree on Judges

[Chosen Reject]

The Judiciary has checks. For one, they can't rule on something that hasn't been brought before them. The Executive doesn't have enforce laws and thus bring the breaking of laws to the Judiciary. Also, if the Legislative doesn't like the way the Judiciary interpreted a law, they are more than welcome to change the law, from minor tweaks to complete rewrites to repeals.

As a recent example, in District of Columbia v. Heller, SCOTUS decided that the "well regulated militia" clause did not limit the "right to bear arms" clause. If the Legislature and the people wanted to, they could create an amendment to the constitution to clarify the 2nd amendment. Sure it would be difficult, but that's the point. That is also an extreme example. There are lots of cases that don't involve SCOTUS and the Constitution or Bill of Rights, where if the legislature didn't like what the judiciary did, they could rewrite the laws to get past the judiciary.

Except...

[tjstork]

The Republican party you're referring to has quite a few similarities to our modern Democrats.

Except for that part about being biblical and fighting wars for an ideological cause. Abe Lincoln === religious nut. You need to understand that in Lincoln's time a black man had about the same level of humanity as a fetus is considered to have today. The whole reason slavery worked was because in the western mind, blacks weren't really people... they were animals, didn't have souls, were more like horses or something and any display of intelligence they did was chalked up to simple mimicry rather than any actual intelligence.

It's like everyone talks about the likes of Frederick Douglas, but, in those days, people went to go see Frederic Douglas weren't going to see an eloquent speaker, per se... it was like, going to see a horse that can count... "oh dear, instead of seeing the counting horse, let's go see the speechgiving negro". There was no black civilization on the planet even close to within 500 - 1000 years technologically of what European nations had and so arguing in favor of equality was genuinely an act of faith. Even Lincoln pretty much said that, he didn't really think that blacks were up to the same level as whites, but it was a religious thing to treat them right.

Re:Except...

[narcberry]

The western mind?

Re:Except...

[skam240]

You're whole post is confusing to me (no offense meant of course). For starters, we were never talking about religion and what you quote me saying these out of context is irrelevant to the general topic given that both political parties of that period called upon religious themes to help draw votes. Furthermore, you clearly state that religion was used both as a justification for slavery (the whole soul thing) and as a justification against slavery (both points which are historically accurate) which further confuses me as you seem to be not making any kind of concise point at all.

Prior to posting this it occurred to me that perhaps you were implying that the Republicans are currently the party of the religious and the Democrats are the party of the irreligious. I assure you, that is not the case. Democrats proudly count among themselves the majority of blacks in this country (a very solid majority of which belong to Protestant faiths), a majority of the Hispanics of this country (almost all of which are Catholic), and a majority of the more generalized Jewish, Catholic and any other faith besides Protestant Christian you can think of. Just because they don't have the majority in the only other Religious group this country has (Christian Protestant) does not make them irreligious.

Re:Except...

[skam240]

As in the popular consciousnesses of those who belong to the self labeled "West". As in White people. As in "Most White people of the period believed..."

Re:Except...

[jez9999]

You need to understand that in Lincoln's time a black man had about the same level of humanity as a fetus is considered to have today.

So, more importance than most people are certainly more than any criminal?

Re:Except...

[Black-Man]

We literally have the "religious right" to thank for abolishing slavery. Quakers, Presbyterians... we all owe a debt of gratitude. Oh... and those pesky Republican bastards... what were they thinking supporting John Brown - who for all intents and purposes WAS the modern day Jesus Christ - who sent those damnable Democrats to a place where they belonged!!! A GRAVE!

Re:Except...

[dwye]

> who for all intents and purposes WAS the modern day Jesus Christ

Well, THAT is a bit extreme. Perhaps he might accept John The Baptist, or else one of the Maccabees.

Re:Except...

[skam240]

And if we lived in the 19th or 18th century you would be dead on in describing American politics. Unfortunatly for your point, we currently live in 20th century America and almost all of the major post WW2 civil rights leaders have been Democrats while said leaders have been consistently and increasing opposed by Republicans.

Electoral ink

[amrik98]

Why can't we use electoral ink in American elections to help protect against people voting twice?

There is only one way to avoid this crime

[istartedi]

Vote Naked

Not true

[Gorimek]

This is a nice tale, but it's not true.

When moving, you do have to report your changed address to the DMV.

In the US, the authorities know exactly where you live and many many other things, just like in Europe. The difference is that they're legally obliged to pretend that they don't, resulting in the worst of both worlds: The state knows all about you, but you still have to tell them things they already know, again and again.

Re:Not true

[IchNiSan]

If you do not have a car or a drivers license, what interest could the Department of Motor Vehicles possibly have in you?

Many states have laws saying that you have to change your vehicle registration and drivers license within so many days of moving, but what if you have none? No law says I have to have state issued identification. There may be a law that requires government issued identification, but a passport would be fine for that, and as of my last passport, that included no address information on the document itself.

Where did Australia get the idea from...?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century..."

It was the 1890s when America went to secret ballots?

The UK had had them since Gladstone's Reform Act of 1872. Did the Aussies copy the UK, and the US copy the Aussies?

Re:Selective Service

[QuestorTapes]

In addition to the point noted by one reply, that only males are legally required to register, Selective Service only tracks individuals young enough to serve as military recruits. While I registered with Selective Service at 18, they stopped maintining my information at 30.

The result is that they track only a relatively small minority of potential voters.

States rights

[bagsc]

You Dutch inspired this grand democracy experiment, so you're an eternal friend of Americans. So in violation of Slashdot rules, I'll explain our system politely:

1) How voting is done is left to States. North Dakota, for example, registers everyone by default. The premise is that, except for in Federal Elections, each State knows best for itself.

2) We don't require any "voting ticket." Or ID. You walk in, tell them who you are, and you vote. It has been decided by our courts that requiring something as difficult to obtain as an ID card is too high a burden to prevent someone from voting. Many states require you to present ID, and if you can't, then they give you a ballot which you can still vote, but may be invalidated if someone else walks in and tries to use your name with an ID.

3) The reasons for ineligibility would include:
a) You don't meet the residency requirements (or else there would be a Mad Max style bus parade into every jurisdiction that was competitive every election day)
b) Being a convicted felon, becoming a citizen of another country, being dead, not being a real person are basically the only ways you can be disqualified from voting. Being mentally disabled may disqualify you, but rules vary from state to state, and enforcement of the rules even more so. There are states that literally ban "idiots" from voting today, and yet *Party_Opposed_To_Your_Beliefs* still gets votes every election...

If I had mod points I'd mod parent up.

[a302b]

I quite agree, and feel that many young people become disenfranchised under the current system. Because of increasing fear of crime, children as young as ten are being tried as adults in certain localities. Yet they (including teenagers up to 18) have no say in how that system is run.

Either they are able to make decisions for themselves, and should be granted the right to vote, or they are incapable of making decisions and should not be punished for crimes, etc.

Using the infant example, if an infant smothers their sibling to death, they are unlikely to be sent to a maximum security prison as they probably had no idea what they were doing. They also shouldn't have the right to vote, as they would have no idea what it is about.

As opposed to what?

[Moraelin]

1. So, you think that those men with property didn't vote for their own personal gain? I wonder where, say, those slavery laws came from. Right, from rich men trying to make it easier for them to oppress other humans.

The sad thing is, there is no limit at which you had enough and you start working (or voting) just for the common good. The brain doesn't even see absolute values, it sees deltas. Your happiness or unhappiness have more to do with how much better or worse you are than yesterday, than with exactly where you are. So someone who has 1$ wants to have $2, someone who has $1000 want to have $2000, but someone who has a billion will need to get two billions to get the same shot of "I'm happy" chemical signals in the brain.

So basically if you think that, "Voting has become the enabling mechanism for thieves to ply their craft"... well, then it always was. That discrimination just divided the class into already successful thieves, and a mass of victims to ply their craft on. The former voted to rob the latter.

2. So what was the improvement compared to medieval aristocracy? You still had a rich class who are supposedly smart enough to decide for everyone else, and a poor class who should shut up and do what they're told. And the former use that mechanism to exploit and plunder the latter.

What's the difference? That the rich get to elect a president? Well, that's how it worked for the HRE, medieval Poland, and a bunch of other places. Heck, medieval Poland was then actually more democratic, because everyone who ever had a noble as an ancestor could vote, so actually even some of the poor got to vote. That the rich also get a say in which laws they get? Again, see the HRE.

I thought that the whole idea of democracy was that the _people_ are in charge. You know, what with even its name being a combination of "demos"=people and "kratos"=rule or power.

3. You know, I wish you guys would find a better fallacy than the theft to justify your greed with. The moment you can function just as well on your own, without the rest of society, _then_ you can say with a straight face that it's 100% your money and anyone having any demands is a thief.

But the fact is, society works as a whole, and money is just a convenient abstraction for how we divde the cake we _all_ helped make. So somehow you think you're that important that you're entitled to a disproportionately larger slice, for the same number of hours worked. And woe if someone doesn't let you loot and plunder the pie as you see fit, at other people's disadvantage, 'cause then that's stealing.

You wouldn't have your job or your standard of living without at least a thousand or so other people working on making that shit you use as status symbols. And if we're talking taxes, your company _and_ its clients wouldn't be anywhere near where they are without the infrastructure built with those taxes. Without the roads to transport the raw materials, or the pool of educated potential clerks and researchers, or a pool of qualified unemployed people to absorb the shocks and bursts, or a gazillion other things, you'd be right back to the 19'th century standard of living.

So you're telling me, what? That all those should happen without you having to pay your share? Who's going to pay for it then? Oh, right, I forgot, you wanted to take the poors' right to vote, so you can plunder _them_.

I'm sorry, but that's not a God-given right, that's a parasitic attitude. Yes, you can pack it in some pretense that if someone doesn't let you take half a poor guy's slice too, it's theft, but it doesn't change the aspect: it's all bullshit rethoric for "I want half of those people's slices too." That's what being a parasite is all about.

Re:As opposed to what?

[electrictroy]

>>>You know, I wish you guys would find a better fallacy than the theft to justify your greed with.

And I wish ye socialists/progressives/whatever label you prefer, could see that "theft" is the best description. If a politician provides a free car for all families earning less than $30,000 a year, the only way to pay for that car is to suck money from the working class (us) in order to give "free" cars to the poor.

I don't know any other label that fits except one: theft. I work; somebody else gets the cotton I picked... ooops, I mean the car I bought for them. That's a human rights violation, and I do not consider it just.

Democrats in the US still rely on fradulent votes

[Tyrannicalposter]

Democrats in the US still rely on fradulent votes. Even though Obama might not need it this election, the need for fraud is ingrained deeply into liberal democrats.

Does requiring ID to buy alcohol or tobacco discriminate against minorities and the poor?
Yet somehow requiring ID to vote is an unfair burden.

I'm 38 and I still have to sometimes show my ID to buy tobacco.
Being against showing an ID to vote is being pro-election fraud, and that's the stance of the national Democratic party.

I'll be brave and take the karma hit, as it's obvious who the realy minorities are around slashdot.

Taking things out of context gives us this:

[swordgeek]

"The article notes the American penchant for trying to fix voting..."

That really sums up far more than the article itself does.

Re:Democrats in the US still rely on fradulent vot

[swordgeek]

OK, I'm not from the USA, so I really don't have any allegiance to either party.

That said, I'm fascinated that you complain about Democrats relying on fraudulent votes, when the last two elections were won by massive electoral fraud by the Republicans, and they're trying to do the same this time.

Show me how many votes have been switched in favour of each party, and I'll show you a Republican landslide. Show me questionable voting technology that shouldn't be allowed, and I'll show you equipment manufactured by companies with close Republican ties.

From the outside looking in, I can't imagine why your populace isn't begging the UN for election observers, except that of course, most of you don't trust the UN.

Re:Democrats in the US still rely on fradulent vot

[east coast]

That's odd. The contested areas, at least in the 2000 election, weren't using electronic voting. What a bunch of FUD your post is. Either you're just bashing the right or you're sadly misinformed.

Ah, THAT idiocy

[Moraelin]

Ah, more bullshit emotionally-charged rhetoric. "Free car"? No, really? Exactly which party proposed a law to give free cars? Oh, wait, it's just a bullshit strawman.

Or perhaps, the problem is that what is regularly proposed is stuff like "free medical care", or "adequate education" or such. And of course if you picked on _those_, you'd come out clearer as a greedy prick.

But ok, you really want to play emotionally charged fallacies? Ok. I see your "theft", and raise you, oh, "murder."

See that gal over there? She's got an early case of multiple-sclerosis. Go kick her out of the hospital yourself, don't try to pervert healt-care into doing that murder for you. Of course, she'll probably die on her own, but, hey, that saved you some money on the health insurance. Less people trying to "steal" your money to pay for those.

See that old guy with Alzheimer's and kidney problems in his own age? Same deal. It's guys like him who didn't smoke, didn't drink and stayed fit, that now suck a lot of money out of healthcare for a decade or two. The fat smokers died earlier and largely didn't get their insurance money out of that system. But that guy didn't. Go kick him off medical care yourself, don't try to pack it in fancy words about why it's stealing your money if we keep him alive.

That other guy over there? Genetic deffects. Dumbly enough, nobody found out until he was older, now he's on life support.

That other gal? Cancer. Lots and lots of fancy patented medicines, and if she's (un)lucky the chemotherapy will make it last for years, while it degrades the rest of her body more and more. You'd be surprised how many people get a cancer nowadays, that the other causes of death have been reduced. Go kick them out of the hospitals yourself.

In fact, be a sport and at least don't let them suffer. Go just put a bullet or two through their brains right now. It achieves the same result, with less suffering. And I'm _sure_ they'll understand that that's for such a worthy cause as you keeping a few more of your precious dollars.

Had enough of that? Good. Well, then tell you what: you drop that over-the-top bullshit about "theft" and I'll drop mine. Wake me up when we ca have a talk like civilized adults.

Re:Ah, THAT idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Go just put a bullet or two through their brains right now. It achieves the same result, with less suffering.

This is perfectly true. I agree 100%.

The true beauty of secret ballots

[Anonymous Coward]

is that there's no way to prove that the "results" have been falsified. Seriously... just claim that the "looser" received a significant minority of the vote, and who's to say differently?

Paper trail? Please... so why is it illegal to record your own vote?