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How We Used To Vote
Mr. Slippery writes "Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad? The New Yorker looks back at how we used to vote back in the good old days: 'A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party's Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis's victory was upheld on the ground that any "man of ordinary courage" could have made his way to the polls.' Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail." The article notes the American penchant for trying to fix voting problems with technology — starting just after the Revolution. This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century.
Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad?
Yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
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.
> 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
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
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)
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.