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| ▲ | WalterBright 24 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > mandate required voting I don't see how forcing a person to vote will result in carefully considering what to vote for. A right to vote includes the right to not vote. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 24 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, and countries with "compulsory voting" embrace the right to Donkey vote, pencil in whatever candidate you choose, criticise the government in a short haiku, and otherwise exercise freedom. It's more a compulsory show you're still a citizen day. The making a valid vote part is down to personal choice. They also appear to have generally better general political awareness and engagement in policy. | |
| ▲ | autoexec 24 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > A right to vote includes the right to not vote. Then add an abstain option to the ballot while still requiring people to show up and select the box. While I do think voting should be mandatory, I'd say that we should make it substantially easier. More polling places, mail in voting, having a mandated paid day off to vote and having more than one day to vote in person would go a long way to making the requirement workable. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 24 days ago | parent [-] | | Forcing people to the polling place doesn't sound like a free society. Nor does it auger for any positive votes - people forced into something don't behave well. You'll get perverse voting. | | |
| ▲ | x______________ 24 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Living in a civilized society with other people should have its social responsibilities, amongst others. | | |
| ▲ | 9875325996435 23 days ago | parent | next [-] | | And you get to decide what others are forced to do, right? | | |
| ▲ | Defletter 22 days ago | parent [-] | | Are you an anarchist by any chance? Because the logical conclusion to this argument is why anyone can "force" anyone else to do anything. |
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| ▲ | Ray20 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, and most of this measures result in decisions being made by the most irresponsible people. Prisoners voting is madness. They are in too dependent a position to believe that their vote will reflect their votes. On the contrary, voting should be banned not only for prisoners but also for people working for the government in any capacity. People who live off taxpayers should not be able to decide how to spend their taxes. Registration procedures should be more complex and strict, not simpler. If someone is irresponsible, disorganized, or illiterate enough to fail to fill the form on time, then why should we consider their vote meaningful? If someone believes they have more important things to do than vote, why force them to vote? | | |
| ▲ | crote 23 days ago | parent [-] | | > Registration procedures should be more complex and strict, not simpler. If someone is irresponsible, disorganized, or illiterate enough to fail to fill the form on time, then why should we consider their vote meaningful? The US tried to do this kind of "literacy test" before, remember? It's where the expression "grandfathered in" comes from: you had to do an impossible-to-pass test to gain the right to vote - except if your grandfather had the right to vote. This was of course used to ban black people from voting without explicitly banning them for being black. > Prisoners voting is madness If prisoners can't vote, what's stopping the party in power from preventing them from ever losing an election by just jailing everyone expected to vote against them? > People who live off taxpayers should not be able to decide how to spend their taxes This should obviously includes everyone working for government contractors. Which is obviously going to include everyone working for any kind of tech company with any government contract. Which, considering HN demographics, means you likely shouldn't e allowed to vote. Heck, why not extend this even further? Anyone living in a state which receives more money than it contributes in taxes should be banned from voting. Anyone using government resources should be banned from voting. Everyone driving their car on government-maintained roads should be banned from voting! | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 23 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There is a big problem with people voting themselves money out of the treasury. It gets worse every year. | |
| ▲ | Ray20 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > this kind of "literacy test" Where did I mention a "literacy test"? I'm against such tests for exactly the same reasons I'm against prisoner voting. > If prisoners can't vote, what's stopping the party in power from preventing them from ever losing an election by just jailing everyone expected to vote against them? Prisons, by definition, are built on the principle that prisoners are under the full control of prison administrations. If everyone who will vote against could be imprisoned, there would be no problem allowing prisoners to vote: prisoners would still vote in the manner desired by the prison administration. That's how prisons work. And I don't think there's a need to increase incentives for authorities to imprison more people to achieve the desired election results through prisoners' voting. > any kind of tech company with any government contract. Obviously, this shouldn't apply to "any" government contracts. But if the majority of a contractor's income comes from government contracts, then yes, employees shouldn't vote. > Anyone living in a state which receives more money than it contributes in taxes should be banned from voting. Anyone using government resources should be banned from voting. I don't understand why you're trying to reduce this argument to absurdity. The goal is to preserve democracy by reducing the government's ability to build a totalitarian dictatorship through its ability to control taxes. And yet you're proposing measures that would proclaim such a dictatorship. | | |
| ▲ | autoexec 23 days ago | parent [-] | | > And I don't think there's a need to increase incentives for authorities to imprison more people to achieve the desired election results through prisoners' voting. Because what happens in the ballot box is private, it should be possible to let prisoners vote without interference as long as poll workers are allowed inside to do their job, but it's not just people currently in prison you have to worry about. There are places where convicted felons can lose their right to vote even after they've served their time and laws like that have already been used to suppress votes. > The goal is to preserve democracy by reducing the government's ability to build a totalitarian dictatorship Freedom means having enough rope to hang yourself with. By strictly limiting who is allowed to vote and taking that right away from millions of Americans you'd be destroying the country, not saving it. |
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| ▲ | AngryData 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Personally I don't find "tick atleast this one box and sign your name, otherwise you get a $20 fine" is too much to ask. If it wasn't the US I would assume most fines would still be ignored by the law anyways, but giving the US legal system another way to fuck with people is also kind of worrying when it is so bad already. |
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| ▲ | RHSeeger 24 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times. Many people already do get the option to ditch out of work to go vote. And it's not logistically possible for _everyone_ to have the day off. So really this is just a matter of sliding the scale a bit so _more_ people can vote; at the cost of more inconvenience. Personally, I'd rather just make mail-in voting more common. | | |
| ▲ | hellojesus 22 days ago | parent [-] | | I love mail in voting, but it does run the unique risk of having verifiable votes to third parties, which means it allows pay-for-votes. No election can mitigate this so long as your vote is provable to a third party. |
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| ▲ | mrighele 24 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are a few things that could be done to improve the electoral process in USA. An easy one would be to have people vote on weekends instead of Tuesday. The second would be to have more polling station so that people don't have to wait hours to be able to vote (alas this seems to be by design). Since we are there, but unrelated to the amount of people voting, fix the vote counting process so that you can get the result the following day. The stuff above is not rocket science and is what most of the other civilized countries do. If people still don't go out and vote, probably is because both candidates suck, or they don't look so much different one from the other. Fixing this would require changing the electoral system, which is not something I see done anytime soon in the USA | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 23 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In recent years, people can vote early, vote by mail, or vote on election day. Hard to see how a "holiday" for voting makes anything easier for anyone, though I could maybe support it if you eliminated all the other options. | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 24 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Also on the list: Tackling the electoral college thing such that every voter contributed equally, regardless of their home state. I don’t live in the US, but US elections have quite an influence and it’s frustrating to see a system I perceive as very flawed having such an effect here, at the other end of the world in New Zealand. | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 23 days ago | parent [-] | | In the US, states elect the president, not the people individually. This is a pretty foundational element of our constitution. | | |
| ▲ | mrguyorama 23 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Another foundational element of our constitution was denying women the right to contribute to society, and not establishing any form of succession and other blatant and stupid failures. Maybe the framers can go fuck themselves. Yet the framers quite literally told you to change what they made, so they agree. | | | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Having a president which a minority of cast votes picked is a problem in my view. | | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 23 days ago | parent [-] | | The President is the representative of the constituent State governments of America, not the people. That is why it is the States that vote. The only part of the Federal government that is intended to proportionally represent the people, and is in practice, is the House of Representatives in Congress. This is a good and appropriate thing. States are approximately countries. Most laws only exist at the State level e.g. most common crimes don't exist in Federal law. The overreach of the Federal government claiming broad authority over people is an unfortunate but relatively recent (20th century) phenomenon. The US does seem to be returning to States having more autonomy, which I'd say is a good thing. |
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| ▲ | yazantapuz 23 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times. In Argentina, elections are held on Sundays. | |
| ▲ | koolba 24 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times. Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too. > We could do like Australia and mandate required voting. I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal. If people are neither informed nor interested, why do you want them to have a say at all? At best they’ll be picking a last name that sounds pronounceable. Or going with whichever first name sounds more (or less!) male. > Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment. We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view? > Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state. I’m generally for this though there are a bit of logistics when you’re dealing with preprinted paper ballots and some expectations of processing quantity. Prior registration also addresses people showing up at the wrong polls in advance. > But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen. Not always a bad thing either. If all it took was the stroke of an executive’s pen, you’d see a lot of things I bet you would not be fond of rather soon. > But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results. The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States. | | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 24 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States. Surely you want the leader that most Americans voted for? When votes are held in the senate or congress, it’s a straight numbers game. Why aren’t those votes also weighted? There wouldn’t be many who’d argue that the American political system is in good health. How would you fix it? | | |
| ▲ | fwip 23 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > When votes are held in the senate or congress, it’s a straight numbers game. Why aren’t those votes also weighted? They are weighted - the House is allocated by population, and the Senate by state. | | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 23 days ago | parent [-] | | They are weighted in how they are elected. They aren’t weighted in how the members vote. |
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| ▲ | claytongulick 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Surely you want the leader that most Americans voted for? I prefer not to live in the Hunger Games world, personally. Those books are a brilliant exploration of the tyranny of urban clusters. The electoral college is an effective foil to that. | | |
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| ▲ | swiftcoder 23 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? About half of all folks in US prisons are there for non-violent crimes, and we're talking about a relatively small percentage of voters anyway. Maybe ~3 million added to the ~244 million eligible voters | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 23 days ago | parent [-] | | For a consequence to be effective, you have to lose something. If you go to prison, the big thing you lose is freedom of movement. But other things, such as who you live with, what you eat, and the ability to vote are other things. | | |
| ▲ | swiftcoder 23 days ago | parent [-] | | I don’t think we have a broad consensus that incarceration is effective. No longer being able to vote seems like a rather petty inconvenience to heap on top |
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| ▲ | LocalH 22 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Voting is a civil right. People who are stripped of their right to vote should also pay zero taxes. You know, "no taxation without representation". | |
| ▲ | Arainach 24 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too. There's no reason that a holiday to give people time to do it requires or logically leads to either of those, no. >I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal. Mandatory participation generally includes write-in and abstain options, but requires people to participate in the process. Making it mandatory defeats the measures taken to stop groups of people from voting (insufficient polling places for long lines, intimidation keeping people away, purging voter rolls, etc.) >We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view? Because it's easy to file bullshit charges against anyone you don't want voting, and because something being illegal doesn't make it morally wrong, so people should be able to vote to change things even when being persecuted for them. | |
| ▲ | RHSeeger 24 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > > There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times. > Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too. Why does having a day with "more people off work to go vote" mean we make voting harder in other ways? I don't understand what you're trying to say/imply here. > > Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment. > We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view? Because, like it or not, they are citizens, and citizens get to vote. Do I think most pedophiles have much to contribute to the process? No, probably not. But there's a LOT of prisoners that are guilty of much lesser crimes; ones that don't imply their vote shouldn't matter. > The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States. Challenge. But this is very much an opinion thing. |
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| ▲ | shiroiuma 24 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >"This is how its always been" is one of the banes of my existence. It explains why we're here, but not how to do better. This is true, but it's also very useful in assigning blame (or avoiding assigning it improperly). So for all the people who complain about all the people who didn't vote, and try to blame them for Trump's election, we can just point to the historical record for voting in US presidential elections. The truth is: the turnout was not unusually low. In fact, it was somewhat high, historically speaking (though not as high as in 2020, which was a record; you'd have to back to the 50s or early 60s to see a higher turnout, and that was in a time when Black people weren't allowed to vote in many places). So instead of blaming non-voters, blame can be assigned properly to those who DID vote. Because the factors that have prevented many people from voting in past elections were still a factor in the most recent election. >We could do like Australia and mandate required voting. Right, and how do you enforce this when people aren't allowed to take time off from work to vote? Also, looking at the state of Australian politics, I don't see mandatory voting as a worthwhile fix. >A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times. Lots of people have to work on national holidays. How do they vote? Society doesn't stop needing police, firefighters, or hospital workers on national holidays. And most stores (like grocery stores) are still open, so their workers are required to go to work too. More importantly, why do you think the GOP would ever agree to any measures to increase voter participation? | | |
| ▲ | thayne 24 days ago | parent [-] | | I didn't see anyone blaming non-voters. The argument is that a majority of Americans didn't vote for this, because most Americans didn't vote at all. (Also, of those that did vote, less than 50% voted for Trump). | | |
| ▲ | reverius42 24 days ago | parent [-] | | "less than 50%" being 49.8%. Kind of winning on a technicality there. | | |
| ▲ | crote 23 days ago | parent [-] | | A big problem of the American two-party system is that you can't distinguish a vote against one party from a vote for the other party: Did all of that 49.8% vote for Trump, or was he the "lesser of two evil" for a lot of people who genuinely hated Harris? | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 23 days ago | parent [-] | | Voting is always a compromise. No candidate ever perfectly represents one's own views on every issue. So IMO reasons for voting "for" a candidate or "against" another don't really matter. | | |
| ▲ | thayne 23 days ago | parent [-] | | Which is why it isn't really fair to say "this is what people voted for." Just because people voted for a candidate doesn't mean they agree with everything that candidate does. |
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| ▲ | decremental 24 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | rayiner 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | Jtsummers 23 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people Define "property owning", presumably you mean land or a home (would an apartment be enough without any real rights to the land it sits on?). This definition would end up disenfranchising most young adults and probably a majority of the members of the military (the military is relatively young, and young enlisted folks are housed in dorms, and if they move frequently often don't bother buying homes because it just doesn't make financial sense). | |
| ▲ | buellerbueller 23 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Of course prisoners should not be allowed to vote I don't follow. Please explain. >Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people who have an IQ above 85 (within one SD of median) and two grandparents born in the U.S. (so culturally assimilated). Yeah, just like the good old days when we had literacy tests in this country to vote down south. You're literally calling for a return of Jim Crow. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 23 days ago | parent [-] | | Jim Crow was bad because it targeted people in the basis of a characteristic that didn’t matter: skin color. That doesn’t mean that all restrictions on voting are bad. If the restriction is based on a characteristic that does matter, like intelligence, that’s completely different. | | |
| ▲ | buellerbueller 23 days ago | parent [-] | | If you are a citizen, subject to the laws and the taxes, you should get a vote: no exceptions. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 23 days ago | parent [-] | | Why? To what end? | | |
| ▲ | buellerbueller 23 days ago | parent [-] | | I am certain, because you use IQ as a metric for who you think should vote, that you are smart enough to puzzle out a steelman argument for my position. Use that big brain of yours and try it, you might learn something about humanity (and humility)! | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 23 days ago | parent [-] | | There’s lots of potential reasons. I’m trying to figure out which one you’re invoking? |
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| ▲ | mystraline 23 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Of course prisoners should not be allowed to vote, for the same reason as children. Prisoners in jail can be there for a multitude of reasons. But the main difference is that they were likely of voting age. Some states even do allow prisoners to vote. Who more than anyone here is subject to its laws than people imprisoned? It also naturally penalizes poor people, since they demonstrably get less 'legal equality', and thus go to prison more. As for children. Thats a different issue. The moment this government(s) started tried children as adults is when and the voting age should have been lowered to the age of 'tried as an adult'. > Expanding the electorate for the sake of expanding it doesn’t make the result better. So, you do not believe or accept democratic principles. It is no different than "get enough eyeballs on a problem, and every problem is shallow". > Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people who have an IQ above 85 (within one SD of median) and two grandparents born in the U.S. (so culturally assimilated). Holy crap, the dog whistles. Sprinkle phrenology (IQ) in there. Used to defend treating black people as slaves cause "we(royal) were doing them a favor" Literally grandfather clause, which disenfranchised former slaves. And property-owning, so a strong retreat to royalist 2nd son tradition. Pray tell, you are only talking about land with property-owning, right? | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 23 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 23 days ago | parent [-] | | You don't believe in social science. Sorry, I mean social "science". It feels like it'd be rude to quote you on that point, but it's one of your most consistent arguments and it's not reasonable to expect people not to notice the special pleading you're doing around it. It'd be like me suddenly talking about the virtues of DNSSEC. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 23 days ago | parent [-] | | I don’t think social science is credible as a field. That doesn’t mean that every finding within it is not credible. |
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| ▲ | JKCalhoun 23 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sarcasm much? Ha ha, you forgot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_paper_bag_test |
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