As a non-American, I don’t know exactly how your polling works, but why am I seeing “plan your voting day” or “set a voting strategy” like they’ve done on the Cards Against Humanity voting campaign?
Where I live, it’s just show up on voting day and cast your ballot, or ask for a mail in ballot, or go to a special voting station if you need (or want) to vote early. Is it the same in the US, and this is just getting people to gather those last pieces of information early and put a reminder in the calendar? Or is there more to it than that?
Thanks!
Studies have shown that if you ask people to make a plan for voting, they are more likely to actually go out and vote. It’s even cited in the FAQ of cards against humanity.
So we ask people to make a plan because it’s an efficient way to make them more involved and more likely to actually go out and vote when the day comes. Not because it’s so hard that they need a plan (unless you live in certain states of course), but because it forces you to think actively about it rather than just passively.
Anywhere you’ve got decades long republicans in office you will find it extremely hard to vote in America. Elsewhere it’s relatively easy. In Colorado I literally don’t do anything, a booklet explaining all the laws shows up in the mail a few weeks before the ballots do, then the ballot shows up and I can either drop it off in one of the numerous drop boxes, put it in the mail, or ignore it and go vote in person where the lines are short because nobody votes in person.
How does a country like the US have hours long lines…
republicans are anti-democracy and have for decades put in place many obstacles for voting. they know that they only exist as a minority, and true democracy would limit their ability to fuck the rest of us over.
Intentional voter suppression.
One thing that I think non-USians don’t understand is that our elections are not ran by some non-partisan agency that has a goal of running an efficient, fair election. Our elections in general (although it varies by state) are ran by partisan actors who know which areas vote for their party and which ones don’t. They intentionally try to make it easy for their supporters and hard for their detractors to vote.
I live in Ohio if you couldn’t tell, and our chief elections officer (the Secretary of State) is not afraid to tell people that he wants Donald Trump to win the election. He is not neutral. That’s just the way it is here.
This is uneducated speculation but what if more people are going to vote as elections get crazier and voting centers aren’t used to the higher volume?
You get even longer queues?
I mean to explain the current longer wait times
Ah I see. Well technically yes but that would be easily preventable with a modicum of planning so it’s much more likely that it’s a deliberate decision.
It really depends on location and turnout.
Here in my town, the longest I’ve ever waited was a minute or two. Small population, and plenty of booths.
When I lived in a city, I only voted twice, but both times I was waiting maybe ten minutes plus a little. That was, as I was told, average for that polling place. It was a church basement (not in the dank and drippy way lol), so it was a tad small for the number of people in the district. But, over at a school gym that was a polling place, I had a friend wait nearly a half hour. Despite the bigger space, the turnout was huge, and not typical for that specific polling place.
They try to make sure a space is big enough (when everything is working right) for the district, but it doesn’t always work perfectly.
Then, you’ve got locations where the voting organizers are willing to fuck over a specific district and the polls will be under staffed, have too few booths, and may have other impediments to getting things done efficiently.
So it’s not really a single factor that goes into the crazy wait times. Nor is an hour in line the default.
Tx… makes sense.
Americans are lazy and kinda dumb so voter turn out mostly driven by drama, feel good messages, and rage. A lot of the “go out and vote” messaging is genuine, but all politics becomes scum and strategy. They can target certain demographics that are likely to vote in a certain way. The goal is to get a demographic with a statistical likelihood of voting for Asshat-A to go out and vote as the Asshat-A voters in that demographic out number Asshat-1 voters.
Voting varies by state law but most of it comes down to mail in a ballot, check a box in person, or click a button in person. The problem is speed bumps. There are major corruption issues that plague US elections as the guys elected are trusted to not be self serving pieces of shit. The voting process can be potentially changed by the people getting voted in, so naturally corrupted groups make voting as inconvenient as legally possible to dissuasive a demographic that is likely to vote against them. (Past efforts:ID checks, reading test, checking if you’re a white land owing male, checking if you are brave enough to walk past the KKK, long lines, stupid rules, de-funding the post office to make ballots late.) Gerrymandering manipulates voting by changing districts on a map to change outcomes of votes. Actual voter fraud is rare in the idea of stuffing a ballot box. The corruption game is payed on a map and spreadsheet, with the threat of bribes not showing up.
Voter turn out is generally a good thing as it can offset corruption and is widely pushed, but each group has people they do and do not want participating in the vote. A single Asshat-1 voter staying home because the line is too long, or too dangerous might as well be a vote for Asshat-A and that can be enough to change the outcome of a district. Lower turnout makes corruption easy and leads to a shitty outcome, and everyone is trying to move things in their favor or win the game.
