Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Unsurprisingly - Jews know:
Should I bother to vote this year?
- Thread starter downtown
- Start date
Unsurprisingly - Jews know:
I don't know where I'll be after I get a job next year, but I am still casting a ballot because if I don't move, then those local issues will affect me.
If you agree largely with the person who will win, giving them a high turnout can be a signal to the major parties to adopt positions more like that candidate, so your vote might have a long-term indirect impact on what policies the parties adopt.
Third parties and protest votes, dude. They will get attention once enough people start voting for them. Paulie B might have won his house seat in Georgia, but there were enough Charles Darwin protest votes against him to register on the national news.
Strong one-party areas are also awesome places for launching third parties because people aren't making that ticket-splitting calculation. It's probably why the Green Party is strong in places like Arkansas and West Virginia.
Depends on the precinct. Sometimes American ballots are several pages long with local races and issues, and the polling places are so under-equipped it takes several hours to cast a ballot. It's often worse in presidential years than midterms, but still this can be hard to do for some working people, especially those with young children.
States used to vote over the entire week (or longer) for federal elections and mailed in the results as they got them. Because of concerns where early voting states might affect voting behavior in later states, Tuesday was selected as a compromise because it wasn't on the Sabbath (Sunday) and it didn't interfere with local market days (which were usually on Wednesday). So the states that voted on Thursday and Friday moved up, and the Monday voters waited a day, and voila. Early November worked because it was after the harvest but before the worst of the winter storms that would inhibit ground-based snail mail.
That too.
Why not just vote for write-ins and strange third party candidates, just for the hell of it? It's mildly more fun than not voting, and if you can get precinct-by-precinct data, then there had better be a nonzero number of votes in your precinct for all of the goofballs you voted for! And you can honestly say you did your "civic duty" and voted, if that's at all important to you.
No kidding, when I first moved here I still absentee-voted in GA. I voted seriously in the federal level elections and wrote in Gary Busey for about 20 local races.
That reminds me of the time I ran my freshman-year roommate for some student government office in college as a prank. It was a single-candidate election with write-ins permitted. I posted strange pictures of him from facebook around campus in fake campaign ads (during that fleeting moment when it was still college-student-only and before people were paranoid about the off-campus effects of embarrassing pictures). He placed third, behind the actual candidate and a minor Star Wars character.
Alas, most real jurisdictions require write-ins to be registered as official write-in candidates in order for the vote to count. So if you want to be sure your vote will (technically) count, be sure to do an Internet search for registered write-ins in your jurisdiction, and find the nuttiest ones there are.
Oh please, that's a crock of manure. Vote, don't vote, whatever, do let's not blame elections not being on Sunday on conservatives. My God, so people are inconvenienced for a few days a year out of their lives to vote. Get up early to go before work or go after work. Heaven forbid we have to go out of our way to perform a civic duty.
I actually oppose expanding voting beyond the actual election day for this very reason. If people are so damned lazy that they don't want to be inconvenienced, then frankly I don't think they care enough about their country to deserve to vote.
I personally wish turnout was 100%. Yes, I wish people cared enough not to whine and moan for having to *gasp* wait an hour or two in a line to care about the future of their country. Oh, the humanity! But it's not going to happen, so I'll take the 40% who actually give a damn about their country.
Well I don't care about the lazy voters either, but having it on Sunday saves lots of money on work time which isn't lost.
Edit: Antilogic's explanation is pretty cool, and I do admire the American respect for tradition and reluctance to chage something that has worked for so long. In Brazil we change the rules every election cycle, as we do with everything else, even the freaking language. It's no wonder the people have such low regard for everything. That said, voting should be on Sunday.
GenMarshall
High Elven ISB Capt & Ghost Agent
I don't know, I'm personally not going to bother voting in this election. My congressman is running unopposed and my gut feeling that two governors running aren't going to making living in my state any better if ether of them wins.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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I've never heard of any such laws in the US. Maybe they exist, but businesses that employ bottom-tier labor (looking at you McDonalds) sure as hell don't abide by them.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Wait, so you're saying that Downtown is right, it's just that you don't really care, and that makes him wrong? That's really the only way I can see to read this.
No, I am saying the reason voter turnout is low is because people do not care enough about their country to actually be willing to be inconvenienced, so instead they whine and moan and want expanded voting. There is no reason why there should be expanded voting beyond election day and mail-in ballots for those that simply will not be in their locale to vote. No reason, that is, except to pander to people who care more about their personal convenience than their country.
Well you're a conservative, and it doesn't sound like you support Sunday voting, so dt isn't wrong.
I dunno how long I'd wait in line to vote... probably not hours. I can estimate how much donating money to a campaign would help, and past X hours, I'm more help for my favored candidate by going to work and donating the money I make during those hours to the campaign.
Far too many people in Canada don't know that their employers are legally required to give them time off to vote. During the last federal election, my bank closed early on election day so the employees could vote.
Some people honestly need the advance polls. The first year I worked for Elections Canada, nobody told me until the last day of the advance polls that I was supposed to vote there (since there was no guarantee that I'd be assigned to work at the same polling station where I would have voted). So I had just a single afternoon to go around to several party headquarters and find out the information I'd thought I would be able to learn at the all-candidates' forums that were scheduled after the advance polls. We had SEVEN candidates that year, and there were three possibilities I was considering.
If not for advance polling, I wouldn't have been able to vote that year.
I usually vote absentee, even when not absent (IL has excuse-free absentee voting). This is in small part to avoid the line, but mostly so that I can look up the candidates for all the races besides the few most well-known ones and make more informed decision. Otherwise I'd only be making informed votes about the candidates for (when applicable) president, governor, US senator, US representative, sometimes state legislators, and any local election I happened to hear about, which is usually none. I'd never know who to support for state comptroller, or treasurer, or city council, and so on. Also the full text of state constitutional amendment initiatives is rarely given on the ballot.
I think there are good reasons to encourage at least early voting by mail - voters who care can make more informed decisions if they can look up information while deciding who to vote for rather than having to make an uninformed decision on the spot. And, of course, it's much better for people whose schedules make voting on Tuesday difficult.
At least you always know when voting day is. Even though Stephen Harper insisted on setting a firm date for the next federal election, that's ultimately meaningless since an election would be called anyway if the government falls on a non-confidence vote. If that happens, the writ would be dropped and a little more than a month later, we'd have an election.
Current speculation is that the federal election will actually be six months earlier than Harper said. I've already had an email asking if I'd like to be part of organizing the local Green Party riding association and maybe run (since Red Deer's electoral boundaries got changed again, it looks like the local Greens are reorganizing).
I'll wish them luck, but I never openly support any party in such a way that I'd feel obligated to vote for them.
Current speculation is that the federal election will actually be six months earlier than Harper said. I've already had an email asking if I'd like to be part of organizing the local Green Party riding association and maybe run (since Red Deer's electoral boundaries got changed again, it looks like the local Greens are reorganizing).
I'll wish them luck, but I never openly support any party in such a way that I'd feel obligated to vote for them.
This. It's one of those encouraged but not really required things. Not like the NLRB can do jack anyway because it has been gimped for years.
Problem is, there is a lot of deviation in those waiting times. Some people wait a grand total of 5-10 minutes to vote because their precincts are well-equipped. Other people have to wait not just 1-2 hours, but sometimes 6-8 hours to cast their ballots. And there's a very particular pattern as to where those locations are that is hard to believe is purely coincidental. Taking out early and absentee voting systems would only worsen that congestion.
I wonder what conservatives would think of long lines everywhere to vote, but you could purchase a fast pass to skip the line. Like they do at amusement parks.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Well then, screw voting. I wouldn't skip out of work just to vote, democracy can go to hell. Unless the boss is really into voting, in which case I would recommend practicing a short speech about civic duty and patriotism that isn't too preachy.
Goodfella
Showing results for
The lack of national holidays is a major factor contributing to the US's ultra low voter turnout.
obamacare![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
obamacare
Canada's law requiring employers to give workers time off to vote (the minimum was 3 consecutive hours) is likely a holdover from the days when it did take more time - because there were fewer voting stations and not everybody drove. My first experience of a voting station was when I went with my grandparents to a little one-room school out in the country somewhere (it's probably part of the city now; I don't remember exactly where it was, given I was about 4 years old at the time). They went in and did this mysterious, important grownup thing called 'voting' that kids were too young for. Kids weren't allowed inside at all, so I had to stay outside in the car.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Voting is your damn obligation, isn't it?
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