Some states have sample ballots, some don’t. We always got them in NJ, but in CT they just put it in the newspaper.
It might, but our constitution specifically does not work this way. Our constitution says that the president shall be chosen by representatives (“electors”) chosen by each state governments however they choose. Note that nowhere in there does it say “by means of an election”.
As a result, each state does things differently (with a few federal laws added along the way to discourage discrimination). And theoretically some states might choose not to use a popular election as that method. It has happened in the past, or rather: using elections has come to be the common method in present day, but it was not always this way.
So without changing the constitution, there actually is no such thing as a national election. Such a change has been attempted in the past, but has failed to be ratified so far.
I don’t have any problem where I live. I think this is a problem in certain urban areas, poor areas, and areas with a lot of minorities.
Each state gets to decide for the most part how it runs it’s voting process. That’s pretty well enshrined in the constitution. I don’t think you could change it without an amendment. The next best thing to that is tying federal funding to enacting uniform state laws, which is being done to a small extent.
The electoral college is not the only reason we don’t actually have national elections. People always directly elected their congress critters, and have directly elected their senators since the 17th amendment (or earlier in most cases - the 17th just made common practice official). The running of those elections was ceded to the states as well.
A national election based on registration managed by the Federal government would be a can of worms. A large one. For starters, the states would fight like mad for THEIR particular variant of procedure to be the way it’s done. And, if we are still to have the state and local offices and issues on the same ballot, the procedure would have to be flexible enough to accommodate the state procedures piggybacking on them. Then, there’s a fairly broad coalition that would object on ideological grounds, not wanting to cede that power to the feds.
I have had to stand in some pretty long lines in cold weather. Part of the problem is that we vote on initiatives that can take a while to read. In Mich this year we had to vote on stem cell research, legalizing medical weed and a couple others. If you have not kept up on all of them. you have to read and decide while you are there We vote on judges, both local and state, we vote on school boards and whatever else comes up.
Not always, in NY. Usually, I would pick one up while standing in line and then make my decision in line.
I think you’re conflating two similar but different issues:
(1) ease/difficulty of voter registration
(2) the practice of removing registered voters from the rolls (for good or more often questionable reasons)
Number 2 doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Number 1.
The lifetime disenfranchisement of felons in some states is something that should probably be remedied, BTW. It’s reasonable to not allow somebody to vote while they are in prison, or even while they are paroled. However, it doesn’t really make logical sense after they’ve done their time, if they are supposed to be getting “returned to society”, etc. Not allowing a 45 year old man to vote because he held up a 7-Eleven when he was 19 isn’t terribly reasonable, given that he hasn’t gotten in any serious trouble since. But it’s one of those things that would be a hard sell to change most of the time.
This is the key point. Early voting takes place in only a few locations per county in most states. On election day itself, there’s a polling location in every neighborhood. The two are not comparable. You can’t compare what’s happening for early voting with a normal U.S. election day, or for that matter a normal election day in any other country.
Ed
Also, a lot of the early voting states actually have what is called “in-person absentee voting”. This is where you fill out and hand-deliver an absentee ballot to the local elections office. It’s really a completely different process than election day, and doesn’t use the voting machines at all.
Hell yes, registration is a pain in the ass! Since January, every time I go from one class to another, there’s some dopey clipboard holder going “Are you registered to vote?” Over and over and over. At least 7 times a day, I’d say, for months.There’s even one obnoxious bitch that waves at you from her elbow and goes “HI!!! How are you today? Are you registered yet to vote?! ::giggle::” I’ve had several wet dreams where I pound her face in.
Seriously, though, it’s a piece of cake. Takes 5 minutes and you only have to do it once each time you move.
Voting is a responsibility to be taken seriously. If people can’t follow the ridiculously easy process to register anywhere in the country, perhaps it’s fair to doubt whether we should encourage them to vote. You can register almost any weekday of the year. People that wait until the last minute only to find some bureaucratic hurdle have no standing to complain.
I mean, really… we don’t have poll taxes, poll tests, or any of that nonsense. What’s the big deal?
I’ve been voting for over 25 years and I’ve never waited more than 10 minutes in any location and I lived in many different states, I usually go before 8am or after 5pm. The last five years in the location in Chicago, I’ve gone at around noon and never waited at all. It was wide open.
IMHO, the main thing that causes delays on election day (for the US vs. Canada) is probably the number of items each person has to vote on.
I’m Canadian, and for our recent federal election you walk in to your polling place, get your named checked off the list (IIRC, if you’re not already on the list you present ID and proof of residence, like a utility bill, or you can even get someone else who has ID to attest that you are who you say you are). You then get your ballot, walk behind a little divider, put a mark next to your choice for Member of Parliament, put your vote in the ballot box, and walk out. I’m 29 years old and I think I’ve voted in three federal elections, with never more than a 10 minute wait.
Here’s a sample Elections Canada ballot. It lists the candidates for that riding and their party affiliation. You mark your choice, and that’s it. There’s no electronic voting, and ballots are counted by hand.
For comparison, I found this sample ballot for Florida from 2004. The items to be voted on are: president and vice president, US senator, US representative in Congress, state representative, county sheriff, county tax collector, county commissioner, eight questions on whether various judges should be retained in office, mosquito control office, and seven different proposed constitutional amendments and referendums.
To a Canadian, that sample ballot from Florida sounds ludicrous - we’re not used to voting on so many things at once. We have separate federal, provincial, and municipal elections. But even adding those three levels of elections together, we don’t vote on that many separate items. Canadian don’t vote for judges, let alone the mosquito control office!?
The best thing about “Mosquito Control” on that ballot is that it’s seat 2. Which means, there’s at least one more “Mosquito Control” person who wasn’t up for election this year.
“Mosquito Control” is my new dog-catcher.
We’ve used those paper ballots & optical scanners for several years now. They have several advantages.
You actually don’t need the privacy desks to vote, of course. In 2006, it was pretty busy at my polling place, and they were all in use. But we were in a church basement dining room, and so many of us just spaced ourselves around nearby tables, sat down and filled out our ballots there. (So they can’t cause delays in voting by under-supplying machines to certain precincts, when all you need is a pencil & paper ballot.)
And unlike machines, they work without power. We once had the electricity fail at a polling place on election day. They got out a bunch of candles, and voters continued to fill out their ballots by candlelight. They couldn’t actually run them through the scanner, but they turned the ballots in to election judges, who ran them through after the power came back on.
And one other advantage – it’s real easy to do a recount. They just take the paper ballots out of the box, and run them through the scanner again. Or a different scanner. Or several, and compare the results. Our Elections Clerk has a special scanner at City Hall, which they keep carefully finely tuned. If there is an election that is at all close, they automatically run the ballots through that machine, and verify the counts. Because this is so fast & easy, they do it more often than legally required (which is only for very close elections). Many of the electronic machines, even ones that print out a paper receipt of the ballot, would be very hard to recount – it would be very expensive and time-consuming to do.
I’ve voted in the last two elections: The US next next tuesday (Is it last if it hasn’t happened yet? ) as well as the most recent Canadian election. The Canadian vote takes about a minute - you look for the party you wish to elect, and check the name of the person running for the party. There are about 8 parties in my riding (district):
Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic Party, Marijuana Party, Communist, Work Less Party (I need one of their bumper stickers), and a couple of more boring ones.
US ballot in California has 6-8 couples running for President and VP, plus US senate, state senate, school board, water board and a ton of other posts, plus a herd of propositions. I showed my ballot to a bunch of Canadians, pretty much all of whom said: “How long does it take you to vote?”.
re. example Florida ballot,
When I was young, I traveled with my parents all over Florida in August. We slept in a pop-up trailer with no AC. Mosquito control officials are closer to saints than they are to dog catchers.
Eh? Neither US Senator from CA is up in this cycle - Feinstein is up for reelection in 2012, Boxer in 2010. Are you sure you don’t mean your representative?
My mistake. I’ve already mailed it in, so I couldn’t check my ballot. My apologies.