In many ways America is an exemplar for other democracies. But in the actual mechanics of conducting elections, no, it’s not.
American electoral practices, like British plumbing, suffer from the fact that they were one of the first in the field. They are really antiquated, really clunky, and not that well-designed. There are other countries who have come later to the game who have superior democratic technology.
And the states that do that are always the top ones in voter turnout. (Which is why some people oppose it – they don’t want more people to vote.)
I agree, it works very well here in Minnesota.
Also, we vote on paper ballots, marked with a pen. So no chance that any local government can manipulate the number of machines to force long lines in certain areas. Here, the lines move as fast as people can sign the voter register and get their paper ballot. In 2008, when it was very busy at my precinct, all the curtained voting booths were full – so people just sat down at tables to fill out their ballot, not caring about somebody seeing who they voted for. Then they insert the ballots into the scanner tht records their votes, get their “I Voted” sticker, and leave.
Also, the paper ballots make a recount quite easy – the officials just take the stack of ballots and spend a few minutes re-running them thru the scanner. In local elections, they often do this whenever the vote is at all close.
It’s really hard to interfere with voting by marking paper ballots. We once had the electricity go out in a polling place on election day. But people continued to vote, marking their ballots by candlelight. (It was in a church basement, so many candles were available.) The scanner couldn’t work without electricity, but the voting officials just collected them in a box, and fed them through the machine when the power was restored.
Jon Oliver had a great story about voter ID (I love his show): Voting: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - YouTube
I read an interesting analysis a few weeks ago, “why the Republicans will not lose the House of Congress”. The basic thesis was that the majority of states, where Republicans have been in control, offloaded the design (i.e. gerrymanding) of congressional districts from politicians to “independent” committees, nominated by those same politicians. (to be fair, Democrats have often done this where they can too.) Much like the design of who can vote, the allocation of voters into districts is such that the incumbent party is heavily favoured and upsets are much less common. once the districts have been set, it’s a decade or more before that can be changed and then, the other party has to dominate the state for that time.
Cite? I’ve never once heard of anyone having to vote outside of their own town.
First you register to vote. You show up, appropriate documentation in hand, and you fill out forms and in due time you receive a voter registration card. At this point, insofar as you had to show ID as well as proof of residence location in order to become registered, one might think the voter registration card itself woud be sufficient form of ID when voting day comes. One might think so but one would be wrong, at least in the venues that are attracting all the political hoopla you’ve been hearing about.
One might think that opening one’s wallet and displaying a driver’s license would be sufficient then?
Not necessarily.
Well, one might think at least that the set of documents that one must show up with would be well-publicized so you know what to bring?
Naaah. What’s well-publicized is that they’re making it difficult, so you might be standing in line a long time and then still get told “nope you can’t vote wtihout proof that you pay bills addressed to you at this address, in your name, by bringing in an unopened business envelope from three utilities, and two forms of photo ID showing your name and signature, plus a retina scan printout by a US certified optometrist notarized and signed in blood at midnight…” well OK probably not that, but the problem is, it isn’t made obvious what you do need to carry in with you.
What they ought to do is issue whatever ID is sufficiently authoritative and secure to you, free of charge, when you register to vote.
Youngtown, Maricopa County, Arizona (population 6000)
The Maricopa County Recorder’s list of polling places does not show any locations in Youngtown, and running some test addresses (gleaned from Google Maps) through the address locator returns polling places in El Mirage and Sun City.
Granted Youngtown is in the thick of the Phoenix metro area, so it’s not like Sun City is very far away, but any Youngtown resident who wants to vote in person has to vote outside of their own town.
I had a professor who had extensively litigated voting rights cases with the SPLC who talked about how the county boundaries in Arizona were drawn to slice the Navajo reservation up into narrow pieces and then put the sole voting locations in the county seats, which were all in the far south of the counties, way outside the reservation.
A touch of info about Texas: Texas doesn’t have party registration. When you vote in a party’s primary, you are considered “affiliated” with that party for the duration of that election cycle. So, if you voted in the Democratic primary, and the Republican primary results in a run-off election, you can’t vote in that run-off.
This has resulted in some awkwardness when candidates don’t understand the consequences, because you are not eligible to be a candidate for a party when you are affiliated with another party. There was a case where an incumbent county judge, running unopposed as a Democrat, voted in the Republican primary to help a friend, and found that he had rendered himself ineligible to appear on the ballot as a Democrat (and, because of the “sore loser” provision that prevents a candidate from switching parties after the primary, he couldn’t run as a Republican either). The case is at 92 S.W.3d 489, if you’re interested. A similar situation popped up in a county I used to work in, so I’m betting it happens more often than you’d think.
And this is what the PR government does. And they do drives to get as many people as possible registered.
This is the joke in Canada about US elections - “they even elect the Dog Catcher”. Even worse, they elect some judges (WTF?), so the one office that should NOT be pandering to the masses also has a strong incentive to do so.
A single example hardly justifies a statement like “now you’re lucky if it’s in the same town you live in” which suggests that this is a common problem.
You said you’d “never once heard” of the phenomenon; I showed you the first example that I could find easily. There are 25 incorporated cities and towns in Maricopa County, plus ten large “census-designated places” (such as Sun City, which isn’t incorporated but has 38,000 residents), and only 60* polling places in the recent presidential primary; that math suggest a fair number of people found themselves voting outside of their own town.
*The list currently available at the Maricopa County website has 116 locations, but reporting on the primary says only 60 were open that day.
You don’t need to control access to know how big a problem authentication is. You only need to be able to examine the record.
Generally, the list of registered voters, and the list of who voted in a given election is part of the public record (how they vote is private). Anyone can get the list. It would be very hard to keep any kind of large problem like this a secret for very long, since people are actually examining the record and looking for this kind of fraud. And, for the most part, they’ve found almost none of this type.
The benefits of casting a single fraudulent vote are very small. The punishment if you get caught is very large.
There are so many more effective ways to rig elections if you’re willing to commit felonies.
Yes.
You not only have to give your name if you register at the poll, you would have to give address (to prove you were resident). Too many people at one address, or invalid addresses, or people at that address (on the voters list) who did not know the people signing in and claiming to live there - these are all scenarios that can be verified after the fact from the swear-in sheet.
As Warlus points out, one vote doesn’t do much. To sway an election, you typically would have to cast say, 5% or more fraudulent ballots (for a close election) and often more than 10%. This would require a vast concerted program of fraud in a statewide election, or even in a big city, with hundreds of “fake” voters presenting themselves. The number people signing in when that was allowed simply did not come close to that level; and when investigators checked, they were legit.
(Except in old-time Chicago, where the number of ballots typically exceeded the voters list count, and people often voted long after they were dead. I believe the line in the Nixon movie was that there was no point in contesting the Illinois result, “Kennedy stole it from us fair and square.” But then, ballot box stuffing by the poll workers is a different kettle of fish from attempting voter fraud against an honest and vigilant poll station crew.)
Can WIC card be used as a government issued ID?
In which state? Cause it will vary in all 50 states.
Here in Minnesota, it looks like that is not on the list of acceptable documents – bills or statements are OK, but only from a utility company. You’d need to have an other registered voter vouch for you.
Besides, do WIC cards have an address on them?
But as raised upthread, how do we really know how widespread the problem is especially with low voter turnout? In my case I of course reported that someone had voted under my name, but suppose I hadn’t gone to vote? How would anyone had known what happened?
Most people in the country illegally have not committed any crime, much less a felony. And since committing a crime would have far greater consequences for them than the average citizen, they tend to be even more deterred from doing so–which is part of why their crime rate is so low.