Since the US voting system is so broken... what does everybody else use?

Politics & Elections
1

I’ve heard lots of people say that the US voting system is broken and that it’s far too easy to vote twice or for dead people to vote. I have always trusted our voting system and figured it was as fair and honest as any system out there, but I might be naive.

I don’t want to debate whether the current system is working or not. I’m more interested in how other industrial countries are doing it compared to how the US does it, and whether their citizens/subjects complain about how corrupt their system is like the Republicans do in the US. I’m excluding countries like Russia and China because I truly don’t trust their voting systems. You must answer these questions three.

  1. If you live outside the US in a European, African, or Asian democratic country do you trust your voting system to be fair and honest?

  2. How do voting systems in democratic European, African, and Asian countries differ from the US?

  3. Is there any one country that is known for how good their voting system is compared to everyone else’s?

2

Taiwan, all votes are counted publicly. Literally held up by hand for all to see. An ink stamp marks each paper ballot. “One vote for Tsai Ing-Wen!” (staffer writes tally mark on board for the witnessing crowd.) “One vote for Han Kuo-yu!” (writes another tally mark). Police officers always stand nearby. Anyone in the audience can challenge on the spot if they see shenanigans, such as a Tsai vote being awarded to Han.

Voter ID required for all voters. No absentee voting.

Very stark, very simple, few if any exceptions allowed, about as transparent as can be. No electoral college; direct vote for president.

Legislature is a bit more complex; a mishmash of things thrown together. Some directly elected, some awarded on a proportional party list, etc.

3

In Australia voting is compulsory for all over 18 (the very elderly are excused if they wish). It saves a lot of crap trying to get us interested enough to go out to vote. Elections are always held on a Saturday but you can vote at pre poll centres or by mail if unable to get to a local school or something on the day. Once in the booth you can write “none of the above” or leave the paper blank, nobody checks that you have cast a valid vote, just that you showed up and had your name crossed off. ID is not required.

My local council uses postal votes only, we all receive our ballot papers and return them by mail.

It seems quite reasonable to me though I know much of the world disagrees. Turning up once in a while seems a pretty low cost for democracy. There have been moves to introduce computers or voting machines that will mean every person does need to make a valid vote, that I am uncomfortable with. Asking us to show up is one thing, forcing us to care quite another.

The cake stalls and sausage sizzles supporting the places providing the voting space are all part of Election Day. Watch for the tag #democracysausage all over twitter etc. come May.

4

Well, the OP didn’t ask me, but I’ll answer anyway. I would say that there is high confidence in the elections in Canada, for a number of reasons.

1. Non-partisan administration - this is a biggie. Our elections are adminstered by non-partisan officials, not by elected partisan officials. They don’t have any motivation to influence the election any particular way. They take the non-partisan nature of the job very seriously, which in turn engenders a lot of trust.

2. Easy voter registration, No. 1 - making it easy for people to vote is not a partisan issue. We want to make it easy for people to vote, regardless how they will vote. The starting point to register is your annual tax return - it asks if you want to be enrolled on the voters roll. Tick the box and you’re enrolled. It’s a cimrina offence to make a false statement on that, just like the rest of the intcome tax return.

3. Easy voter registation, No. 2 - if for some reason you aren’t on the rolls as the election comes around, you can go to the local elections office with i.d. and get put on the rolls. Generally you just need some government photo i.d., but a lot of other types of i.d. will work, including power bills, presciption bottles with your name on it, and so on. You have to present the i.d. and swear you’re a citizen and you’ll be added to the rolls.

4. Easy voter registration, No. 3 - if, in spite of all that, you’re somehow left off the rolls on election day, you can ask a neighbour to swear you in - any other voter in the riding who is on the rolls can swear that they know you and that you’re a citizen, and you’re added to the rolls right then, and can vote.

5. Notification of polling places - anyone who is on the voters’ rolls as the election comes around gets a voter card in the mail, sent by the non-partisan election office, with their name, address, and polling place on it. You just need to take that card and some sort of government i.d. with you, go to the polling place, and give your name to the polling clerks. They’ll check that you’re on the list, and if you are, give you your ballot and you go mark it. They cross your name off the "Big Book o’Voters’’, drawing a heavy line through it.

6. Simple ballots - we just vote for one position in federal and provincial elections, and they’re not held at the same time. That means the ballot is very simple and doesn’t need electronic scanning. Make an X against the name of the person you want to vote for, fold up the ballot, and go put it in the ballot box. Done.

7. Trust - this is probably the biggest one - there is no party that is trying to reduce access to voting. All parties want to encourage voting, wtih due concern for security. But when you add the non-partisan administration to the other things above, it’s pretty hard for anyone to throw an election by the “retail fraud” of individual voters. Better to ensure everyone who is eligible to vote does so, even if maybe some who aren’t eligible manage to slip through the cracks and cast a ballot. It’s the election equivalent of “better 9 guilty men escape than one innocent is convicted.” We want people to vote.

5

Just remembered one more thing:

8. Easy Vote-counting - since the ballots are so simple, the vote-counting is quick and easy. Again, the counting is done by non/partisan officials. Parties are entitled to have scrutineets present to watch the count, but they have no role in the counting or the certification.in most cases, the votes are counted and the election is concluded by about 10 pm.

6

It must be because of the trust part that this is assumed to be “easy.” If a US state were to propose making it so that you could only register to vote by filing taxes, presenting yourself for scrutiny at a government office building, or getting a neighbor’s permission to vote, it would be a major scandal.

7

Huh? How, really, is the “scandalous” part different from what today’s Republicans want?

8

I would just add that you should not leave the paper blank, it could then be filled in by someone within the counting system, if you don’t wish to vote always destroy or deface them

9

To add to this, one other significant feature of the Australian system is that it’s all run by a non-partisan independent body, the Australian Electoral Commission. So there’s no gerrymandering of districts to try to skew the results one way or another - boundary redraws are done purely on the basis of shifting population, and our electorates are mostly sensible shapes.

On the ‘ease of voting’ issue - wherever you live, you can walk into any polling place in your state and vote at that polling place (they keep spare ballots for all the other electorates and send them to the correct places when the polls close). You can vote from interstate as well, along with early voting and postal voting. They really do make it easy.

10
  1. I’m Norwegian. I have no doubts about the fairness of our voting system.
  2. Elections in Norway are every two years, alternating between local and national elections. In local election years you vote for a party list for municipal governance and for a party list for county governance. In national election years you vote for a party list for parliament. There are minor options for influencing the party’s ranking of candidates by marking the list. You’re registered as a voter simply based on being a citizen or resident of Norway and included in the national population registry and you need to either know the vote takers (which isn’t unusual in rural Norway) or have photo ID matching the list. All votes are made with printed lists. There is always early voting available, and you can then vote outside your district at any early voting location.

Other than voting for representatives Norwegian law allows for referendums … simply by not including anything about them. There just have been 6 national ones in modern history. Only one in my lifetime. (Apparently local referendums are less rare and were added to the laws in 2009, but I’ve never been eligible to vote in one.)

As long as you vote for a party that meets the threshold for getting a representative in your municipality or county, your vote gets you representation. And for national elections, as long as you vote for a party that gets more than 4% nationally, your vote has influence, even if it fails to meet the threshold at the county level. (National representatives are county based, with each of the 19 historical counties sending between 4 and 19 representatives.)

  1. Not to my knowledge. I’ve always assumed that most of Europe has functioning, unbiased voting systems.
11

Those people are wrong. The past election was the most monitored in our history and turned up very few instances of such things. In a country of 300+ million people you’re going to get a couple because no system is 100% perfect. So far less than 500 instances that might have been voter fraud in 2020, and less than two dozen where sufficient evidence was found to get the legal system involved. In a country with a third of billion people. Our system is not broken, far from it.

12

Of all the things that are broken in the US electoral system, sorry but this just isn’t one of them.
The rate of occurrence is a mere handful out of what 150 million vote?. And in a futile effort to stop this all but non-existent problem which doesn’t sway elections, millions of genuine eligible voters get disenfranchised which does sway elections.

My three point plan to fix:

  1. Non-Partisan administration of elections and maintenance of the electoral rolls.
  2. Non-Partisan administration of elections and maintenance of the electoral rolls.
  3. Non-Partisan administration of elections and maintenance of the electoral rolls.

It’s not like the US doesn’t have it’s own examples of world’s best practice non-partisan institutions.

I’d add eliminating the gerrymander that prevails in the US electoral districts, which could be easily fixed with by either the same non-partisan administration or using proportional representation. Winner-takes-all is a total crock too. The Electoral College could stay with proportional state representation. Lots of polling stations, distributed equitably. Make it simple to get registered and simple to get to a polling booth or mail-in. Give the fixation electronic voting the heave ho. The potential for election swinging fraud isn’t worth the risk. And their expense is used as justification for limiting their availability. India can get 600 million votes counted using paper and pencils. So do lots of other functioning democracies.

Plenty of good advice from other posters upthread.

13

Those people are wrong, naturally. Try voting twice for yourself and see how easy it is.

14

Do I understand you correctly: your vote is not anonymous? It may seem very open and transparent to you, but I see great potential for coercion there. It may be OK for your country, but I would strongly object if that were the system in Germany or in Spain.

Concerning the OP, I disagree with his premise. The voting system, I believe, is not broken because somebody might vote twice or vote in the name of a deceased person, that seems to be extremely rare; the voting system is rotten because of gerrymandering, of the non-representative electoral college, of the two party system that fosters the most radical candidates in the primaries, a Senate that represents territories, not people and because of voter supression. And a lot of indifference, as seen in the low turnout.
Social media, Rupert Morlock and foreign interference have made the problem worse in the last 20-30 years.

15

As others have said the main thing is trust. Trump deliberately set out to destroy that trust to convince his supporters he didn’t lose.

And the stunning thing is he didn’t do it as part of any grand plan for gaining or keeping power but simply to save his ego.

16

Velocity can no doubt comment, but I don’t think that’s what he means. The ballots are anonymous. But later, as each ballot is counted, it is held up to show who it is a vote for.

17

Ah, that makes much more sense, thank you!

18

And the parties nominate scrutineers who confirm the validity of each vote counted.

Even though all this mostly takes place manually, with paper votes, the result for most electorates is known by late on Saturday night.

19

This is, in my mind, the biggest difference between Canada and the USA. I legitimately would rather seem my party lose with 100% turnout of eligible voters, than win with 50% turnout. In the USA, the Republicans do not want the wrong people voting. They would rather win by disenfranchising people then lose to a free and fair election.

20

It is.

It’s not. That’s not how the system is broken. In fact, one of the ways it is broken is that it’s too protected against those possibilities, so that it’s too easy for someone to vote zero times, or for live people not to vote.