Here is a BBC News piece about the Indian election last year, about how five polling officials and two police officers hiked into a forest just so one man in a temple in the middle of the forest can vote. Why does the US do the opposite; make it as hard as possible to vote?
A few factors:
- In most countries, elections are run by nonpartisan civil servants. In the US, elections are run by partisan elected officials.
- Those partisan officials do what they can to promote their own party at the expense of the opposition.
- In many states election officials are currently Republicans. Republicans tend to do better when voter turnout is low, for various reasons.
4, Therefore, they will try to keep turnout low.
“The” US doesn’t, certain jurisdictions in the US do.
That’s sweet. And sad.
Yep.
I have a lot of complaints about my state - but it does do a good job on access to voting. And credit where its due - the secretary of state is a Republican, as was the previous secretary of state. But they both did a good job of promoting voters’ interests and protecting and enhancing voting access. This needn’t be a partisan thing. Like I said above, there are 73 drop off boxes in my (relatively big, relatively populous county). But I looked at one of the tinier counties - Wahkiakum. 4000 people, 250 sq. miles. And they still have 4 drop off boxes for people to drop off their ballots. (That’s 4 times the number in the city of Houston, which has 1000 times as many people.)
It can be done. It doesn’t need to be partisan.
Yup. My county of ~ 30,000 has at least 6 drop off boxes. I think most are covered with video security. We have app visible on your phone that will route you to polling places. All in this small county.
More GOP bullshit. That could be the headline in every paper in America for that last 4 years.
On Thursday, five days before the election, the wife became a US citizen. Today, three days before the election, we went to Honolulu Hale, our city hall, where she registered to vote and then voted on the spot, driving yet another nail into Chump’s coffin. (The voter registrar’s office is open on Saturdays through the election.)
We were pleased she could vote. Originally we had heard the deadline for registering was early this month and thought she was out of luck. But that turned out to be the deadline for registering and receiving a mail-in ballot. And while Hawaii has gone all mail-in, eliminating polling places, they have set up some electronic voting machines in each island’s city/county hall for those who absolutely cannot trust the mails or who, like Mrs. Siam Sam, are just now registering.
Congratulations and thank you, Mrs. Sam!
The Ugly
The judge, who I understand is a Republican, decided to be sane.
Read the whole article—third paragraph in particular:
It’s not over yet. There are many who are predicting that this partisan federal judge will rule in favor of the plaintiffs and order the votes to be thrown out.
How the heck does drive-thru voting violate the Constitution?
Um… 'cause they didn’t have automobiles when the Constitution was written? That’s all I got.
The plaintiffs are arguing that drive-through voting should only have been made available to people with disabilities.
However, as I wrote in another thread, the goal here is disenfranchisement.
The plaintiffs don’t care about the supposed Constitutional issues they have raised—that’s just window dressing.
Well, one could drive one’s horse and buggy past the town hall on election day. But they’re really not even trying to pretend there are legitimate issues; they’re just blatantly trying to make sure the wrong people can’t vote.
I know.
What gets me is that some people still make the claim that both sides are just the same. Maybe I’m naïve, but they’re clearly not; only one side is trying suppress democracy.
Absolutely true.
I get very aggravated when I read articles about how awful it is when people let “political differences” come between them or divide families. There are much deeper issues at stake here than mere “political differences.”
This just might get interesting.
The state Supreme Court ruled that the drive-by ballots are good.
So they’re taking it to Federal court next. The judge is said to be a known blatant right-wing partisan who is expected to reject those ballots, just because he’s a blatant right-wing partisan with a history of rulings like that.
So, off to Supreme Court. But wait: The Supreme Court has delivered mixed rulings about counting ballots (see: Pennsylvania ruling vs. Wisconsin ruling) and their controlling principle seems to be that the STATES control their elections and the Federal courts need to stay out of it. (It’s actually a bit messier than just that.)
So this will really test if the Supremes have any scruples. They ought to rule that the ballots are good, because the Texas secretary of state said they are, and the county elections commissioner said they are, and the state Supreme Court said they’re good.
One hundred quatloos says they throw the ballots out.
(ETA: OMG! It’s not even 17:30 here yet and it’s getting dark! The long nuclear winter is upon us!)
Twp hundred says they accept them (if it gets to the Supremes, which I’m guessing is 60-40). Just being positive - I’m sick of worrying about the worst case scenario and I’m not going to indulge myself by wallowing in stress for the next few days 
.
But a legal theory being put forward by the plaintiffs and other conservatives is that the Constitutions charges state legislatures with prescribing voting practices. What state governors, state courts, secretaries of state and local election officials think is irrelevant. Neil Gorsuch took essentially this position in his concurrence in the recent Wisconsin case.
And the larger implications of this line of reasoning are breathtaking. Would Governors lose their veto over election-related legislation? Would the legislature have to specifically prescribe all details of voting procedure – where individual voting locations will be set up, when Agnes the election volunteer gets to take her lunch break, etc.? Would state courts lose all authority to hear cases arising from voting laws? And does the U.S. Supreme Court become the new arbiter of all state elections statutes?