With the filibuster, it largely doesn’t matter how someone votes.
Between the fact that it wouldn’t be passed with a filibuster in place, and if it were somehow passed even with a filibuster, then it still means that you cannot vote for people to get anything done, it is relevant.
Well, 9 more, but yeah.
Rather than making voting day a holiday, so what the do in Quebec. Every employee, no exception, must have a four hour period off during the hours that the polls are open. McGill simply closes down at 4PM on voting days.
Derp.
~Max
For the record, I agree with this statement fully and wish it didn’t exist.
~Max
Personally I support state laws that guarantee paid time off to vote. Unfortunately, my state of Florida offers no such protection. I don’t think the federal government should or can provide such protection except for their own employees.
~Max
I fully agree with all of these measures, except possibly the part where states decide whether to have in-person voting. That should not be optional. You can’t vote by mail until you recieve the ballot by mail, which is difficult or impossible for those who move frequently or have no permanent address. The reality of elections is that large numbers of people still vote on election day, in person. In the 2018 midterms, 60% of voters cast their ballots in-person on election day (“In 2018, 40 percent of voters used an alternative voting method”). I forsee no feasible way of convincing all of those people to vote by mail before 2022.
~Max
One thing that’s needed is to establish a felony, or a set of them, for interfering with an election. Spread flyers in “the wrong neighborhood” giving incorrect information on when or where to vote? You’re going to prison. Voter intimidation? Prison. State officials violating the other provisions of the act, like trying to close down voting locations beyond the required levels? Guess what, they get to go to prison, too.
And it’s way too late to speak out against abolishing the filibuster. The Republicans effectively already have, at least for bills they want. Anything they want to pass, they can just say falls into some special category that isn’t eligible for the filibuster, even if it blatantly doesn’t. If the filibuster requirement is only binding on Democrats, then of course we should eliminate it at the first opportunity.
I wonder, logistically, if we are talking about a federal law would we be limited to referencing federal offenses, in this case 18 USC 245 (b)(1)(A)? Or could the act read, “unless convicted of a state crime along the lines of…”
~Max
Get rid of the artificial limit on the number of members of the House. The pandemic has shown that Congress members can work and vote remotely. There’s no reason other than possibly logistics that says a Rep in a high population state should be representing several times the number of citizens as one in a low population state.
In Canada, prisoners vote for candidates in the riding in which they were convicted.
Which makes sense for the most part.
But, in the US, they are counted as part of the Census, which means more representatives for the area that they are in. Since their presence is what gives a state more representatives, it seems they should be involved in the selection of those as well.
Does Canada have any sort of apportionment like that? If so, would a prisoner be counted as to where they were convicted, or where they are incarcerated?
I don’t know the answer to this, but I suspect it’s not a significant issue. The 2016 census recorded ~40,000 federal and provincial prisoners from a total population of 35 million (less than 20% of the US rate), so they’re not going to skew population statistics very much. We also tend not to have large prisons in rural or small town locations. Canada is divided into far fewer provinces and territories than US states, so again less impact, especially as representation in Parliament is not directly linked to the census results.
I still don’t get the Americans’ distate for voter ID. I come from a poor country and everyone has the national ID which doubles as the voting ID (In fact, in the past, it was called Libreta Electoral, now it’s Documento Nacional de Identidad). And by everyone I mean illiterate potato farmers up in 4000 m.a.s.l. ten-hut hamlets.
I just don’t buy the “it’s too hard to get” thing.
Also, I don’t get how you accept voting without some sort of ID that has State/National weight behind it.
The US could certainly have a national ID system but I some of the religious types fear it would represent a biblical “mark of the beast”.
Voter ID here in the USA has historically and currently been used for voter suppression, especially among minorities and the poor.
Racist states make it hard and/or expensive to get the ID.
Does your country have a national voter ID system? Or is it left to the individual states, as it is in the US?
The people who want Voter ID in the US want to make it too hard to get, that’s the problem with it.
It’s three years old, but this blog posting from the Pew Trusts describes some of the difficulties in getting a state ID card.
To get an ID card, most states require multiple proofs of identity or permanent residence, such as utility bills, Social Security cards or birth certificates. Some states require proof of homelessness, such as a letter from a social services agency.
And most states charge a fee to get an identification card — not to mention fees of as much as $50 for a copy of a birth certificate. But even with waived fees, getting an ID can be an arduous process entailing multiple visits to a state office.
Or read this eight-year-old report from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. Or this four-year-old article from The Washington Post (paywall warning).
National, it’s a unitary country
How? What are the methods they have proposed to make it difficult?
Still, why can’t the federal governemt do one and it’s anID valid in the whole USofA.