How are elections run where you live that you expect not to have to wait at all?
Just to say, the UK practice is much the same as in Germany. There is a standing electoral register of voters at each address, and each year we’re sent a form to check and confirm/update (there’s talk of linking this somehow with driving licence and/or NHS registration, which hasn’t happened yet).
You get a card about three weeks before telling you what the election is for, when and where to vote (with a map showing your polling station), and with a summary of voting rules and procedures. Your polling station is tied to where you’re registered, and the law on allocating polling stations stresses the convenience of voters. As a fairly densely populated and urbanised country, it’s not difficult to place polling stations in schools, libraries and other public buildings within walking distance, usually with no more than a couple of thousand electors per polling station. Mine is in the school over the road, so I pop in to vote on the way to pick up my morning paper (polls are open usually from 7am to 10pm). In remoter rural areas and the Highlands of Scotland, there’s more travelling to do, but fewer electors, so it cancels out.
At one recent election, after a rush of late registrations and people leaving it till the last minute to vote, there were complaints of people not being able to get in in time, but only in a few places.
One other thing that might be relevant is that the maintenance of the electoral register and the management of voting and counting arrangements are, by law, all in the hands of professional civil servants. Political interference with them is a whole variety of offences, as we discovered in my own borough a few years ago.
This bears repeating: very simple ballots and many polling stations.
You vote for one candidate, and one candidate only; except in a municipal election, where you might vote for a mayor, a couple of councillors, and perhaps a school trustee or two. There are no downballot elections, there are no referenda on propositions, there are no complicated butterfly ballots or hanging chads. Just a sheet of paper, maybe 3" by 6" or so (larger in municipal elections, obviously), with a list of names and their party affiliations. You mark one name in federal and provincial elections, and that’s it.
As for polling stations, I don’t think I’ve ever had one far enough away that I’ve had to drive to it. Out of the three Canadian cities I’ve lived in when I’ve been old enough to vote, I’ve been able to walk to the polling station every time–heck, when I lived in a Toronto highrise apartment building of about 220 apartments, we had a polling station in the lobby, just for our building. It was an elevator ride away, at most. Nowadays, I vote either at the school a block away, or at the church three or so blocks away.
There are so many polling stations and such simple ballots, that if there is a line, it will be short and it will move quickly. I’m typically in and out in five to seven minutes, tops.
I’m sure most of the world is completely puzzled at the Electoral College system of electing a President. To many third world countries it must appear as a construct of a mentally challenged dictator.
Actually, I understand why the Electoral College exists as it does, though it’s not for me to say if it’s right for the US today.
Parliamentary systems have, in effect, indirect elections for the head of government, and some countries with elected (ceremonial) heads of state do so indirectly (by parliament and/or representatives of local government in some form of special assembly). And the EU uses weighted voting by member states to balance the interests of larger and smaller states, on quite a range of issues, though not for electing top officials.
Just one other point on the minutiae of electoral administration: some things I’ve read suggest that some US states have everything on the same ballot paper. When we have several separate elections on the same day, we get separate papers, differently coloured, and separate boxes for each one.
I’ve just been watching footage of people dealing with postal ballots and…jesus…how slow and inefficient?
Each individual has a pile of envelopes (in the wrong place) they pick each one up, reaches for the opener (in the wrong place) opens the envelope, replaces the opener extracts the sheet inside, unfolds, smooths the sheet, tears something off, reads the sheet, places in a pile (all in a single pile!), reaches for next envelope…Gah!
I timed it, I couldn’t help myself. nearly a minute for each envelope and I don’t even know if they’e been counted yet (as they all went into single piles).
Give me ten minutes to re-arrange those people and tasks and I’d at least double the speed of processing for sure.
Because our Electoral Commission sets out very clear guidelines on voting and polling stations. I’m not familiar with the rules as I’ve never had to read them, but the location and amount of polling stations is tightly regulated by population - most people will be in walking distance of their polling station and the number of voters for each station is also regulated, so there’s very rarely any queues, particularly if you don’t go just before or after work.
Voting registration and voting cards are also super simple - once a year, the local council sends you a household registration form to fill in (by post or online) - you don’t have to provide proof of ID or anything. Before polling day you are sent a polling card, but you don’t even have to take this with you to vote (or any ID). You just tell them your name and they cross you off a list. Voting cards are manual - mark a cross in a box and post it in a box. It’s simple and fast. So no queues.
I should add that polling stations are open 7am-10pm, so even though they tend to be on a working day (Thursday), there’s really no reason to find it difficult unless you’re out of town - and then you can do a postal vote or have a nominated person vote for you by proxy. The long hours also spread the voters out.
… long term systemic problems… “If the only thing you could possibly use would be a college student card and you’re not a student, or a driving license and you don’t drive, or a passport and you never travel anywhere, you can imagine that certain economically disadvantaged groups will be disproportionately affected, and certain ethnic minorities could be excluded,” Gacek said.
The report also referred to the disenfranchisement of felons and former felons. It said: “An estimated 5.2 million citizens are disenfranchised due to a criminal conviction, although about half of them have already served their sentences.”
“These voting restrictions contravene the principle of universal suffrage,” the report concluded.
Gacek said that $400m federal emergency funding for states’ election administrations had not been sufficient and the shortfall had come from private sources. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, contributed $400m.
“But when you look at the $14bn which has been spent on the campaign, and you juxtapose that against an administration which has been having to rely on philanthropists to help them actually run the election, I think it’s interesting,” Gacek said.
I find it particularly interesting that Mark Zuckerberg contributed $400 million to the cost of actually running the election, because the states and federal government couldn’t meet the cost.
That’s the key point to take away here, it should be easy to vote. I heard a lot of people praising theturn out for this election, at almost 70% I believe… that’s pretty sad for a country that claims to be some kind of uber democracy. I checked what the lowest turn out was in the Netherlands for a general election (where you elect parliament), and since the early seventies in was 73,3%. 80+ is pretty normal.
And you reach that by makeing voting easy. Everyone is registered, many polling stations (the last few elections there were some added on train stations, so people can vote while waiting for their train), hardly any waiting time, the reminder card that everyone is sent, etc. Normally I vote just on my way to work and it has less impact on my day than an unlucky red light in my commute.
My longest wait was maybe 4 people in front of me, which took about 3 minutes. And that was when I was literally voting in the parliament building (it was on my way to work). I think that is one of the more popular polling stations… just because of where it is.
I’m really not sure why (although I saw Novelty Bobble’s post just now), but the countig is a lot faster as well. Polls close at 9pm and that very evening most results will be coming in (reported by municipality). All these partiallcounts I see on CNN… doesn’t really happen, because the full count is available very quickly. Some of the smaller municipalities typically race to be the first to report and last time around it was 41 minutes after the polls were closed. In any case, the next morning the results are pretty uch done and dusted (as far as I know).
Same in the UK - polls closing at 10pm and basically everyone has reported by the morning (with most through the night). I think postal votes are still only a small part of the process so don’t hold things up. We also have some neighbouring constituencies having a race. The candidates are also in the counting room, being shown spoilt ballots and such as they count, so there’s really no legal challenges post count. We don’t see partial counts either - just the result when it’s been verified by the returning officer. It’s announced to the room with the candidates stood behind them (yes, even the PM goes back to his constituency for the count).
Counting is way faster in Canada because the ballots are so much simpler, as Spoons mentioned. Federal, provincial and municipal elections are held separately, and the federal and provincial ballots are just for one position, and are thus identical throughout each electoral district. Counters just have to look at the ballot and mark down which candidate is voted for (“Is it Smith or Jones? Jones. Right, next ballot.”), then move on to the next ballot.
Not like the US, where as far as I can tell, each ballot will have presidential vote; house of reps vote; maybe a senate vote; maybe a governor vote; state house votes; municipal votes; school board and other local govt agency votes; judges; and proposition votes.
And since the ballot has such specific local votes, like municipal or county positions / propositions, each county / municipality has to have its own ballot, am I correct?
So the counters have to record which presidential candidate is voted for on a ballot. Then they have to record which Representative is voted for on that ballot. Then maybe a senate candidate on that ballot. Then start all the state candidates. Then the municipal candidates. Then the propositions. Etc.
That would take way more time per ballot than the “Smith or Jones” approach on Canadian single candidate ballots.
Yep, that was me. But there were far more polling sites on Election day.
One other difference is that our ballots are way simpler: it’s just for the local member of Parliament, or for the local provincial member. (Federal, provincial and municipal elections are all run separately.) One X and I’m done, outta there. Shorter time to vote means you can push more voters through more quickly.
I think this might be the biggest difference- I voted by mail, and it took me at least ten minutes to fill out my ballot at home. If it had been one X, it would have been a lot quicker than voting for president , for congressional representative, for state assembly, for state senator, for borough president and for nine judges out of fifteen or twenty candidates 15 or 20 listed on the ballot.
And thank God we didn’t vote for any city-wide or state-wide offices this year. ( those are scheduled for 2021 and 2022)
Even more - since I live in a densely populated city, every polling site has to have multiple ballots. The people who live in my city, in my county , in my neighborhood within walking distance of my polling site may still be in a different state assembly or city council district.
Elections Canada is a non-partisan body administering federal elections and referenda. Each province has a similar group.
I’ve lived in five provinces, small cities and the biggest ones. Voted in a lot of elections. Never waited more than five minutes or was unable to walk to the nearest (and usually designated) polling station.
The complexity of ballot varies a lot from place to place and from election to election. In a lot of places, state and municipal elections are staggered, and I believe that the places where there are a lot of non-office-holder matters to vote on are not that common.
I’ve never had to vote for more than say five or six offices at once–usually fewer–and usually one other issue, and I can’t recall ever having more than three issues on the ballot.
California is notorious for having long, complicated ballots, but I don’t think that’s a general standard for American elections.