Election Day

If the cost factor can be overcome, why not hold the election on Saturday and Sunday? That should maximize the convenience of voting and eliminate the issue of religious obligation, given that no religion of which I’m aware holds both days sacred.

Voting on saturday is much better than on a work day. Australia has the best voting system in the world. The elections are all on saturday and voting is compulsory. Plus, the “instant runoff” system is used so a vote for nader isn’t a vote for Bush sort of thing (or a vote for UKIP isn’t a vote for labour if you go that way). Much better than this “first past the post” system seemly used every where else.

From the little I have read on the subject, weekend voting has a clear effect on voter turnout. Probably larger than that of any campaign to raise voter awareness or rally the people around democracy or whatnot. Another good way to raise participation is to hold local and nationwide elections on the same day. Proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post is even better, but the ultimate voting booster is obviously to make voting mandatory.

I’m with Chris Brooke on this. Not fair to kids, changing the day.

How do you make voting compulsory?

And do we really want people with no clue what’s going on to pick candidates at random, or on the basis of which name is funnier?

Saturday voting would disenfranchise observant Jews.

Well, civil servants do get the Queen’s birthday off, which is probably reasonable compensation for having to work on polling day.

Perhaps it’s clearly true in England that people can work and vote on the same day. It’s not clearly true in the US. It is not uncommon for polls to be open from 7AM-7PM (in California, it’s 7AM-8PM), and many urban workers have commutes of an hour or more. The conjunction of those two makes it effectively impossible for many people to vote in-precinct, especially if their precincts have long lines (lines of more than 1 hour long are not unheard of, sadly).

The Republican party “routinely opposes measures to increase voter turnout”?

As in their actions after the Civil War? Or as in their actions in the 1960s when they provided the key Congressional support for the Voting Rights act and similar measures?

It is true that, in recent years, the Republicans have consistently been more willing than the Democrats to discourage illegal votes. I suppose one could say that objecting to illegal votes from felons, non-citizens, dead people, and entirely imaginary people, et cetera, does reduce turnout.

As for myself, I think that, in the long run, honest elections, with simple precautions such as photo ids (objected to by nearly all Democratic leaders), will increase turnout by increasing the faith that people (including Republicans, Professor Quiggin) have in the electoral system. It is simply a fact that places in the United Statess where electoral fraud is endemic also generally have low levels of voting.

I live in Washington state, where Democrat Christine Gregoire now sits in the governor’s office. On the basis of the evidence available there is simply no question but that her margin (129 votes) last November came from illegal votes. And there is a good chance that our junior senator, Maria Cantwell, also won office in 2000 only with the help of illegal votes.

So I have good reason for thinking that turnout is not our biggest problem.

Professor Quiggin may not be familiar with the history of the Republican party. Or so I would judge from his claim that “Second, the Republican party routinely opposes measures to increase voter turnout.” I would suggest that he particularly review the period after the Civil War and the big fights over the civil rights bills in the 1960s.

It is true, that, in recent years, Republicans have tended to oppose illegal votes more than Democrats have. (And it is hard not to conclude from these fights that the Democrats know that they benefit from vote fraud.)

But I do not think that reasonable checks on fraudulent voting, such as photo ids, discourage turnout in the long run. In fact, I would argue just the opposite, that clean elections encourage turnout. And it is a fact that those parts of the United States where vote fraud is endemic also tend to have low turnout.

I take this rather personally since I live in Washington state. On the basis of the available evidence, it is nearly certain that the Democrat who sits in the governor’s office, Christine Gregoire, got her narrow margin (129 votes) in last November’s election from fraudulent votes. (For instance, the counts are disputed, but roughly 1,000 felons — a group almost as Democratic in their voting habits as college professors — voted illegally.)

And so many failures have been found in the King County (Seattle and the nearby suburbs) elections office procedures that it now seems likely that our junior senator, Democrat Maria Cantwell, also won office in 2000 with the help of fraudulent votes.

For all our problems in this state, it is nearly certain that there were even more illegal votes in Wisconsin, perhaps enough to tip the state to Kerry. And for those who are not familiar with these states, I should add that both Washington and Wisconsin are generally thought to have cleaner elections than the average.

So, I don’t see increasing turnout as our biggest problem here in the United States.

Yes, Republicans are so concerned about illegal voting that they compile lists to make sure that even people who have names similar to those of felons are unable to vote. And they ensure that neighborhoods that might contain disproportionate numbers of felons receive inadequate numbers of voting machines, so that hours-long lines discourage people from voting, while those in less felon-rich neighborhoods are able to vote in minutes.

Does anywhere in the US that uses schools for polling really close them for this? I’ve never seen it, despite living in a few different cities that used schools- they just rope off the area used. Polling stations are not so big- it would seem crazy to close the whole school for that, wouldn’t it? Especially if not every school was used. I’d be interested to hear if this actually happens. (It doesn’t happen in Idaho, or Albany NY, or Philadelphia.) The best place I’ve had as a polling station was the Pizza place down the street from my first apartment in Philadelphia. (They didn’t close that, either, making it seem even more dumb to close a whole school) Free Pizza and sodas avaliable for the poll workers and people going to vote. I’m sure it helped turn-out, at least in the in the neighborhood.

Mill, in theory compulsory voting could favor the re-election of incumbents. Apathetic voters who would just as soon have stayed away may tend to pull the lever for the name that is most familiar to them. I have no personal knowledge as to whether there is any empirical support for this hypothesis in Australian politics. One commentator suggests that “There have been 21 Federal elections since Menzies took the Coalition to victory in 1949. The incumbent has won 17 of those elections, 18 if you consider Fraser to be the incumbent in 1975.” Again, though, I cannot venture to say how reliable that writer may be.

Tom T., fair point.

I suppose what I’m trying to get across is that objections raised to compulsory voting that are based on it being a perceived infringement on rights or liberties are not usually accompanied by corresponding objections to, say, enforced shopping hours, or seatbelt-wearing, or car registration, or mandatory education between the ages of six and sixteen …

There is usually an ulterior motive involving the perceived likelihood damage to a particular political party or cause. We’re having a similar debate now in Western Australia where the conservatives are opposing the introduction of one-vote-one-value electoral sizes (in W.A., country electorates have as little as a third the population of urban electorates but still have the same parliamentary representation). Since our conservative parties (the Liberals and Nationals) tend to fare better in rural areas there is an obvious pragmatic motive for this opposition, but it is never voiced (which irritates me greatly).

So yes, generalising about “conservatives” is probably unwarranted. I’m sure if compulsory voting was likely to damage the left wing of politics they’d campaign against it on equally silly grounds.

The polling station here is open from 7am to 10pm, which ought to be long enough for most commuters.

Yeah, I never understand this about voting being so hard. As Jasper says, polls are open here 7am to 10pm: even with a commute, surely no-one spends *that* long away from home (I have to walk about 30 seconds to get to the polling station this year: it’s always been less than 5 minutes away from my house). Maybe it’s different if you live in a rural community. But then you could always get a postal vote.

I do have some sympathy with the view that voting shouldn’t be *that* easy to do: it should be something you’re willing to spend 15 minutes on once every 4 years. Put that way, it’s not that hard a task (getting a passport probably causes me more pain). I’d be more in favour of something like P.R. to encourage people out with the argument that their vote will actually count.

In Maryland, we got off from school on election day.