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Is it time to change our Federal Elections?

 
 
 
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Jimmy Higgins

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I was watching BBC World News and the two presenters were noting that the ballot is huge. Which is an issue, because election lines get so long, but one of the problems is it takes too long to vote!

  1. President
  2. US Senate
  3. US House
  4. State Legislature
  5. County Government
  6. Local Government
  7. State Supreme Court?
  8. Local Judges
  9. State Issues
  10. Local Issues

Is it time to have a Federal Election Day and stop cramming all this other important stuff into it and having a separate day for non-Federal positions?

It would take people 1 minute to vote for a President, Senator, and House Representative. Wouldn't this eliminate lines altogether, help increase turnout, etc...?

I suppose the concern could be fewer people would vote for State/Local elections.
 
I think this idea could have a little merit but it's already too hard to vote once in a year for many let alone twice.
 
In many areas, the lines are too long because there are too few polling places and/or voters do not trust that their absentee ballot will be counted. It is a deliberate attempt to suppress the vote. IMO, in those areas, making the ballot shorter would simply result in even fewer polling places and more rejections of absentee ballots.
 
That is why I vote by mail, and have been for many, many years. My ballot was four pages long what with the federal, state, and local issues, from President to local school boards.

If I had to vote in person I would have to make sure I did all the research beforehand and then bring in a crib sheet to fill out the ballot.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
I was watching BBC World News and the two presenters were noting that the ballot is huge. Which is an issue, because election lines get so long, but one of the problems is it takes too long to vote!

  1. President
  2. US Senate
  3. US House
  4. State Legislature
  5. County Government
  6. Local Government
  7. State Supreme Court?
  8. Local Judges
  9. State Issues
  10. Local Issues

Is it time to have a Federal Election Day and stop cramming all this other important stuff into it and having a separate day for non-Federal positions?

It would take people 1 minute to vote for a President, Senator, and House Representative. Wouldn't this eliminate lines altogether, help increase turnout, etc...?

I suppose the concern could be fewer people would vote for State/Local elections.
Click to expand...

That's certainly one problem - if anything, it'd be preferable to have *all* elections at the same time, once every two years.

Baltimore, around here, typically has city elections on off-federal years. NYC used to have elections and initiatives decided on all sorts of bizarre days. And these were often the places with the longest lines in their respective states - especially black, Hispanic, and Native districts. This is why Alaska, and parts of Brooklyn, ended up being covered by the VRA's preclearance requirement - the state simply kept screwing the Native Americans there over, so they got added, and stayed there until the Roberts court ignored all reasoning and gutted preclearance a few years ago.

Typically, my own district has everything on federal election years, and a 0-5 minute wait on election day. And while this year's a special case due to COVID-19 and the general disgust with Dolt 45, I doubt you'll see the 8-hour lines here you typically see in less white districts in general where republican AGs are in charge of the process especially. As LD said, this is almost entirely an effort to suppress votes first and foremost - it's already at the point where marching bands, rappers, and the like regularly appear to keep people waiting in line entertained, and have been for years.
 
And maybe it is time to explore making mail in ballots for everybody. No state should make laws forbidding counting mail in ballots before election day, as some are doing now. By law, there must be enough voting booths so that there are no more long lines. It is time to start looking at making electronic voting available, safe and secure. New voting machines should be designed by the Government to be secure, unhackable, and have adequate paper trails and easy to set up and run. They should be durable, and easy to maintain and not hackable as possible. All manufacturers of voting machines must use the model system for any machines they manufacturer.
 
laughing dog said:
In many areas, the lines are too long because there are too few polling places and/or voters do not trust that their absentee ballot will be counted. It is a deliberate attempt to suppress the vote. IMO, in those areas, making the ballot shorter would simply result in even fewer polling places and more rejections of absentee ballots.
Click to expand...

This. What we need is something akin to:

If any polling station has a wait time in excess of 15 minutes for more than 10% of the time it's open then in the next election then the number of voting stations (and associated people, such as those who give you your ballot) in the area it served must be increased by the ratio of the 10% threshold wait time and 15 minutes. (Thus if there was a 30+ minute wait 10% of the time the capacity must be doubled.)

This can be done either by increasing capacity at the existing polling places or by adding more polling places.

(I add the 10% of the time threshold because of surge situations--a small polling station shouldn't have to increase capacity because a busload of voters arrived.)

Everyone gets a timestamped paper when they get in line, they turn it in with their ballot. Subtract the average time people spend with the actual voting machine.
 
Shadowy Man said:
That is why I vote by mail, and have been for many, many years. My ballot was four pages long what with the federal, state, and local issues, from President to local school boards.
Click to expand...

Yup, nearly 4 pages here, although half a page was used up with the initiatives on the ballot.

If I had to vote in person I would have to make sure I did all the research beforehand and then bring in a crib sheet to fill out the ballot.
Click to expand...

Around here we get a sample ballot in the mail a few weeks before the election. It's a perfect crib sheet and the mailing label serves for ID purposes, normally I just show it and they hand me the card for the machine. (I don't know how election-day voting works, the early voting is city wide and so the machines must be told exactly what should be on your ballot. Hence a plastic card you stick in the machine to tell it which districts you are in. I say districts because different offices have different boundaries. Off the top of my head there's state house district, state senate district and county commission district.)
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
And maybe it is time to explore making mail in ballots for everybody. No state should make laws forbidding counting mail in ballots before election day, as some are doing now. By law, there must be enough voting booths so that there are no more long lines. It is time to start looking at making electronic voting available, safe and secure. New voting machines should be designed by the Government to be secure, unhackable, and have adequate paper trails and easy to set up and run. They should be durable, and easy to maintain and not hackable as possible. All manufacturers of voting machines must use the model system for any machines they manufacturer.
Click to expand...

Two notes on mail in ballots:

First, here in Maryland, I received an email at my preferred address when I registered to vote by mail, another one when the registration was accepted, and another one when the ballot was received.

Second: One reason why Florida is having a tough time? Many of their county jail records, for the fines and fees ex-felons need to pay off? They're kept on paper receipts, boxed up in some warehouse or other. Do *not* expect every state would come anywhere near putting together a decent system. Hell, even the unemployment system in Florida was designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible, and that's something that the workers pay into.

(I'm also still wary of a single voting system, done digitally, for security reasons - but that's a side discussion, and one I don't feel like typing out in full. Suffice it to say that I agree with that xkcd comic on the matter, and I'll leave it at that.)
 
In Georgia, we never vote on that many things in the same election. It seems like we're always having elections here, sometimes for just one item or one person. I think one reason the lines have been so long this year is the horrible voting machines that were purchased last year. You vote, and then go to another machine to receive a paper trail that you check to make sure that your vote matches. I only did that once in March and despite there only being 3 people in line in front of me, it took over a half an hour to finish. I voted by mail this time. It was easy, and I was able to check to make sure that my ballot was accepted and counted online. I think voting by mail is the way to go. It's likely to be much cheaper and more secure. The same poll workers could be used to help sort and count the ballots. But, we will never get everyone to accept that. People don't like change. Some people don't trust that way of voting. Some people think like voting on Election Day in person as if it's some kind of special patriotic thing. Humans are a pain in the ass.
 
That's the way we do it up here in Canada. All the various elections run on their own schedule. Your way seems to completely subsume the local races under the national picture and people go into vote for the President and then just tick whatever box has a D or an R by their name and move on. The local races can't even get much media coverage because so much bandwidth is focused on the top of the ticket that anyone who actually cares needs to go far out of their way to even know what's happening there.

Given that most people's lives are far more affected by what happens locally than by what happens nationally, that's kind of an oversight.
 
I still think the priority should be publicly funded candidates (via tax). No more big donors & everyone gets equal air time on C-Span (non profit). Campaign rallies would be publicly funded as well. Add that along with Ranked choice as mentioned by Treedbear and I'll apply for citizenship ASAP.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
That's the way we do it up here in Canada. All the various elections run on their own schedule. Your way seems to completely subsume the local races under the national picture and people go into vote for the President and then just tick whatever box has a D or an R by their name and move on. The local races can't even get much media coverage because so much bandwidth is focused on the top of the ticket that anyone who actually cares needs to go far out of their way to even know what's happening there.

Given that most people's lives are far more affected by what happens locally than by what happens nationally, that's kind of an oversight.
Click to expand...

That's not about to change regardless of scheduling. Even off-year federal elections see a massive falloff in voter participation - which mostly harms democrats for now, as it's especially true among younger voters. Random elections for local races almost never get coverage regardless of when or who they are, outside of city mayor or governor - and the result tends to be anti-evolution or anti-LGBT lunatics being put in charge of school boards.

(And the near collapse of local news is not helping in any way, shoutout to Facebook in particular for pushing everyone to near-worthless videos over text-based formats)
 
I think having better candidates would be a welcome change for our quadrennial POTUS elections.
 
Lot of reforms needed, yes.

Some states have federal and State elections in even numbered years and County and Municipal elections in odd numbered years. That help things a LOT.
 
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