2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumTHIS IS WHY ALL ELECTIONS NEED TO BE HELD ON WEEKENDS OR HOLIDAYS
Some huge number of Arizonans spent an entire work day waiting in line to vote for Sanders.
Their ballots are no longer secret.
This is why Election Day needs to be a national holiday. It needs to be changed immediately.
Can all Democrats rally around the cause of democracy, please?
TCJ70
(4,387 posts)...it's pretty stupid that we don't make it as easy as possible for people to participate in our democracy.
astrophuss42
(290 posts)I think it's stupid too but they are doing it for a reason.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Scheduling voting on weekends wouldn't do. We don't want people deciding between a weekend with friends or voting, after all. Or trying and failing to fit it in between the kids' activities and hitting some sale at the mall.
And making a Money or Friday into a national holiday would just invite voters to head for a long weekend in the mountains instead.
And then let's also require people to vote anyway and fine them if they don't. You know, make it as easy as possible to vote, as in "easier" to just do it than to spend the day reading a good novel.
Baobab
(4,667 posts)Whatever it takes to win. Big money interests need Hillary to win. Otherwise 20 years of work setting up the WTO and progressive liberalisation of services will go to waste and wages will stay high in the developed countries relative to the rest of the world.
Reducing profits and preventing a race to the bottom in them. Then the wages elsewhere would probably go up, not down.
So a lot is riding on Hillary's victory. She is associated so closely with Bill who is seen as the most visible American associated with neoliberalism, so in a sense its a referendum here on the WTO as well, as well as the "Washington Consensus".
She really has to win to prevent a major loss of credibility for neoliberalism, which to some extent rules by fear and creating the mistaken impression that its brand of globalization is "inevitable".
In exchange for giving up their beloved social programs, public health care and education, the LDCs get the promise of preferential market access to developed countries if they can put in the lowest qualified bids on services and commodities. Struggling schools and hospitals, and IT departments will gain access to high skill, very low cost workforces.
For the least developed countries, that will be the long-awaited pay back for decades of participation in globalization. Many LDCs now have huge debts to the West which they hope to pay back with the money earned and sent back home via remittances via these service jobs.
In a sense the promise of work in America, the EU, etc, has been a El Dorado of sorts, that has allowed corrupt regimes to stay in power when they otherwise would have been replaced by the would be upwardly mobile, highly educated jobless class.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)I mean how could the gods of screw ups only screw up Bernie supporters?
astrophuss42
(290 posts)upaloopa
(11,417 posts)Again how can a screwed up operation only pick Bernie supporters to screw up?
And do voters have any culpability here? Did independents or people wanting to register yesterday try to vote in a closed primary?
think
(11,641 posts)general election...
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)(emphasis mine)
Of course, the OP never said any such thing. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this was just sloppy reading on your part, and not a slimy, deliberate straw man.
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)but also making it easy to vote.
vote by mail is easy...and works well.
Increases voter participation.
Baobab
(4,667 posts)then they have to have another election with new candidates immediately
NOT send it to the House to decide!
think
(11,641 posts)Baobab
(4,667 posts)I have never heard of anything like this happening anywhere else, where voters were still lined up by the thousands at midnight of the next morning. I went to sleep at 3 am here last night and there were still lots and lots and lots of voters waiting to vote in Arizona. (at 12:00 am on the 23rd)
What I am saying is that whomever set this up this way should not be rewarded by an election where a great many people were not able to vote, if anything, there should be a new election where they can all cast their votes and it should be held on a weekend. Maybe a Sunday.
This looks like a clear case of extreme voter suppression.
think
(11,641 posts)WheelWalker
(8,943 posts)election. Everybody votes at the same time and we have a national primary winner. States could still assign delegates however they do now, but every state would hold their election or caucus on the same day.
Baobab
(4,667 posts)Clear plastic ballot boxes with unpickable locks and use commodity off the shelf scanners and the simplest open source software-something so simple even a 10 year old could read and understand it.
Everything public and out in the open. No touch screen voting machines.
(see
http://citp.princeton.edu/studies/voting/
158-page report [PDF] On Sequoia Voting Machines
http://coblitz.codeen.org/citp.princeton.edu/voting/advantage/advantage-insecurities-redacted.pdf
Andrew Appel's studies of voting technology
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/voting/
Insecurities in New Jersey voting machines (2008) Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H - YouTube
States Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?em
I. Intro to the Mathematics of Voting
http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/Voting/overvw1.htm#Introduction
No computers or least complicated possible computers = no hackability.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)WheelWalker
(8,943 posts)the social interaction at the polls; but, the ballots are paper, the act private and secret, and it offers everyone time to consider and vote.