by frog
It was astonishing to listen this morning to Morning Report’s Geoff Robinson interviewing US voters queuing for hours to be able to cast votes. Every time I have ever voted I’ve just walked right in and had my name ticked off. No queues. Seeing Americans investing that much time in voting is a powerful reminder of how important democracy is – especially given their vote is so much less likely to count towards the end result than the average New Zealand vote.
No Right Turn’s discussion on how US election system falls over when turnout gets above 50% is worth reading:
The idea that people would have to queue for more than five minutes to vote in any advanced western democracy is absurd. The idea that they would be queuing out the door, for hours to do so is positively third-world. It speaks of an election apparatus so hideously under resourced that is simply not fit for purpose.
It makes me wonder if the USA’s low voter turnout is not due entirely to apathy. It’s easy to be apathetic when voting requires an hour or more of standing in a queue outside on an autumnal Tuesday when many people should be at work.
If you’re in a queue on Saturday enjoy it and say hello to the people either side of you. It’s your time to spend with other people taking their chance to participate in our democracy
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
We have a simple situation in New Zealand, the USA has many things being voted for today! Not just President, but also
Representatives (house 100% Senate 33%)
State Governor
District Attorney
Mayor
Judges
Chief of Police
Chief Dog Catcher
and dozens more. As I understand it, there can be over 30 decisions to make and indicate in the booth in a US election.
The other issue is how many people will volunteer to operate the system. IN my own, quite large, constituency we have only this time managed to have a polling site in a suburb of some 15,000 people, and YES, in 2005 I had to wait in line for a booth to be available for me to go into, pull the curtain, make my mark and walk out of again!
Oh that we were like Australia, where people felt so strongly about the obligation of citizens to vote they made it a criminal offense not to, and to this day prosecute people under that law. We here should be so lucky.
God bless American Patriotism, and please allow a bit of that patriotic fervour to drop onto us New Zealanders!
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The other issue is how many people will volunteer to operate the system.
Volunteer?
(Jaw drops)
What sort of a mickey mouse system do they have over there?
(As for lots of stuff to vote on, sure, but that’s no excuse not to resource it adequetely. More booths, and at the least a priority for the count, though computers obviously help there – if you can trust them).
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I do believe its about the same as ours, where they recruit people to give up a day of their time to man polling stations and be abused by people who haven’t even registered! While there is a fallacy that these people are paid, a look into the system will show you that you could get more sweeping a main road in Wellington on Saturday morning!
Volunteers for democracy are very special people – with total commitment to an ideal. Me? I thing we should make people on welfare man the stations – can you imagine PhilU doing a day’s work!
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Computers! He He. Too easily interfered with! They have card punching machines in most states, and all votes MUST be capable of being hand counted in the event of a challenge – just like here!
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While there is a fallacy that these people are paid
It’s not a fallacy – they are paid. It may not be much (I’m not sure – their pay rate isn’t anywhere I can find on the website), but OTOH they’re not the ones who seem to have trouble finding election day staff or resourcing their elections properly.
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The electoral office pays about 16,000 people to work on the day. The pay varies depending on responsibility. That’s roughly 1 person for every 150 voters.
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185,000 people in USA terms all managed, recruited, etc., at the lowest level of local government.
WE should do it by mail, same as the local authority votes, it would be much more cost effective and labour efficient!
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Strings Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
> WE should do it by mail, same as the local authority votes, it would be much more cost effective and labour efficient!
only if you want voter turnout to go down.
If you want high voter turnout, there needs to be a sense of occasion to it. And going out to vote on polling day has more os a sense of occasion to it than sending in a postal ballot sometime during a 3-week period. It helps to remember that humans are not rational.
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I worked as an election night counter 6 years ago. I think it was 3 hours work + an hour or two training, and i got about $90 for doing so. It was pretty good money for being a student.
It was a smooth operation and I have a lot of faith in the way the electoral process in NZ happens.
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me too. we shouldn’t change one single thing about it.
it’s already the envy of the world
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