We really need to have a compulsive voting law where the fine is like $1000 dollars. To make it easier though voters should get a federal holiday for elections, a choice of mail in voting, and be rewarded with $50 dollars for doing it. For all of you people who hate the idea of being compelled to vote, jury duty is mandatory but you get a small stipend for your time (at least in CA) and it's necessary to keep a functioning government.
Now if only we can get rid of the electoral college and implement ranked choice voting...
Also worth noting: Republicans have only once won the popular vote since the turn of this century, in 2004 for George W. Bush's reelection, when he had both the incumbent advantage and was still riding the post-9/11 patriotism wave
or put another way, the democratic candidate have won the popular vote on 5/6 presidential elections this century
It's funny because here being incumbent usually is a disadvantage because you get blamed by all the crap that's happening, even the little that isn't their fault.
The median voter is woefully uninformed and largely votes on vibes and name recognition. Many fail to understand exactly what kind of power the president actually holds.
Personally I blame this in part on the death of journalism. Local newspapers keep going out of business which removes any accountability for local authorities, and the only way you know of anything happening is based on Facebook gossip dripping in all of the biases the individuals who are there when something happens. And the local news that still exists keeps getting bought up by larger entities that may or may not be politically motivated to try to sway opinions and set the conversation across the country. Or worse in some cases independent news outlets are simply threatened into not investigating or reporting on certain topics
Maybe a really dumb question and I'm not from the US but why did Hilary lose in 2016 when she had more votes than Donald Trump? That doesn't really make any sense to me
Because we have this stupid thing called the electoral college. Basically, each state has a certain number of votes, based (roughly) on population (its a whole other issue), and the states' votes are cast for whoever won the most votes within their state (barring rogue electors and the few states that use proportional representation for votes.) Theres a total of 538 votes, and all that matters is winning more than half of them. This has made the winner of the popular vote lose the election 5 times (though in 1824, it went to the house of representatives for a final decision because no one had a majority.)
To summarize: not a dumb question, VERY dumb answer.
It's funny that even even if the weight was distributed equally by population (it isn't), it's not based on number of people voted.
so, in theory if only one person votes, their vote still has the same weight as the whole state.
Also to clarify further, the founding fathers created the EC specifically to override the popular vote, because they were afraid that land owning men might be too poorly educated to actually make decisions about our "democracy."
Really let that sink in. They probably would have opposed the expansion of voting rights to anybody.
What a weird system! Is there a specific reason why the US decided to do elections this way instead of just using the normal tallied vote count? This just adds a huge layer of complexity to the elections - you'd think they'd want to keep it as transparent and simple as possible.
People don’t vote, states vote. Semi proportionally to number of people, but it isn’t linear. This means that California gets 50 some odd votes and they all go to the democrats most of the time but Wyoming gets 3 (the minimum) despite it being smaller than many cities in population and they all go to the republicans basically every time. That’s why swing states are a thing that exists and matters. Back in the 00s Florida and Ohio were in the sweet spot of big and could go either way (insert joke about my girlfriend) but now they’re both considered firmly Republican states, meanwhile Wisconsin lost its Republican status and now swings as did Arizona. When people talk about texas possibly becoming a swing state as a big deal this is why, it doesn’t matter who gets the popular vote, texas is so big and serves as a counterweight to California and New York for the republicans that if the democrats win Texas without the republicans picking up several states that they never get, all of the swing states, or one of the two big hitters of the Dems then there’s basically no chance for them to win.
We were supposed to be a representative democracy with one rep for every 33,000 Americans. When voting for president each state gets one vote per rep and one for each of their two senators.
A while back some assholes decided that 33,000 is too representative and we should have a fixed number instead. So now it turns out that Wyoming should get one rep for every 58,000 Americans so their votes are worth far more than a Californian's.
Quick reminder: In Switzerland, we have the ability to vote on everything. We get educated like that from the early childhood on, that voting is important and necessary. Even with that concept, the average voter participation is between 40-50%. So even if you might think a lot of people are not voting - yes, true, but you will never be able to increase it much above 50% IMHO.
Fuck me, that’s awesome. Then Switzerland and the US are clearly doing something wrong. What is the average voter participation in Norway and how often can people vote?
I forgot to mention that we vote every 4 years on a municipal level and every 4 years on a national government level (offset by two years like summer and winter olympics).
Oh I had to vote three times last year (USA). Usually it’s twice but they called an august election in my state to try to pass a law to make ballot initiatives harder because abortion was a ballot initiative for our November election. I suppose you could have 6 elections in one year here: 2 primaries which don’t have to be the same day or any of the real election days, then quarterly elections, February is possible but I don’t think I’ve seen it, May is common, august I’ve seen once, and November happens basically every year and is this important one usually. Oh also there are emergency elections when someone dies or is forced to step down. And you kinda just have to keep track of it yourself and they don’t really tell you all this in school. You’re taught that elections are on the first Tuesday following a Monday in November. Oh and you don’t get time off work for it. Professional jobs are often cool with you being out the door asap or needing to shift your hours a bit, but most jobs aren’t.
So yeah I’d argue our lazy and uninformed populace is only one reason why we have shit turnout.
Exactly. Now you can vote early. But it’s an ordeal. And by mail but it’s a whole thing. And you’re exhausted and working two jobs to try to cover rent. Politics really isn’t that relevant to your life is it?
Votes by mail sound a bit risky to me as well. I know the postal service has lost packages and stuff before. Are there special envelopes? Special ways to tell that the vote hasn't been lost or "lost"?
Also, is it at least free? Postage already paid for?
It's mandatory voting in Australia, but you just need to turn up and mark your name off the list and you won't get hassled to vote. But I guess, once you're there....might as well vote.
And the fine for not voting is $50 or so, and the electoral commission will take most reasonable excuses and waive the fine if you don't make it.
So it's more like a, "come on guys, do your civic duty" kind of thing as opposed to MANDATORY, and 90-something percent of the voting population in Australia just rolls with it.
Bonus: At most polling places you can usually get a "democracy sausage" for a small donation to a local cause, so most people will wander in just for that.
Edit: voting is on a Saturday, so most people don't have to take time from work to vote. There are legislative provisions that say that employers have to allow people time to vote if they work Saturdays, and polling stations are open from 8am to 6pm, which generally allows a window of opportunity for most people to vote without disrupting their day too much.
There are also postal votes of course, which can be ordered via phone/letter/internet and sent to your address. You can fill them in and send them back early, so there's no real reason to not vote.
The founders were a gentleman's club. Which is basically a fraternity. They made up rules that made sense to a bunch of frat boy farmers with enlightenment libraries.
I wouldn’t call them farmers. Partly because a variety of wealthy professions were represented and mostly because the ones who called themselves farmers didn’t do any farming, they forced enslaved people to farm for them.
List a jurisdiction where you say it happened, and I’ll link you to the court records of what the Republicans actually said happened, once they were in court and would have to back up their wild and outlandish lies
This guy is being downvoted, but voter id isn’t a bad thing. Like in a lot of easy things, it’s just that the US is backwards.
In Europe everyone gets national id, and that enables you to vote. It IS voter id, but since it’s not only easy to get, but mandatory, you can’t use it as a means to exclude groups you don’t like.
IDs are not routinely checked when voting in Germany at least. But there's no voter registration necessary because everyone is registered with their municipality and automatically gets their voting paperwork sent home. You just need that paperwork to vote, no ID. I wouldn't change that setup because giving poll workers ways to refuse voters is not a good thing.
Btw. I've never had to wait in line for more than a minute to vote. Voting booths are usually in walking distance (might be different in very rural areas) and each accommodates maybe 250 people for the day.
Also, there are polling stations in prison. The right to vote can't be taken away.
So how does Germany ensure that people are not taking other people's voting paperwork and voting several times? I'm sure it must be addressed in some way.
Same way as they would for the ID, They don't. That's not a common problem. Only people in the same household could possibly access the paperwork and as there are only 250-ish people voting at the same polling station, risk is high that someone voting twice with paperwork of a family member would immediately be found. That there are enough cases of this to sway election results is highly unlikely.
voting several times
Check list. Everyone that is registered at that polling station is ticked off on the list.
Step 2 is out it is in most countries in Europe. But honestly I like how it is in the UK. You vote on a Thursday and people have legally mandated time off during that day to go vote.
I feel like a lot of people would definitely vote if it gave them paid time off from their work.
If you move to a weekend then it comes off their free time and they might be away etc
Looks like '95 has 5% third party votes. The lower bound for visually representing votes here may be somewhere between 5% and 3% for the purposes of this graphic
Also, sometimes it say "won" or lost" behind the candidates, sometimes there is an asterisk, but for many entries, there is no information who won and who lost?
Should split this out by electoral college votes/states where the 'did not vote' could actually have made a difference. This is great info but also a bit misleading cause votes in swing states have more of an effect than increasing votes in deeply blue or deeply red states. The US president is not selected by a national popular vote. See on the chart how W Bush won the election but Gore had the popular vote, due to how the electoral college works.
Not discounting that more people should vote. I wish there were a national holiday in the US for everyone to get out and vote. But some votes matter more than others, depending on where you live, and this chart misses that nuance.
Pretty much. My domicile is in one of the polarized States & the mail-in ballot costs $15 to send. It would be a waste of my money to send a ballot & since I don’t live there I have moral issues voting in elections for places I am out of touch with—leaving just federal content of the ballot.
And even then 15$!!?! How much does it cost to send a regular letter there? Because that’s at most how much it should cost to vote by mail. (But it’s it should 1000% be free)
W Bush didn't win the election due to how the electoral college works, he won it due to the corrupt supreme court. Not only did he lose the popular vote, he lost the EC as well.
There should be a No Vote tax, make it just $1–10 or something small. If you vote, you don’t pay it. Use the money to help pay for administering the elections (wouldn’t cover everything, but it’d help).
Should we fix the system so that people both want to and can vote for candidates they want?
No, that wouldn't be American. Make something punitive that can be disproportionately leveraged against the poor and marginalized community neighborhoods.
