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And it's great. No lines, no waiting. Get your voting guide a week before, get your ballot, drink some coffee while you peruse the issues and candidates, look stuff up if you're not sure about things, drop the ballot off at the library after work.
You hear "stay in line after polls close!" Or about folks waiting 4+ hours, or it being illegal to hand out water/food to people in line and it reads like madness.
Vote by mail is so damned civilized in comparison
Huh, where I live (Zürich), voting by mail has been a thing since before I can remember, but voting at the urn has also been frictionless every time. I've never had to wait for more than 30s after getting to the municipal office and it also only takes about 30s. These waiting times and laws are insane you're telling me about sound insane. Voting at the booth doesn't have to be this horrible.
Unfortunately, the horribleness here is largely intentional. E.g. Texas Republicans just closed 92 voting locations in one of their largest counties (Tarrant). That's almost 30% of the total.
One of our parties consistently tries to make voting less accessible - and they're the party in power right now
Oh no :(
That is what I don't understand about folks who want to get rid of the mail in voting. The same people who get cranky about the line at the stoplight or checkout is suddenly ok at the voting booth?
There is a real problem with voting by mail: there is no way to enforce secrecy, voters can potentially be pressured by someone with power over them (employer, parent, spouse, bully, whatever) to fill out the ballot in front of them and vote as that person wants, not as the actual voter wants.
I think voting by mail should exist, but it shouldn't be the default; if you want to do it, you should have to provide documentation that you have a good reason not to be able to vote in person (such as being ill, disabled, on vacation, etc.).
Lots of right wing talking points about edge cases that won't affect 99.99999% of voters, but easy enough to address.
Mail in ballots can be filled out anywhere. If a spouse is concerned about it, they can get the mail early and drop theirs off in any ballot drop box, which are normally next to government buildings like libraries and are designed to withstand semi-truck strikes. Washington also has a way to get a new ballot if for some reason here is an issue with yours.
Voter coercion is a crime, and an approved case for replacement. Reporting it will resolve all sorts of issues. ~~Ballots~~ Return envelopes have unique codes so they can be sorted out if needed.
As to your other right wing talking points introducing tons of overhead for voting like "must have an excuse, etc" these only serve to reduce turnout, reducing the scope and breadth of democracy. Means voting testing, which is what the above is, will always drive down participation for the poor and disenfranchised, i.e the people that the GOP dont want voting.
How about you fuck off with your voter suppression plans and let states vote very successfully in the safe, efficent, and effective manner they already use?
I'm not American myself and so certainly am not motivated by driving down participation by "people the GOP don't want voting". I was talking about democracies in general, not specifically the US.
I would have thought my talking point would be a left-wing one that acknowledges that people sometimes face economic or other pressure by people with power over them, and there needs to be a system that reduces the impact of this. Denying that this can ever happen sounds like that's the "right-wing talking point" to me, tbh. In fact, I would expect the problem I mentioned to affect more left-wing votes than right-wing ones because employers might want their employees to vote for right-wing parties while the employees might want to vote for left-wing ones; but that is beside the point, my opinion would be the same if that weren't the case.
I get what you're trying to say, but the other person just pointed out there are safe guards for people that feel threatened by a spouse or family.
What I don't get is why you keep bringing up the employer thing. The ballot is sent to you home and you can drop it off without ever interacting with work. If your boss tells you to vote a certain way then lie to them, while you look for a new job and report they're ass for vote cohesion after you section a new job.
The pressure might be to fill out the ballot at the workplace. I agree that if that happens, it should be reported and the person exercising that pressure prosecuted.
Again just lie. "Sorry boss I'm not registered" or "I'm still waiting for it in the mail." And find a new job.
The problem is that the in the US the right wing has claimed there was fraud with mail in voting. This means that if anyone mentions the issues with mail in voting they are assumed of doing the same thing.
No matter whether you are left or right, mail in (or god forbid online voting) is an horribly bad idea. The whole voting process should be transparent and visible from casting your vote (or someone elses) to seeing it counted. That is not possible with mail in voting so it allows for possible fraud (or even the suggestion of fraud as we see in the US).
Someone mentioned unique barcodes on ballots, great now you have eliminated voting anonymity.
Yes, voter suppression is a real issue mail in voting can help against, but IMO mandatory voting is the better solution.
I should have been more specific. The barcodes are on the return envelopes, not the ballots. They allow a ballot to be tracked by the voter to make sure its proccessed or sorted out before its tallied in the cases that a voter reports an issue, but at no point is who the person voted for tracked or logged. The tally process involved immediately discarding the envelope and separating it from the ballot itself when the votes are tallied, fully preserving anonymity.
The envelopes include voter signatures which are checked against voter registration, and the collection and processing follows a chain of custody. The tallying itself is monitored and transparent as well. The whole process is audited, because the paper ballots are retained and can be recounted if needed. You can view the process here:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/securing-your-vote
Mail-in voting can be wholly secure, and should be the default because of its efficieny in widening engagement with democracy.
It's still much less transparent with more possibilities of things going wrong and it doesn't guarantee a vote was done anonymous.
Mandatory voting is the much simpler solution
Where I live (Austria), voting by mail is possible, but not the default. People who want to do it need to apply for it and sign that they will be unable to vote in person, for example due to being absent or for medical reasons. I don't think anyone actually verifies this though, the voter is taken at their word that that's the case.
I live in WA which is also considered a "vote by mail only" state, and yet, there are voting centers where you can go and vote if you prefer, specifically for those reasons you list.
Are you sure you think it should exist? You're giving classic GOP talking points designed to get rid of voting by mail.
If you want to go into vote, you can always go somewhere. Where I live ballots are sorted out in the county courthouse. They set up several voting booths for those who want to vote in person.
You are not limited to only voting my mail.
You are 100% incorrect.