Hacker News Reader

Comment by touisteur | Hacker News Reader

I agree.

I don't understand the argument of reducing cost of elections and scaling. The current paper system in place in most works (at least in European countries where I've witnessed the process) and doesn't need to scale more. If actors in a democracy can't afford such a system, and the occasional (once, twice a year) walk to the voting place, 15 minutes wait and fellow-citizen interaction, can't we accept they don't care for voting and participating and stop listening?

I'm all for accommodation of special cases (people with reduced mobility or unability to be in contact with other people) but we already have the necessary systems in place (mail-in or vote delegation).

Literally one of the last places I'd check for change or optimization. It works, leave it alone, I'll happily pay the 3 or 10eur a year.

View on HN

> I don't understand the argument of reducing cost of elections and scaling.

How about if we could scale ballots to such an extent that a citizen can vote from wherever/whenever on all issues they're interested in[1], not just a head of state election every X years? Wouldn't that be a more democratic process ?

I believe it would, and that paper ballots won't get us there.

[1] A current instance of this is the Swiss voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland

Well, I live in a representative democracy, and it mostly works. I don't think the vote is only way to express political power, just the most 'sacred' and extreme of all. The one of removing your ruler (or ruling party) from power.

And making people vote on issues they're interested in just makes me think only extremes will be heard and counted, and I would have to give my opinion on a bunch of things I don't really care about, or am not quite competent enough. To me, the democratic vote should be a precious rare thing, to elect a representative or a bunch of them, and trust them to do a non-too-shitty job of it.

Referendums, IMO are among the worst democratic moments in my republic, and I feel my concitoyens (from talking to some, and reading what they say in polls or public forums) don't really vote on the specific subject but on a global policy rant. It's a place to vent, not to decide ; when your elected ruler throws up his hands and gives you back the wheel at the last moment, with little context, FSD-style.

> I don't think the vote is only way to express political power, just the most 'sacred' and extreme of all. The one of removing your ruler (or ruling party) from power.

Indeed, the voting is less about getting people you want to have power, but more about preventing people you don't want from getting power (or retaining the power). Votes don't directly affect the actual policy decisions that representatives make afterwards, you're not legally bound to fulfill your campaign promises. What voting process does instead is telling the society, ‘See, the elected officials are not massively hated by the people, no need for a concern’.

The thing about representative democracy is that your representative is still your representative even if you didn't vote for them.

> It's a place to vent, not to decide

When the ballot process can be done in the morning with your coffee and toast, maybe more people would be inclined to apply judgement and vote in good faith.

And I think I speak a truism when I say that more deciding power for each citizen is a better kind of democracy than representative democracy. What I'm hearing from you are just hypotheticals that nobody can be sure of without actually trying a system like this. Basically that's all I'm saying, the current democratic process leaves a lot of citizens without proper representation and probably we need to move in a direction where that's not true any more. We need to look at alternative ballot systems which would allow that. If the current political strata are wrecked in the process, all the better.

American here and I have had to wait >2 hours to vote multiple times. In the worst instance someone tried to illegally close the polling place even though people were still lined up outside. This is in clear violation of state law. So long as you are lined up to vote before the polling place closes they have to take your vote. To the sheriff's department credit (they are generally terrible) the deputy who responded refused to make people leave and told the worker they had to stay open. When I lived in a more rural area of the same county I would just walk in and vote within a couple minutes. I'm sure it isn't broken by design though.

live in a metropolis? -also american but in a midsized city and ~15 minutes is more than the average wait.

What that means is that you don't live in a city in a republican state. For the past couple decades, the GOP has gotten increasingly brazen about reducing the number of polling places for the people they don't want to vote.

Tennessee. I think I might incredibly be in a low traffic part of town despite it being a huge commercial sector with surrounding suburbs.

> American here and I have had to wait >2 hours to vote multiple times.

That doesn't have to be the case though, that's a political decision to staff voting booths like that. It's also trivial to fix.

The American voting system seems broken in many ways that have not much to do using paper.

Elections taking place on tuesdays instead of weekends for some reason, low polling-places-per-voters ratio (though numbers are hard to find), ballots with multiple non-trivial questions, etc.

Before turning to voting machines, there's a lot that could be changed at every level. Moving Election Day to weekends would be a good start.

The American voting system is broken by design. There used to be reasons and conventions, and there is a somewhat excessive regard for states rights, but you could build a system that keeps that regard while being sane and fair. The fact that the US political classes would rather focus on gerrymandering instead, tells you all that you need to know about motives.

I don't even understand the concept of voting on workdays. WTF. This is a sacred thing! Especially if you want citizens of all horizons participating (and I want people from all sides to check on each other - without being too disruptive by default... I mean there's a process for reporting and all - doing it on a weekend is a minimum.

See, no need for fancy tech. Paid officials and unpaid volunteers manning everything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com