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I was reading this article on HUffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/bernie-sanders-election-day-holiday_n_6121674.html The independent junior Senator from Vermont and possible Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders thinks we should have a National Holiday for voting. I think this is a great compromise for the states that want to eliminate early voting. The only downside I see is that the kind of people Sanders wants to vote, won't actually go do it. Hell the old white people will all vote even if you gave them 1 hour to do it at 4:30 am, but as for the rest, yeesh you have to really put some good bait on the line. So I figured, lets think of ideas to get minorities and poor people out to vote. How about gift cards to Applebees or Walmart. Think about it, you can get some groceries just for casting a ballot. That's a good incentive. And I'm a big believer in free-market solutions. I think another thing we could do is prevent people from collecting entitlements unless they can prove that they voted. If you want to collect any kind of monetary disbursement you should be able to demonstrate that you are a good citizen and civicly active. It doesn't matter who you voted for, just that you got out there and did your duty! Any other ideas? 
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Nov 17, 2014 19:03
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I think voting by mail is a better solution. It solves the problem of poor people not being able to get transportation, congestion at the polls, and it would help even for special or other wacky elections that don't always fall on 'election day'. A national holiday would be a good step in the right direction, but I have a hard time believing that employers would abide by it. A guy flipping burgers doesn't get Columbus Day off, after all.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:19
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Lots of people don't get days off for the national holidays that we already have. For voting in person, probably a better way is to require that employers give a day or half-day PTO for voting, and make the voting-in-person window last something like a week so that everyone isn't ditching work at the same time.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:30
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withak posted:Lots of people don't get days off for the national holidays that we already have. Specifically the people we're trying to get to vote.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:33
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Ah yes, when I think of how to make voting better in the US, giftcards and corporate sponsors is at the top of my mind. Maybe democrats should actually figure out what their supposed base wants? If you have to pay people to support your ideas your ideas maybe they aren't any good.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:33
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tsa posted:Ah yes, when I think of how to make voting better in the US, giftcards and corporate sponsors is at the top of my mind. Maybe democrats should actually figure out what their supposed base wants? If you have to pay people to support your ideas your ideas maybe they aren't any good. Low voter turnout is a bipartisan issue.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:39
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Maarek posted:I think voting by mail is a better solution. It solves the problem of poor people not being able to get transportation, congestion at the polls, and it would help even for special or other wacky elections that don't always fall on 'election day'. A national holiday would be a good step in the right direction, but I have a hard time believing that employers would abide by it. A guy flipping burgers doesn't get Columbus Day off, after all. We certainly should be expanding it, but most states have some form of early or absentee voting- 'lack of time' only has a tiny contribution to why people don't vote. This should be rather obvious simply from looking at offyear vs. presidential elections; the huge drop has nothing to do with working or time.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:43
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Anybody have the final voter tally? There were those stories about 72 year low-vote turn out, but what are the actual numbers in the millions?
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Nov 17, 2014 19:43
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zeroprime posted:Low voter turnout is a bipartisan issue. Actually most of the subgroups represented by the gop have turnouts each election similar to most industrialized countries with free elections.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:46
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tsa posted:Ah yes, when I think of how to make voting better in the US, giftcards and corporate sponsors is at the top of my mind. Maybe democrats should actually figure out what their supposed base wants? If you have to pay people to support your ideas your ideas maybe they aren't any good. It's illegal to offer people incentives like this to vote under current US laws. Krispy Kreme or Dunkin Doughnuts tried to offer doughnuts to voters a few elections ago and they had to change the offer to everyone.
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Nov 17, 2014 19:50
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In the hit television show the Office, Stanley is apathetic about everything. Until pretzel day. Suddenly he has a sparkle in his eye for that salty, carby goodness. That's the kind of incentive we have to give out. Now as it has been pointed out, that's illegal. You cant just give away tasty treats to the electorate. So how? What do you think of the AusTralian approach, but instead of a fine for not voting, jailtime. People who dont care about the process are actually a burden to the process. By jailing them, we cull them from the populace who do care. What we are left with is an energized electorate, eager to bring about change.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:09
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tsa posted:We certainly should be expanding it, but most states have some form of early or absentee voting- My state rejected early voting in a referendum the other week  On the plus side, we're still one of only 4 totally blue states.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:12
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Slipknot Hoagie posted:In the hit television show the Office, Stanley is apathetic about everything. Until pretzel day. Suddenly he has a sparkle in his eye for that salty, carby goodness. That's the kind of incentive we have to give out. Now as it has been pointed out, that's illegal. You cant just give away tasty treats to the electorate. So how? I'm not sure why, but I'm convinced you're trolling now.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:18
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Isn't the incentive to vote the ability to increase taxes and decrease benefits to others while reducing taxes and increasing benefits to yourself? This is worth much more then a $100 gift card to home depot. I don't know why we ham it up with rock the vote and all this other horse plop. Go vote or the old are going to screw you six ways to Sunday when they die leaving you with 300k of national debt that they spent on themselves.
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Nov 17, 2014 20:43
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Kill and cook the rich, serve them on toothpicks as free snacks for voters, next to the "i voted" stickers
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Nov 17, 2014 21:17
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What if we reformed the voting system to something remotely modern like IRV so that people who don't support either of the business parties had a reason to vote?
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Nov 17, 2014 22:40
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The prevailing political winds right now are actively discouraging voting to the maximum degree possible legally.
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Nov 17, 2014 23:15
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Handbeezys
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Nov 17, 2014 23:17
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I don't think stupid people should vote, but I respect their legal right to.
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Nov 17, 2014 23:18
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zeroprime posted:Low voter turnout is a bipartisan issue. Actually it's not, considering that there's a distinct partisan difference between voters and non-voters.
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Nov 17, 2014 23:20
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Slipknot Hoagie posted:In the hit television show the Office, Stanley is apathetic about everything. Until pretzel day. Suddenly he has a sparkle in his eye for that salty, carby goodness. That's the kind of incentive we have to give out. Now as it has been pointed out, that's illegal. You cant just give away tasty treats to the electorate. So how? What about places where prisoners are allowed to vote? Would they get pardoned if they vote while serving their sentence for not voting?
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Nov 17, 2014 23:26
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Slipknot Hoagie posted:So I figured, lets think of ideas to get minorities and poor people out to vote. How about gift cards to Applebees or Walmart. Or Nike 
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Nov 17, 2014 23:34
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Slipknot Hoagie posted:
Is there any legitimate argument for removing early voting?
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Nov 17, 2014 23:52
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Do you consider "Anything that enables greater numbers of voters favors Democrats" a legitimate argument?
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Nov 18, 2014 00:29
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What if you could vote by hanging a signed macaroni picture of your favorite candidate outside your house, OP? What if your father and your mother never met, OP? CAN YOU IMAGINE?
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Nov 18, 2014 01:10
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Voter turnout is a major if not the major problem for Democrats. Republican voters tend to show good discipline. This has been the case everywhere I've looked or worked. If you were designing a system from the ground up where you wanted to get the most possible people to vote, it wouldn't look a loving thing like what we have now. Every possible convenience, internet voting, mail voting, early voting, incentives, a week-long election period backed up by labor laws that mandated paid time off, and a dozen other similar notions and the Republican party would screech in cataclysmic rage and terror at the thought of an army of darkies and illegal immigrants destroying the country and raping their daughters. The best thing for Republicans would be poll taxes, spelling tests, voter IDs, warrant checks and maybe some beatings and whatever else they had going in Alabama in 1941.
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Nov 18, 2014 04:16
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Xandu posted:Is there any legitimate argument for removing early voting? Yeah voter fraud. Some say it doesn't happen, but I'm not totally convinced: http://online.wsj.com/articles/hans-von-spakovsky-here-comes-the-2014-voter-fraud-1414450805 quote:Voting by noncitizens alone could swing such races. A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, found that 6.4% of all noncitizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterms. Basically, illegals got ObamaCare into law, and raised my premiums. It's not the only negative thing they've done-- the federal government has placed several hundred illegal children into already stretched schools near me. My property taxes are through the roof and my local elementary school doesn't even have a cafeteria, its actually a repurposed warehouse with cubicles. But I didn't write this thread to rant about how bad illegals are, that's for another time. My point is that voter fraud does happen, and an official, required paid day of voting should offset all other kinds of early voting and any kind of voting where a person does not show up physically and present ID. The state and integrity of our country depends on it.
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Nov 19, 2014 15:38
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I for one am glad your premiums went up and your property taxes are through the roof.
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Nov 19, 2014 16:09
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Won't someone think of Slipknot Hoagie's insurance premiums and property taxes??? 
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Nov 19, 2014 17:44
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The nineteenth century had the right solution: whiskey punch.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:01
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Just make it the law, you have to vote. Also instead of a voting day it should be like a voting week or something, because Tuesdays as a voting is the most stupid poo poo. Also I don't care if "non-citizens" vote, anyone who lives here should have a say regardless of where they came from because non-citizens often provide just as much value to society as most other poor/low income people and way more than wealthier/upper class people.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:07
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I don't think I've seen this suggestion, how about making voting by mail not require a stamp? Franking mail in ballots would be cheap & easy.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:59
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Reason posted:Just make it the law, you have to vote.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:09
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Reason posted:Just make it the law, you have to vote. Also instead of a voting day it should be like a voting week or something, because Tuesdays as a voting is the most stupid poo poo. Also I don't care if "non-citizens" vote, anyone who lives here should have a say regardless of where they came from because non-citizens often provide just as much value to society as most other poor/low income people and way more than wealthier/upper class people. The majority of states do already have a way to vote outside of election day. It's not that poor / young people don't have a say, it's just that they don't go to the polls for whatever reason. This idea that people not having enough time to vote is the reason they don't vote is complete nonsense which can easily be seen with offyear elections. You can also compare minority turnout pre and post implementation of statewide early voting- there isn't much to suggest it has significantly increased minority turnout relative to non-minority turnout. The overriding factor is motivation, not time. quote:I'm fully in favor of making it easier to vote, so that people who want to vote have the opportunity, but if someone doesn't want to vote, I don't see the benefit of forcing them to vote and at best adding statistical noise to outcome. Well the assumption most people are making here is that lazy, unmotivated, or disenfranchised people are going to default to the dems so it really wouldn't be noise. This of course is what we would assume so long as the population of voters is representative of the population of not-voters- the lowest turnouts are in D heavy demos.
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Nov 19, 2014 21:49
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Perhaps more people would vote for Democrats if they actually started representing even a modicum of the left.
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Nov 19, 2014 21:50
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BUG JUG posted:The nineteenth century had the right solution: whiskey punch. I prefer the eighteenth century solution: enlightened absolutism
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Nov 19, 2014 21:50
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More people would vote if there were decent candidates. I vote, but I usually feel dirty afterwards. It's difficult to not feel apathetic when the choices are pure evil versus idiot. Nine times out of ten,if not more, those are our options. Also, the idea of giving people gift cards to vote is moronic. Voting is a right. We should not be encouraging people who need to be bribed to vote.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:06
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Xandu posted:Is there any legitimate argument for removing early voting? Honest question: if voting expansion instead heavily benefited the republicans how do you think posters' opinions here on the topic would change? It's interesting no one is really addressing why greater voter turnout is good beyond that it benefits the party most posters here support. I support voting expansion, but I also realize it's very easy to do so when it helps your party and hurts the other. Arri posted:Perhaps more people would vote for Democrats if they actually started representing even a modicum of the left. That's true, the most progressive demos do seem the worst for the dems. Youth voter turnout by party would be an interesting stat to look at. tsa fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 22:09
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Slipknot Hoagie posted:What do you think of the AusTralian approach, but instead of a fine for not voting, jailtime. People who dont care about the process are actually a burden to the process. By jailing them, we cull them from the populace who do care. What we are left with is an energized electorate, eager to bring about change. No-one gets jailed for Not Voting. Source: Am Australian. Have not voted. Got threatened with a fine. Also, mandatory voting just means retards who couldn't care less about issues vote. Why a totally uninformed vote is better than no vote is beyond me.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:11
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Skinnymansbeerbelly posted:I don't think I've seen this suggestion, how about making voting by mail not require a stamp? Franking mail in ballots would be cheap & easy. Seconding this. My mail-in ballot warned me that additional postage would be required due to all of the extra propositions, but didn't bother to actually say how many stamps to put on.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:13
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