I won’t argue that. I lived my life super poor, and through nepotism and medium work clawed me and my family out. Also a lot of right time, right skills, luck, etc.
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Thanks!
I’ve been wondering about Merkel, and just why she seems intent on being remembered infamously, right alongside Maggie Thatcher. Maybe it’s not too late for her to save her legacy.
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I had some friends who lived out there, and it sounds like a wonderful way to vote. You get a much more informed electorate and time to think. Plus, you don’t have to worry about going to vote on a particular day and worry about getting out of work for it, etc.
Don’t many European countries vote on the weekends, though? Our mandatory voting day, is on tuesdays, always, meaning it’s harder for people to show up. this is why we have such low numbers of voters on off-years. Plus, for many of us, it’s getting into a car, not walking down to the polling station. it seems like other countries already make it easier to vote than we do here in the US. In a place like Oregon, having voting via mail makes sense, since you do have a large rural population.
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Some do, but not in the UK. Always a Thursday.
So in the elections in question (2004), they were held between 10 and 13 June 2004. The UK was on the 10th, other countries were later. UK turnout for that election was an awesome 38.2% - a bit higher (low 40s?) for the postal-only regions.
Totally on board with the idea of holidays/weekend voting. Again, I don’t object to postal votes, I was just annoyed I wasn’t allowed to vote a different way.
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Ah! Yeah, making voting day a holiday or having it on a weekend, seems pretty critical to me, at the very least. But in some cases, such as with rural oregon (and the many other rural parts of the US), mail voting might be more cost effective and practical.
But yeah, having the choice makes the most sense.
That doesn’t help with the lowest class workers though, those doing shift/retail work.
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last post on… er… post voting 
i worked on july 4th, the day before, half a day on sunday, and half all holidays last year. weekends? i worked sat and sun most of my life. and if i got monday off but voting was on tuesday, guess what i didn’t do.
voting by mail is waaaaay better. and that is the end of my rant.
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There is actually a pretty easy solution to the coercion problem: allow people to change their votes.
You would be mailed a ballot with some ballot number on it that is assigned to you. If you are coerced into voting a certain way (and let’s be honest, if you’re married that is fairly likely), you fill it out and mail it in.
Then you go to the post office and ask for a new one which would have the same ballot number, but with a newer issue date. You fill that one out there and mail it in and it would supersede your previous coerced vote.
Secrecy of how you vote from the state is also possible with cryptography hashes - though a little harder to accomplish if you allow for people to update their votes and not entirely impervious without a trusted entity that maintains control over a per-election key.
This is also how you could do secure electronic elections. In fact, it is entirely possible to get a receipt from your vote that you could look up to ensure your vote was not only counted, but counted correctly all without anyone knowing how you voted. It actually surprises me we don’t do this right now since it would be trivial to make one voting scanning machines print out a receipt with a hash of your votes and your ballot number on it.
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Pirate party UK (probably others, the website is FOSS) has online voting that has the option of giving you a receipt for you to validate that your vote was counted.
Mainstreem parties, take note.
Please post a link to the site referenced.
This is what she’s being remembered for now.
I’ve seen this comedy bit recently.
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