NJ will now tie voter registration to government IDS, so any time you get a driver’s license or picture ID you are registered.
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In Denmark, all employees are legally able to take time off (with pay) to vote - though usually an hour or so will suffice (no endless queues at polling sites). Personally, I tend to vote in the morning on the way to work when there is no queue at all.
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Rest of the world? Like Iran? Russia? China? North Korea? Venezuela? Saudi Arabia? Sudan? Burma? Cuba? Laos? UAE?
We Americans get accused of being close-minded and thinking the world works the same way we do, but we’re not alone.
It varies by state, not all states require giving any time off to vote, and in some states voter suppression efforts include things like making voting much harder and slower in some communities than others. OTOH some states allow early voting or mail-in voting.
@Melz2: I agree. I get why the founders made it a Tuesday, but that reasoning stopped making sense a long time ago.
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From the first article linked, this is interesting:
"In a report published after the 2004 federal election, the parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) summed up the competing for and against arguments with the following quotes:
‘Compulsory voting … the bigger the vote, the more representative the government, the healthier the democracy,’ it read.
‘Voluntary system … all of those who voted, did so because they wanted to vote and had given consideration to their choices. Quality is always better than quantity.’"
If those are the “boiled-down” arguments for each side of the issue, then it’s clear to me that compulsory voting is the better one. How many people do you know in the U.S. who vote voluntarily, yet know almost nothing about the candidates or the issues? Better to cast a wide net and get every uninformed opinion, than a narrow one and get only a select group of uninformed opinions. 
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Good for NJ! People who don’t want to serve on juries probably shouldn’t be driving around loose anyway.
Vermont has Town Meeting Day as a state holiday when all towns (except one) hold their town meetings. (Where all town residents can gather to debate and vote on town issues, and elect officials.) I know most cities and towns in the US only have electoral votes only rather than floor debate and votes issue by issue (bill by bill) by the whole town (or whoever shows up) but those could still coincide with other elections and be held on a holiday or half day… this could be combined with a milder version of “compulsory” voting – for that to have less opposition it needs to be an expectation rather than compelled by thread of punishment. I.e. you get a letter telling you that voting is required, and if you don’t you get a letter telling you that you neglected to vote and that you must next time. Make sense?
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Okay, then.
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That should also be the case for most people. I too am lucky enough that if I needed to do so, my polling place is within walking distance. I think the problem with that is in more rural areas, where there is no public transport option and no walking option. I know in the recent election in Alabama, voting rights groups and activists set up a program to pick people up and drive them to the polls. But for voting, none of us should have to depend on that, though (though I’m happy they did it).
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None of those places should be open on Christmas. Neither should they be on voting day. That’s the point - to give as many people the day off as possible.
Mail in ballots seems to work well in Oregon.
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If I squint really hard, I can see the </sarcasm> tags around your post…
If you want to benchmark your democracy against Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Burma, Cuba, Laos, and the UAE then have at it. I won’t stand in your way, and I won’t even point out all the ways such a comparison would be totally apt.
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I feel like anyone pointing to Iran or Saudi Arabia as someplace that the US is better than is telling on themselves if those are the best examples they can come up with. American Exceptionalism indeed.
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Maybe now, but in the 60s/70s, it was very hard to find anything open on Christmas. Chinese restaurants, maybe.
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Ohio has vote by mail, and there’s lots of speculation (leaks? early counting? just polls?) about how the races are going.
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You benchmarked those countries against US democracy by saying “the rest of the world,” and I merely commented the inclusion. In fact, I did so negatively to indicate that I did not believe they should be included.
Had you said, “the rest of western democracies” that might have made more sense, or even the arrogant “the rest of the civilized world” it might have been a stretch but still worked.
But instead you wrote, “the rest of the world” as if somehow the measure for inclusion in your world is your approval and not being part of the world that is not the United States, and that none of the countries I listed were in the world.
Yes, you are correct thaht Jon S should not have included the “rest of the world” in his comment regarding the state of the US democracy. That was quite sloppy of him to have included “Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Burma, Cuba, Laos, and the UAE” in his comment rather than discussing only successful, proper democracies.
To your first point, maybe they should and maybe they shouldn’t be open. But the point is they will be open, so we need to discuss the impact of it which is helping generally conservative voters get to the polls while disadvantaging generally more liberal ones.
To your second point, NJ has mail in ballots for anyone who requests them, as well. It’s great.
Move the vote to Presidents’ Day. Boom no new holiday needed.
Yeah. Vote-by-mail is AWESOME. It’s one of the things I’ll miss if I go through with my plans to leave Seattle for warmer, less expensive places. I don’t miss having to find my local polling place at all. No holiday needed either; you just get a collection of position statements and a ballot in the mail a few weeks before the deadline, and somewhere in that span you can surely find a little while to fill it in and drop it in the mail or a collection box.
I’ve got a voter information packet and a ballot sitting around waiting for me to get to it. Mostly I’m waiting for the Seattle Democratic Socialists to put out their endorsements.
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