Talk Me Down! Long lines are a poll tax and where are the youth?

Fortunately, I live in Washington, which along with Oregon, Colorado and California, are vote by mail states. (Permanent No Excuse Absentee) Your ballots arrive in the mail. SAT (fill in the bubble optical scan) type. No lines. No lost work. If you don't trust the mail, you can drop off at a voting station and you can check on line to see if it was received.

You can also register anytime at a driver's license office and they ask you whenever you renew. All states should do this, no question.

Fortunately, I live in Washington, which along with Oregon, Colorado and California, are vote by mail states. (Permanent No Excuse Absentee) Your ballots arrive in the mail. SAT (fill in the bubble optical scan) type. No lines. No lost work. If you don't trust the mail, you can drop off at a voting station and you can check on line to see if it was received.

You can also register anytime at a driver's license office and they ask you whenever you renew. All states should do this, no question.

In 2004, a few dead people voted, but that's been fixed now (I hope) and King County (Seattle) has a new high security warehouse to house all the scanners, designed by casino experts.

Vote by mail states: 

we need to have vote by mail everywhere like they do in Oregon.  it eliminates the long linesand it works.  Call up some Oregon officials and ask. 

You're my shero, Rachel.  Go get 'em.  love your show...

I'm glad that someone finally mentioned that there are states that vote by mail!  I'm in Oregon and I voted last Saturday (Oct 25), no lines, no waiting.  I sat at my kitchen table and filled out my ballot.  When I had a question about a ballot measure I could put down my pen and read the voter's pamphlet or look up stuff online.  My children got to watch me vote, as I talked to them about how important it is to be informed and exercise our right to vote.  Then I put my ballot in an envelope and put it in the mail.  I could have dropped it off at lots of different drop-off sites (schools, libraries, post offices, etc).  If I was a procrastinator I could fill it in in Tuesday and drop it off at the elections center that day.  Still no lines (except maybe a "drive-thru" line to drop off - there are an amazing amount of procrastinators out there!)

Why can't other states adopt this method?  It has proved to work well with minimal glitches (which are being addressed and fixed).  In Oregon, as of last Friday, 43% of registered voters had already voted!  Four days ahead of election day!  Nobody in the national media seems to realize that there are solutions to the long lines - vote by mail!!  Those of us on the west coast do have an idea worth listening to, once and awhile.

Well, we now know what the attack attempt is - this question over Obama's aunt's immigrant status.   Don't know why it should matter, since she's not the one running for office.  

Bill, anyone who is naive enough to think Obama will win, for sure, should pay more attention to a few things:

-The tens of thousand who have been purged. 

-There seems to be a lack of youth coming out as we were promised they would, and

-Republicans are VERY GOOD at cheating [recall the owners of the voting machines are rabid Republicans who promised and delivered Bush the vote.....by fiat].

Don't kid yourself......this last minute "we can't let the most liberal Senator get a mandate"........this fear of actually giving Obama something to work with WILL likely work for McCain - and that's IF Obama is even elected. 

No, this election will be a mess.  Why?

After the last eight years, I am convinced that Americans are truly ignorant.  They WANT to be told how to think, plus they don't seem to care that Bush has raped our Constitution.....most don't even KNOW what it says!!!

Until that changes, we are likely to see more misery instead of any..... change :o{

I feel sorry for you.  You are right, "they are liars!"  Problem is, the they is politicians, both parties, both canidates, one as bad as the other.  Add yourself to the list.  You're lying to yourself.

I think there may be a quantitative and qualitative differenced in the lying done by both sides.   But without any way to measure the lying to make some kind of comparison then you may be lying to yourself by holding the belief that both candidates are "as bad as the other".

My sense, and this is just an impression, is that the McCain campaign's  lie are  bigger and more frequent...but I wouldn't bet my bike on that claim. 

I would actually be willing to bet that if McCain and Palin get elected, that Palin would wind up as President before McCain could finish his term.  Given his age and history of cancer, it is quite easy to believe he might not live to finish his term.  Which is why his choice for Vice President is SO important - and so bad.  

The Palin record:

When she became Mayor of Wasilia, the town had no debt.  When she left office, the town had over $1 million in debt, due from legal fees resulting from her starting construction of a sports complex on land the town did not yet own.  As Governor, she only denounced the Bridge to Nowhere only after Congress put a stop to it, but she kept the money anyway (that one really blows my mind).  We all should know about TrooperGate by now.  The gas pipeline that she and McCain talk about all the time is not built yet, and won't be for some time - if ever.  The company contracted to build it has NEVER successfully completed a pipeline before.  And there have been questions about the bidding process for that project.  And then there's the Alaska National Guard.  The Alaska National Guard has the lowest preparedness rating of all the state National Guards in the country.  They are not considered deployable, and are not even capable of properly handling a state emergency.  And she has no experience with or understanding of foreign policy issues.

Palin's time in office has been marked by incompetence.  There is no way this woman is qualified to be Vice President, let alone President.  She has proven herself to be fiscally irresponsible.  She couldn't keep her town financially solvent - how is she supposed to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington and the country if she can't do it in a town of less than 9000 people.  She's ethically challenged, and has used her office to aid her personal interests.  If she is incapable of properly negotiating and executing contracts, how is she supposed to negotiate with world leaders?  And if she can't properly manage the National Guard in Alaska, and doesn't understand foreign policy issues, how can she be Commander-In-Chief?

This is something that I think about regularly.  The idea of Sarah Palin as President makes my blood run cold.

Palin in the oval office receiving an exorcism before taking an important decision?

Scary.

And by the way, why the long lines? Why the people in the US have to wait all that long just to vote?

I am Greek and I voted about 10 times in my life. I usually finish within 20'-30' from the moment I enter the waiting line and a couple of times it took me longer to give my id, take the ballots (we still use paper ballots), go to the voting booth, vote, take my id back and sign, than waiting in the line. And we usually have a 70-80% turnout and a single day of election.

We actually do something better than you guys!

I second your assessment about young people, Helen.

As another old person, I've got time to stand it line and time to read political blogs. One of Rachel's comments in this blog scares me:

A day-long wait might as well be a poll tax.

I hadn't though of it that way before, but it strikes me as true and a real danger.

The other thing I'm worried about is young voters turning out. That remains an open question. I hope they do. There is evidence they're going to. But I need to see it to be entirely comfortable.  Long lines, inertia, a believe their vote won't be needed and other factors may keep the youth vote down. I pray it doesn't. It's so important this year for the Obama coalition and the local candidates who need a big turnout.

Grace...RAchel has alegit concern...This is a tiem of instant gratification....standing in long lines is not instant gratification. BUT more seriously, if it is costing you a day's pay(or your job) it seems to me you might be less likely to stand in line for so long. IT is a serious problem.

You are still watching Rachel's show because she is witty and quite bright. Her style is different from Molly Ivins---whom I miss but Rachel is very good at what she does. Now go to on Rachel and enjoy...No more insults with that silly Greta person/lawyer

Crap.  30s is geezer age now?  Damn.  Here I was deceiving myself into thinking that somehow I still qualified as the "youth vote".

*Sigh*

Well, at 28, I apparently still qualify as the youth vote.  And I voted on Oct. 16th, the first day of early voting in NC.  And since I am unemployed due to the crappy economy, I have been spending lots of time volunteering on political campaigns.

I do agree that having to spend hours in line is as bad as a poll tax, though I also had not thought of it that way before.  We need our voting system changed and upgraded to allow for high voter turnout.  

I was 12.  My only memory of that election is of the first debate between Clinton, Bush, and Ross Perot.  My school assigned watching the debate as our only homework for the evening.

You said it! Although I vote in Iowa (by absentee ballot), I've been living in Taiwan for many years, and the way they handle voting here is an example we Americans could learn from.

All polling places use paper ballots. After the polls close, the ballot boxes are collected at the township level. There, they are opened *in public* and the ballots are counted *in public*, with representatives of the parties and the media in attendance. They hold up each ballot, show it to the "audience", and call out the votes. A second election worker affirms each call, and it is tallied on a board in full view. In a country with 23 million population, the entire process takes a few hours. (I've heard that they have a similar system in Canada, but I don't know any details.)

Another nice thing about elections here is that the date is flexible, and is traditionally set on a Saturday, to allow more people to vote without missing work.

Granted, they have their own set of election problems here (google "chen shui-bian 2004 recount" for example). They don't have any mechanism for absentee ballots -- you MUST travel to your "home" precinct to vote -- but despite this they still have generally higher levels of participation than America has in the past few decades.

In Iowa, by the way, we switched from mechanical voting machines to paper-ballot scanners in the 1980's... seems a pretty sensible solution to me. I can't imagine why more states don't use them.

--jrd

Don't have to register because you automatically are when you turn 18.  Isn't that incredible... that the United States who charges other countries of voter fraud refuses to make our election and electorial process simple?  And they have the audacity to over see third world elections.. tisk.  This country should be embarassed.   This brokendown system has to do with creating unnecessary jobs.  Government has a history of taking the long road to get things done.

When I hear european leaders discuss issues like the way they handle their market crisis in public, one wonders how the heck did the US ever became a powerful nation?  Money, corruption and invasions. 

I've thought for some time that anyone who is a US citizen should be able to vote.  Just have proof of citizenship, since we all have to have some kind of proof of work eligibility in order to get a job.  What we need is a database that would have all citizen's voter information so that all we need is some form of ID.

"I've thought for some time that anyone who is a US citizen should be able to vote."

I've thought for a long time that voters need to pass a basic civics test before being allowed to vote. Too many voters haven't got a clue as to how our government operates, or the actual responsibilities of the position they are voting on. One question could be "what are the duties of the VPOTUS?"

I think you need to give that civics test to Palin.  She certainly can't answer that question properly.

I agree that lack of civic understanding my US citizens is a HUGE problem.  But I want a system where there is no way to purge people from the voter rolls.  There have been too many instance throughout history of politicians manipulating the system to benefit themselves and their party, by both parties.

"I've thought for a long time that voters need to pass a basic civics test before being allowed to vote. Too many voters haven't got a clue as to how our government operates, or the actual responsibilities of the position they are voting on. One question could be "what are the duties of the VPOTUS?""

Maybe, but this is not democracy. In a democracy EVERYBODY has the right to vote. Even if they are not ready, even if they don't know anything about the constitution or their civil rights, that's the central idea around democracy. It's up to the state then to give to the citizens the proper preparation for them to become good voters.

So when the people vote for candidates like G.W. Bush Jr. they can only blame themselves. Both the state and the people.

What you are descriving is something different.

I don't necessarily disagree with you Nodas. But voting in a democracy, in my opinion, is both a right and a responsibility. The right is granted, but the responsibility is not required. Someone pointed out in another post that voting in Australia is required by law. Maybe the state giving the proper preparation to become a good voter should be a mandatory test similar to those required to become a naturalized citizen. Our country makes the responsibility of voting too easy for native citizens and we all pay a price for that.

There should be more information available that is non biased non ad based. I used to live in California and about a month or so before each election I would get a several hundred page pamphlet giving the argument for and argument against each issue (as well as a response to each argument) on the ballot and there are always plenty of Propositions in California both state and citywide.

It was alot of reading, often too much, but it was good information. I don't remember if there was information on candidates stands but perhaps a current CA resident can tell us.

I think at this point something like this should be available on the internet and people should be encouraged to go to the site and think for themselves so they are not overly influenced by slanted news commentary or guidance for their religious groups.

Good education is very important, make everybody finish at least highschool and make an effort to teach them as much as you can about how the political system works, about rights, responsability.

It's not gonna work for everyone, but if you manage to make it work for the majority it will work, most of the times at least. Democracy works with large numbers. It's not perfect but at least it's the less non-perfect system we have.

By the way in Italy and Greece (I lived in Italy till 2003) TV ads -most of the times- are not permitted (majorities change, laws change) and when they are there is a limit. On the other side there are programs to every channel but specially to the state TV, where representatives of every party take time explaining their program. 

And both in Greece and in Italy the elections last a month and a half. A year? Pheww you Americans when you do things you really do them BIG!

In NC, you have to take a class in government and economics in order to graduate high school.  Not sure how much it helps, because historically I have not heard a lot of people analyzing the issues and fact-checking things they are told in church, in the paper, or on tv.  But at least it's a start.  I have to note, this year seems to be different with the younger generation.  More of them that I talk to seem to be fact-checking, and given the huge youth population in this state, that's going to have a big impact.

In NC, we also have a voter guide that is published and mailed to everyone before early voting begins.  It's also available on the internet.  It only includes congressional and local elections, and the info is incomplete, but again, it's a start.