
Vote.org is a non-profit that wants to get the U.S. to 100% voter turnout - shayannafisi
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/05/vote-org/
======
baron816
The biggest reason people in the US don't vote is because they don't have
enough options so they never get to choose people they really care about.
Plus, no individual vote matters. This all has to do with our winner-take-all
elections. Countries with proportional representation have much higher voter
turnout rates (often in the 80-90% range). That's because you get to vote for
the person or party you want, and they'll at least still get a seat in
government even if they're just in the opposition. But you still have an
incentive to get out and vote and make their position stronger. There are no
lost causes or strategic voting.

~~~
JacobJans
One of the worst lies perpetuated by the media is that the presidential
election is the only one that really matters. There are so many elections that
have a direct impact on your life that you can participate in – state, city,
and county election. These are not generally very partisan. Sadly, local
elections often don't have enough options simply because there aren't enough
politicians standing for election.

~~~
samstave
We need a TV channel/website that simply states the facts of the positions
each politician holds, where they are from, when their elections are coming up
and their voting record based on their supposed stance.

There are SO many things that we can do.

We invest supposedly in physical and technical infra, but never in
political....

THAT is the revolution I want to see.

~~~
dublinben
Every campaign website I have ever seen clearly explains the candidates
position on all relevant issues. If you are looking for third party sources,
you can also see the information compiled be VoteSmart.org and
OnTheIssues.org.

Your state's Secretary of State office will list upcoming elections, and
BallotPedia.org collects many of these.

The resources are already out there and available. It says something that you
didn't even know that though.

~~~
samstave
Thank you, let me amend my statement and we just need to better educate people
on where to find this info.

~~~
specialist
Some of the struggle is due to silly arcana. For example, the local deadline
for submitting candidate statements is immediately after filing week, but
before endorsements can be known. So crucial signals voters rely on are often
missing.

The only fix is to keep pushing for improvements. Explain the problems to the
gatekeepers, lobby for change.

------
debracleaver
Hey everyone. Debra Cleaver here, founder of Vote.org. I am ready to answer
all of your questions about voting in the US, as long as they are non-
partisan. Partisan questions should be directed to your local political party.
I'm especially keen to talk about ways we can use technology to modernize the
election process. My current focus is how we can use electronic signatures to
roll out online voter registration in states that don't have it, and for
people who don't have driver's licenses.

~~~
laxatives
Maybe this is or isn't non-partisan, but here's a shot: I'm 25 years old. I've
never voted and never will vote as long as there is a two party system. There
has never been a situation where I can agree with either party or individual
enough to support them in an election. How do you intend to get people like me
to vote?

Also, if you did you get everyone to vote, wouldn't every vote turn in to a
popularity contest? In other words, why wouldn't every candidate attempt to
win their elections by appealing to the lowest common denominator?

~~~
burkaman
>wouldn't every candidate attempt to win their elections by appealing to the
lowest common denominator?

I think that's sort of how democracy is supposed to work. Politicians win when
they can convince more people than anyone else. It's like that famous quote:
“democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.

Yes, everything would be better if countries were run by benevolent geniuses
who always implemented the right policies even if they weren't popular. But
failing that impossible paradise, democracy is the best option. And if only
some people vote, and everyone knows in advance roughly who is going to vote,
democracy won't work as well. The government should reflect all the people it
serves.

~~~
valvar
Why exactly is democracy the best, or shall we say "least bad", option? Have
you, or has Churchill, evaluated all of the alternatives? And how does the
belief that you air in your last sentence, that government should reflect all
the people it serves, rhyme with your belief that the ideal (but admittedly in
your opinion impossible) form of government would be one run by benevolent
geniuses who always implement the right policies, even if they are not
popular?

If I may, it does seem to me that qualitative and quantitative government are
two quite distinct concepts - one might even go so far as to say that they are
fundamentally opposed. Increasing voter turnout certainly increases the
quantitative, most purely democratic, aspect of democracy - but what should
someone who is more interested in the qualitative aspects of government have
to say about that? And if one, as a supporter of democracy as the least bad
option, recognises the inherent problems of popular government as a necessary
trade-off, would it not make sense to try to mitigate as much of those to the
greatest extent possible? I'm not sure if increasing voter turnout to absurd
levels would be in tune with this latter category of mindsets, but I'd be
curious to hear what you or others of a similar opinion think about that...

~~~
davekinkead
To address your first question, the actual quote is:

> Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of
> sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed,
> it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all
> those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

So it's not a claim that democracy is the least worst simpliciter, but an
empiric claim of history (and compared to 20th century alternatives like
national socialism, fascism etc, is backed by evidence). None of that however,
justifies the claim that democracy is the best form of government compared
when compared possible alternatives.

~~~
sverige
Correct. The very best form of government is a good king with final say on all
matters of importance to the state. The problem with that is that there have
only been a handful of good kings over the last few millennia.

------
partiallypro
Not everyone should vote. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but
democracy only works with informed citizens. If you have a bunch of people
that are not informed on the issue voting you're probably going to have an
outcome that is awful. If you think politicians are bad now, just wait until
the populists have the uninformed voting in high numbers (hey, that sounds
familiar this year.)

To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably
don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote. Or maybe you do know
the issues, and that's why you're not voting.

There are some cases where this is not true, such as someone having a weird
shift; but that's what early voting is for, and that's why most states have
legal paid time off for voting (up to 3 hours.) There's also mail-in ballots,
absentee voting, etc. Democracy isn't always a good thing, to be frank; and
it's undoubtedly why the U.S. was set up as a representative democracy rather
than a pure democracy.

~~~
ssmoot
> To me, if you don't care enough to take time to vote as it is, you probably
> don't know the issues, and you probably shouldn't vote.

Or maybe you live in a state where your vote doesn't matter because it's not a
swing state.

Or maybe neither two-party candidate is on the right side of the issues you
care most about.

Don't want to go to war? Do you pick Hillary or Trump? Who knows? Want to see
Criminal Justice reform? Which candidate do you pick: The one that backed
mandatory minimums helping shift the scales to the prosecution and making
judges largely irrelevant for a majority of cases or the "not liberal" one?
Want to see domestic spying scaled back and transparency introduced? Which
candidate?

~~~
partiallypro
Oh, I agree with all of that. I amended my post to mention that too. Usually
I've vote for a 3rd party though, but I agree that choosing to not vote is
just as legitimate as voting. I don't agree with the sentiment of "you can't
complain if you didn't vote." That's total nonsense.

------
igorgue
I have a theory that since that the USA doesn't make election day a federal
holiday is one of the major factors the working class of america is not
voting, usually it takes too long to vote, and it's not paid for employees,
especially blue collar ones.

I wonder what are your thoughts about it, and how can it happen in America?
I've seen every single proposal be rejected in congress.

~~~
izacus
Hmm, here the elections are on sundays because of that. USA votes on workdays?

~~~
cag_ii
No one works on Sundays where you are?

~~~
lostmypassword2
Plenty of people work on Sundays. Where are you?

------
seomis
To those commenting with some variation of "only informed citizens should
vote," pause and consider how much overlap there is with your idea of what an
"informed" voter is with race/class lines. You may be unwittingly (or
wittingly in some cases?) insisting that voters in the US should be,
disproportionately, wealthier whites.

~~~
logfromblammo
Studies on statistical aggregations often show that a crowd can make a better
guess collectively than any individual member.

If you ask a crowd to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, the people who
are the worst overestimaters and underestimaters tend to cancel one another
out, and the mean and median of all responses will be shockingly close to the
actual numeric value. Therefore, my hypothesis is that reaching 100% voter
turnout will be more beneficial per unit cost than any attempt to "inform" the
citizenry already most likely to vote.

Here is a thought experiment. 20% of voters are knowledgeable about a subject,
and vote accordingly. 80% vote based on a coin flip. How do the random voters
harm the outcome of the vote? They add noise to the result, certainly. But if
the signal from knowledgeable voters is unable to overcome the random noise,
how certain can you really be that those people are correct? Is it at all
important to know what percentage of all voters cared enough about the subject
to self-inform, rather than just trust their lucky voting coin?

Outside a hypothetical, people are very rarely _entirely_ ignorant of a
subject. Even if they know only one true thing about it, when they vote based
on that thing, it is incorporated into the statistical aggregate, and
therefore influences the final result in some small way. If you restrict the
vote to knowing certain things, only those things end up influencing the final
result, and you can therefore bias the result by changing the test criteria.

~~~
michaelkeenan
I used to think this way. The thing that changed my mind was learning how much
people think the USA spends on foreign aid[1]. On average, Americans think 28
percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, but it is about 1
percent. People base policy preference on their mistaken impression. When
informed of the correct amount, the number who think America spends too much
on foreign aid changes from 61% to 30%.

Foreign aid is one persistently misunderstood issue that I know of, but I
worry that there might be many similar issues.

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/07/the-b...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/07/the-
budget-myth-that-just-wont-die-americans-still-think-28-percent-of-the-budget-
goes-to-foreign-aid/)

~~~
logfromblammo
To be more precise[0]:

    
    
      2013 US Budget                 ~= $3 803 300 000 000
      +- International Affairs        = $   52 018 676 000 ( 1.37%)
         +- State Operations          = $   17 702 825 000 ( 0.47%)
            +- Int'l Orgs             = $    3 386 331 000 ( 0.09%)
         +- Foreign Operations        = $   33 810 927 000 ( 0.89%)
            +- Bilateral Assistance   = $   21 134 577 000 ( 0.56%)
            +- Int'l Security         = $    8 791 500 000 ( 0.23%)
            +- Multilat. Int'l Orgs   = $    2 875 204 000 ( 0.08%)
            +- Foreign Banks/Funds    = $    2 548 553 000 ( 0.07%)
            +- Direct Food Aid        = $    1 533 859 000 ( 0.04%) [1]
            +- US AID                 = $    1 450 806 000 ( 0.04%)
            +- Independent Agencies   = $    1 258 585 000 ( 0.03%)
      +- US Dept. of Defense         ~= $  672 900 000 000 (17.7 %)
      Total Military SA+FR+UK+DE+JP  ~= $  283 500 000 000
      2013 AAPL total expenditures   ~= $  136 000 000 000
    

What people think of as "foreign aid" may vary. The budget covers everything
from bed nets to bullets. If you count only spending on operations that most
directly assist poor foreigners, such as US AID, Peace Corps, and UNICEF,
rather than just writing checks to foreign politicians, militaries, and
bankers, it amounts to about $7-$10 billion, or 0.2%-0.3% of the budget.

And _nothing_ in the US budget takes up more than 25% of it. The top 4 items
are, in fact, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, military, and _debt service_
(6.5%!). Even if you count all military spending as some sinister form of
foreign aid, you can't get to 28%. The problem there is not just being
_uninformed_. Someone must be actively spreading _mis_ information--lying to
the public. That's a much bigger problem than simple ignorance, and trying to
restrict turnout to only "informed" voters is not going to help when people
believe they are informed after hearing enough lies.

[0]
[http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/224071.pdf](http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/224071.pdf)
[1] paid to US Dept. of Agriculture

------
inanutshellus
I'm likely to be flamed out of existence for saying this, but I'm against 100%
voter turnout. A shocking number of people in my social circle get their
political opinions by intuition. Never do they watch a debate, nor do they
have any idea who the contenders are. When the primaries were running in my
home state I asked several of my friends about their opinions and most of them
only knew one person from each party that was even running.

They were passionate about their hatred of the opposing party's most-tweeted
person, and clueless about what their person's positions were, the states they
were from, their voting history, their "moral fabric" as it were...

Point is, screw my friends. If they only Facebook-Care(TM) about politics,
they shouldn't be encouraged to vote anyway. They do not get to decide my
country's fate.

In fact, I want the opposite.

I want a test. Step one: Name 3 people in your primary and name 3 in the
opposing party's primary. Who is your party chair? Who's in the majority in
the house? Who're the senate majority and minority leaders?

~~~
bobbles
Coming from Australia where we have mandatory voting, you're missing one of
the biggest benefits.

When people are forced to vote, the parties HAVE to accommodate that not only
their 'die hard fans' are going to get them through the election.

It leads to far less extremist views from the parties, or if they are
extremist, they often temper some of the points later to ensure they don't
have a huge backlash during the election to their policies.

~~~
abfan1127
how do they make it mandatory? Is there a voting police?

~~~
davekinkead
The AEC manages the federal election roll. Enrolling is technically compulsory
for all citizens but only seems to be enforceable once you are on the roll.

Failure to get your named crossed of a a voting booth (voting isn't compulsory
- turning up is) results in a $50 fine.

[http://www.aec.gov.au/](http://www.aec.gov.au/)

------
dragonwriter
US voter turnout is low relative to many other modern democracies (much less
compared to the ideal of 100% turnout) because the choices are poor because of
the structure of the electoral system which supports only two viable parties
at a time (which two has changed nationally twice in the history of the
nation, and when things were more regional there were times when the two
locally-viable parties included one of the national parties and one other,
such as the Missouri Republican vs. Farmer-Labor period.) This is a fairly
well-established effect of the electoral system, evidence through, among other
things, comparative studies of modern democracies.

So, what is Vote.org's plan for dealing with this, which is _the_ fundamental
problem in keeping turnout low?

------
bpodgursky
I'd rather have 100% turnout by the 10% who are actually informed about the
issues and candidates.

~~~
masudhossain
Group A: Group B isn't informed. If they were, they would vote for Group A.

Group B: Group A isn't informed. If they were, they would vote for Group B.

~~~
Spivak
Group C: Group A and Group B completely miss the point, their choice is
meaningless until Issues 1, 2, and 3 are addressed.

------
jimrandomh
There's a very important reason to do this which no one has brought up. US
elections have a lot of vote-suppression shenanigans; in some noteworthy cases
(including the 2000 Presidential election), fraudulently removing voter
registrations, understaffing and obstructing poll locations changed the
outcome. This sort of thing becomes much more difficult to execute and much
more difficult to get away with if there's an expectation of 100% turnout, as
in countries which have mandatory voting; large asymmetric chunks of the
population failing to reach the polls no longer look plausibly innocent. I
think mandatory voting is worth having for that reason alone, in addition to
the other reasons.

~~~
debracleaver
Jim, shenanigans is the word that comes to mind for me as well. I've yet to
meet this mythical "apathetic American" that people talk about, but I've met
tons of people who were prevented from voting by administrative incompetence
(at best) and what appeared to be deliberate attempts to prevent citizens from
casting ballots.

Here's an fun example: 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from
changing their voting laws under the VRA of 1965 immediately passed
restrictive laws once the VRA was gutted.

~~~
hackuser
> 7 out of 9 of the states that were prohibited from changing their voting
> laws under the VRA of 1965 immediately passed restrictive laws once the VRA
> was gutted.

Here's a question that I'm not sure you can answer publicly: Ideally, support
for voting should be non-partisan, and everyone seems to want to operate on
that principle (including Vote.org).

But what if it is a partisan issue? What if the most important problem is that
one party truly opposes voter turnout? Personally, I think that's the case,
and I think our failure to address the real problem, for whatever idealistic
reasons, is the primary reason we make so little progress.

------
boona
To know why this is a bad idea, you might want to watch this video titled The
Myth of the Rational Voter
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U).

~~~
dominotw
They want voting process to be as painful as possible. That is on purpose.

------
atria
This is a worthy goal, but is it a good thing to have 100% voter turnout?
Every direct democracy has failed since the time of Socrates. After several
generations, direct democracies turn into a mob with the majority voting
themselves benefits while minorities become permanently disenfranchised. At
least voter disinterest allows minorities the possibility of voting as a block
and gaining influence in off-year elections. In my opinion, sometimes too much
so.

~~~
shifter
In a similar vein, Andrew Sullivan's article on this year's US election is a
fantastic read:

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-
tyranny...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-
donald-trump.html)

------
redthrowaway
Not to sound elitist, but is that really a good thing? What sorts of people
are going to be simultaneously not motivated to vote, and good at picking the
best candidate?

~~~
debracleaver
very few non-voters are unmotivated to vote. voters are far more likely to not
cast ballots because voting is too hard.

~~~
fotbr
I refuse to participate in a process I know from personal experience to be
corrupt at the local level. When the people responsible for investigating are
the same people responsible for the illegal acts and the state and federal
agencies tasked with enforcement won't even take the complaint -- well,
there's nothing that's going to convince me that there is any hope for this
county's process.

In 2004, our ballots had the presidential candidates as the first item. I
personally witnessed ballots being sorted at the polling location and placed
in different boxes based on that first item. The boxes were identifiable as to
which was which ("GWB","JK" and "AO" \- all others), placed into the back of a
sheriff's car, and driven to the election board's office. The "GWB" box
remained in the back seat of the car while the "JK" and "AO" boxes were taken
in to the office to be counted. Since I wasn't blessed as an "official"
observer, I was not allowed inside. The "GWB" box was never counted, driven
back to the Sheriff's office, and was discarded in their dumpster, locked and
unopened. Anyone in that particular batch who voted for GWB had their votes,
not just for president, but for congressional office and local issues, thrown
out. Every single official -- county, state, and fed -- I tried to report the
issue to responded with some variation of "mistakes happen, it's not an issue
we're going to look into". Party officials didn't care -- D's votes got
counted, R's didn't care because the D's had solidly carried that county for
decades and more-or-less written the county off, and no one else had the
manpower to do anything about it. My vote (in the AO category that time
around) was counted, or at least made it inside to be counted, but it still
bothers me that things are so corrupt that there isn't even an attempt to hide
the corruption.

Fix the absolutely blatant corruption, and I might, possibly, be motivated to
vote. I don't mean charging people with little misdemeanors and letting them
plead out to fines. I want to see felony charges and jail time for those
participating, furthering, and knowingly benefiting from the systemic abuse of
our election processes.

------
dingo_bat
Why is 100% so important? There will always be a section of people who really
do not care about choosing their representative. Why insist on such people
voting too? In my opinion it would be a random, ill thought out vote.

------
jayess
The right to vote also includes the right _not_ to vote.

------
jjtheblunt
Why stop at 100%? Chicago supposedly has gone far beyond before.

~~~
DrScump
It's not exactly 100%; there are _dozens_ of dead people who don't vote.

------
marcoperaza
I don't agree with the stated goal of 100% turnout. As many people should turn
out to vote as their are citizens who want to vote. If you're not self-
motivated to vote one way or the other, with so much being on the line these
days, then maybe it's better that you don't.

------
swalsh
I've always thought that online voting could be made MORE secure than
traditional systems. If you combine cryptography with more traditional layers.
It can also be anonymous.

Take an existing online registration, allow a user to login, and "create a
password". Take the password, hash it with the users registration id, and a
salt, and that becomes the id for a ballot. Now a user can always login, and
view their existing vote (as long as they remember their password) however no
outside or inside user could directly link a ballot with a voter.

In addition, allow all online votes, and registered users (who voted) to be
instantly publicly accessible via API by 3rd party non government
organizations so that all results can be monitored.

The hashing algorithm can be the same used by any traditional password system.

~~~
yurisagalov
Online voting (the kind you could do in the comfort of your own home) suffers
from manipulation in the more traditional form: I sit at your house with a
baseball bat and make sure you vote for my candidate of choice. Voting at a
voting booth prevents that.

I'm generally in favor of overhauling the voting system with technology
(especially open source technology that can be publicly validated), but I
think there are still benefits to having people vote in a supervised public
space making sure people can vote anonymously and safely

~~~
wl
Vote by mail suffers from the baseball bat problem, yet it's not uncommon in
the US.

~~~
yurisagalov
You're right. I was actually just about to edit my post to comment on the fact
that absentee ballots still suffer that problem, so perhaps my thoughts here
are invalid.

------
ausjke
whenever a local election comes up, the first thing I want to know is that who
are running for what, and what's their key difference and if available, track
records. A quick comparison chart/table will serve the purpose but I rarely if
ever found that, hope someone will create a website like that for all, so
voters can know the quick-facts before voting relatively easily.

~~~
dexterdog
My policy is when in doubt vote for the non-incumbent.

~~~
burkaman
Ok, but wouldn't it be nice if usually you weren't in doubt, because there was
a really easy way to educate yourself on all the candidates?

~~~
dexterdog
There are plenty of ways, but you should still have doubt. Take the two people
running for the big seat right now. They're both saying what they need to say
to get the biggest base. How does listening to what they say in this crap-
storm educate me as a voter?

~~~
burkaman
If you don't think listening to the candidates is useful then I guess I can't
help you.

------
pjc50
I recently realised that one big advantage of compulsory voting is that it
completely kills attempts to suppress voter registration or differential
turnout.

How do you plan on dealing with voter suppression and gerrymandering?

~~~
notahacker
If you make voting compulsory for registered voters, you end up further
suppressing voter registration (specifically suppressing registration of those
in situations which leave them disproportionately unlikely to be able to get
to vote and poor enough to see the fines as an issue)

If you ensure all voters are registered, then making the voting compulsory is
redundant.

There is no advantage to compulsory voting, unless you believe that democracy
is enhanced by diluting the votes of those with a preference for a particular
representative with those that don't care.

~~~
tangent128
Compulsory voting's advantage is giving people an excuse to vote.

If you are legally obligated to show up at the voting booth, even if you elect
to spoil your ballot at that point, your employer can't fire you for taking
off work to do so.

~~~
notahacker
A public holiday would be a far less authoritarian way of achieving the same
end. Postal ballots and the option of extending voting hours also exist.

And frankly, if people are at risk of being fired for taking time out to vote,
the problem is that employment law allows people to be fired for voting, not
that electoral law doesn't compel them to choose between the risk of being
fired or the certainty of being fined.

------
afinlayson
It's an easy problem to solve, just have to make incentives for politicians to
get more people to vote. Oregon made it an opt out state, and made all votes
be mail in ballots. Seems like an easy way to increase democracy.

You could also make it so any politician's terms relative to the populations
voting for him.

If 50% of eligible voters vote for someone with 51% of the votes, they should
only get 25.5% of the term.

------
Aoyagi
Why would you want to force people who don't have enough knowledge or interest
to make an educated opinion to vote?

------
programmarchy
Anarchist here. You can count me out. I won't be consenting to this form of
government any time soon.

------
civilian
I want my brother to tell all of you guys about how it's not worth his time to
vote. (Especially in an extreme democrat state like california-- it's unlikely
that he'd be the deciding vote.)

But my brother is so aware of the value of his time that he doesn't post on
HN.

------
lujim
Hi Debra,

I've always been skeptical of these kind of "rock the vote" initiatives
because I believe they motivated not by a overall altruistic love of
democracy, but a motivation to sway elections towards the organizations
favored political party. What are your thoughts?

~~~
debracleaver
I've worked with RTV for years and have nothing but great things to say about
them. They, like Vote.org, are nonpartisan. I can speak to our motivations,
however: we want to see 100% voter turnout and don't give a flying fig who you
vote for, as long as you vote. We've been criticized by both sides of the
aisle for not appearing to have a political stance, but fuck it: voter turnout
is too important to waste time on partisan games.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Why? Why do you personally care what I do? Why do you think forcing someone to
do something against their will is to be desired? What do you get from it?

Make voting easier and accessible for those who want to vote? Sure, great.
Coerce and force those who choose to opt out? Unacceptable and unamerica.

------
rcheu
I feel like an easy solution is to just pay people $20 when they vote so that
it's no longer an irrational decision. People will find a way to register and
vote if there's a financial incentive.

Part of the problem right now is that it's hard to convince someone to vote
because it's not actually a rational decision. With very high probability,
your voting action has no impact on your life, and it takes significant time.
Make voting a rational decision, and we'd probably see more people doing it.

------
klue07
Recent phrack had an article on Internet voting for those interested.

[http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article](http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article)

------
nxzero
100% voter turnout assumes that not voting is a not an meaningful expression
of someone's right to vote. Unless there's option to express this within the
voting system, there will always be voters that don't vote.

Second, if it's safe enough to bank and file taxes online, it safe enough to
at least take an unofficial, but publicly published count online; people could
for example update their vote during the run up to the official election.

Some countries have had penalties for not voting. Unclear if this helps, or
hurts, the system.

~~~
erispoe
Tax errors can, and are, routinely corrected. There's an error tolerance for
taxes that is way, way higher than for voting. What if you realize three
months after the fact that your taxes are off? Might be a big problem, but not
as big a realizing three months after the fact that election results are
wrong.

------
masudhossain
If someone were to vote on your website, how long would it take?

One of the main reasons why people don't vote is not being informed enough.
Let's be honest, we hate the media and a lot of people don't know WHAT to
believe anymore.

So do you have any plans on educating the people to think more logically and
look at statistics for example when choosing to vote? Of course I'm not
suggesting you to have any bias towards any candidates, but rather educate the
people on what they vote for.

~~~
debracleaver
you can't vote on our website, but you can receive help registering to vote,
checking your status, and getting your absentee ballot. we focus on the nuts
and bolts of voting, but there are so many great orgs out there who work on
voter education.

------
duncan_bayne
To the vote.org people who are here - have you ever considered throwing your
weight behind alternative democratic mechanisms, like sortition, for selecting
representatives?

This would have the effect of considering all eligible citizens for
Government, thereby mitigating many of the problems with voter turnout.

------
nxzero
Unlikely, given that many states have an absentee voting option, polls are
long enough in a day that if someone really wanted to vote they would, etc.

Also heard it's the time of the year, but fact is that there's only so far
that you're able to go before you corrupt or bias the system.

------
smnscu
Related, here's Andrew Kim's reimagining of the US ballot:
[http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-
elect](http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-elect)

~~~
occsceo
appears to be some progress until you scroll down to see the interview and
survey results. the study is all 18-34 year olds. compare against the past 15
years of voter history age grouping on turnout/registration, not a
representation of the majority of the voters. they essentially asked their 18
year old kids what car to buy for their 65 year old grand parents. "Easy,
Lambo."

------
tn13
Why? High voter turnout is like high page visits, it does not necessarily
translate into good things. Ideally people who understand political issues and
see that by voting they can truly help their ideology must vote.

------
jakeogh
Computerphile: Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

~~~
burkaman
This is about voter registration, it has nothing to do with electronic voting.

~~~
jakeogh
I realize that, but all to often bad ideas are implemented incrementally.
Online registration is an obvious step along the way. Next up: Internet ID
(for "secure" online registration).

~~~
burkaman
Well there are a bunch of comments from Debra Cleaver in this thread that make
it clear that she doesn't trust online voting yet. But yes, this is an obvious
step along the way. Eventually we will get to a point where online voting is
practical and safer than physical voting.

~~~
jakeogh
That's the point, it wont be safer. Software and it's hardware are inherently
buggy (or worse) and that's not going to change any time soon.

Hand counted paper ballots are by far the safest.
[http://www.handcountedpaperballots.org/documents/requirement...](http://www.handcountedpaperballots.org/documents/requirements.html)

~~~
burkaman
But eventually, it will. I don't think we really disagree here, unless you
think that widespread online registration will somehow cause online voting to
inevitable happen too early. We tried electronic voting already, it didn't
work very well, most states stopped doing it. When the technology gets better
we will try again.

Self-driving cars recently became a safe idea even though software is
inherently buggy. Someday the same will be true for voting.

~~~
jakeogh
No, I really am saying electronic voting is fundamentally a bad idea, hence
the the video explaining why.

------
estrabd
Any idea about what the political ideologies of the full 100% looks like? It's
bound to be vastly different that the low percentage that turns out.

~~~
rhino369
I have no idea myself, but I think we can guess based on the fact that
democrats generally want more turnout and republicans generally want less turn
out. That suggests that democrats and republicans generally agree that the
100% would benefit democrats.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
That doesn't explain Washington State, where the Democrats didn't use their
state-provided primary at all (all of their primary delegates were allocated
by a caucus you had to attend) and the Republicans did (though only one
candidate is running now, so it doesn't really matter).

The Democrats made you physically get up on a Saturday and go, unless you had
a valid excuse. Elections in Washington are by mail, so to vote in the
Republican primary, you only had to walk to your mailbox.

~~~
delecti
That's irrelevant, because the turnout in-person among Democrats isn't
comparable to the turnout via mail of Republicans.

~~~
debracleaver
vote-by-mail patters are changing, however, to be more representative of the
electorate as a whole. i _think_ it tended to skew more conservative in the
past because the RNC invested considerable resources into VBM programs. the
DNC has been a little later to the VBM process.

------
ravenstine
Can anyone explain why everyone should vote?

~~~
davekinkead
Here are a few justifications of democracy and how increasing voter turnout
would affect them:

1) Epistemic (democracy is good because it makes the correct choices).
Increasing voter turnout doesn't do much because 10,000 randomly selected
voters are sufficient to get the correct answers and increasing less competent
voters would actually make it work.

2) Preference Satisfaction (democracy is good because it maximizes
preferences). Increasing voter turnout is only beneficial if it improves the
representation of voters to actual population.

3) Consent (democracy is good because we consent to it). Increasing voter
turnout is only good if you deny those currently not voting are somehow not
consenting. Higher voter turnouts make it easier for government to justify
laws however - 'but you all voted for this!'

4) Transformational (democracy is good because participating makes us better
people). Increasing voter turnout would be good regardless of how
representative the new voters are of the population at large.

TLDR - there are many ways to justify democracy, increasing voter turnout will
be good/bad/irrelevant depending on the justification.

------
samstave
I would like to see a security discalimer just like the one at the airport
regarding if your bag has ever left your possesion: "Has anyone at any time
come to you and asked you to cast a vote for them, or otherwise attempted to
compromise your individual right to vote"

------
debracleaver
hey all. it's been great chatting with everyone. i have to go offline for a
bit to eat dinner and talk to potential partners, but happy to pick this
conversation back up later tonight.

------
ck2
Wouldn't insisting on motor-voter take it to near 90% ? Most states refusing
motor-voter are controlled by the hard right.

Sure hope there is a plan to fund 100% more voting locations and booths.

Because Republicans have figured out a great way to kill voting when they
simply just have to give in and let people vote is to defund voting locations.

Unless the plan is to just have everyone vote absentee but that allows for
votes to be "lost".

~~~
atria
Perhaps that has something to do with people who aren't supposed to vote,
who's demographics skew to the left side of the political spectrum: \- Foreign
citizens with drivers licenses \- Permanent residents with drivers licenses \-
Felons with drivers licenses \- Drivers under the voting age of majority \-
Non-naturalized immigrants with drivers licenses.

~~~
debracleaver
ok, let's keep this simple: until having a drivers license is a requirement to
vote in this country, let's not rely on driver's licenses as a requirement for
voting. the DMV was not built to administer elections. that's what local
election offices are for

