A US ballot
October 3rd, 2012 at 4:00 pm by David FarrarA reader sent these in, to give others an idea of how many choices most US people get when they vote. He says some years there are four pages of things to vote on.
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October 3rd, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Sigh,isn’t it nice the US voters get a chance to vote on so many issues in their society,one that so many of us Aotearoans love to slag off?
More’s the pity about our “democracy” where the elites reserve so much power to themselves.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 4:04 pm
I think I’ve seen worse. I recall a friend showing me his absentee ballot – he was in Australia at the time of the last state election. I think I remember it was basically a blank sheet of paper and you had to write in the names of the people you wanted to vote for. Barriers to voting? Surely not.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Was his name “Chad”
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Candidates names don’t appear to be alphabetical.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Funny you should post about this David – I’m just wading my through the 158 page Arizona General Election Guide. This has a summary of pro and con arguments for all 11 ballot initiatives (this is low – the usual number is close to 20) and the AZ Law Commission’s independent assessment of all the AZ Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Superior and Municipal Court Judges (that we all get to vote on). Voting can sometimes take 10 minutes because we vote for:
President/VP (actually you vote for the Electoral College electors for the party of your choice and they vote for the President when the EC meets a few days after the election)
US Senator
US Congress
Governor (only some states)
Lieutenant Gov
About 8 – 9 state wide offices (like Attorney General, Secretary of State, Mines Commissioner
County Sheriff
State Senator
State Representative
Mayor
City Councillor
Possible sales and other tax initiatives (no city, state or county taxes can be raised without voter consent)
Local bond issues (no city/county can take on debt without getting voter approval)
All the judges mentioned earlier
Ballot initiatives (which in the case of AZ are binding on the legislatures)
Don’t forget that only 2 months ago we voted in the local Primary elections and whilst not all positions have multiple candidates for the two major parties, we had to vote for 30 odd local precinct representatives for the GOP.
Voters here have a lot more power and get to vote on so many more issues but it does explain why the voter turnout is lower.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 6:43 pm
Amazing…. that’s a *real* eye-opener!
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 8:08 pm
There are cetainly a lot of posts to vote for. Certainly more democratic choices per voter.
cheers
David Prosser
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Interesting when you consider how quick some people are to have a go at the US voting system – organising an election that includes this much paperwork is quite a different excercise to our “two ticks and your done” general election.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 8:25 pm
scrubone: worse than that. Every jurisdiction can have their own rules for voting, within a broad framework. The paper is not nationally consistent, the rules for registration and voting are not nationally consistent. The electoral college is handled differently in some states (I think some are winner takes all, some are allocated proportionally to the votes).
On the one hand this inconsistency is a weakness – somewhere in America someone is getting screwed by the system, their vote isn’t getting counted. On the other hand, it’s really hard to systematically skew the system – too much local control to allow that. Some of the states have very skewed (gerrymandered, amongst other flaws) processes, but they all seem to average out.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 9:41 pm
This is why the USA is bankrupt. The complete overkill of democracy is unaffordable.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 9:58 pm
nick k
so here in aotearoa ,where we don’t have “democratic overkill”,why are we also bankrupt?
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 10:37 pm
PaulL – Not sure that it matters that much if it’s inconsistent. Many people don’t realise that the President (and VP) are the only officals in the entire country that are elected by the country, everything else is state wide or local.
kowtow – we are not bankrupt, not by a long shot. But we’re going in the wrong direction.
Vote:October 3rd, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Kiwi in America:
Vote:US Senator is also only “some states”
October 4th, 2012 at 7:31 am
Paul L
Only Nebraska allocates the Electoral College vote (they have only 3) proportionally – all other states its winner take all.
scrubone
Correct – 1/3 of the senate only is up for election every 2 years because they have a 6 year term. Elections for the House of Representatives are every 2 years.
Another thing is the different WAYS you vote: some eastern states still have old style voting machines where you pull levers (including the straight ticket lever that will vote for every Dem or Rep candidate), others have strictly paper ballots that are manually counted, some have punch card ballots (few since the famous hanging chads in Florida in 2000), most have a black marker pen and you fill in a gap in a line and the ballot is electronically read while still others have older style tick boxes.
Electoral laws are decided at the state level and the boundaries are redrawn by the legislatures so there is much more partisan input into boundary drawing hence the gerrymandering that is still common. A few states attempt to replicate the NZ style bureacrat led impartial Boundaries Commission. The 2010 GOP sweep tipped several legislatures to Republican control for the first time in a generation allowing for some redressing of some long standing Democrat driven boundary imbalances (eg Pennsylvania) and to enact stricter voter ID laws. There are still about 15 states that don’t ask for any ID when arriving to vote – most now require a state issued photo ID to be shown (to reduce illegal immigrant voting). These laws are all over the page – some states have Lieutenant Governors separately elected others its like the Presidential ticket, they have open (anyone can vote) , closed (ony Reps in Rep primary or Dems in Dems) or semi open Primaries, the way each state replaces Senators who resign is different – some are Governor appointments, others must hold special elections within x days, campaign finance laws, filing and candidate registration requirements are wildly different. Even the task of getting a Presidential candidate’s name on a ballot is different from state to state. Then there are the caucus states vs primary states and whether the primary is winner take all or proportional (or a mix). TX uses BOTH and a few states the primaries are indicative only and the candidate selection is done at a state party convention. It literally is not possible for anyone except the most expert electoral historians and political scientists to keep up. It makes for a rich, raucus cacophony at election time and makes NZ elections look timid and tame by comparison. And then there’s all the ads and billboards!!
Vote:October 4th, 2012 at 8:03 am
Some of those Constitutional Amendments are terribly worded – we think our citizens referenda can be badly worded at times – but at least they are limited to a one liner not a whole paragraph.
I’m not convinced that more voting options necessarily means that it is more democratic – if the outcome is low voter understanding and low turnout.
Every three years I get the pleasure of voting for my District Health Board. I get to preferentally rank about 17 candidates in order of preference. Most of them I have never heard of before. Voter turnout for this poll is typically around 25-30% meaning that the people who win it at best have the preference votes of about 15% of the voting population. Is that a vibrant democracy or a waste of time? I still don’t really understand the division of duties between the Ministry of Health and the DHB’s and at the end of the day, like most people I think, I hold central government and the Minister of Health accountable for the state of the public health system. I’d rather scrap the whole ‘local democracy’ DHB system and save us all a bunch of time and money – does that make me a fascist?
Vote:October 4th, 2012 at 10:24 am
yes but because the names are listed alphabetically (I believe that is still the case)in a selection process people get easily bored and tick off the names from A-K and the rest are ignored.
Vote:October 4th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Wouldnt surprise me if the responses were ‘pre-populated’ – all you have to do is file the forms into the ballot box !
Vote: