democracy sausage and other things

[tielan]

It's become more clear to me as the US election comes closer that mandatory voting is less about forcing people to vote and more about forcing governments to enable people to vote easily and without undue hardship. It's about enabling democracy to happen, which doesn't tend to happen when the people in power are allowed to control how democracy works.

Standing 9 hours in line to cast a ballot on a working day would be undue hardship to quite a few people in Australia.

The longest I've ever waited to vote is maybe 30 minutes. I bitched after 5 minutes, though - as did we all! Made jokes about tablecloths (the voting paper for the senate), whined about the lovely smell of 'democracy sausage' that was being BBQ'd a dozen metres away, and commenting that we hoped all the good cakes wouldn't be gone from the cake stall by the time we got out.

And it was on a Saturday. The people who had to work retail cast their vote at 8am before they went in, or would do so after their shift finished. The polls are open until 6pm.

At a polling station, votes are counted from 6pm until whenever: poll workers are hired for about $400AUD/day (base by the Australian Electoral Commission. It's a pretty long day and nobody discusses politics. The closest I got was a brief conversation with someone as we were counting ballots: "Ugh, another One Nation supporter." I guess she felt pretty safe saying that to me - a non-white Australian. We agreed it was a pity that this area was so firmly conservative and we'd both voted for the Greens in spite of the issues we have with some aspects of their platform.

That was the state election - NSW went LNP (conservative) again.

At the federal election I opted to help hand out 'how to vote' flyers for the Greens. I figured that, as a non-white Australian, I might be able to convince a few fellow non-white Australians that maybe the Greens platform isn't all 'white people concerns'. It's not always explicitly thought, but we know that racial bias is there in all of us. I'm pretty sure at least a couple of families of Asiatic descent looked at me as I offered them a flyer and accepted what they wouldn't have taken from a white person. Unfortunately, the conservatives had volunteers from a subcontinental background handing out flyers for them, and there's quite a number of families from those backgrounds here, too.

Still, the federal went conservative, too. Murdoch and other billionaires putting money in to make sure that Labor lost in key seats. *grr*

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I think that first paragraph is exactly it

[lynnenne]

Yup. In Canadian elections the polls are open until 8 pm and I don’t think I’ve ever had to travel more than 10 blocks to get to a polling station, or wait in line longer than 15 minutes. And we do it all with pencil and paper!

[queenbookwench]

Democracy sausage and cake sounds like an excellent Election Day tradition!

And yeah, I think your point about requiring people to vote meaning government is required to make it easy is well taken--though I wouldn't put it past the US to find a way to do it that's all about criminalizing people somehow.

[novel_machinist]

Heh, we were dropping ballots off in our car and waited 20 minutes. America, home of the googling other countries to move to as soon as the pandemic is over.


I MEAN FREEDOM

[weaselett]

while we don't have mandatory voting, we do have rules about accessibility (I have never had to wait, the polling station is in the village, my dog screaming outside is my main issue each time)

we always vote on a weekday (for reasons I do not understand) but the polling stations are open 7am to 10pm to allow for almost all working patterns.

I do wish there were cake stalls.....

the US system may not be the worst in the world, but all things considered, it's....disturbing.