(Non-Partisan) Should voting be compulsory for registered US citizens?

Monocrom

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I'm just picturing write-in ballots for The Easter Bunny.
Mess around.... Dude goes and changes his name to "The Bunny."
With "Easter" as his middle name. Legally gets it changed.
Shows up to the White House. What are they gonna do!?
He's the new elected President!

6 months later, declares nuclear war on a certain nation he hates.
Starts dropping nukes.... All the war-heads have been painted bright fluorescent colors like Easter eggs. Special Delivery!
 

Galane

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Don't know who Taylor Swift is? No problem, just shake it off.

I'm currently on jury duty. 4th time in 30 years in this county. We're on call for 3 months. There's fewer than 11,000 people in the county. Fortunately the small population also results in few trials. This round I'm Juror #303 so *extremely unlikely* to get called in. I've been called in twice. First time there was a snowstorm. I couldn't get through to the court on the phone, constantly busy, so I had to drive across town and it was "What trial?" turns out it had been canceled due to weather and with a few hundred potential jurors trying to call to find out if the trial was still on... Second time the weather was good and I got to waste much of an afternoon at the county courthouse. Fortunately I was about middle of the pack and they allowed all the juror pool to observe the selection so when my turn came I knew exactly what perfectly honest answer to give to a question in order to get dismissed. I didn't want to be on a jury for a stabbing case.

After the 2000 election mess I came up with a balloting system that would be impossible to hack to cast fraudulent ballots or alter them afterwards. It would create paper ballots too, with copies for both the election and the voters. To cast a fake or change one vote would require simultaneous hacks at multiple locations *and* somehow replacing CD-R discs both at the polling place and the central vote data location. These days there are other WORM data recording technologies, but CD-R would still be good for vote data. Even better, with my design there'd be no tabulating or counting required, the results would be instantly available with the final vote cast.

The most suspicious part of 2000 was Voter News Service. VNS was created by the TV networks to save on money spent on exit polling. Rather than each network sending out hundreds of people across the country to ask people who they voted for as they left the polls, they all put money into VNS to do all of that. Thus all the TV news from the first election with VNS through 2000 reported the same prospective winners and losers. When FOX started their news division in 1995, they signed on with VNS.

In the USA it is illegal for the media to call a winner in a State (for Presidential or in-State offices) until all the polls in the State have closed. IMHO for the President they shouldn't be allowed to make any win calls until the polls in the entire country are closed. The current per-State rule gives the Eastern and Central time zone States a big influence on whether or not people in Mountain time, Pacific time, Alaska and Hawaii even bother to vote if it looks like their candidate is losing in the east.

So what went down in 2000? Florida's panhandle is in Central time while the rest of it is in Eastern time. Voter News Service, for the first time in its history, made the "mistake" of calling the winner in Florida an hour early while the polls in the panhandle were still open.

The TV news called the election for Gore... but then someone at FNC realized the SHTF... the Flordia call was illegal. So they were the first to recant calling Florida.

But nobody involved in the VNS "mistake" was prosecuted. AFAIK there wasn't any real investigation. VNS was just quietly disbanded after attempting the biggest election tampering in the history of the USA.

I live in Idaho, where showing ID to prove you are you so you can vote has long been a thing. We have no issues with it. Registering to vote is easy and can even be done at the polls right before you vote. You just need something like a utility bill showing Idaho residency for the past 30 days, and a photo ID. Driver's license or State ID card if you don't have a driver's license.

It's simple, it works, we don't have people coming in who are ineligible to vote here and managing to vote. AFAIK there's never been a case in Idaho with more ballots cast in a town or county than the number of people living there...
 

jtr1962

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I'm just picturing write-in ballots for The Easter Bunny.
Mess around.... Dude goes and changes his name to "The Bunny."
With "Easter" as his middle name. Legally gets it changed.
Shows up to the White House. What are they gonna do!?
He's the new elected President!

6 months later, declares nuclear war on a certain nation he hates.
Starts dropping nukes.... All the war-heads have been painted bright fluorescent colors like Easter eggs. Special Delivery!
I want Beavis and Butthead as President and Vice President.

 

kaichu dento

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…I came up with a balloting system that would be impossible to hack to cast fraudulent ballots or alter them afterwards. It would create paper ballots too, with copies for both the election and the voters. To cast a fake or change one vote would require simultaneous hacks at multiple locations *and* somehow replacing CD-R discs both at the polling place and the central vote data location.
In that case they're not at all interested in it.
Honest people would love to see it in place, but they're not in charge now are they.
 

Falcon9h

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Called ranked-choice voting here in the USA. NYC uses it for some local elections but it's not common.

Don't know how it works in your country, but two really big issues with this so-called responsibility right now:

1) With all the civil litigation in the US, jury duty has morphed from what used to be perhaps a once in a lifetime thing into an annual ritual for many. Sure, if they actually pick you for a jury you're in the clear for the next four years. If not, you might get called again the next year. Besides that, it's one thing to have your life disrupted to decide about someone's freedom but most of the calls for jury duty are from civil court, not criminal court. Sorry, I shouldn't have to waste my time making decisions where only money is involved. Tort lawyers love to roll the dice and play the jury trial card in the hopes they'll get a big award for their client (and themselves) as most tort cases are contingency. Win the lawyer gets a percent, lose they get nothing.

If we made jury duty a once in a lifetime thing (i.e. go down when called, whether or not you're picked for a jury that's the last time you'll ever be called) most would find it palatable.

2) To be excused you usually have to show up the first day you're called to explain why to the judge. Kind of defeats the point. If it's a burden to serve it's also one to show up at all. For example, I'm caretaking for my mother. I can't leave her in the first place to go to court to explain to a judge that I can't serve. There's no way to simply go online and give reasons why you can't serve. Or better yet, a list where they don't send you a summons in the first place if you have a reason you can't serve, like caretaking, disability, age, infirmity, sole proprietorship, etc.

Another issue is the time of day. It might be easier for some people to serve if some courts convened outside of normal business hours but for the most part they don't. Then you have day/night people. Sorry, but my faculties aren't working well until late afternoons. I can't really make any important decisions in the context of a court where I might be fighting my own fatigue for most of the session.

Anyway, I never actually served on a jury, nor would I want to. I only got called once, but my number to go down didn't come up fortunately. I really think we should just follow most of the rest of the world and ditch jury duty. It's been horribly abused by lawyers, especially in the US.
All I had to do was bring up mental health problems-true-and never got called, thank God.
 

Falcon9h

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Probably gonna get banned..

hac-politics.jpg
 

kaichu dento

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At least they're funny, which is more than I can say for most of the idiots we have in charge from both parties.
At least one of the parties, regardless of how flawed many of their members may be, isn't basing all of their policies on doing everything in their power to destroy this country.

So ironic to have idiots calling others science deniers while screaming in defense of things that proves who the science deniers actually are. Calling others misogynistic and telling women to shut up when they speak out against being marginalized in a brand new way.

Yeah, both parties are flawed because human beings are flawed, but one party is now flawed all the way to its modern core, exemplified by battles for inclusivity, except for those who dare disagree with them.
 

kaichu dento

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Don't hold back kaichu. Tell us how you really feel.
There's millions of others thinking it, because it's all there to see right in front of us, and if someone else upstream in the thread starts this line of conversation, it's hard not to respond.

I guess your post to me would very well apply to quite a few other posts made in the thread before mine. :)
 

bykfixer

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There's millions of others thinking it, because it's all there to see right in front of us, and if someone else upstream in the thread starts this line of conversation, it's hard not to respond.

I guess your post to me would very well apply to quite a few other posts made in the thread before mine. :)
My post was a joking way of saying "well said".
 
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