Turn Out
The people who keep talking about turn out are full of it. They believe that a turn of less than 60% for a Presidential election is great. I want to know what is wrong with the 40% of the country who couldn’t be bothered.
Florida turn out was much better than average, but not as good as 2004:
2004: 10,301,290 registered 7,640,319 voted 74.2%
2008: 11,247,634 registered 8,201,274 voted 72.9%
About half of the people who were added to the books didn’t show up at the polls. That’s pathetic.
In my county we only added about 2,000 new voters between 2004 and 2008, but we had 5,000 more voters this time, raising our turn out to 73.5%.
I am personally bummed out by the vote on our “hate amendment”. Showing Florida as a “blue state” is not truthful. Nearly a million Florida voters who chose Obama, also chose hate.
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…don’t know whether vote by mail is actually an advantage, but out here in Orygun the percentage of registered voters casting a ballot in this election is just a tad about 86% and may, once absentee ballots are added, be a turnout record. Still I wonder, why wouldn’t everybody vote if all they have to do is sit in the kitchen and fill in circles with a pen or pencil…
It sounds like a much better system than millions of people having to stop what they would normally be doing and travel to a specific location on a specific day to do the same thing. These things are expensive when you look at all of the resources wasted to do it the way we currently do.
We already have absentee ballots, which are essentially the same system, so I don’t have a problem with it.
It’s probably like Medicare for – it makes too much sense and saves too much money to be adopted.
medicare for all, voting for all, marriage for all… geez bryan let’s not get greedy here.
I’m not greedy, I’m cheap, especially with tax dollars.
Marriage licenses generate revenue, so you make them available to everyone.
Single payer would save huge amounts of money, so you switch to single payer.
Voting by mail has got to be cheaper than staffing hundreds of polling stations, so you vote by mail.
It’s amazing how many “liberal” ideas are cheaper than the way “conservatives” want to do things. You would think they would be familiar with the concepts of “return on investment” and “cost-benefit ratio”.
I don’t know what the case was there in Florida, but here in California all of the normal liberal coalition turned out against Prop h8 — *except* the black population, 70% of whom voted *for* Prop h8. Apparently they think that now that they got their own equal rights, nobody else needs theirs? But anyhow, if the black population had voted even 50-50 on Prop h8, Prop h8 would have failed at the polls. But they didn’t. So it won, and hate is now California law.
My gut feeling is that we have a lot of education to do in the black community before they stop treating gay like it was evil and stuff and vote for equal rights for all Americans, not just straight ones…
– Badtux the Numbers Penguin
Oh yeah, regarding vote-by-mail, the normal rap against it is that it makes vote buying and voter intimidation too easy. Ward bosses can too easily go door to door in their wards and demand that voters vote the way the boss says and get $5 — or else (said while slapping blackjack into hand). And can follow it up by demanding to see their ballot marked the “correct” way. Something that can’t be done if the voting is done in the privacy of a booth in a designated polling station that is supervised by representatives of all the parties involved then the ballot dropped into a box prior to any ward boss being able to see it.
On the other hand, what might have been an issue in the crowded ghettos of the 19th century which were ruled with an iron hand by corrupt ward bosses in the pay of the city machine probably is not a problem with today’s wide-flung urban areas and the easy communications that allow such abuses to quickly show up on YouTube. So I think the original impetus behind the secret ballot done on a specific day is no longer operative. But it’s tradition now, so… (shrug). Luckily it’s an *optional* tradition here in California now. I voted by mail the week before the election.
– Badtux the Voting Penguin
you’ve got the costs pegged, but you’re measuring the wrong benefits. conservatives value keeping power and equality out of the reach of little people way more than they value a few dollars here, a billion dollars there.
Badtux, here it was the surge in AA and Latinos that pushed it over. The polls said it would fail and the polls always under represent those groups in Florida. I should have remembered that, but I had hopes that people would forget their hate for a day.
Having lived in a city in New York that used the mechanical voting machines, I can tell you that it was easier to control the votes in the current system, than a mail system. You only had to station people at the polling locations, not visit them individually. It’s a lot easier to intimidate people at polling locations and prevent them from voting if you think they will vote “the wrong way”.
It’s all about control, Hipparchia. Every reform gets modified into a new method of control.
There are three different lawsuits already filed against Prop 8 here in California.
I can’t believe people would actually think adding an amendment that takes away civil rights would be a good thing. We even voted to let chickens have more cage space! But turning our backs on gays? Where is our humanity?
What was the point in tearing down one barrier and building another?
When was discrimination ever right and moral?
Maybe we should start labeling water fountains “Straight” and “Gay” to remind members of the minority community what this is really all about. When I was growing up they were labeled “White” and “Colored”.
Do these people think penguins make a “lifestyle choice” or anyone would volunteer to get the crap beat out of them all through school?
Apparently 50% of Californians think chickens are more worthy of humane treatment than gays.
What to think of that… I try not to.
– Badtux the Not-a-chicken Penguin
The problem is we work with computers and can see the links. People OTOH can hold completely contradictory views in their minds and never notice the conflict. If you don’t believe you should be discriminated against for something you had no choice over, why would it be OK to discriminate against another group for something they have no choice about.
The longer I live, the more I appreciate cats and computers, as compared to people.