[strommen]

Do you know of studies or other hard data that tracks _why_ people don't vote? The article claims it is the difficulty of the process, but I would have guessed the top reason is voter apathy (which isn't really a technology issue).

Here's one thing technology could help with: identify which polling places are facing long delays on Election Day, so additional resources can be allocated to speed them up. Without being "partisan", I've noticed that areas with lots of college students and minorities tend to have much longer delays than affluent mainly-white areas (I wonder why that is...)

[debracleaver]

oh sure. there are a wealth of studies out there. it's hard to say why any particular person doesn't vote, but there are some trends that show when voting is easier, more people vote. Colorado, Washington and Oregon all moved toward vote-by-mail systems, in which a ballot is automatically mailed to a voter's house, and saw an immediate increase in voter turnout.

Honestly, I'm waited to see the outcome of Oregon's automatic voter registration efforts on turnout. My guess is that Oregon will continue to lead the way with high turnout. I could be wrong, of course, but there's nothing that suggests that making voting easier would decrease turnout.

[pjc50]

The UK increased postal voting, and found greatly increased fraud: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26520836

I'd be concerned that some of the increased turnout aren't real voters...

[tehwebguy]

That article is just the opinion of Richard Mawrey QC.

Here is the Electoral Fraud Review report from the Electoral Commission in 2014. Mawrey seems to strongly disagree with the findings of the report.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file...

[notahacker]

The Electoral Fraud Review report concludes that banning postal voting (in specific areas or altogether) would be a "disproportionate" response to allegations of voter fraud.

It also quite explicitly states that limiting postal votes would reduce the risk of voter fraud (p34) and acknowledges some evidence of systematic voter fraud in some regions of the UK exists.

[debracleaver]

it's hard to draw conclusions cross-country. right now i would say that we are very much in a position of denying actual citizens the right to vote, and we need to address that stat. postal mail is one way we can do that. making voting easy in general is the goal here.

[Twirrim]

My wife absolutely loves the mailed ballot approach in Washington (I'm not eligible to vote). Particularly because Washington appears to have votes of some description every quarter.

The information booklet that comes with it has been great for kickstarting investigation into the candidates and their policies, and the various other proposals that are up for the vote (booklet has both for and against arguments from different interest groups) so that she's been able to be a lot more informed as she prepares to vote.

[vanattab]

Am I understanding you correctly? Is the washington state GOVERMENT mailing out ballots with a "pro/con" booklet or are they being sent out by some poltical nonprofit that is just printing off the standard ballot. It would disgust me if it was the election board compiling an "unbiased" pros/cons booklet that is included with every ballot.

[dragonwriter]

I don't know about Washington, but California has:

(1) Candidate statements from candidates (there are requirements for being allowed to submit a statement), and (2) Pro/con statements from the official proponents and registered opponents of ballot measures (identifying the sources for both) as well as financial estimates for ballot measures (for statewide measures, these are prepared by the state Legislative Analysts Office.)

[steven777400]

Yes, it works great. The Secretary of State's office solicits a pro and con opinion from interested groups. At the bottom of the opinion is a laundry-list of groups that co-wrote the statement. That list is often more informative than the contents of the statement itself. The booklet also includes a candidate statement submitted by the candidate for each position.

[Frondo]

Former Oregonian here--they do that too, and it's extremely handy to have all that stuff laid out in one place. Many an afternoon I sat down with my ballot (everything is done by mail there) and the booklet and read up on the issues and voted.

[simantel]

The government mails out the booklet, but all of its contents are submitted by various "interested parties," and are labeled as such.

[smsm42]

Do you (or anybody else) track about how informed the voters that are captured by "easy vote" are? I understand there are a lot of partisan disagreements, but there are also basic facts both about how US government works and what positions of the candidates are, which unfortunately are unknown to significant number of people. If you just get those people to vote, they might vote based on whose name they heard on TV, or who is handsomer, or because they heard somebody said something good/bad about some candidate and they never bothered to see if it's true. Do you think getting such people to vote more would improve the state of democracy?

I am not saying people don't already vote while uninformed - but you may be making matters worse. I am also not saying people that vote only when it's super-easy are necessarily of this kind or even have more uninformed voters than in general - maybe yes, maybe not. But I think it is a reasonable hypothesis which would be nice to check before investing money in effort in something that very well may make matters worse, not better.

[cinquemb]

I'd also be interested in data about the why's as well. My personal reasons span somewhere from personally humorous contempt of the idealized process (and its manifestation in reality) to observing how well extra-democratic interventions work for influencing specific political goals/change (esp in "democracies") under the right circumstances.

Though I doubt there will be a poll/test that would allow for such description and provide it within a larger context of being available as dataset for the public. It's easier to cast blanket statement of "low information/access" and work from such basis and pat oneself on the back for token reforms to be cited in a pamphlet/resume somewhere.

[dexterdog]

Don't most areas with lots of college students just see lines at the post office to mail in absentees? When I was in school nobody I knew was registered locally.

[DrScump]

Why would one wait in line to drop something into a mailbox?

[dexterdog]

We're talking students. They need stamps and probably envelopes.

[DrScump]

All voting jurisdictions here use prepaid-postage mailers. Perhaps that is not the norm.

[dexterdog]

I went to school quite some time ago.