[salicideblock]

I really don't think this is about a tradeoff between time and reliability.

Other developed countries have, for decades, reliably given results within hours of polls closing, without "automation or obscure technology". Time to results is a factor in the credibility of the results, just as auditability and transparency.

International election observers regularly raise concerns about protracted and drawn out election counts in less developed parts of the world. I wonder how they would report on US elections.

[vonmoltke]

> Other developed countries have, for decades, reliably given results within hours of polls closing, without "automation or obscure technology".

How do these other countries handle mail-in ballots? In most (maybe all) US states, a ballot postmarked on election day is valid as long as it is received by some specific point (usually Friday) after election day. Thus, in the US there are an undetermined number of valid votes that have not even been received by election officials yet.

[disgu]

Germany: Every person over the age of 18 is automatically registered to vote. The right to vote cannot be lost.

Every registered voter gets a letter some time before the election and if you want to vote by mail you have to send the letter back for free and they'll send everything over. The ballots have to be received by the end of the day of election. There's a lot of time so you won't miss that date. The letter you get to remind you of voting also contains information about where you have to be to vote in person.

There's very little last minute changes in Germany. The election is not decided in the last couple of weeks before the election, people have made up their minds at that point.

I think the crucial part is that there's absolutely no effort involved. You basically show up at the polling place on the Sunday of the election and you're good to go. If you're too lazy for that you can to everything by mail. If you decide to vote by mail and then forget to send it via the post you can just drop it off at the polling station as well.

[ac29]

> The ballots have to be received by the end of the day of election.

The argument here is: why should someone who voted on election day, or even a day or two before have their vote thrown out because their ballot doesnt arrive to be counted until the day after the election?

I think the argument that there is plenty of time is reasonable, but many elections in the US can be very, very close, so it does matter. Throwing out valid ballots that were mailed on or before election day effectively disenfranchises people (keep in mind some people cant go to polls to vote or drop off ballots, and in some places it is illegal to have anyone besides the registered voter drop off the ballot, so it must be mailed).

[slaman]

In Canada, mail in ballots have a separate, earlier deadline.

If you do not mail your ballot on time, there is another simple solution, you go to the (lineless) polls on election day.

When they check everyone in they confirm that they have not already received a mail-in-ballot from that individual before allowing you to the booth.

With enough time allocated for mail-in-ballots, I feel that it doesn't matter that the deadline is earlier. Deadlines are fairly arbitrary either way and at some point you need to select a winner.

If you have plenty of opportunity to vote and you do not vote by the deadline, your vote is not counted regardless of the method you have chosen.

[cameronh90]

Those rules just sound like a bad idea that should be changed.

In the UK at least, it needs to be with your local authority by 10PM on polling day. If you fail to send it in time, you can just bring it down manually instead.

(aside: I am generally opposed to postal voting. Postal vote seems even more prone to abuse than remote electronic voting.)

[tyingq]

"Other developed countries have..."

I suspect they have a way to mandate how local governments handle the voting. The US does not. That's the barrier.

[dragonwriter]

> I suspect they have a way to mandate how local governments handle the voting. The US does not.

Yes, it does.

It does for federal legislative elections because while the Constitution gives power to run those elections to the State in the first instance, it also gives Congress the power to jump in and regulate anything it wants about "the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, [...] except as to the places of choosing Senators".

And, while it doesn't have truly mandatory federal direction for Presidential elections (for which voting by the people isn't even Constitutionally required), it does in practice for them the same way much of what is done in Presidential elections is already fixed: safe harbor laws defining what states must do to protect their electoral votes from being subject to challenge when counted by Congress.

The US chooses not to exercise the tools it has to mandate how local government handles the voting, and where it does exercise those tools doesn't do it well, and that's the problem, not the absence of the tools.

[Arnt]

Germany handles it fine, ie. each of the sixteen states handles it fine.

There's nothing magic about holding election, that prevents Florida from doing it trustworthily and would permit the USA do achieve the same feat. A great many states do it, some federal. It requires coordination and reliability, in much the same way as delivering the mail, supplying everyone with fresh milk, handling vaccines, etc.

[tyingq]

I think you're missing the point that US states have rights that can't be infringed upon. They are all allowed to make their own types of ballots, allow (or not allow) mail-in voting, decide how many workers to employ for the process, etc. The US government is, by law, not allowed to mess with any of that. Check out how different, for example, Maine's process was this year. They didn't have one winner. They split out electoral votes to two different candidates.

[dragonwriter]

> I think you're missing the point that US states have rights that can't be infringed upon.

Those "rights" (there's a problem with applying that term to states and not people, but its a side issue here) do not include the "right" to run federal elections without oversight by Congress, which has both direct and explicit regulatory power for federal legislative elections under the Constitution, and the Constitutional role of assessing whether electoral votes are properly given when counting them, and has, in fact, has acted based on the latter power to direct states as to what they must do in federal Presidential elections to shield their votes from potential challenge.

[Arnt]

No, I'm not missing that. I mentioned Germany because the sixteen German states have rights too, sufficiently so that it matters for politics in general.

Some German states even partly devolve elections further. There was a minor scandal regarding that last year, when one city chose to deploy some software that broke (and as a result, some votes weren't tallied until many hours later than expected, perhaps >24h). That's the kind of scandal federally devolved elections can have, the kind the Americans should aspire to having.

[slowmovintarget]

Yeah, the "Hey I found these 30,000 votes in the trunk of my car... oops" stuff is really embarrassing.