[mystraline]

"This is how its always been" is one of the banes of my existence. It explains why we're here, but not how to do better.

There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.

Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.

Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state.

But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen.

But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results.

[WalterBright]

> mandate required voting

I don't see how forcing a person to vote will result in carefully considering what to vote for.

A right to vote includes the right to not vote.

[defrost]

Sure, and countries with "compulsory voting" embrace the right to Donkey vote, pencil in whatever candidate you choose, criticise the government in a short haiku, and otherwise exercise freedom.

It's more a compulsory show you're still a citizen day. The making a valid vote part is down to personal choice.

They also appear to have generally better general political awareness and engagement in policy.

[autoexec]

> A right to vote includes the right to not vote.

Then add an abstain option to the ballot while still requiring people to show up and select the box. While I do think voting should be mandatory, I'd say that we should make it substantially easier. More polling places, mail in voting, having a mandated paid day off to vote and having more than one day to vote in person would go a long way to making the requirement workable.

[WalterBright]

Forcing people to the polling place doesn't sound like a free society. Nor does it auger for any positive votes - people forced into something don't behave well. You'll get perverse voting.

[x______________]

Living in a civilized society with other people should have its social responsibilities, amongst others.

[9875325996435]

And you get to decide what others are forced to do, right?

[Defletter]

Are you an anarchist by any chance? Because the logical conclusion to this argument is why anyone can "force" anyone else to do anything.

[Ray20]

Yes, and most of this measures result in decisions being made by the most irresponsible people.

Prisoners voting is madness. They are in too dependent a position to believe that their vote will reflect their votes.

On the contrary, voting should be banned not only for prisoners but also for people working for the government in any capacity. People who live off taxpayers should not be able to decide how to spend their taxes.

Registration procedures should be more complex and strict, not simpler. If someone is irresponsible, disorganized, or illiterate enough to fail to fill the form on time, then why should we consider their vote meaningful? If someone believes they have more important things to do than vote, why force them to vote?

[crote]

> Registration procedures should be more complex and strict, not simpler. If someone is irresponsible, disorganized, or illiterate enough to fail to fill the form on time, then why should we consider their vote meaningful?

The US tried to do this kind of "literacy test" before, remember? It's where the expression "grandfathered in" comes from: you had to do an impossible-to-pass test to gain the right to vote - except if your grandfather had the right to vote.

This was of course used to ban black people from voting without explicitly banning them for being black.

> Prisoners voting is madness

If prisoners can't vote, what's stopping the party in power from preventing them from ever losing an election by just jailing everyone expected to vote against them?

> People who live off taxpayers should not be able to decide how to spend their taxes

This should obviously includes everyone working for government contractors. Which is obviously going to include everyone working for any kind of tech company with any government contract. Which, considering HN demographics, means you likely shouldn't e allowed to vote.

Heck, why not extend this even further? Anyone living in a state which receives more money than it contributes in taxes should be banned from voting. Anyone using government resources should be banned from voting. Everyone driving their car on government-maintained roads should be banned from voting!

[AngryData]

Personally I don't find "tick atleast this one box and sign your name, otherwise you get a $20 fine" is too much to ask. If it wasn't the US I would assume most fines would still be ignored by the law anyways, but giving the US legal system another way to fuck with people is also kind of worrying when it is so bad already.

[RHSeeger]

> A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

Many people already do get the option to ditch out of work to go vote. And it's not logistically possible for _everyone_ to have the day off. So really this is just a matter of sliding the scale a bit so _more_ people can vote; at the cost of more inconvenience.

Personally, I'd rather just make mail-in voting more common.

[hellojesus]

I love mail in voting, but it does run the unique risk of having verifiable votes to third parties, which means it allows pay-for-votes.

No election can mitigate this so long as your vote is provable to a third party.

[mrighele]

There are a few things that could be done to improve the electoral process in USA.

An easy one would be to have people vote on weekends instead of Tuesday.

The second would be to have more polling station so that people don't have to wait hours to be able to vote (alas this seems to be by design).

Since we are there, but unrelated to the amount of people voting, fix the vote counting process so that you can get the result the following day.

The stuff above is not rocket science and is what most of the other civilized countries do.

If people still don't go out and vote, probably is because both candidates suck, or they don't look so much different one from the other. Fixing this would require changing the electoral system, which is not something I see done anytime soon in the USA

[SoftTalker]

In recent years, people can vote early, vote by mail, or vote on election day. Hard to see how a "holiday" for voting makes anything easier for anyone, though I could maybe support it if you eliminated all the other options.

[lostlogin]

Also on the list: Tackling the electoral college thing such that every voter contributed equally, regardless of their home state.

I don’t live in the US, but US elections have quite an influence and it’s frustrating to see a system I perceive as very flawed having such an effect here, at the other end of the world in New Zealand.

[SoftTalker]

In the US, states elect the president, not the people individually. This is a pretty foundational element of our constitution.

[mrguyorama]

Another foundational element of our constitution was denying women the right to contribute to society, and not establishing any form of succession and other blatant and stupid failures.

Maybe the framers can go fuck themselves.

Yet the framers quite literally told you to change what they made, so they agree.

[lostlogin]

Do you mean farmers?

[lostlogin]

Having a president which a minority of cast votes picked is a problem in my view.

[jandrewrogers]

The President is the representative of the constituent State governments of America, not the people. That is why it is the States that vote. The only part of the Federal government that is intended to proportionally represent the people, and is in practice, is the House of Representatives in Congress.

This is a good and appropriate thing. States are approximately countries. Most laws only exist at the State level e.g. most common crimes don't exist in Federal law. The overreach of the Federal government claiming broad authority over people is an unfortunate but relatively recent (20th century) phenomenon. The US does seem to be returning to States having more autonomy, which I'd say is a good thing.

[yazantapuz]

> There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

In Argentina, elections are held on Sundays.

[koolba]

> There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too.

> We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.

I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal. If people are neither informed nor interested, why do you want them to have a say at all? At best they’ll be picking a last name that sounds pronounceable. Or going with whichever first name sounds more (or less!) male.

> Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.

We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?

> Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state.

I’m generally for this though there are a bit of logistics when you’re dealing with preprinted paper ballots and some expectations of processing quantity. Prior registration also addresses people showing up at the wrong polls in advance.

> But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen.

Not always a bad thing either. If all it took was the stroke of an executive’s pen, you’d see a lot of things I bet you would not be fond of rather soon.

> But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results.

The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States.

[lostlogin]

> The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States.

Surely you want the leader that most Americans voted for?

When votes are held in the senate or congress, it’s a straight numbers game. Why aren’t those votes also weighted?

There wouldn’t be many who’d argue that the American political system is in good health. How would you fix it?

[fwip]

> When votes are held in the senate or congress, it’s a straight numbers game. Why aren’t those votes also weighted?

They are weighted - the House is allocated by population, and the Senate by state.

[lostlogin]

They are weighted in how they are elected. They aren’t weighted in how the members vote.

[claytongulick]

> Surely you want the leader that most Americans voted for?

I prefer not to live in the Hunger Games world, personally.

Those books are a brilliant exploration of the tyranny of urban clusters.

The electoral college is an effective foil to that.

[lostlogin]

I wouldn’t call the US system ‘effective’. The US system is spiralling and it’s getting dystopian. The hunger games analogy is fitting, with The Patriot Games coming right up.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/18/politics/patriot-games-an...

[swiftcoder]

> Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting?

About half of all folks in US prisons are there for non-violent crimes, and we're talking about a relatively small percentage of voters anyway. Maybe ~3 million added to the ~244 million eligible voters

[SoftTalker]

For a consequence to be effective, you have to lose something. If you go to prison, the big thing you lose is freedom of movement. But other things, such as who you live with, what you eat, and the ability to vote are other things.

[swiftcoder]

I don’t think we have a broad consensus that incarceration is effective.

No longer being able to vote seems like a rather petty inconvenience to heap on top

[LocalH]

Voting is a civil right. People who are stripped of their right to vote should also pay zero taxes. You know, "no taxation without representation".

[Arainach]

>Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too.

There's no reason that a holiday to give people time to do it requires or logically leads to either of those, no.

>I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal.

Mandatory participation generally includes write-in and abstain options, but requires people to participate in the process. Making it mandatory defeats the measures taken to stop groups of people from voting (insufficient polling places for long lines, intimidation keeping people away, purging voter rolls, etc.)

>We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?

Because it's easy to file bullshit charges against anyone you don't want voting, and because something being illegal doesn't make it morally wrong, so people should be able to vote to change things even when being persecuted for them.

[RHSeeger]

> > There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

> Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too.

Why does having a day with "more people off work to go vote" mean we make voting harder in other ways? I don't understand what you're trying to say/imply here.

> > Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.

> We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?

Because, like it or not, they are citizens, and citizens get to vote. Do I think most pedophiles have much to contribute to the process? No, probably not. But there's a LOT of prisoners that are guilty of much lesser crimes; ones that don't imply their vote shouldn't matter.

> The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States.

Challenge. But this is very much an opinion thing.

[shiroiuma]

>"This is how its always been" is one of the banes of my existence. It explains why we're here, but not how to do better.

This is true, but it's also very useful in assigning blame (or avoiding assigning it improperly).

So for all the people who complain about all the people who didn't vote, and try to blame them for Trump's election, we can just point to the historical record for voting in US presidential elections. The truth is: the turnout was not unusually low. In fact, it was somewhat high, historically speaking (though not as high as in 2020, which was a record; you'd have to back to the 50s or early 60s to see a higher turnout, and that was in a time when Black people weren't allowed to vote in many places).

So instead of blaming non-voters, blame can be assigned properly to those who DID vote. Because the factors that have prevented many people from voting in past elections were still a factor in the most recent election.

>We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.

Right, and how do you enforce this when people aren't allowed to take time off from work to vote? Also, looking at the state of Australian politics, I don't see mandatory voting as a worthwhile fix.

>A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

Lots of people have to work on national holidays. How do they vote? Society doesn't stop needing police, firefighters, or hospital workers on national holidays. And most stores (like grocery stores) are still open, so their workers are required to go to work too.

More importantly, why do you think the GOP would ever agree to any measures to increase voter participation?

[thayne]

I didn't see anyone blaming non-voters. The argument is that a majority of Americans didn't vote for this, because most Americans didn't vote at all. (Also, of those that did vote, less than 50% voted for Trump).

[reverius42]

"less than 50%" being 49.8%. Kind of winning on a technicality there.

[crote]

A big problem of the American two-party system is that you can't distinguish a vote against one party from a vote for the other party: Did all of that 49.8% vote for Trump, or was he the "lesser of two evil" for a lot of people who genuinely hated Harris?

[SoftTalker]

Voting is always a compromise. No candidate ever perfectly represents one's own views on every issue. So IMO reasons for voting "for" a candidate or "against" another don't really matter.

[thayne]

Which is why it isn't really fair to say "this is what people voted for." Just because people voted for a candidate doesn't mean they agree with everything that candidate does.