Tag Archives: absentee voting

We Can Have National “Referendums” in America

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

Thinking about how the 2017 Australian Marriage Referendum was carried out, besides the impact it had on LGBT mental health (like these sorts of referenda so often have). But officially, it was not a referendum: it was carried out by the federal government entirely by mail, it did not have the force of law, was not subject to Australia’s mandatory voting law, and did not need enabling legislation to be conducted. Yet, the federal government in Australia did make use of Australia’s national voter database to send the survey out, and a deadline was selected for citizens to register to vote in order to participate.

Technically, the United States federal government could carry out a national postal survey, mostly bypassing the states. However, it would have to be carried out with voter rolls purchased from the states.

Currently, besides the consultations carried out by federal agencies as required prior to approving or rescinding a rule, the only existing federal attempt at direct democracy is the “We the People” petition site. I wonder if the Biden admin will improve on this site or let it languish as it has.

  1. It only requires that someone create a whitehouseDOTgov account in order to create a petition, and it doesn’t even require one to be signed in in order to sign a petition. Signers should be signed-in first.
  2. There is no verification of identity in order to create an account. I’d tie it to one’s social security number and that one be a registered voter in one’s state in order to create an account.
  3. The only response that could currently be asked for is a statement from someone in the White House if it reaches 100k signatures in 30 days. If it were to reach 1 million signatures within, say, 60 days, a higher response should be required. And if a certain threshold of signatures were reached, such as 8% of popular vote turnout in the last presidential election, a national non-binding postal survey on the petition question should be triggered.
  4. Require two-factor authentication for accounts.

The regional discrepancy in early vote turnout for 2020, and other observations

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

Looking at the Elect Project’s map of early voting turnout up to this point, I spent a week wondering why the turnout in the Midwest and Pennsylvania (especially Pennsylvania) was so low compared to most of the “Sun Belt” states.

Apparently, I learned that this is the first year in which most of the Midwest, Pennsylvania and New York was introduced to both early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, but no-excuse absentee was introduced as the only means of early voting in several Midwestern states. Gerrymandered Republican state legislatures had incredible misgivings about no-excuse absentee throughout this election cycle.

That partly explains why pre-Election Day turnout in the Midwest, New York and Pennsylvania is lower than Georgia, Florida, North Carolina (All three of which use both absentee and and either paper ballots or machines for in-person for 3 weeks), Texas (which largely used paper or machines for 3 weeks of early in-person voting while shunning expansion of absentee voting to those with no excuse), and most states west of the Mississippi.

(At least Michigan prepared a bit better with the passage of Proposal 3 in the Blue Wave of 2018, which legalized no-excuse absentee voting among other reforms via ballot initiative as a constitutional amendment, which has meant that Republicans have found other means of nipping at absentee voting in Michigan such as cutting counting time to Election Day).

The Midwest needed no-excuse absentee in the first place. Michigan was more prepared for COVID forcing a greater reliance on absentee voting, but not the other Midwestern states. The early voting turnout in the Midwest was leaps and bounds ahead of their 2016 early voting turnout, which is to be praised. BUT this sudden and exclusive switch to no-excuse absentee voting was a mistake, IMO, at least when looking at states which did both in-person paper/machine voting and absentee voting and almost eclipsed their 2016 totals (like Georgia and Florida). This amounted to a trial-by-fire for election administrations who were more accustomed to voters turning out on Election Day in person. Absentee voting (and especially early voting) absolutely should be kept and expanded in the Midwest, but maybe they should be kept as an option for at least a few more elections before going total absentee like Colorado and four other states. Or maybe this method of reserving early voting for absentee ballots will improve in future cycles.

Thanks to this early turnout for absentee ballots in the Midwest, GOTV for Dems is going to be a heavier lift in the Midwest/PA/NY for Election Day (but a lot easier for Dems compared to 2016), while GOTV for Dems in the Sun Belt has the easier(?) but more complicated necessity to be more precise with who to pull to the polls, especially Black and Brown voters in Florida. The worries over Black and Brown turnout are easy fodder for the usual “Dems in disarray” headlines, even as Biden has led an otherwise stellar campaign.

And the growing consensus among the prognosticators and election mappers I read on Twitter is that North Carolina’s early count of absentee ballots (currently 97% counted) will likely point to the Electoral College winner on what is erroneously called “Election Night”.