In article <105iq00$pvo$
1@reader1.panix.com>,
James Nicoll <
jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
In article <pbbp7kp0o8eot5hpevpu5b1dkiioc2ioeq@4ax.com>,
The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
On Wed, 9 Jul 2025 14:38:19 -0700, Bobbie Sellers >><bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
No, 1/3 the electorate didn't vote at all. So really, about 25%
of americans actually voted for the orange clown.
So are you arguing for the Australian system of mandatory voting?
He may not be arguing for it but i might. Too many people will be >>>affected by elections to let any of them stand aside. Politics in the USA >>>are no fun but a Citizen's first duty it to stay informed and vote for >>>what you believe in as often as possible.
All I can say is "Amen!" - and not just in the USA either. I have
always been amazed that the voter turnout level in the US is almost
always amongst the lowest in both NATO and the "Anglosphere"
[(In 2016 we were vacationing in Britain and purely by accident
happened to be there in the two weeks before the Brexit referendum -
wow! I was told by locals that campaign banners on ships on the Thames
were NOT common in most British elections but were very definitely
present in force during the Brexit vote)]
As a Canadian we have separate elections for each level of government
(e.g. national, provincial, local) and at least in the first two the >>turnout is fairly high. You even had big lines in 2021 during COVID
though at that election our voting lines were longer as we were
standing much further apart than usual!
Turnout in the last Ontario election was kind of crap, and it can't
have helped that it was in the middle of winter and 90% of the voters
did not receive their Voter Id Cards. VICs are misnamed: they can
help ID a voter but what they are really for is to let the voter
know where their advanced poll is and where their voting day poll
is. This info can be had online... if the voter thinks to look,
but many do not.
A common element in federal and provincial elections is that on
voting day, you can only vote at your assigned polling place. We
get lots of people showing up where they voted before, or they
assume that they can vote anywhere in their riding, or they
misread their VIC and their polling place is the one right across
the street from the one I am working in [1].
The last federal election, I was a registration officer, which
means if someone shows up and is at the right polling place, I
am the one who registers them so they can vote. I ran into a
problem none of the far more experienced staff members had
encountered, involving addresses.
The voter showed up with no VIC but sufficient ID to show they
were who they said and a Canadian citizen. They had forms proving
they lived where they said they lived. However, they had just moved
into their brand-new house on their brand-new street and neither
the house nor the street was in any database we could access.
For that to happen, the place had to be less than... five or
six days old.
The reason this mattered is because only the registration officer
at your assigned polling place is supposed to register you and
we couldn't tell where the voter was supposed to be. However,
she did know the nearest major intersection, and I was able to
ID where the street would have been on my map if it had been
on my map. It was in the next riding over. So, I called their
head office, explained the situation, and arranged for the voter
to be registered there.
1: That happened in 2015: there was one polling place south of Chopin/Westmount, and one north of Chopin/Westmound.
--
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