Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt said the numbers indicate “historic levels of anger and disgust with our political and economic systems.”
Nearly 6 in 10 voters say the economic and political systems are stacked against people like them, tying a record high over roughly 40 years of national NBC News polling.
According to the latest NBC News survey, 59% of registered voters agreed that those systems are stacked against them, while 38% disagreed with that sentiment and 3% were not sure.
The share who agreed with that notion tied a high point in April 1992, a record set after NBC News began polling this question in 1988.
By having voting day be just one fucking day is already a clear sign the system is stacked against them. Like, what if someone is sick that day and cannot physically get to a polling station? Car broken down? Experiencing the literal birth day of a child. Why not have it be voting week? Voting month? Some kind of available time period that’s more than a single fucking day’s worth of daylight.
Also, the fact that so many jurisdictions have zero interest in alternative, scientifically-proven more democratic, voting methods, like ranked choice or ranked preference or whatever it’s called, and stubbornly stick with the easily-manupulated first past the post method is incredibly telling how rigged against the people the US “democracy” (or republic or whatever symanticism people there prefer) is.
Thing is, it’s NOT just one day. Most states allow early voting (in person), and many allow mail-in voting. These usually start a month before “voting day”, and have fairly generous terms. Voting day is effectively the final day, with local options set up everywhere for convenience.
Even your examples are fairly easy to overcome, although you have to want to vote bad enough to find solutions. You can vote from a hospital, and your local political parties arrange plenty of free transport to/from polling sites.
Fully agree with your statement on RCV and the rest. Some states have adopted it, but even there it has limits on effectiveness.
Of course, all of this is highly dependent on location. The US doesn’t have a single election, it has 50+ state elections (including DC) that look similar. My experiences and options in Ohio are going to be different, possibly very different, from New York or Montana.
Keep the polls open until 2/3 if registered voters vote.
Make registration automatic and voting mandatory. Require ranked choice for every election of a person as well as a “none of the above” option. If a majority of voters pick “none of the above” as their #1 choice, hold a new election for that office with all new candidates.
edit: also make mail-in the standard for all votes.
That’s a slippery slope since voting is a right. But it is a civic duty to vote, and that right should be exercised to use.
all the other things I said were to ensure that you have every capacity to vote how you truly prefer rather than being dictated to select one of a small group. If you currently don’t vote as a protest against the candidates, voting for “none of the above” accomplishes that while taking away the interpretation that you didn’t vote because you don’t care.
They’d have buses shuttling in OAPs until the minimum was met then shut it down.
As opposed to now where they shuttle in OAPs and then the polls close with less than half of people voting.
Neither.