Canadian elections are also done on paper, mostly in person (though mail-in voting is allowed, and has became more popular during the pandemic), counted by hand. We don't use any machines on the federal level, though at the provincial level there's sometimes tabulator machines to speed up counting and even that's not much of a benefit.
This is true at the municipal level too, which have more complicated ballots to vote for mayor, councillor and school board trustee. Still done on paper ballots, counted by hand.
Despite it being a manual process, the results are always available within a few hours of closing time. This is democracy, not rocket science. It does not and should not require technology to operate elections.
Sounds pretty based to me. Leave voting alone. Write your vote on paper, bring it in yourself. Sure there's room for improvement in the process, but sprinkling networked computers in to solve every problem is the wrong approach.
Just to be accurate, we do not write anything, you gather an envelope and take 12 pieces of paper (one for each candidate), then in the booth, you fill the envelope with your chosen candidate.
There is a bin to dispose of the other papers, or dispose of them elsewhere for complete anonymous. Most people just take the one they want, or the few they are still undecided before getting in the booth.
Off-topic, but do you mean "biased" when you say "based"? I feel like I'm in some parallel universe because I swear for the last 6 months I've not seen a single person spell biased right.
Was there a meeting where everyone agreed to make a confusing change to the spelling and no-one told me about it?
How is dropping an envelope in a box more secure? It would seem trivial for an attacker to create one or more fake ballots and slip them in the box along with their real ballot.
>France doesn’t do mail-in voting, early voting or use voting machines en masse like the United States.
I get not doing mail-in-voting but what's wrong with early voting? I remember there was a huge line in front of the french embassy here last elections because there's no exception to that rule for expats. For a city like Montreal with a lot of French immigrants it means a single vote office for thousands of people.
Compare that to the US where you can email your vote in a lot of states if you live overseas... and it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
>What is the DoD Fax Service? If you need to send your election materials to your election official by fax but do not have access to a fax machine you can email them to [email protected] and FVAP will fax your election materials for you.
In France and most European countries, the electoral campaign is highly regulated and designed in principle so that citizens can make a rational decision, and no candidate can unduly influence the vote.
All (major, which is based on the latest parliamentary election) candidates must by law be given equal air time, election funds are limited and checked by the state, the campaign must start at a particular date and end the day before the vote, etc.
Early voting flies in the face of most of this: maybe on day X of the campaign some candidate makes a claim that convinces people to cast their votes then and there. On day X+2, some other candidate claims that the first one was lying. Now, even people who are convinced by the second candidate are unlikely to go and rectify their votes (if this is even allowed). So, early voting favors emotional campaigns and dirty tricks over a reasoned decision.
Of course, this is all in theory - but measuring the results in practice is probably much more difficult.
By French law, the envelopes are inserted into a transparent box that must be visible by any elector during the voting period. Having the box sit several nights without public scrutiny is not as safe.
I think it clashes with all sort of election rules, like the candidates must have had the same air time during the campaign (can’t guarantee that every day of the campaign), also there is a cool down period 24h before the vote where the campaigns are suspended, you can’t publish polls or discuss the candidates programs in the media. I am not sure why you would blame it on nefarious motives.
>I get not doing mail-in-voting but what's wrong with early voting? I remember there was a huge line in front of the french embassy here last elections because there's no exception to that rule for expats.
I assume that their "proxy" system addresses this problem sufficiently for internal voters. Also, the actual voting process is far more streamlined:
so the throughput at polling places is much better. The central mechanism of voter suppression in the United States is lines (ok, also felony disenfranchisement), and every reform the Democrats propose is trying to end-run that system so that the lines won't matter.
It's very understandable for prevent frauds. The last election in the US was disputed and disputable in the first place because of how easy it is to cheat.
> Compare that to the US where you can email your vote in a lot of states if you live overseas... and it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
That's not true. As a former expat, the only annoying thing is establishing a proxy since it can only be done during "tournées consulaires" dedicated for it, that are of course very rare. I feel the election is fairer without possible easy way to hack-in votes.
The voting offices are supposed to be adapted to the amount of French citizens in the area. Here in Belgium there are 12 of them for example.
It's possible that the consulate of Montreal misjudged the amount of voters (the turnout in 2017 was higher than expected for the citizens living abroad, if I recall correctly) but more generally, citizens are expected to make the effort necessary to cast their vote.
> Compare that to the US [...] it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
This is laughable, the number one reason for the ridiculously low turnout in US elections is that elections are held on Tuesdays when people actually need to work.
ID checks, no mail-in voting, strict limits on proxy voting. What amuses me is that the same french newspapers who have no issue with French elections, report US republican officials who try to introduce the same safeguards as racists and engaged in voter suppression.
Perhaps there’s a difference between a country that hasn’t implemented mail-in voting yet, and a country that has had it, people using it, and now has efforts to take it away.
Also, before dismissing the racism concerns around voter ID laws, it would be instructive to look at why this is so. The history of the US is steeped in race, and the concerns cannot be dismissed without understanding history.
To get an ID in France:
- Go online, request a birth-certificate, wait a week to receive it by mail.
- Go to the city-hall, with a photo, birth-certificate, and proof of residence, then fill a form, pay nothing.
- Wait ~6 weeks, pick-up at city-hall ID, valid for 15 years.
To get an ID in USA:
- Hope you still are in possession of the only copy of your birth-certificate.
- If not, hope that your church/city-hall, can provide you a copy.
- Go to the DMV, birth-certificate, two proof of residences.
- Wait couple of weeks to receive by mail.
Things are much simpler in France, cost nothing, and because it is mandatory to have an ID, it is never an issue to provide one.
The US doesn't allow proxy voting in elections at all. Furthermore, it was banned to deliberately disenfranchise illiterate people in some cases:
>In Alabama, the Perry County Civic League's members' assisting illiterate voters by marking a ballot on their behalf was deemed "proxy voting" and "voting more than once" and thus held to be illegal.
Bringing ID (government issued, with photo and basic life details) and being registered is also requirement in Czechia, along with hand counting the votes obviously.
Honestly, when I first heard how US handles voting I couldn't believe how open to abuse it is. In a way, I'm surprised that election integrity hasn't been questioned sooner.
Edit:
To clarify, I don't believe the 2020 elections were affected by fraud, in fact they were proven not to be. Just that the process doesn't seem very trustworthy to me in general.
The main issues with election integrity in the US are all the tactics used to cull voter lists (often removing legitimate voters), make it less convenient to vote (e.g., getting rid of early voting, not enough polling stations, voting only on workdays), and of course, gerrymandering (rigging district boundaries to allow one party to win far more seats than its overall vote share would imply).
It would be sensible to have a national ID in the US and to use it in voting, but in practice, the voter ID issue is simply used by the Republican Party as another tactic to restrict voting. They know that Democratic voters are less likely to have ID, they intentionally include/exclude various forms of ID based on the voter demographics, and they are generally against measures that would ensure that every valid voter obtain ID.
So yes, in a vacuum, voter ID sounds obvious. However, when you see how the issue is actually used in American politics, it's actually pretty sinister.
> Honestly, when I first heard how US handles voting I couldn't believe how open to abuse it is. In a way, I'm surprised that election integrity hasn't been questioned sooner.
I'm surprised why voter ID has become such a partisan issue, specifically how intense the Democratic opposition to it has been. It's a sensible policy and it seems the concerns about "[X] not having ID" should be addressed by solving the problems preventing [X] from getting an ID. I mean it shouldn't be too hard: setup some government agency to help people with the bureaucratic labor around confirming identity and send people akin to census takers around to onboard people into the ID-getting process.
Would it surprise you to hear that in Canada, we accept a very broad range of ID (a bank statement and a lease agreement for an apartment would do)? And even if you don't have any of that, you can still vote if another registered voter vouches for you?
> Bringing ID (government issued, with photo and basic life details)
Are you sure about this? I remember from past if election commission member knew you they could identify you even without any ID card or even if 2 other people could identify you it was sufficient to confirm your identity without any ID card. Was this option cancelled?
noteworthy that outside from presidential elections, candidates need to purchase and provide these paper ballots (plus official flyers mailed to registered voters) on their own cost and only get reimboursed if they score more than 5%.
>People who can't go to the polls for various reasons can authorize someone else to vote for them.
>To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. A person can be the proxy of no more than one voter living in France — and potentially one additional person living abroad.
>Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago.
It's not that France isn't accounting for the people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day. It's just that they're doing it differently.
In fact despite these constraints the turnout in France is traditionally much higher than in the UK and the US which have a much more relaxed system. Though turnout is trending downward quickly.
How many elections occur at the same time in France?
I've heard that in European elections, you tend to vote for one person at a time, where in the US, it's pretty routine to vote for three or more. (In presidential years, you vote for presidential electors, a representative, and 2/3 of the times a senator, and then beyond that there are state and local elections.)
I'm wonder how much of the difference comes from counting one versus multiple elections at the same time.
Not sure about France, but next door in Germany we try to put multiple elections on the same date, because organizing the polling stations is always the most expensive thing.
So it's not uncommon to have some of city mayor, city council, regional, state and federal and European elections fall onto the same date. I think the "worst" I've seen as a volunteer was 4 elections on the same day.
Counting process starts by splitting the ballots (if we have all of them in one urn), and then counting and tallying them one election at a time. The ballots are distinguished by different colored paper.
One voting district is usually around ~1000 voters, out of those, before Covid ~10-20% did mail-in-voting, during Covid it was ~40-50%. Then with a normal voter turnup of around 60-70% depending on the elections that are held, we end up with a few hundred ballots to count per election, with a staff of normally 8 people... Polling stations close at 6pm, and the latest I have left the voting station after counting was 8:30pm.
Just in 2018, the Italian regions of Lazio and Lombardy had three elections together: 2 nationals (representatives/senators) plus the regional elections.
And within a political system that is much much more fragmented than the US one.
Still, it was all done on paper, and we got the results overnight. It's not rocket science, really.
During presidential elections you only vote for the president, then you vote for part of the parliament during "les législatives", 2 months after.
On the other end, some local elections take part at the same time (ex: regional and departmental)
In Germany for the major votes you have two votes, then there are often also
additional votes bundles in, so 3 or 4 votes in one setting are not uncommon.
There are no voting machines.
And it, in general, works without problems.
(Mail in voting is possible but not used that much.)
To be clear, the limiting factor in the US is not will: everyone knows and understands that paper ballots are the gold standard. The problem is that electronic machines are much much cheaper and it’s tough to explain to voters why you saw fit to short the school district’s budget in favor of the elections budget.
I’ve seen how paper ballots can be manipulated in Russia and Ukraine. There are many videos available showing ‘volunteers’ poorly obscuring surveillance cameras and stuffing the ballot boxes full of false votes. They also threw out many votes (from the candidate they were paid to sabotage).
It may actually make sense for a nation to try and protect public trust in the electoral process.
We have gone in the opposite direction in the United States, and my gut tells me that mail in ballots to every mailbox (and in dumpsters and boxes left randomly by te side of the road) wasn’t a good thing for our nation, in the greater sweep of history.
Mass mail in voting is a disaster, and people in the US now largely support it because of politics, not because it improves the integrity of elections.
Voting processes are to a large degree about balancing tradeoffs. The point of mail in voting is to decrease the friction of voting, i.e. you don't need to go to a polling place on a specific day.
[+] [-] a-priori|4 years ago|reply
This is true at the municipal level too, which have more complicated ballots to vote for mayor, councillor and school board trustee. Still done on paper ballots, counted by hand.
Despite it being a manual process, the results are always available within a few hours of closing time. This is democracy, not rocket science. It does not and should not require technology to operate elections.
[+] [-] seanw444|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yohannparis|4 years ago|reply
There is a bin to dispose of the other papers, or dispose of them elsewhere for complete anonymous. Most people just take the one they want, or the few they are still undecided before getting in the booth.
[+] [-] kingcharles|4 years ago|reply
Was there a meeting where everyone agreed to make a confusing change to the spelling and no-one told me about it?
[+] [-] jasonlaramburu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mardifoufs|4 years ago|reply
I get not doing mail-in-voting but what's wrong with early voting? I remember there was a huge line in front of the french embassy here last elections because there's no exception to that rule for expats. For a city like Montreal with a lot of French immigrants it means a single vote office for thousands of people.
Compare that to the US where you can email your vote in a lot of states if you live overseas... and it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
>What is the DoD Fax Service? If you need to send your election materials to your election official by fax but do not have access to a fax machine you can email them to [email protected] and FVAP will fax your election materials for you.
https://www.democratsabroad.org/de_how_to_fax_your_ballot_by...
https://www.fvap.gov/eo/overview/resources
[+] [-] simiones|4 years ago|reply
In France and most European countries, the electoral campaign is highly regulated and designed in principle so that citizens can make a rational decision, and no candidate can unduly influence the vote.
All (major, which is based on the latest parliamentary election) candidates must by law be given equal air time, election funds are limited and checked by the state, the campaign must start at a particular date and end the day before the vote, etc.
Early voting flies in the face of most of this: maybe on day X of the campaign some candidate makes a claim that convinces people to cast their votes then and there. On day X+2, some other candidate claims that the first one was lying. Now, even people who are convinced by the second candidate are unlikely to go and rectify their votes (if this is even allowed). So, early voting favors emotional campaigns and dirty tricks over a reasoned decision.
Of course, this is all in theory - but measuring the results in practice is probably much more difficult.
[+] [-] pif|4 years ago|reply
By French law, the envelopes are inserted into a transparent box that must be visible by any elector during the voting period. Having the box sit several nights without public scrutiny is not as safe.
[+] [-] cm2187|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|4 years ago|reply
I assume that their "proxy" system addresses this problem sufficiently for internal voters. Also, the actual voting process is far more streamlined:
https://www.pret-a-voyager.com/2017/05/french-lessons-voting...
so the throughput at polling places is much better. The central mechanism of voter suppression in the United States is lines (ok, also felony disenfranchisement), and every reform the Democrats propose is trying to end-run that system so that the lines won't matter.
[+] [-] historia_novae|4 years ago|reply
> Compare that to the US where you can email your vote in a lot of states if you live overseas... and it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
That's not true. As a former expat, the only annoying thing is establishing a proxy since it can only be done during "tournées consulaires" dedicated for it, that are of course very rare. I feel the election is fairer without possible easy way to hack-in votes.
[+] [-] seszett|4 years ago|reply
It's possible that the consulate of Montreal misjudged the amount of voters (the turnout in 2017 was higher than expected for the citizens living abroad, if I recall correctly) but more generally, citizens are expected to make the effort necessary to cast their vote.
[+] [-] d--b|4 years ago|reply
This is laughable, the number one reason for the ridiculously low turnout in US elections is that elections are held on Tuesdays when people actually need to work.
That'd be easy to fix...
[+] [-] cm2187|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JAlexoid|4 years ago|reply
Elections in France are on a Sunday, when almost everyone is off work.(in US it's always Tuesday?)
Photo IDs are low cost there and mandatory. Everyone has a photo ID.
Polling stations are not a "million miles away", you will not see regular multi hour lines in France.
And finally - you cannot win, unless you get at least 50% + 1 vote. In US and UK - a simple plurality of votes makes you a winner.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|4 years ago|reply
This is straightforward when you have a national ID scheme.
[+] [-] alphakappa|4 years ago|reply
Also, before dismissing the racism concerns around voter ID laws, it would be instructive to look at why this is so. The history of the US is steeped in race, and the concerns cannot be dismissed without understanding history.
[+] [-] yohannparis|4 years ago|reply
To get an ID in USA: - Hope you still are in possession of the only copy of your birth-certificate. - If not, hope that your church/city-hall, can provide you a copy. - Go to the DMV, birth-certificate, two proof of residences. - Wait couple of weeks to receive by mail.
Things are much simpler in France, cost nothing, and because it is mandatory to have an ID, it is never an issue to provide one.
[+] [-] pif|4 years ago|reply
Getting an ID being an issue is the real problem.
[+] [-] outside1234|4 years ago|reply
For example, you can't get an absentee ballot in Texas. Well, unless you are old and a likely Republican voter, then it's totally ok.
[+] [-] scythe|4 years ago|reply
The US doesn't allow proxy voting in elections at all. Furthermore, it was banned to deliberately disenfranchise illiterate people in some cases:
>In Alabama, the Perry County Civic League's members' assisting illiterate voters by marking a ballot on their behalf was deemed "proxy voting" and "voting more than once" and thus held to be illegal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#United_States
Talk about a false equivalence.
[+] [-] clarionbell|4 years ago|reply
Honestly, when I first heard how US handles voting I couldn't believe how open to abuse it is. In a way, I'm surprised that election integrity hasn't been questioned sooner.
Edit: To clarify, I don't believe the 2020 elections were affected by fraud, in fact they were proven not to be. Just that the process doesn't seem very trustworthy to me in general.
[+] [-] DiogenesKynikos|4 years ago|reply
It would be sensible to have a national ID in the US and to use it in voting, but in practice, the voter ID issue is simply used by the Republican Party as another tactic to restrict voting. They know that Democratic voters are less likely to have ID, they intentionally include/exclude various forms of ID based on the voter demographics, and they are generally against measures that would ensure that every valid voter obtain ID.
So yes, in a vacuum, voter ID sounds obvious. However, when you see how the issue is actually used in American politics, it's actually pretty sinister.
[+] [-] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
I'm surprised why voter ID has become such a partisan issue, specifically how intense the Democratic opposition to it has been. It's a sensible policy and it seems the concerns about "[X] not having ID" should be addressed by solving the problems preventing [X] from getting an ID. I mean it shouldn't be too hard: setup some government agency to help people with the bureaucratic labor around confirming identity and send people akin to census takers around to onboard people into the ID-getting process.
[+] [-] a-priori|4 years ago|reply
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...
You can also register on election night. I did this a couple years ago when there was a provincial election shortly after we moved.
And yet we don't have widespread electoral fraud.
[+] [-] Markoff|4 years ago|reply
Are you sure about this? I remember from past if election commission member knew you they could identify you even without any ID card or even if 2 other people could identify you it was sufficient to confirm your identity without any ID card. Was this option cancelled?
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Markoff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frequent|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yohannparis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|4 years ago|reply
>To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. A person can be the proxy of no more than one voter living in France — and potentially one additional person living abroad.
>Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago.
It's not that France isn't accounting for the people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day. It's just that they're doing it differently.
[+] [-] cm2187|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trothamel|4 years ago|reply
I've heard that in European elections, you tend to vote for one person at a time, where in the US, it's pretty routine to vote for three or more. (In presidential years, you vote for presidential electors, a representative, and 2/3 of the times a senator, and then beyond that there are state and local elections.)
I'm wonder how much of the difference comes from counting one versus multiple elections at the same time.
[+] [-] klaustopher|4 years ago|reply
So it's not uncommon to have some of city mayor, city council, regional, state and federal and European elections fall onto the same date. I think the "worst" I've seen as a volunteer was 4 elections on the same day.
Counting process starts by splitting the ballots (if we have all of them in one urn), and then counting and tallying them one election at a time. The ballots are distinguished by different colored paper.
One voting district is usually around ~1000 voters, out of those, before Covid ~10-20% did mail-in-voting, during Covid it was ~40-50%. Then with a normal voter turnup of around 60-70% depending on the elections that are held, we end up with a few hundred ballots to count per election, with a staff of normally 8 people... Polling stations close at 6pm, and the latest I have left the voting station after counting was 8:30pm.
[+] [-] lou1306|4 years ago|reply
Still, it was all done on paper, and we got the results overnight. It's not rocket science, really.
[+] [-] lesquivemeau|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dathinab|4 years ago|reply
There are no voting machines.
And it, in general, works without problems.
(Mail in voting is possible but not used that much.)
[+] [-] JAlexoid|4 years ago|reply
And it depends, often elections don't coincide and the election process is just a few weeks long.
[+] [-] jimbob45|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeman1000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aborsy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newbamboo|4 years ago|reply
We have gone in the opposite direction in the United States, and my gut tells me that mail in ballots to every mailbox (and in dumpsters and boxes left randomly by te side of the road) wasn’t a good thing for our nation, in the greater sweep of history.
[+] [-] _hcuq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfodor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cafard|4 years ago|reply
https://www.multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oreg...