this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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To me the most baffling thing is that it's not on the weekend in the USA AFAIK, like why the fuck would you have it on say a Tuesday when people need to work, pick up their kids from school etc, you might argue that still some people work on the weekends but that's a much lesser percentage and makes voting easier for a lot of people and who does have to work, they can mail it in.
School is usually cancelled because the schools are often polling locations.
It makes it all the more dumb to not have it as a national holiday.
You have answered your own question.
Pretty sure my polling place is open for more than 12 hours. Maybe it varies by state, but that should be a reasonable amount of time for over 99% of the population to get there. Obviously, some places are massively overrun and understaffed, especially in the "unfavorable" districts, but I've had no issues making it out in less than 10 minutes by leaving for work 20 minutes early.
Is literally every business closed all weekend where you live? Or is this just another case of people not realizing that lots of people work holidays and weekends?
Businesses are already legally required to let people leave to vote.
The USA was designed for minority rule since forever.
At the time most Americans were farmers. Can't be Sunday because it's a Christian rest day, Wednesday neither because that's market day. They might have to travel a whole day to get there, so it can't be on Monday or Thursday either. Which leaves only Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.
What are the voting times in America?
It differs by state, mine is 7am to 8pm in addition to the preceding 2 weeks for early voting.
Weird. In the UK it's 7am to 10pm and the queues are rather short
In Canada it's a half-day off, the polling places are many and varies, the waits are short and/because everything is hand-counted.
America uses a big-bang polling stations with machinery and demonstrations and gun nuts and intimidation of minorities and disenfranchisement , etc. It's a whole thing.
Not getting time off is part of the cruelty toward the working class.
Not having to confirm your identity seems like it's a jank but it's part to services the elites don't want to give the plebes, just hidden.
Lines are long, you May Not be generous with free water, in some places, counts take weeks on these fast computers and the legal challenges take months where ours is over in a night.
Safe to say it's gonna be super-different from a UK election.
In the US, the experience differs drastically, but you only see the long lines in the news.. My location has short lines, old retirees running the polls.
That's odd. In the UK the lines are never long. We don't get time off, but you can find time to drop in to the polling station anyway since they're open 7-22. Our counting and decision is decided overnight and the prime minister may change the day after that
It's the same in my country, but we have voting district thats like under a 1000 people.
I an guessing with the gerrymandered US districts they get quite weird and lots of people vote in the same place