Wednesday, November 9, 2022

Why Do We Make Voting So Frustrating?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right?

With that said, why do we keep making voting such a frustrating process?

I went to vote yesterday afternoon, leaving the house just after 4:00 pm.  It was 6:25 pm by the time I had actually cast my ballot and left the building.  A frustrating experience all the way around for several reasons.

First, by four, every polling station had at least an hour line.  Jamie had gone at 2:30 pm and waited in a forty-five minute line.  

I went to a station out at the Lucas Oil Motor Speedway.  From the outside, large building, should be able to process a lot of voters.  Short line outside, so things looked good.  When I got in the line though, I learned that the wait was an hour from the point where you got to the door.

The large building was just primarily used to house the line that snaked around inside.  Only six voting machines, so only six people maximum could vote at a time.  And the polls were going to close at 6:00 pm to new voters.

Why have we not worked on ways to improve this yet?

We hold the election on a work day, when it is difficult to get to for most people.   We limit machines to artificially inflate a wait time, as the actual time to cast a ballot is minimal.  Plus we rely on machines that still confuse people in voting to this day, such that they require a person to walk you over to them and explain the process.

It's past time to rethink our process.  Election day as a national holiday, or moved to a weekend.  Paper ballots across the board.  Universal mail in voting.  An increase in capacity at most voting locations.

Something.  Then maybe we can get voter participation up over 70%.

Or let's least admit that the difficulty is a feature, not a bug.

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