Yeah :( Big sad, both for you as a citizen of the US (I presume), and for me, as someone under the thumb of the US's sphere of influence.

Stay safe out there next week. I'm presume it's gonna get wild.

Y'all need to unify your federal election into an actual federal election. Not 50 separate ones.

It would be a lot harder to pick and choose battleground states for lawsuits if you 1. Change the voting system yes, but also and importantly 2. Have consistent rules and voting infrastructure across the whole country.

Having to understand 50 separate election rules makes it way easier to sow doubt.

I am aware there are also some federal laws on voting, but still.

We're seeing in real-time why maintaining a coherent, unified, transparent voting system and communicating how and why it's secure against tampering is so important. It needs to be difficult to sow doubt in the election, and you can only achieve this through simple to understand and explain methods.

Because if the average person can be convinced it's not secure and legitimate, then it doesn't matter what the reality is.

This is why I'm so sick of people pointing out the defamation lawsuits from the voting machine companies as some kind of win for the democratic process.

Voting machines have been just one of the many ways the Republicans have sown doubt over the results. Stop using voting machines, obviously (in my opinion. There's also 2 great videos from Tom Scott on the topic)

Important things to get right:

• functioning, reliable postal system. (Trump did a great job on undermining this)
• unified electoral communication so that every place has the same election, not bloody 50 separate ones with wildly different practices. (Well shit, constitution needs to be amended)
• a simple voting recording method anyone can understand. (Voting machines are bad, simply because they're too much of a security risk and black box that can have doubt sown very easily)
• consistent invigilation
• courts that aren't stacked (good luck with this one, though)

And obvious move away from FPTP, but everyone is already calling for that.

Armchair citizen under the American empire, giving you my 2¢.

I said it a bit in jest, though as explained, I think it's still somewhat a true statement. I wouldn't actually say this to people who don't identify as left-leaning, because as you point out, it would be counter-productive.

Lol, yeah this makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying 😅

I echo the sentiment (regarding Trump being a much, much worse outcome), but you can already "Kiss Hong Kong goodbye". It's part of China, they have cracked down, and the two systems has been reduced to like 1.5 systems ahead of schedule.

I am genuinely curious what you think either presidential candidate would do about this, considering they will continue to espouse the One China policy. Where they might differ is in their support of Taiwan, whose status is much more murky.

Hong Kong though? Pretty sure that ship sailed once the UN decided: no Empire no longer, and the 99 year lease came to an end.

I think it's more shorthand for the fact people generally do want to take care of each other and make sure everyone has the opportunity for a happy life.

Though I suppose it is a little cheeky to say that means people are left leaning.

Reality has a left-wing bias

What I mean is a federal electoral commission that directly administers the entire election, not just sues people who do the wrong thing. We can plainly see how fragile the current arrangement is

In my view there is no argument to be made at all that the states should have any direct involvement in the running the federal election, it's a federal election.

A federal electoral commission gives you: one consistent set of rules, consistent voting infrastructure, consistent chains of reporting, consistent invigilation and auditing. Ideally also: no politicians picking their own electorate boundaries, no voting machines (for real, please see 2020 and 2000 for how spectacularly those have caused issues, and probably other times, also), no need for as many lawsuits just to get the bare minimum in compliance.

The number of lawsuits is indicative of how badly it's going.

One side is definitely making it harder to vote, I would definitely agree. I just feel not enough emphasis is given to voting as something that affects the entire political system, and should be the core #1 issue, including where I live in Australia (even if it's massively in better shape here).

Again, I always feel like a bit of a clown telling someone else in another country how to run it, but US is fair game, given it's world hegemon status.

Hope y'all can manage to get some sorely needed reform :/

Here's the link to the actual speech from Sanders: https://youtu.be/Vf5MThSniiY

I came to the Politics community 9 hours after it was posted to find discussion. Nothing.

Personally I feel an exception should be made when the news is literally just a video, why wait for a journalist to regurgitate it in written form?

Anyway

This is very obviously easier said than done, but having mail be reliable seems like a much better way to safeguard this kind of voting, than trying to install massive security around these specialised boxes. Or even having staffed early voting centres would be better than an unattended box.

I'm just looking on (from Australia) and feeling like the way voting is managed in US federal elections is unnecessarily difficult and complicated.

Every state has its own rules, and administers its own vote for a federal election?? (I understand why historically, but this is a really dumb way to run things). Some states use electronic voting, and we have seen what a bad idea this is in terms of ability to claim voter fraud. Even if electronic voting were 100% secure, which it isn't - it's way more vulnerable to large scale attack, it's simply easier to claim fraud when it's inner-workings a black box. And early voting is done in specific unattended ballot drop boxes, which so, so obviously would become a target.

And this lack of coherent, federally managed elections, also means some states just literally provide way too few places to vote.

Y'all flying by the seat of your pants, and it's scary, considering how much control over the world, and specifically my country, the US has.

Please advocate for voting reform, it should be the number one priority above all others, because without it, the political system in the US is going to keep being way too fragile. And again, this shit affects us all because of US imperialism.