Interesting Links for 07-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Ken Clarke defends secret courts. I, of course, think they're an awful idea.
  (tags: law secrecy security_theatre uk )
• 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying
  (tags: money income society )
• Jews in Scotland may be disenfranchised by a Saturday vote.
  Is there a reason why voting has to happen on one day? Give people a week to vote, with daily updates on the ongoing count!
  (tags: voting uk scotland independence jews )
• Kids born later in the year more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD
  (tags: adhd diagnosis children )
• Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords. (And they can, frankly, fuck off)
  (tags: facebook privacy employment usa )
• Dammit, I find myself largely in agreement with esr on Hollywood, piracy and the internet
  (tags: censorship politics freedom )
• A man who informed police when he found child abuse images on his computer has not been allowed to be alone with his daughter for four months.
  (tags: uk Child_abuse )
• How I became Amazon’s pitchman for a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant on Facebook
  (tags: lubricant facebook amazon advertising )
• On Writers Block
  (tags: neilgaiman writing )
• I hadn't realised that Gillian Anderson stood on a box for The X-Files
  (tags: GillianAnderson x-files tv )
• Either be offensive, or don't be offensive. Being offensive and then pretending you weren't is just dumb.
  (tags: humour offensive )
• Rather than a mansion tax we should be sorting out council tax
  (tags: tax uk housing )
• Romney vs Mr Burns - can you tell which quote belongs to which one?
  (tags: simpsons politics usa )

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's a really good question. Why does voting all have to happen on one day? Surely if it was an all week event, turn outs would be way up... and that would be awesome for democracy.

If, perhaps, very bad for tv stations.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I suspect it is a hangover from when voting was done by acclamation or by hands up and everyone had to be in one place at the same time.

Not convinced by the idea of having updates on the score during the voting but this may be a bit of conservatism on my part.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Releasing as the count went along would be a nightmare. I expect you would reach a situation where huge numbers of people delayed voting until the very end so they could decide if/how to vote tactically.

[andrewducker]

Yup, I'd expect people who were completely wedded to one party to vote early, and then other people to vote for their favourite of the ones in the lead. This would provide impetus for you to vote early if you thought your party had a chance of winning, so that others would see you as worth voting for.

It would be a ridiculous system and _still_ better than the one we currently have.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I would certainly do that in my constituency when using single member plurality voting.

I live in a multi-way marginal. The Labour majority over the Lib Dems is in the hundreds, the SNP won the Holyrood constituency that my Westminster constituency overlaps and I think the Tories would consider this a target seat.

So, I’d love to wait until the end of the week and then vote tactically.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

When it happened in America, and Fox declared Bush the winner even though polls were still open on the west coast, it seemed to result in a lot of people not bothering to go out. Which is odd, I would have assumed that a party being in the lead would seriously motivate the opposition to get out there and vote.

Still. I think updates could be useful, just. Anything that gets better turn-outs in our elections. It's shameful how few people bother to vote.

[naath.livejournal.com]

gotta have people manning (and womanning) the polls

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, we can hardly have the volunteers taking a whole week off work can we.

[naath.livejournal.com]

We could make it be like jury duty...

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

They aren't volunteers, they are paid. OK it's only for 1 day, but when I did it I got about £500 (about 10 years ago). I doubt you would find it hard to get more people willing to do it as the pay is pretty good and as I recall all that was involved was 1 evening training.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Crikey! I had no idea they got paid for it. That's amazing. I wonder where you sign up.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The local council organises it. There may be details on your council website. I only got the job because I knew someone who had done it before. I suspect the same people do it every time. It's very boring, but the pay was good (although only for 1 day obviously).

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I don't think turn-outs would be increased. A huge amount of effort is put into ensuring everyone gets the opportunity to vote. Pretty much anyone can get a postal vote. The polls open very early and close late. Everyone receives leaflets explaining the numerous different ways they can vote.

There can be very few people who genuinely are unable to cast their vote. I tend to think that if people cannot be bothered to do so on polling day then tough. I also doubt that if people are not interested enough to vote on one day then I doubt they would do so on a different day.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

You'd have to be very careful to ensure that information on the count so far didn't get released - I think it's only been in comparativelty recent years that even exit poll results have been published while the polls were still open.

But the whole "disenfranchising people by holding the vote on a day when they can't get to the poll" thing is a complete and utter straw man: it's possible to vote by post.

[andrewducker]

My suggestion was that information _was_ released. I want actual figures out there so that people know which of the candidates might win, and thus how to place their votes.

If I can't have Instant Runoff Voting then this is better than plain FPTP.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

That would mean that you would need tellers (paid) and scutineers (unpaid) for a week rather than just a day. I'm also fairly sure that publicising how a poll is going has got more drawbacks than advantages (numbers at each individual polling station can be low enough that split over a week you've a reasonable chance of being able to tell how a particular group of individuals voted, so you can re-invent the market in buying and selling votes: which is a seriously bad thing).

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

It's a total straw man, especially given that laws can be changed. You would think that there is nowhere civilised, with a similar country size, using a very similar electoral system, that votes on Saturday, whose law and experience could be referred to.
More than 10% of the votes in the recent NZ election were Advance Votes. Most of those were from people walking into one of the polling stations that were available for the two weeks before polling day. IT'S NOT DIFFICULT!