I recently went to early voting for the election coming up on Tuesday, November 3. The first thing that came to mind was how difficult the voting process is. It is ironic that such an old democracy makes it so difficult for its citizens to exercise the most democratic right. To begin with, US elections are on a Tuesday, a weekday. You have to call off work to vote, that’s assuming you’re already registered to vote. In almost none of the states can you vote by appearing at the electoral college that has been indicated to you by letter. No, the normality in the US is to have to previously register as a voter.
That and on top of everything else: In places like New York, there is no vote by mail. In Texas, you lose the right to vote if you have had any run-in with the law. In several conservative states, out-of-state college students are barred from registering to vote. There are also bills in many of these states to cut school opening hours. All these difficulties have consequences.
And why is it so difficult to vote? The answer, as almost always, is because someone is interested in it being that way. Do you know who does not have a car or travel abroad? the poor. And do you know who does not usually have a fixed address or change a lot of residences? the poor. And who has it worse for leaving work for a couple of hours to vote, precisely because they are paid by the hour? the poor!
Another good example is that of ‘strict’ voter identification laws. In Colorado, to take just one example, a court has had to force the state to stop being so picky about voter lists. Until now, if there was a variation of a letter or an apostrophe of your name in an official document, you could be denied the vote. Let’s do an exercise again: who is more likely to misspell his name on record? John Johnson or Antonio Pedro Martínez Goiceaga? Well, the Antonio Pedros also usually vote for a specific party.
So much complication to vote and so much dispute to see who has the right to vote complicates the counting of the ballots. For example, several states allow you to vote even if you are not on the census list as long as you show within days that you were registered. Those “provisional” votes are counted in the election night count, but then they have to be removed from the polls if they do not comply with the regulations. All very functional and practical.
Besides this, there are a thousand problems derived from voting systems. The country that in 2000 astonished the world with those “butterfly ballots” that failed more than a fairground shotgun, today we see them with blanket ballots where you have to choose 30 names for different positions and that are very difficult to decipher. And even if you get to vote and count, then there is the habit of counting again. In many parts of the country, if the margin is narrow, the law mandates that the votes are counted again or a second round is automatically declared. And there are several different types of recounts: manual, typed, ballot to ballot, only in a county, only in a table …
Ultimately, the central problem is that the elections are regulated by the 50 states and not by the federal government. And in most cases, who decides on the details of the process is not even the states, but the counties. To give us an idea, only in Florida there are sixty-seven, each with its own electoral authority and peculiarities. With such complications and voting on a Tuesday, it is sometimes surprising that there are those who come to vote and that the authorities are able to offer a result.