I don't get the complexity the US creates around voting. I live in a fairly large city (Berlin, Germany, around 3 million I believe).
- I walk 150m to my polling place. It's similar for most people.
- I've never waited more than 5 minutes
- The polling place is run mostly by volunteers, about 5 or 6 per place, with civil servants filling spots that can't be filled. Costs are neglible.
- I get a paper ballot, I mark my vote with a pen
- After 6pm I sometimes return and watch the counting. I can freely walk around between the people sorting the ballots and look at anything I want
- Did the same with friends last time around, we each had a bottle of beer, nobody cared. They were mostly older people happy to get a few visitors and talk a bit of politics.
- Pretty accurate first results (not exit polls) usually around 9pm.
- I can check the counts from my polling place the next day. Votes for the large party are in the lower 3-digits, so it's possible for me to specifically verify a few results.
Here's what most people that are not from the US don't understand:
When I go to vote on election day, I'm not voting for one person/party or even three people/parties. The typical ballot in my neck of the woods is double sided and has ~30 questions: National elections (President, HoR rep, maybe senator), state elections (Governor, SoS, local rep/senator, corporation commission, referendums/ballot initiatives), county elections (sheriff, judges), city elections (mayor, city council, dog catcher), and funding questions (bond overrides and the like). I'm probably forgetting an item or 10 on that list.
I never had 30 elections on one day in Germany (I think 5 was the absolute maximum) as we elect fewer positions in general and don't combine most elections on one day. Usually the federal election is the only vote on that day with some states specifically moving their state election day by one week to avoid a clash. The only usual combination is regional/European elections or state/regional elections for the small states. Referendums (there only a few) are usually tacked onto another election if there is one in a reasonable timeframe.
The elections each use a seperate ballot (and often seperate ballot box) and are counted one after the other with the most important election being counted first while the rest is still locked away in sight.
But yeah, for 30 ballots that system might break down.
I live in White Plains, NY, which is about 45 minutes north of NYC. My experience is similar to yours. But the US is a big, big place. I wouldn't be surprised if your experience has more to being in a major city, than in Germany. That is, what is the experience in rural parts of Germany? Poorer parts of Berlin?
Looking almost exactly the same. Rural (well rural in Germany is not the same as rural in the US) polling places might have 100 voters assigned instead of 1000 and people know each other but that's about it.
One issue is the cost and logistics of it all. In Sweden we therefore have three different elections on the same day. Campaigning tend to focus on the national election, thus the others gets a back seat and quality suffers.
Also, I've helped some smaller parties with the ballot distribution. It's not a small task for a small party to ensure each an every polling place in the country has ballots. Just the physical logistics of it is hard enough, but then you also have to deal with all the people who seem to think that only established parties has a right to participate in the election in the first place. The barrier to entry is quite high. Perhaps that is a feature though.
I have a question: Does every party has to supply a seperate piece of paper and the voter then chooses which piece of paper to put into the ballot box? What do voters do with the non-chosen ballots, i.e. how is the secrecy of the vote protected?
The system I know from Germany is that there is one ballot per election and the voter puts a mark which party/candidate they choose with a pen on that.
Yes. Three actually, if you count the different elections. On the ballot is a list of names representing the party so you can vote for a particular candidate by marking the name.
Usually people pick a set of ballots for different parties to bring behind a screen where the choosen ballots are put in the envelope for the box. The non-choosen ones you can pocket to keep secret. Some people tend to leave them in the booth though.
Voting procedures are handled at the state level, subject to terms from the federal government regarding basic access and fairness, so there is a lot of variety. I lived for twenty years in CA and I could have said the same thing about my polling experiences except for doing the counting (you can volunteer to be an elector and after some basic training do so, they just don't let the general public wander in to the best of my knowledge.)
In France, if you can vote, you can even count, and people can volunteer when they cast their ballot. The president of the voting station will usually also ask young voters to help.
- I walk 150m to my polling place. It's similar for most people.
- I've never waited more than 5 minutes
- The polling place is run mostly by volunteers, about 5 or 6 per place, with civil servants filling spots that can't be filled. Costs are neglible.
- I get a paper ballot, I mark my vote with a pen
- After 6pm I sometimes return and watch the counting. I can freely walk around between the people sorting the ballots and look at anything I want
- Did the same with friends last time around, we each had a bottle of beer, nobody cared. They were mostly older people happy to get a few visitors and talk a bit of politics.
- Pretty accurate first results (not exit polls) usually around 9pm.
- I can check the counts from my polling place the next day. Votes for the large party are in the lower 3-digits, so it's possible for me to specifically verify a few results.