I still find it weird that voting by mail is not more common in the US (and other countries). Here in Switzerland, 90% of votes are done by mail and it works great.
Something that I've heard recently that's made me rethink voting by mail as a common practice. It's very common for a head-of-household husband to be more passionate/insistent on how they vote than their wife. It's also very common for the husband to vote one way (Republican) than the wife (Democrat).
It would be much easier to coerce (even mildly) while voting from home than at a confidential voting booth.
I’m Swiss too (dual citizen with US) haha. And yeah man it’s so much easier to just get the letter without even needing to register to vote or whatever. Automatically get it when you turn 18 and an election comes up.
Each state has their own little constitution. West coast states have it built in that ballot measures are by the people, for the people, and honored by the state, so The People can fix or add things at the state level. Other states rely entirely on the legislature.
Voting setup and enforcement is a state thing, that in federal elections then gets handed to the fed for certification.
We have mail as an option here (our province in Canada is having an election this month), but quite a lot of people go and vote in person either on the day or on one of the early voting days
No downside to either option, just curious about the history behind it
First introduced in the late 1970s as an effort to boost low voter turnout, postal voting was anchored in Swiss law in 1994. By 2006, all 26 cantons had introduced functioning systems.
“It works well, so there’s not much debate about it,” says Uwe Serdült, a political scientist at the University of Zurich. Cantons report that around 90% of citizens now vote by post, and some have reported figures up to 97% (Aargau, 2017). There were debates about security in the early years of postal voting, Serdült says – as there are now around e-voting. But over the years it has been accepted, largely due to the high levels of trust in Switzerland – “vis-à-vis the state, and in the postal system”.
I really miss the Voter Handbook with all the information I could need about laws or propositions, the candidates in the ballot, where and how to register, and I think where to vote.
The full text of laws and props are present along with calculated 10 year cost, and a statement from proponents and a rebuttal to that statement from opponents, and a statement from opponents accompanied by proponents' rebuttal. For candidates, they submit statements which are usually a brief biography and things they say they support and oppose, why they're running, and whatever else they think is important. There's a sample ballot showing exactly what you'll see on election day. It tells you how to register and where to go, about provisional ballots, mail-in ballots. It was such a fantastic resource.
Here in Texas, it isn't easy finding information about the candidates besides their names and party. For any laws, good luck finding anything except for the name the dang thing. The plain text will be buried in a messy state website with nothing else presented. It's like they don't want us to know a damn thing about who or what we're voting for.
I don't always read all the info but I follow the money, so for instance anything "Howard Jarvis" is for, I'm against. Can you at least find out what groups or people endorsed your various choices in Texas?
And you (and everyone else) shouldn't HAVE to. There's enough automation and technology to make it so that nearly all of society's needs could be met with a handful of hours of work from people who are able and driven to do so.
I hope you are able to engage in creative or other activities that bring you joy and fulfillment, despite your limitations. If you are not, due to lack of assistive device or other means, please communicate it. There are communities here and a lot of users like myself that would be happy to try to help.
Yup. got mine but some bar association reports are not updated yet along with stuff on the water reclamation district so I still have half of it to fill out. mail ballets are the bomb.