The ballot drop boxes in Washington and Oregon both have fire suppression systems that are designed to activate when the temperature inside reaches a certain point, coating ballots inside with a fire-suppressing powder.
For unknown reasons, the system failed to prevent the destruction of hundreds of ballots in Vancouver, just across the Columbia River from Portland.
What are these things doing outside? I don’t get that. Put them inside the courthouse, post office, fire station, a million other places they’d be safe from arson.
The problem lies in that people need to access them outside working hours due to their own work schedules, which is ultimately the point of these things. Granted, a fire station,
police station, or even a hospital lobby would be better than outside.Edit: ok, maybe not a police station, but y’all get my point
Police station would be a terrible choice. People who aren’t able to vote on election day skew poor, black, brown, and/or immigrant - exactly the groups who would be (rightly) afraid of entering a police station.
Removed by mod
Hey, mod here. What they are saying is correct. Police intimidation/fear is justified for a large percent of the population, even those that are law-abiding. That’s why the phrase “walking while black” exists.
I urge you to not make these kind of comments, as they detract from the overall conversation. I also urge you to edit or remove this comment, as it violates rule 1.
This response is so wild to me. Nobody even needs to talk to a cop. Having an additional drop off location at a police station is more convenient than not having it. Walk into building, put envelope in box, walk out. Makes sense for any government funded building that’s already required to be staffed 24/7 and monitored by CCTV, the police department included.
Are you just…completely unaware of the racist nature of police in America? What a nice privilege.
Little bit concerned about a police station, both because people might feel intimidated, and votes could get ‘lost’.
Why not just use post boxes? Less of a concentrated target because there’ll be a whole bunch of other letters in there too. At least, I don’t believe my country uses special boxes just for votes
You can drop it in the post but many people are paranoid about it being lost in the mail. The US also suffered a not unnoticeable degradation in the post service under Trump and his post master general pick who is still at his post because he didn’t resign and Biden didn’t fire him.
I still vote in person because of my own anxieties about my vote being counted.
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.
We actually do have laws federally to protect voters from disenfranchisement. There are often lawsuits about polling locations, hours of voting, and number of drop boxes. One side is definitely always trying to make it harder to vote, specifically on contested areas.
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 :/
I used a 24hr box for my ballot because I have a job at “normal” hours.