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.
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.
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.
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”.
Nice!
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.
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.
Voting is only done by mail in Oregon. I love it!
Every state I’ve lived in has had vote by mail. I’ve never voted at a polling place because of the convenience of vote by mail.
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.
Is there a reason for such a high proportion?
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
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-the-world-s-most-frequent-voters-handle-postal-ballots/46070666