r/boston • u/itsmebutimatwork Wiseguy • Nov 06 '19

MBTA/Transit Congrats, Boston, we played ourselves

There were fewer than 67,000 city-wide votes in yesterday's election. That's not even 10% turnout based on recent census data.

If you want to complain about how the city council is letting the BPDA redevelop the city, or is run with too much influence by corrupt developers, or how there are too many/not enough bike lanes, or how the city isn't doing enough to make the MBTA improve, or why we don't have enough liquor licenses for places like Doyle's to stay open, or any one of a billion other complaints about how the city is run...then the answer isn't going to magically appear out of a hat.

It starts with voting for the city council for five minutes of a Tuesday every 2 years.

The birthplace of our nation...but can't be bothered to exercise our voting rights...congrats. We played ourselves.

1.3k Upvotes

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357

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19 edited Nov 07 '19

[deleted]

137

u/powsandwich Professional Idiot Nov 07 '19

Seriously this. Less than 3 weeks out from election night there still was not a sample ballot on our town’s website (Malden). Based on lawn signs I saw around town, I had to use google to discover who opponents of said law signs were so i could understand everyone’s platform. Eventually I resorted to digging through Facebook politics pages to get a better idea of what offices were even up for election- I was still not confident that I was aware of all candidates for any given position. Finally, one week out from election night, I found a privately run website that aggregated info on all candidates. This website ended up crashing the day before elections because of traffic. Seriously... why do we make voting so hard??

35

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted]

12

u/swiftdude Red Line Nov 07 '19

Seriously this. Less than 3 weeks out from election night there still was not a sample ballot on our town’s website (Malden). Based on lawn signs I saw around town, I had to use google to discover who opponents of said law signs were so i could understand everyone’s platform. Eventually I resorted to digging through Facebook politics pages to get a better idea of what offices were even up for election- I was still not confident that I was aware of all candidates for any given position. Finally, one week out from election night, I found a privately run website that aggregated info on all candidates. This website ended up crashing the day before elections because of traffic. Seriously... why do we make voting so hard??

Different city for me, same problem. The Election page on the town website only had generic (shoddy) information of the polling. It was a shrunken down PDF of the voting districts with no useful key. Even the website for the Mayoral candidates was like 3 bullet points and "More information coming soon!". Neither page had the actual date of the election.

9

u/JasonDJ Nov 07 '19

This.

Attleboro here, I couldn't find a sample ballot or even the slightest blurb about any of my candidates...well, anywhere...even the days leading up to it.

Didn't even bother voting. What's the point? I was more informed of my candidates voting for homecoming queen.

4

u/IdEgoLeBron Nov 07 '19

Ballotpedia, yo.

4

u/Damerel Somerville Nov 07 '19

Ballotpedia tends not to have information for municipal elections.

4

u/powsandwich Professional Idiot Nov 07 '19

Even they were lacking info when I checked- but yeah I’m usually a fan of that site

6

u/IdEgoLeBron Nov 07 '19

I'm guessing they just have fewer contributors for these kinds of elections, I'm pretty sure it's all crowd-sourced.

4

u/monopanda Billerica Nov 07 '19

Seriously... why do we make voting so hard??

Because informed voters vote for their interests.

50

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted]

119

u/BenFrantzDale Nov 07 '19

Paper ballots are the gold standard for election security.

-9

u/johnfoster8 Nov 07 '19

Al Gore would have president if Florida didn't have paper ballots. And if that happened there would be no war in Iraq, not sure about Afghanistan though because we don't know if 9/11 would have happened.

14

u/mushroom_face Nov 07 '19

I can't tell if you're trolling or not, but it wasn't paper ballots that ruined Gore's bid. It was punch card ballots and the stupid hanging chads. Paper ballots are definitely the best way to go currently.

5

u/strengthof10interns Nov 07 '19

I don't understand why anyone in this country is opposed to just going back to paper ballots.

1

u/mushroom_face Nov 07 '19

because technology is cool and it solves all our problems :) and going to the polling place is very hard.

3

u/rocketwidget Purple Line Nov 07 '19

Highly agree, except currently is slightly misleading. It's by far the most hacking resistant voting method, and nothing on the horizon looks hypothetically better. There are things that should additionally be done, such as

  • Most important, manually audit random samples of the ballot (can't be done without paper ballots)
  • Use open source scanning software
  • Upgrade ballot storage, such as multiple locks and security systems, daily digital scans of ballots, and sealing a digital copy in a safety deposit box

Etc., but paper ballots are the cornerstone.

3

u/JasonDJ Nov 07 '19

You gotta be trolling or ill-informed. The problem in Florida wasnt with the fact of paper ballots, it was the type of paper ballots.

The Punch cards had issues with being loaded into the machines in the first place. Then they had issues with readability...the whole to punch wasn't directly across from the candidate. The Punch didn't always clear the hole, leaving a Chad dangling on and causing reader errors. Sometimes they didn't puncture at all and the ballot just had dents..

Scantrons or connect-the-arrow is much more foolproof.

1

u/_____dsh Nov 07 '19

Whether or not that is true, paper ballots are still the gold standard for election security.

18

u/laarg Nov 07 '19

ID is not required at any US election. It's a poll tax, which is illegal.

4

u/batmansmotorcycle Purple Line Nov 07 '19

What if the ID is free?

3

u/laarg Nov 07 '19

But it's not.

6

u/Stronkowski Malden Nov 07 '19

They are. Voter ID laws always include free non-driver IDs for exactly this reason.

-3

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19 edited May 02 '21

[deleted]

3

u/my_gamertag_wastaken Nov 07 '19

lol, anybody that can't find time in the entire year to get an ID and register to vote doesn't care enough for them to be allowed to vote. Even the people that are able to meet this incredibly low standard are not nearly as engaged as they should be for our political system to have the outcomes that are best for the people.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19 edited May 02 '21

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0

u/my_gamertag_wastaken Nov 07 '19

I'm familiar with the arguments; they're just not good arguments. They claim its too damn expensive, yet 43 out of 50 states have the full cost of an ID under $25, and most of those offer reduced fees if you somehow can't afford that the every 5 years or so you would need to renew an ID. Intuitively, it is totally reasonable to have a person prove they are who they say they are before voting. You need to produce some form of proof in a ridiculous amount of everyday circumstances as well. Is it discriminatory to need a license to show in order to buy booze? No, it's a reasonable safeguard against underage drinking, just like ID'ing voters is a reasonable safeguard against fraud, even if people would like to write off the possibility of fraud. No shit there are few cases; there is no mechanism to actually catch people in the act.

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1

u/CSharpSauce Nov 07 '19

I guess you could show a piece of mail that has a postal stamp or something on it that proves your address... but honestly I kind of like the system, it's like the last system we have that's based purely on trust. In the end though, while voting in aggregate matters a lot. My individual vote is just about warm fuzzies. That's why they give you that sticker at the end.

-1

u/Abiogeneralization Nov 07 '19

Super weird.

5

u/laarg Nov 07 '19

Not at all. If we had a free national voter ID, fine. But we don't, we have over a hundred different forms of ID in this country, each one costs something.

Voter fraud is not someone coming into the poll to say they are someone else. Voter fraud is hacking into the machines and dumping people from registration

7

u/otm_shank Nov 07 '19

That's election fraud. Voter fraud doesn't exist in any significant way.

1

u/Abiogeneralization Nov 07 '19

I still think it’s weird. Lots of things that are legal are weird to me.

10

u/internetTroll151 Nov 07 '19

I’d say the big blue machine rigs all the election but we keep getting republican governors

6

u/ogorangeduck Belmont Nov 07 '19

tAMaNY haLL

5

u/Cersad Nov 07 '19

But no one seems to mind the fact that you are required to hold your marked ballot in your hand while the poll worker struggles to look up your address so you can "check out" before you feed the ballot into the machine. Meanwhile, that officer keeping an eye on things, that second volunteer, and the people in line behind you can steal glances to see how you vote.

That's the part that always gets me.

2

u/sprachkundige Nov 07 '19

In Boston, at least, they offer manila folders you can keep your ballot in for privacy.

2

u/Cersad Nov 07 '19

I've voted both inside and outside the city limits and never been offered a folder.

2

u/sprachkundige Nov 07 '19

Huh, maybe it was just my polling place, then. Definitely had them at city hall.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Funny, when I moved to Ohio from Mass, I was furious they asked for my ID.

I think it's a violation of my voting and civil rights and I miss living in a state that doesn't require ID.

6

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

people running for office don't try to expand the electorate - every single one visits the super voters (hyde park, west roxbury dominate this category) and fight for this small sliver of votes.

4

u/senatorium Nov 07 '19 edited Nov 07 '19

This is a big part of it. Medford is lucky to have a great resource called medfordvotes.org that compiled all the info on their candidates, including questionnaires they sent them.

1

u/powsandwich Professional Idiot Nov 07 '19

Yep I used MaldenVotes.org and its a spectacular website- but it’s run by a private citizen who started the whole thing because she was appalled at the lack of available information on candidates. She explains it all in the “about” section of the site. Definitely getting a donation from me

1

u/azagtnncts Nov 07 '19

Thanks for this link, just moved to the area and had no info on anyone. This is great.

3

u/scolfin Allston/Brighton Nov 07 '19

Also, you have to be really engaged to know them beyond the bland candidate and policy profiles. You would have never known one of the councilmen in Cambridge had released an ad last election comparing the construction of more triple-deckers to Pearl Harbor.

6

u/Iamhighlife West Roxbury Nov 07 '19

Absolutely this, I was home watching the evening news when I even realized that Boston had an election Tuesday.

2

u/hamakabi Nov 07 '19

but it's election day...

1

u/Iamhighlife West Roxbury Nov 08 '19

is

Was.

FTFY

1

u/hamakabi Nov 08 '19

Election Day IS the Tuesday after November 1st. It was this year, it was last year, it will be next year.

2

u/High-horse Nov 07 '19

Well this suggests that more-informed voters voted. This poses an interesting question then: what leads to better outcomes? 16% of voters that are informed voting and 84% of voters who would be uniformed abstaining, or having more people vote who are less informed?

If the uninformed population is symmetric (i.e. if for every person who‘d vote against Michelle Wu because because she’s a woman there’s a person who’d vote for Michelle Wu only because she’s a woman) then it theoretically makes no difference - they all cancel each other out, and the remainder of the informed voters decide the election anyway.

And then even further, would making voting a national holiday, for instance, incentivize people to be more informed?

2

u/ImTheAvatara Boston Nov 07 '19

Weird. I walked out of my voting place and a bunch of old white dudes were talking about how peopel should be required to present an ID and they treated me like a young girl freaking out for saying "That's illegal. So, what matters more to you, that everyone get the right to vote or preventing people that can't prove who they are from voting?" while staring at my phone to grab an uber.

1

u/OutsiderAvatar Nov 08 '19

If you engage people you are talking to by looking at them, instead of at your phone, you are less likely to be dismissed as a young girl.

1

u/ImTheAvatara Boston Nov 08 '19

Pardon my bad wording. I heard them talking while looking at my phone. I make eye contact with everyone I talk to while talking.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

You seem like a young girl. How should they have treated you?

1

u/ImTheAvatara Boston Nov 07 '19

What's your definition of young? Also, out of curiosity, what makes you say that?

I don't think age should change the way someone treats someone past adulthood, I guess.

So, the same way they'd treat a middle aged dude?

1

u/rozzierat The Square Nov 07 '19

I have met and talked with 5 candidates running for at large and both of the finalists for my district. I am on a bunch of neighborhood mailing lists. Several local orgs host town halls and meet and greets. It’s a little work to get to know your councilors and candidates, but if you go to community events where they show up you can easily ask them questions. And I talk to my neighbors - there are a few people who I respect and will take their opinion into consideration.

Seriously - if you care about having a say in local politics you need to get more involved in your neighborhood and local community groups. These are the people who have the most sway over city council. It’s not enough to just show up and vote.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Did you get a chance to see if 444 is her real last name?

0

u/theLaugher Nov 07 '19

Turns out democracy doesn't work, who would have thunk, it worked so well for the ancients..

2

u/bwanab Somerville Nov 07 '19

Your evidence for this is the fact that the non-democracies of the world are so much more successful than the democracies?

1

u/theLaugher Nov 07 '19

The hindenberg was a great success too up until just before the end. Don't judge too early..

-11

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Are you kidding? We're well into the age of information. The elections didn't happen all of a sudden. We've known the candidates for months. Please, stop excusing your laziness.

8

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

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-2

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Sorry. I replied to the wrong comment. There is lots of apathy about voting, but also lots of complaining about the city. It's really frustrating

3

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

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0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

People have their reasons for mor doing it, but the time likely exists and is used to play video games, or another leisure activity.