Or should something be done about that so that it's made as quick, easy and efficient as possible?
Give your reasons for your answer.
If that's what you want to do, fine. But it shouldn't be the only option.
I recommend the following:
- Standardized nationwide voter id with the voter's picture on it
- Standardized nationwide balloting hardware
- Standardized 30 day early voting periods for federal elections
- Wherever you are in the nation, you go into the local court house, swipe your card, and your local ballot pops up. You make your choices and get on with your day.
But if you want to stand in line to do this on election day, god bless you and feel free. You're stupid but you have the right to be stupid.
What is there to prevent a state from putting one or two of those machines at a court house for hundreds of thousands of people? What is there to stop a state from only allowing voting to happen at one or two court houses?
The problem is purposely putting few machines or machines that are out dated or machines that don't work properly or a "glitch" in the software to cause long lines and suppress voting. Or closing down most of the places to vote or moving those places to areas that people can't get to or public transportation doesn't go to.
Long lines can and will be created at the court houses in minority areas just as the voting places are in minority areas now. And it's mostly in red states.
Get the republicans to stop using these suppression tactics and there won't be such a problem.
That wasn't the upper limit I described. That was the standard. Meaning that if you currently have 20 voting booths at a school now, you replace it with 20 of these machines.
Glitches happen regardless of the system.
You're right about voter suppression which is why I think we need a standardized rule--nationwide--about early voting starting a month before the "Tuesday after the first Monday in November".
The thing about the ease-in-voting measures I listed is this... Lets say you're soft in the head and believe all of this Hunter Biden bullshit; that motivates you to vote for Trump whereas before, you really didn't care. So you're out one day on a day off and after listening to right wing talk radio, you get angry and go vote somewhere. In our system, that is perfectly valid. You needn't go to some website and look up where you can vote at or wait until election day when you may be working... Anger=action=voting. Now, I would disagree with the entire premise of why you're angry and po'd at the world but that isn't for me to say. Its preferred that they, of course, study the issues, evaluate the veracity of the claims made by the candidates, etc... But they can be as ill informed as they want.
Anyway....the above items I listed; standardized picture ID, universal standardization of voting hardware, standardized early voting dates...thats just part of it. When I did disaster response for the County, our grant monies were tied to training. We literally had to do table top exercises, simulations, constant training--I have about 30 certificates from these silly classes FEMA and the National Fire Academy put on... I didn't know there was a national fire academy but that is another topic. Anyway, every few months, we would assemble these people--nurses, restaurant inspectors, animal control folks, administrators, logisticians like myself and do this exercise to be ready for hurricanes, H5N1, etc... As I understand it, no such parallel training happens for the tens of thousands of precincts that run our elections. And they rely on volunteers. I'd mandate regular rigorous testing and training for the election staff the same way DHS did for us.
What happens if there is a hurricane on election day and it's about to hit Florida or Houston? Is there a back-up for the hardware I listed above? That is the value of voting early and that is the value of the training. At some point, you have to rely on some technology that may not be glitch-free. Its just the nature of the system and how we are currently oriented.
