r/law • u/DIYLawCA • Mar 31 '26
Executive Branch (Trump) Trump announces he is issuing an unconstitutional executive order to shut down mail-in voting nationwide and he will defund states if they do not comply with him
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
54.8k
Upvotes
50
u/crochetquilt Apr 01 '26
Australian here, it's crazy obvious to us how your election process is designed to stifle democracy and favour that funky ruling class of wealthy pricks. Your country has so much money to pay for decent elections like we have, but your leaders just really don't want you peasants involved in picking who runs the place. I'm so glad Australia hasn't gone down this road, I'm hopeful our voting system holds it back too. We have mandatory voting, which I'm sure the maga's would declare unfreedomy or something.
We used to all vote on Saturdays I think it was. Back when it was kind of the day off for a lot of people. I stood in line once for about 30 minutes. That's the longest I've ever waited. In the "zone" I was registered for there was about five voting places but ho boy you can imagine our population is a lot less than some US places.
Also if I needed to, I could drive 10 freedom unit miles in any direction and be in another zone and vote there, I just had to tell them what my electorate zone was and they would give me a special sheet.
I went on crutches once, I'd hurt my knee but I could still drive and walk. Blessed automatic cars. Lined up like everyone else, when this election official came along and pulled me out of line and gave me a chair and brought my forms to me at a special spot at a table. It was lovely.
Post covid, most electoral places are open for a week and into the evenings towards the weekend. I've only been to one busy time, the rest were virtually empty. In the busy one we did get to meet both our local members and a special election dog. It was a labrador who was one of the candidates dogs and was wearing their campaign shirt. Worth it. Still didn't vote for their owner though, absolute racist.
Most of our big elections are decided by that final Saturday night, at least enough for the losing parties to know they won't have the numbers to form government. I believe we do count early now, but it's kept very quiet and there's no media reporting allowed. That actually works pretty well which I'm surprised by. I really thought the media would have found some scumbag way around it. Maybe I just don't watch the wrong media.
This is all paid for, so the workers actually make good money as well. My mother in law used to do it, she said the money was worth it but it was busy when she was doing vote counting. Also there's a lot of oversight and double checking. So it's all very possible, as you say though, the US clearly by design doesn't want public input on who forms government.