Voting in Italy
From commenter “Paolo Pagliaro, who lives in Italy:
In Italy we are able to have uncontested elections – even by a left party adopting “Fascist alert!” as the leading slogan – because strict in person vote, on paper, in a precisely designated site is mandatory; not only we have to show an identity document (usually the “Carta d’Identità”, which the town office issues to citizens in a very short time, everybody has it), but we also have a personal electoral-card stamped by an official at the polling station each time we vote. The exceptions are minimal and cannot impact the outcome by design.
I’m boggling at the absurdity of your system, you simply cannot have confidence in the results, each and every time.
What Paolo describes – or something like it – is typical for European countries and most other countries around the world. Not the US. But the US has become an unserious country, I’m afraid. We do have an absurd voting system, at least in many blue states as well as many purple states, which of course affects the entire outcome. And perhaps “absurd” is a kind word for our voting process.
What’s more, we not only have a cognitively challenged president, we have a president who is obviously cognitively challenged. Just a few years ago most of us wouldn’t have believed it possible. We also are about to have a senator from Pennsylvania who is cognitively challenged in a different way, and was elected despite it.
I repeat: we are an unserious country. But reality can get serious very quickly. In fact, I think it already has, but the US hasn’t adjusted.
No mail in voting (except for military personnel stationed overseas or away from their legal residence.)
All voting must be done in person at the polling venue and each voter must have proper ID.
All votes cast by paper ballots at the polling venue only and no machine voting.
Voting to take place on one day only.
The above is really the only way to insure elections that are not manipulated. True, some folks will not be able to vote, but I do not see a way to avoid this.
Until we have something like this, it is a slam dunk that any close election will always go to the demokrats. They are experts at cheating.
Check out the voting procedures in France.
JohnTyler:
Yes, but the point is that it’s Catch-22. Only one party wants it; the other is advantaged by the more relaxed rules and doesn’t want them tightened. It’s done on a state-by-state basis, and once the rules are relaxed the Democrats become more entrenched in power in that state. How can the GOP then change back again?
After its problems of two decades ago, Florida would seem to have made its system reasonably secure and its results trustworthy. This is not so with other states, such as PA, with Fetterman winning with a majority of (quite possibly questionable) mail-in ballots, as well as both AZ and NV, where it seems as though all the America-First candidates will be finding themselves farther and farther behind as more and more votes are discovered, as if by magic, for their opponents. Why should a rational person trust such an outcome in a lamentably “unserious” country with such an obviously (and very sadly) “absurd voting system”?
I have no problem with ballot harvesting as long as the ballots were all cast by legal American citizens and each voter cast only one vote. Democrats did nothing but utilising votes that would have been wasted by people who weren’t interested enough in politics to vote in person… all wars in history were won by the development of new strategy and technology, instead of adapting to the new world and learning the more efficient ways to win elections republicans just want to ban a new strategy that they don’t understand but legal, despite a bit shady…. Learn ballot harvesting and do it so well that democrats lose so much that they want to ban it, instead of banning mail in ballots completely, which is legitimately beneficial to many voters.
Learn ballot harvesting and do it so well that democrats lose so much that they want to ban it, instead of banning mail in ballots completely, which is legitimately beneficial to many voters.
Sorry Dave. Voters that can’t be bothered with the triviality of showing up in person at a polling place, don’t deserve a vote. I don’t recall ever having spent more that 10 minutes in line at a polling place. Do you really want people who haven’t put the slightest effort into evaluating their choices expressing them in a vote?
I have no problem with ballot harvesting as long as the ballots were all cast by legal American citizens and each voter cast only one vote.
The whole point of it is to violate those stipulations Dave cites. And even if that isn’t the point of it, how would anyone know for sure? You can’t, because it is a crap system. Then it becomes a competition between fraudsters. No way to run a democracy.
I contend until mail voting is gone we never will have a clean election. Reading there are many races still being counted and seems most will be won by Democrats finding votes a week after election day.
Your belief on what constitutes a legitimate vote don’t matter, nothing in the constitution states that a voter has to prove his merit by taking the trouble to make it to a polling booth in order to make his vote count. A vote is a vote, technology is all about making life easier, you can’t say a writer is less legitimate if he uses computer to write instead of the good old way of a pen. all ballot harvesting is is a new way to make voting easier for voters so more people who wouldn’t have voted will vote, a new technology that makes something easier lower the bar of entry of course is going to create more participates, the fact that it will negatively affect conservatives diluting the weight of their votes don’t merit it being banned…
Voting is about to go from “unserious” to deadly serious.
We have about 75% of people who think the country is going in the wrong direction, but the party in power is probably going to keep the House and Senate. A large number of people believe that (1) their government is not legitimate; (2) their government is working against their interests; and (3) their is nothing that they can do to change anything.
We are an unserious country with a large military and a nuclear arsenal (assuming it still works). Frightening.
Voting is about to go from “unserious” to deadly serious.
We have about 75% of people who think the country is going in the wrong direction, but the party in power is probably going to keep the House and Senate. A large number of people believe that (1) their government is not legitimate; (2) their government is working against their interests; and (3) there is nothing that they can do to change anything.
For years, Mark Steyn has been (properly) contemptuous of American election sloppiness. He’d certainly agree — as do I — with the prescription above by JohnTyler and the commentary above by TommyJay.
In a Steyn Q&A with his Club’s members in January 2021, he acknowledged a question by me:
“Mark, you’ve talked about the superiority of simple paper ballots, hand counted where they’re cast. Nolo contendere.
“But even though you’ve lived in New Hampshire for decades, I wonder if you’re carrying over too much from your Canadian experience, wherein an election consists of a **single** race: the choice of the MP for a provincial or federal riding. (To clarify for non-Canadians, that’s one or the other, **not both**. I checked with James Fulford, editor at VDARE. James lives in Toronto.)
“But in U.S. elections, there can easily be a dozen candidate races on the ballot, as well as ballot questions.
“(e.g. In Montana, besides the presidential, U.S. senator, and congressional rep races, we just elected governor, attorney general, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction, regional member of the Public Service Commission, state legislators, some local officials, plus we voted on several ballot questions.)
“In principle, you could go to a separate piece of paper for each contest, but I think the resulting blizzard of paper would likely yield chaos that might well be as fraught as what we’re stuck with now.
“So, regarding your recommended elections regime, am I missing something obvious?”
But Steyn really didn’t **engage** with my question about the **practicalities** of paper ballots in American-style elections. So he didn’t really answer my question. I’m wondering if anyone in Neo’s audience can elucidate on this.
To lay it out most starkly, in a Canadian riding’s election, for example, there’s **one** candidate contest on the ballot. That’s all! So counting the votes on paper ballots can be as simple as appropriately putting marked ballots into as many piles as there are candidates competing for the one seat, then counting the number in each pile. This is something that can be done in easy view of election observers.
This works in a parliamentary (Westminster) system because the only contests are for legislative seats. All the members of the executive branch are members of the legislature.
Bumper sticker for a possible presidential slate in 2024: Biden/Fetterman 2024 — no-brainer.
Paul Nachman, the solution is paper ballots marked by hand and optical scanners which can read all of the offices and issues available on a two-sided ballot. We use it here in NC, by law. Two years ago, there was a very tight election for our Supreme Court. Five million votes were cast for the office in total, with the candidates separated by 440 votes. The votes were re-counted in each of 99 counties by machine, and then a random selection of precincts in each county was hand-counted. The vote difference didn’t change.
If you can get all the “good government” upper-middle-class progressive reformers into the same party as the ballot box stuffing, ballot harvesting political machines, the machines will never have to worry about real election reform.
And if you can get most of the ferocious anti-capitalists into the same party as most of the richest capitalists, the money men won’t have to worry about revolution or “real” socialism
If ballot harvesting is democrats’ edge, why don’t republicans have an edge in run offs?
Dave’s points about all votes, including unseriously thought out ones, being treated equally is valid. However, that doesn’t change the fact that that mail-in balloting is a crap system that invites unpreventable fraud. It’s the only point that really matters. Learn how it is done.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/
the carter baker committee said it was bad in 2005, just like frontline and hbo said the same about dominion machines, upto a month before the campaign, now it’s totes fine,
Dave:
Ballot harvesting is only one tool. There are many, and they matter as well.
Plus, there aren’t a whole lot of runoffs. It’s really been Georgia, hasn’t it? Georgia in 2020 was roiled with division, plus several people on the right were telling people on the right not to vote.
In addition, an unbelievable amount of leftist money poured into Georgia for that runoff.
Of course, something of a repeat may occur in 2022.
The issue is ballot box control. In Washington, prior to all mail balloting, your ballot was tallied (scanned) when you dropped it in the ballot box. Ballot stuffing was hard. the box was under observation by everyone in the place. At the end of voting the memory module was removed from the scanner and sealed. The bag of ballots was removed and sealed. The memory module was then run through a tabulator. There was no easy way to insert bogus votes. Now all are ballots scanned by the government where piles of ballots from who knows where keep showing up. And everything has numbered seals and hand receipts, the old “found an uncounted bag in the car trunk” has been BS from the time the first liar thought it up.
I should have written “an” issue. Another issue is not much ballot harvesting is needed when your voter rolls are so corrupt that 40 non-existent voters call the same empty lot home.
Paul Nachman,
Just one point- the US has had these kinds of multiple races on a ballot for the last 200 years, and we somehow managed to do it with quite a bit of trust in the results outside of Chicago, and without having to wait until December get a declared winner.
However, the counting can be done almost as easily as one race by hand- you just put the ballots in a chain of counters- Counter group 1 counts the governors race out of 100 ballots, gets a tally. That batch of 100 is passed to group 2 who counts Lt. Gov. That batch of 100 is passed to group 3 who counts Sos……
The system is not absurd if by that you mean there is no reason to have it so. The Dems created it the way it is so:
1. People could vote early before they really start paying attention. Paying attention to is the last things the left wants a voter to do.
2. Eliminate the secret ballot voted by a lone person in a voting booth. Allows coercion and intimidation by harvesting mailed ballots.
3. Loose registration rules and same day voting. The disinterested can be bribed with walking around money or cigs.
4. Last, and actually the least important, outright fraud.
Au Contraire! Where they have been able to manipulate the electoral ‘systems’, the democrats could not be more serious.
jvermeer:
Of course I’m aware of the reason the system is the way it is in many states and why it’s highly unlikely to be undone. I already wrote this comment about that.
The word “absurd” is used to indicate it’s absurd in terms of a fair or checkable system, or one that gives people confidence in the validity of the results.
The most unserious people in America are the nominal conservatives and Libertarians who have observed the descent of the nation under despotic Dem rule and think that the issue of importance is that Trump not run again. We’ve seen the destruction of election integrity, a coup attempt, the elimination of the rule of law, a declaration by the enemy to destroy the constitution, a descent into 1984 as Big Brother relentlessly abuses us with lies, slanders and trumped up criminal charges, the abandonment of the border and all manner of other abuses and crimes.
And the wimps don’t have any plan or even any interest in doing anything about any of it. The working people who love Trump love him for one reason. He sees the destruction and fights. He has accurately identified it and fought. He is infinitely more moral and more ethical than his detractors.
The wimps and wusses who think that Trump is bothersome don’t fight. They have never fought. They don’t give a damn about the people. They don’t care about the country or our constitution. All they care about is tut tutting and adjusting their pinky fingers on their tea cups.
Dems just stole the senate back. And the wusses won’t do one damn thing. In fact, they are so worthless and pathetic, they can’t even rouse themselves to say or write what they plainly see happening to us.
The GOP and Libertarian wusses are evil in their own way. They and their preferred politicians keep asking for votes and then abandoning those voters who trusted them. They are liars of the worst sort. They are backstabbing betrayers. They believe themselves morally superior while all they do is help pave the path to hell. They are the modern Pharisees convinced of their own morality while judging harshly. They are vipers all. They see the demons and refuse to even admit what they see.
The Democrats are evil. Either fight back or admit to being an enabler of evil. Period. Those are the only choices. If you don’t fight, you don’t count.
The pathetic Andy McCarthy says Trump will be indicted. No matter what anyone thinks of Trump, he deserves the support of all patriots. Condemn the kangaroo courts. And no matter what evidence, they are kangaroo courts. Those who choose not to support him are enabling evil of the worst sort.
Note, anyone who says they need to see the evidence is an enabler of evil. Period. These persecutions have nothing to do with the rule of law or fundamental fairness. Anyone who pretends they do is knowingly helping the Democrats abuse us all.
stan:
You are lumping a whole lot of people together who are not the same and do not fit your description. Some do, of course. But a tremendous number of people who are turning on Trump are doing it very reluctantly, having supported him either from the start or at least early on. They feel very strongly that sticking with him will empower the Democrats. They want to fight smarter, not to give up.
Yancey Ward:
Thanks for your prescription. Yes, all that has occurred to me. I have several practical objections:
1. With ballots that have many markings, I think it will be harder for observers five feet away to pick out whether ballots are being accurately/fairly sorted into the respective piles.
2. The whole process would stretch out to N times as long, where N is the number of races to be counted.
3. The more physical handling of the ballots, the more chance for screw-ups and chicanery.
Probably none of those is insuperable. And anyway the system would likely be materially superior to what we have now. But it would still have what I think are those weaknesses.
Perhaps we should check with election officials in small-town New Hampshire, where Steyn lives. They may be doing something along the lines of what Yancey suggested.
The essential problem with our current voting system is that it undermines confidence in the legitimacy of the published outcome and therefore in the declared winners and resulting government.
Very few in government talk about fixing that, and any that do are declared election deniers, racists, etc.
There is a more fundamental problem that is not being (and cannot be) addressed.
During the FDR presidency, the primary role of the federal (and later state) government transitioned from doing the things that are mentioned in the Constitution, to taking stuff from citizen A and giving it to Citizen B, with the people who works for the government taking their cuts along the way.
Now a plurality of people depend on the government to keep food on the table.
We have avoided bankruptcy and economic collapse only by the good fortune of having the world’s reserve currency, which has allowed us to postpone inevitable economic collapse.
China, India and a few other smaller economic entities have the means, motive, and now the opportunity to de-reserve the dollar. When they succeed, it will be hard times for all of us.
This goes farther back than many think. US politics in big cities has ALWAYS been corrupt. Always. It just was confined to them, in the past. Now it’s metastasized.
Most things become obsolete eventually. I fear our form of government will, too. And I have no idea what will replace it.
Voting procedures in France. see here
https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-france-elections-europe-96859198666d51b2c4482c3cdb0eb6aa
Isn’t Pennsylvania more unionized than most states? I’d bet that Fetterman owes his margin of victory to union shop stewards “strongly suggesting” their members vote a certain way. If they hear someone voted otherwise, bad stuff could happen.
The whole thing is rigged, and I don’t mean necessarily voter fraud; the GOP threw the election. Why else would Lindsay Graham propose a national ban on abortion in mid-September, 6 weeks before the election? Why would Mitch McConnell send money to Lisa Murkowski and not support Blake Masters in a winnable contest? You’ve got Kevin McCarthy as house GOP leader, but he’s an empty suit who scares absolutely no one, and even if the Republicans eek out a slim majority, Pelosi will find enough bribable Republicans that she could remain Speaker of the House.
Pathetic.
I recently learned that another of the D’s changes in how we vote occurred in larger cities. In those cities voters would go to small neighborhood locations with short lines to vote. The small number of votes were easy to count accurately.
The D’s changed that by moving all voting to huge venues. Now we have big lines and huge opportunities for skullduggery.
Can’t say D’s are dumb… They have attacked our voting processes methodically, all for their advantage, whilst the R’s bury their heads in the sand or create false fears about a guy called Trump and then call their brokers to check on their net worth.
But…. but…. but….
How can America be driven bananas without a Banana Republic Grade® voting system?
The truth is that Italy’s voting system recognizes the eternal fact that some people will cheat. So, it’s designed to stop charters cold.
The Democrat mantra for many, many years has been that too many voters are “disenfranchised” by making the rules restrictive. Voter ID just isn’t fair to poor and disadvantaged minorities. Yet, no one can function in our society without having an ID. Thier mantra also demands that we trust everybody – that there are no cheaters. Yeah, like there are no illegal aliens flooding across our borders and fentanyl addiction isn’t a crisis.
Unless it’s acknowledged up front that cheating does occur, and all election procedures must be designed to defeat cheating; elections will be questioned. Otherwise, many voters will not trust the results.
Whenever election results are questioned, the mantra is that “everybody knows” the questions are “baseless.” My question to the election officials in Arizona, Nevada, Washington, California, and other states where the procedures are questioned is this: Why not be totally transparent about all issues. You claim the questions are baseless. Open the books. Prove it so that all of your voters will agree that the election was honest, and the count correct. The future of the nation as a democratic republic depends on all citizens trusting our elections. Not resolving this contentious issue is tearing the country apart.
@ JJ > “Not resolving this contentious issue is tearing the country apart.”
For the Left, that is a feature, not a bug.
Nearly all our cities, certainly all our major cities, have African levels of poverty, violence and corruption. All elections are stolen. and that goes back deep into the 19th Century.
Italy is laughing at our election process, but the shame isn’t definitive until Poland weighs in.
In Spain we have to show our identity card to be able to vote. The vote is done by papers that we put inside an envelope. We put the envelope inside a box. If we have to vote for different elections on the same day, for example senate, congress and regional elections, there is a different box for each of the elections, and different papers and envelopes with a different color for each election.
Voting hours are from 8 am to 8 pm. After 8 pm boxes are opened one by one and the People on each electoral table count them by hand. There are three People in each table during the whole day and until the voting is counted. These three people are chosen randomly from the census and are paid 50 euros for their work.
Besides those 3 People, every political party can send watchers Who have the right to stay there the whole day and take part in the counting. They make sure that there are always enough papers of every polítical party to choose from. Anyway, we are also sent home papers and envelopes for every major political party and every election, so most of us take them ready from home inside the envelopes.
By 11 pm of Election day the results are already counted and official. The boxes with the votes inside are precinted by the Police, signed by everyone who took part in the counting, and taken to the nearest justice court by a member of the electoral table escorted by two policemen. The boxes are storaged there should a recounting be necessary.
If someone wants to vote by mail, they have to ask for it in avance in a post office, and they have to show their ID and sign. The vote is precinted and sent in advance.
The system is so serious, safe and efficient that People in Spain can not believe how it is done in the USA. They literally dont believe me when I tell them about it. And so, they always think republicans are antidemocratic to suspect the results. The system is so third World that we can not associate it with the USA. But of course demography is destiny and the USA is at exponential speed leaving the first World and entering the third. As are France, Belgium, Sweden, England, etc.
The socialist goverment of Spain this week has passed a law giving spress spanish nacionality to southamerican children and grandchildren of spaniards. Of course those People Will vote by mail and the mail voting in Venezuela or Cuba for example May not be as trustable. It seems like the same modus operandi is working everywhere against western civilization.
Inmigration and vote fraud.
As Bertolt Brecht said, the goverments are electing a new People.
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Netherlands:
– no mail in voting
– no early voting
– government issued photo ID required
– every citizen allowed to vote (meaning everyone over 18) gets a physical voting card stating which polling station(s) they’re to use and which election the card is for mailed to their home address as known. This is required to be handed in, you get your ballot(s) in exchange. Number of handed out ballots is double checked against the number of received cards.
– voting in person only. Each person can only be authorised to vote for 2 other people, and only people voting in the same polling place (thus limiting ballot harvesting).
– if you want to vote somewhere else (e.g. you’re working too far from home to make it back there before the polling stations close) you need to apply for getting your polling place changed to your city of residence, and will be issued a new card listing the new polling station in exchange for your old one at least 2 weeks before election day.
– voting machines (both mechanical and electronic) are illegal. Only paper ballots marked by a special marker supplied by the polling station are allowed. Any other marker invalidates the ballot.
– citizens residing abroad have to vote in person at their nearest consulate or embassy (which becomes their polling station for the day). Same rules apply for them as for everyone else.
Doesn’t quite make fraud impossible, but extremely difficult.
Now if only our politicians would actually honour the outcome of the elections.
And if there weren’t persistent rumours that the actual election outcome doesn’t reflect the ballots collected but is determined between the party leaderships months in advance.