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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2026
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So you don't think about whom to vote for before you enter the voting booth? There are all kinds of arguments about voting by mail on both sides, this may be one of the weakest.
Maybe true for you and I but I'm sure plenty of people are too tired from their day jobs and just vote blue but haven't looked deep enough into the other candidates and you end up with someone like fetterman. If you vote by mail you can dive deep into what each candidate truly fights for.
You have weeks or months before the election to make that decision.
If you’re too exhausted from your day job to do meaningful research into the candidates, why would the option of a mail-in ballot make you less exhausted?
I don't think you're a human being. You don't demonstrate a reasonable understanding of human nature and how people actually live their lives.
Do you go to the polls with a big set of notes on who all the major and minor candidates you want to vote for are? In Texas they explicitly ban phones in the voting booths. Nominally this is so you don't take pictures of your completed ballot. In reality it's so you can't research candidates while in the voting booth.
I, personally, don't live in the US and am not a citizen there. Elections in my country are usually just elections to one single office (or assembly), not several at a time.
But yes, I generally walk into the voting booth knowing how I'm going to vote. If I had trouble remembering this, then yes, I would write it down and take those notes with me. If you think that Texas law you describe is especially bad, then I wonder how you think people voted before smartphones…
Well in the US, we hold our election in bulk. You'll have dozens of federal, state, even city and county races on the same election day. This is the context of the discussion here. We're talking American politics, not German politics.
Yes, I know that. Still, if there were more than one election on the ballot, I would do the necessary research before and walk into the voting booth already knowing what I'm going to tick. I wouldn't know why anyone would do it differently.
(My country is Austria, not Germany, but the same would apply if it were Germany.)
I mean, the reason is as given. Many people have difficulty keeping track of the several dozen names/initiatives they want to vote for, in addition to the (purposely, these days) onerous process of voting in person at polling places.
If we can remove barriers to voting, we absolutely should. If it is a struggle for voters to keep track of everyone and everything on the ballot, and voting by mail helps solve that, then that is a fantastic solution.
its way easier but honestly mostly for judicial retention. having to bring in notes to the poll is a pain.
Why do you have to bring in notes? I've always made decisions beforehand and go in and vote for them.
100% your not from the us. with judicial retention im not sure if it reaches 100 but it can be over two pages. Don't think I have ever seen four. I mean granted if your the type to shirk the judicial then its more possible but you have water reclamation districts. school districts. local, county, state, and federal things. Its still a lot.
100% I am from the US. Born here and raised here. Did live overseas for awhile. But back in the US for many years now. Been at this voting thing for quite some time, participating in every local, state, and federal election that's come and gone. I still say I don't need pages of notes when I've made my mind up about the candidates beforehand.
I call bs to this. Unless you have an edict memory that is way to many names to have memorized when you get to the polls.
Well, thankfully I have no desire nor obligation to prove anything to you. Call whatever you like. Just because you can't manage it doesn't make it true for everyone else.
It is not, nor ever has been, hard in any election I've participated in to know which persons I'm voting for. I don't care if you believe me. Have you perhaps considered that not every election process is the same? Maybe your state does it different from the 4 states I've voted in.
It's a pretty good argument for down-ballot races and legislation. Every piece of policy I've voted on has been confusingly written, so it's hard to tell exactly what the result of a yes/no vote is.