turnout reports, voting problems, and last minute dirty tricks

[ag]

Now Parma, OH. I cannot spot any Black or Latino voter in that precinct either ...

Maybe you should read about that specific city's (racial) history.

Plz give me a summary. What's so special about Parma, OH ?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Parma%20Ohio

There is plenty more stuff if you want details.

But there is a but this year: Parma is heavily Ukrainian (well, "heavily" to the extent there are heavily Ukrainian places out there: sizeable Ukrainian nationalist population). Normally would mean heavily Republican. But this year at least some of those have their own reasons to hate Trump.

[ag]

The ordeal surrounding voting in the US always sounds so bizarre. I never had to wait in line or even spend more than a few minutes to bother about voting.

Though I guess inner city area and not being the victim of voter suppression goes a long way towards that.

Yeah, it is what happens when elections are run on the cheap. In Mexico they open nearly 150,000 polling stations, and no station can have more than 750 registered voters. I have never had to walk more than 3 or 4 blocks to a station, and the longest I once waited was about 15 or 20 min: usually you show up, vote your 6 ballots and are out in 15 in total (including the 3-minute wait in line). But it is a huge logistical exercise, and costs a pretty penny.

BTW, all paper, no early vote, multiple elections on the same day.

[ag]

The ordeal surrounding voting in the US always sounds so bizarre. I never had to wait in line or even spend more than a few minutes to bother about voting.

Though I guess inner city area and not being the victim of voter suppression goes a long way towards that.

Yeah, it is what happens when elections are run on the cheap. In Mexico they open nearly 150,000 polling stations, and no station can have more than 750 registered voters. I have never had to walk more than 3 or 4 blocks to a station, and the longest I once waited was about 15 or 20 min: usually you show up, vote your 6 ballots and are out in 15 in total. But it is a huge logistical exercise, and costs a pretty penny.

Roughly the same like here and in Sweden.

Austria for example has 11.000 precincts for 6.4 million voters. That's 580 voters per precinct, but 15% vote with postal ballots, so it's closer to 500 per precinct.

In the US, it seems there are about 5.000 voters per precinct ...

We do not have any domestic postal vote. If you are out of town for a national election you could go to one of the special precincts set for that purpose  in places like airports, but there are only 900 of them nationwide, if I recall correctly, and they have few ballots to avoid them being used for fraud.  The only postal ballot is for those resident abroad, and using this option is non-trivial, so there are only a few tens of thousands of such votes in total: with an electorate of over 80 mln.

BTW, who staffs your precincts?

[ag]

In Croatia we have 6700 polling stations for 3.8 million voters, or 560 voters per polling station.

This is a good average. Our maximum is 750, as soon as it is bigger, it is divided into two alphabetically. Mine had 483 registered voters at the last election, my wife's 484.

[ag]

The ordeal surrounding voting in the US always sounds so bizarre. I never had to wait in line or even spend more than a few minutes to bother about voting.

Though I guess inner city area and not being the victim of voter suppression goes a long way towards that.

Yeah, it is what happens when elections are run on the cheap. In Mexico they open nearly 150,000 polling stations, and no station can have more than 750 registered voters. I have never had to walk more than 3 or 4 blocks to a station, and the longest I once waited was about 15 or 20 min: usually you show up, vote your 6 ballots and are out in 15 in total. But it is a huge logistical exercise, and costs a pretty penny.

Roughly the same like here and in Sweden.

Austria for example has 11.000 precincts for 6.4 million voters. That's 580 voters per precinct, but 15% vote with postal ballots, so it's closer to 500 per precinct.

In the US, it seems there are about 5.000 voters per precinct ...

We do not have any domestic postal vote. If you are out of town for a national election you could go to one of the special precincts set for that purpose  in places like airports, but there are only 900 of them nationwide, if I recall correctly, and they have few ballots to avoid them being used for fraud.  The only postal ballot is for those resident abroad, and using this option is non-trivial, so there are only a few tens of thousands of such votes in total: with an electorate of over 80 mln.

BTW, who staffs your precincts?

Municipal clerks and party officials from all parties. All parties have a strong organisation in all towns and many volunteers, so it's pretty easy to find election officials here who are supervising the election process.

We have a draft, jury-duty style. For a federal election it is nearly 1,500,000 staffers and trained substitutes, which are called up and trained by 38,000 temporary electoral commission employees over several months. Parties send additional observers, of course (all 9 of them, not counting the state-only parties). Incredible exercise.

[ag]

The ordeal surrounding voting in the US always sounds so bizarre. I never had to wait in line or even spend more than a few minutes to bother about voting.

Though I guess inner city area and not being the victim of voter suppression goes a long way towards that.

Yeah, it is what happens when elections are run on the cheap. In Mexico they open nearly 150,000 polling stations, and no station can have more than 750 registered voters. I have never had to walk more than 3 or 4 blocks to a station, and the longest I once waited was about 15 or 20 min: usually you show up, vote your 6 ballots and are out in 15 in total. But it is a huge logistical exercise, and costs a pretty penny.

Roughly the same like here and in Sweden.

Austria for example has 11.000 precincts for 6.4 million voters. That's 580 voters per precinct, but 15% vote with postal ballots, so it's closer to 500 per precinct.

In the US, it seems there are about 5.000 voters per precinct ...

We do not have any domestic postal vote. If you are out of town for a national election you could go to one of the special precincts set for that purpose  in places like airports, but there are only 900 of them nationwide, if I recall correctly, and they have few ballots to avoid them being used for fraud.  The only postal ballot is for those resident abroad, and using this option is non-trivial, so there are only a few tens of thousands of such votes in total: with an electorate of over 80 mln.

BTW, who staffs your precincts?

Municipal clerks and party officials from all parties. All parties have a strong organisation in all towns and many volunteers, so it's pretty easy to find election officials here who are supervising the election process.

We have a draft, jury-duty style. For a federal election it is nearly 1,500,000 staffers and trained substitutes, which are called up and trained by 38,000 temporary electoral commission employees over several months. Parties send additional observers, of course (all 9 of them, not counting the state-only parties). Incredible exercise.

The ÖVP Interior Minister also suggested a jury-duty system for election workers after the original presidential runoff in May with mandatory e-learning programs. Even though the e-learning system was introduced now, the jury-duty system was scrapped because the party officials said that they will easily find the staff that is needed.

We do not trust our parties here.  They are welcome to observe, though.