Marc Palmer

The other day, thanks to Garr Reynolds’ always useful Presentation Zen blog, I watch this video of Seth Godin talking about how things are so often “broken” and how people are complicit in creating the breakage or ignoring it, or not complaining about it.

Now it’s a very amusing and quite thought-provoking talk. I now look at things even more critically than I used to, and annoy my wife by telling her how broken something is.

Anyway, the US voting system is broken. Ignore the problems with ballot papers, dodgy voting machines, and the whole lack of security in the electronic voting machines…

The US voting system is broken, I can tell, because all I hear on the news is how people are voting EARLY and yet it is taking them 3-4 hours in many cases, from entering the building to casting their vote.

This is utterly utterly broken, and you have to wonder if it is broken intentionally (one of Seth Godin’s 7 or so reasons for being broken is deliberately broken by the maker).

After all, a long delay to vote is rather a good way of filtering out certain kinds of voters – those with low paid jobs and unhelpful bosses – those who are carers – those who are young and have something better to do with their four hours. Could voting delays alone be the single nascent reason behind the Republican presence in the White House for so long?

Can you imagine the outcry if it took people 4 hours to vote in the UK!?

For your information, last time I voted in the UK it took 5 minutes.