So it looks like Obama won the election...
However, I'm curious about polling in America, since it (seems) to be different from Australia (forgive me if these are ignorant questions!).
- why isn't voting compulsary?
- why don't people vote? is it laziness? or they don't feel obligated to?
- how old do you have to be to vote?
- what are the criteria for absentee voting (posting a vote in before ( Read more... )
In Australia we have to vote on the day, except if there is a good reason why you couldn't (you were in hospital or nursing home or knew you were going to be unable to get to a booth for whatever reason on the day), but it is more typical to go to the booth on the day.
It's always interested me how American elections are on a week day because it would seem to limit the number of people who can get to the polls - even if employees are supposed to give time off. We have ours on Saturday from 8am to 6pm.
Are American elections called at a specific time? Here the in charge government is able to call an election at any time (within a certain time frame - a term is 4 years so they have to do it before the 4 years is up) and they can manipulate it slightly to call it when polls are in their favour.
I heard that about 62% of the eligible population voted this time, which is apparently a good turn out :)
Reply
Leave a comment