reflecting on my voting record and life as a migrant

[amw]

For entirely selfish reasons, i really wish the US election season was limited, like it is in pretty much every other democracy. The reason is that apparently no matter my intent beforehand, i still end up getting suckered into following the horse race, for nigh on TWO FUCKING YEARS out of every four. It's ridiculous. "She doesn't even go here

Comments

[siglinde99]

Unlike you, I have voted in practically every possible election since I became eligible, even when living abroad. I may have missed a municipal election or two while on posting, but I don’t think so. I’m still exhausted and very worried. Election interference and this have me turning to Star Trek. I’m currently watching DS9, which feels the most authentic right now, yet far more positive (in current circumstances) than it usually does:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/incendiary-devices-plot-canada-russia-1.7378613

[amw]

As a (former) Canadian public servant, how do you feel about naturalized Canadians living overseas voting? I think what makes me feel a little awkward is that i don't even have any family in Canada. I was the first person in my family to migrate there, and i don't have a partner or kids, so from the point of view of my value to the country, my only value was resident-for-tax-purposes for around 5 years of my life. I like to think that since Brexit i have repesented Canadian values abroad by presenting myself as Canadian and being generally polite and open-minded and multicultural/cosmopolitan... but am i contributing enough "soft power" to have earned a say in governance? I don't know.

I really wish that countries had a dedicated representative for overseas citizens. Especially Canada and the UK, which are both not just countries of immigrants but countries of emigrants too, with almost 10% of their citizenry living overseas. We would never form a large enough voting bloc to dominate parliament, but at least our voices could be heard

[siglinde99]

I have mixed feelings about it. The government did try to limit voting to people who hadn’t been out of the country for more than X number of years, but that was a disaster politically for all the immigrant politics reasons. Then they tried limiting votes to those who were no more than one generation away from being born in Canada or a naturalized citizen. That also proved problematic as people born abroad but with strong ties to Canada who happen to be working abroad for short periods would not be able to pass on automatic citizenship to children born abroad. That would be the case for both my kids, for example

[annaserene]

As a life-long dual citizen of Germany and the U.S., and as someone whose mother received permission as an adult to keep her German citizenship and acquire U.S. citizenship, there are exceptions.

There is a loop-hole for Japan, which is an open secret and only really becomes controversial when it concerns a famous person (such as Naomi Osaka), though there are fewer ways or instances of it compared to Germany. Japan is stricter and doesn't make exceptions on purpose.

I even met someone from China who acquired New Zealand citizenship but managed to hang on to her Chinese passport. I asked her about it but apparently she could simply use it at the airports in China and no one asked questions (similar to Japan), at least at the time.

Anyway, you raise a lot of interesting points.

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[coercedbynutmeg]

Heh, I vote where I don't even live. I've voted in Virginia since 2011, but only lived there from 2011-mid-2013 and 2018-mid-2021. I vote to keep my state residency out of question.

I used to deeply research all the candidates, especially for small, local races like city council or school board, and I'd pick those who best reflected my views, and they almost never won. The winners were always the guys who sent out flyers or door hangers or had campaign posters. Or the people whose names appeared at the top of the ballot.

[amw]

You guys vote on so much in the US it's bananas. I can't believe most voters really pay that much attention to all the downballot stuff, although things might go better in their lives if they did focus more on those than the president and whatnot. When local politicians do stuff, you can actually see the change right in front of you, no need to pick up a newspaper to read about it or have some guy on a podcast telling you how to feel.

In Australia they have a mildly-complicated preferential voting system where you have to stack candidates in priority order, so of course, the parties all hand out "how-to-vote cards" so that voters don't need to think about who they're voting for, they just vote what their chosen party suggests. But then you gotta wonder... why even bother with the preferential vote at all then? Huh, there's even a wiki about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How-to-vote_card

I can't decide if it's more democratic to allow everyone to vote on everything and then people don't have the time or interest to give a shit so

[coercedbynutmeg]

The US used to be more republican in their elections, like until the early 20th century, the Senators (upper federal legislative house) were selected by their respective states and not a popular citizen vote. I'd honestly prefer returning to that because it would get rid of a lot of money in elections. Like, you'll hear about some company in Connecticut throwing $20MM towards a Senate candidate in Minnesota and it's just ridiculous. Let the legislatures, which are more attuned to the needs of their specific states, pick the senators instead.

I recently found out that voting in Australia is mandatory and you get fined if you don't, which sounds crazy. I do think ignorant voters are probably worse on the whole than abstaining voters, especially since the impacts of proposals (both positive and negative) are typically understated. Like, in 2008, California voted for this high-speed train from SF to LA. 16 years later, it's not built, it's not even close, and they've squandered a gazillion dollars on it. But yeah, for a lot of

[annaserene]

While living in Northern Ireland in 2016, there was an election and a local guy at work mentioned he didn't vote. A woman from Belgium asked him what will happen to him since he didn't vote. It turns out voting is compulsory in Belgium, which honestly sounds good to me considering all the voter suppression in the U.S., for instance. But it's true that in the U.S. there are so many smaller elections with candidates nobody's heard of, and it's important to make informed decisions.

[olamina]

Believe me, we Americans wish the election cycle was shorter too..The only people that benefit from this is the media and all the analysts and consultants in the political space. I am certain these long political cycles is what contributes to the "division" the pundits are always lamenting.

I really think people are mostly the same everywhere, but when faced with having to choose which mafia should run the country, most eligible voters in America realize it all sucks and stay home and the others mostly just flip a coin.

As an anarchist, I find representative democracy appalling, so I don't vote for candidates, but I will do the ballot measures. We had one here that I guess "enshrines" equal rights and makes abortion fairly impossible to be outlawed. That's all I participated in.

[amw]

I think every US presidential election that passes, i hate the media even more. It's like a codependent relationship where America's shitty electoral system is enabled by the media that reports on it, because earning money doing play-by-play and color commentary on a 2 year long horse race is presumably easier than having to spend time investigating leads that may or may not turn out to be stories. And then there's the next level of codependency which is the people who are addicted to the 24 hour news cycle that enable the media to produce such garbage content. And then when finally a good story comes along, it disappears under the mountain of pointless political bickering and culture war nontroversies.

I am a little more optimistic about the average voter than you. Usually more than half of eligible voters turn out in the US, so they must have some faith in the system to do "something" or they really would stay home. And i suspect that more than half of those are also "true believers", as much as anarchists would like to think

[annaserene]

Interesting. My situations have been different but I can relate in certain ways. For instance, as soon as I turned 18, I felt it was my responsibility to vote and I always have in the U.S., where I was living at the time, though I realized last week that I hadn't been living in the U.S. during a presidential election since 2012. Anyway, one issue with local elections here is that they are so small that at times only one candidate is listed for a certain position, but the worst thing is when these local candidates are listed but I can't find any information about them. It might be considered a "minor" election, but it blows my mind that I'm sitting at home with my ballot and cannot even find a website for more than half of the candidates, nor can I easily find any information about them online, not even on the town's website, which facilitates the voting. So that's odd in my opinion and frustrating.

The other, more relevant, thing is that I haven't lived in Germany for more than a few months since I was a child. In 2014, I was studying