Online voting, same-day registration, one full week to cast your ballot … and drinks! This is the way all primary elections should be organized. And who knows, maybe our expatriates will be the decisive margin this year, just as they arguably were in 2000. Per Bloomberg:
Polls close today in the only Democratic primary taking place in hotels, restaurants, all-night diners, pubs and beer halls over the course of a week.
American expatriates are turning their haunts into impromptu polling stations as they cast ballots for their presidential nominee for the first time since 1992. Democrats abroad will send 22 delegates, with 11 votes, to the convention in Denver.
“People just love coming out to the pub and voting,” Democrats Abroad Austrian Co-Chairwoman Katie Solon said as she sipped tea in Vienna’s polling place: Pickwick’s, a bar and English-language bookstore that served beer as ballots were filed on Feb. 5. “It’s amazing to have the community feeling.”
Democrats Abroad, the Washington-based organization representing party members living in over 100 countries, switched from a 16-year-old caucus system this year to try to increase turnout. Voters cast ballots on the Internet or show up for same- day registration at polls, in addition to retaining the ability to mail absentee ballots to their home states.
Pub voting could certainly ease those “lesser of two evils” elections. Pull the lever and drown your sorrows.
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p>Also has promise as a strategy for raising turnout.