Should some people get two (or three, or four) votes while others only get one?
By poingly
@poingly (605)
United States
January 10, 2010 4:02pm CST
So this is sort of spawned off another discussion on here that I was reading.
My parents live in a vacation community (though they have retired there full time), and an issue came up where many local residents who owned vacation homes there demanded being allowed to have a vote in elections there as well.
Does this seem right to anyone else? That just because someone owns two homes that they would be allowed to vote for two different mayors? Two different Senators?
This seems to break the idea of one person one vote. I sort of couldn't believe they even tried to get serious attention for it.
2 people like this
5 responses
@spalladino (17891)
• United States
11 Jan 10
I live in Florida and, no, I don't want the snowbirds who only live here part-time to have the ability to effect what goes on in my state. They are not residents...they are visitors.
@anniepa (27955)
• United States
12 Jan 10
Absolutely NOT!! However, it sort of ends up that way in some Presidential Elections with the stupid Electoral College. For example, in 2000 Gore got the most popular votes but Bush got all of the electoral votes for Florida when he only "won" - IF he won - by a few hundred votes. On the other hand, there were several small states where Gore had won by six figures but only got a very small number of electoral votes.
Annie
@poingly (605)
• United States
12 Jan 10
Technically the smaller states count more than the larger states.
Wyoming with a population of 550,000 people gets three electoral college votes. One vote per 184,000 people.
California with 37,000,000 people get 55 electoral college votes. One vote per 673,000 people.
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
12 Jan 10
Senator Harry Reid is promoting a bill that would automatically register every citizen to vote.. whether they register or not, so with voter fraud being so rampant, many may get to vote many times. (Using those name which didn't vote!) Tricky. So many tricks.
@poingly (605)
• United States
12 Jan 10
I don't see how automatically registering every citizen would allow this? In fact, if every citizen is automatically registered it might cut DOWN on voter fraud. If everyone is registered anytime someone registers a new address, it would be a given that they were already registered, and it would just a matter of finding the record.
I mean, I think the thing to remember is that voter fraud is illegal now; it will be illegal no matter what.
@xfahctor (14118)
• Lancaster, New Hampshire
10 Jan 10
What sort of elections are you talking about? if your talking about national and state elections...then No. period. typiclay though people who have residencies in multiple towns enjoy being able to vote at town meetings in each town they have a residence in. But to have more than one vote in actual elections....nope.
@poingly (605)
• United States
11 Jan 10
To make an interesting point, I don't think anything stops me from visiting my parents and showing up at their town meeting (or anyone else's town meeting for that matter). Though obviously if massive numbers of people starting showing up randomly at town meetings, it would probably raise some eyebrows.
In this situation, it was about actual voting/casting a ballot. I'm not quite sure how much they wanted to be able to vote on but they (obviously) didn't get it.
@thegreatdebater (7316)
• United States
11 Jan 10
There have been many people that have proposed ideas like this, but I haven't seen one that actually makes any sense yet. If you start to give people more votes than others, then you are discriminating against one group of people. Although, now there is a group of people that you can say are being discriminating against, but they do have a choice where they live, but you can understand how people feel about having to live with decision made by people who are only there part of the time.
