Voted

[sabotabby]

I have never seen lineups like this. It took an hour (I know that's nothing in the US, but in Canada that's a very long time—you're usually in and out in 5-10 minutes for advance polls). Also it's Easter, and raining. The poll workers were stressed but the mood in the lineup was quite cheerful and chatty.

You do not get a sticker or a lollipop and I think that needs to change.

Comments

[redbird]

For historical reasons, in the US they're allowed to hand out "I voted" stickers, but not lollipops or hot dogs or anything else that might count as an incentive to voting.

So we get places offering the occasional Election Day special, like free donuts, but they can't check whether the customer voted before giving them the donut.

[sabotabby]

What if the stickers are the glitter kind?

It's so weird that Trump and Elon can hand out checks for a million dollars but you can't hand out lollipops.

[springheel_jack]

Well, they can't, it's electoral fraud, but there's no law now, which has a number of downsides.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. It's not actually illegal here either. Ford can just hand out cash to people to vote for him.

[redbird]

Eln doesn't care about the law, or thinks the tradeoff is worth it; a Krispy Kreme donut shop or similar gains much less by giving out free donuts or coffee or such.

Those laws are decades-old, and were aimed at things like party bosses (Tammany Hall etc) giving people alcohol in return for votes: one shot of whisky per vote, not a huge check to one person. [I'm doing this from memory, which may be fuzzy on the details.]