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00:00We're going to take a look at how Americans actually do cast their ballots in the election.
00:05Solange Mougin with us in the studio now and it's a rather complex process Solange to cast
00:11their ballot and you've brought a rather precious document with you, there it is.
00:14Here it is, it is my absentee ballot that I will be mailing in later today
00:19but I thought it illustrates quite well how complex and what a hodgepodge actually
00:23voting is like in the US. Why isn't it simpler? Because the rules of how you vote and how your
00:28ballot is counted, they are largely set by the states and different jurisdictions and there are
00:3310,000 jurisdictions and 176,000 precincts in the United States and they set many of these rules.
00:40So in the county that I am from you have an envelope that you send it back to them with
00:46when you vote absentee. You also have a something called a security sleeve, you slip your ballot in
00:53here, it is in English and in Spanish and then on the back you have places where you sign
01:00your name. If you can't sign your name a witness has to sign it for you again in multiple languages
01:06and then inside you have your ballot. It is big and long. On your ballot I will be voting for 20
01:15different people, different roles. The president, the senator for the US senate but also
01:20one of the state ones, four levels of judges from state judges to family judges to town judges,
01:26as well as representatives from for the US congress and also state congresses. On the back
01:32this year there are three local propositions in my county. One is about whether to not about
01:38protecting against unequal treatment, whether that should be added to the New York state,
01:42I'm from the New York state constitution. Then these two here they are really very my town
01:48specific. One is about water quality in my town, another is about a parkland on a specific block.
01:55All of this to show you that when you vote in the US it is a far cry from the one piece of paper you
02:00stick in an envelope like in France. Of course there are a few nationwide rules that were added
02:06to the US constitution over time, like the fact that the election is on the Tuesday following
02:12the first Monday of November, like the fact that women and minorities can vote, that you can start
02:17voting at age 18. But beyond these constitutional amendments and laws it's pretty much up to states
02:23and the jurisdictions and precincts to decide the rules. It certainly looks much more complicated
02:27than the voting ballot I get in the United Kingdom, Solange. Why are there so many different rules
02:32per state? Take us through the history of this really rather decentralized system. Well the
02:37founding fathers of the US constitution, they decided not to include any specifics, leaving it
02:42up to the states. Already in the colonies before independence there were lots of different
02:48practices. George Washington in his bid to be part of the colonial Virginia's house of Burgesses, which
02:52was kind of like the house of lords for the colony, he invited voters over for barbecue and beer.
02:58Back then, even and then even after independence, well people would vote viva voce, or they would
03:03say out loud who they were voting for, either verbally, by voice, or actually with their bodies.
03:11The word polling actually comes from the practice of counting people's heads as voters walk from one
03:16side of the commons to another. Another tidbit, the word ballot comes from placing a small ball,
03:21be it a bean, a corn kernel, or even a bullet inside for one candidate or another. Now the
03:27practice of anonymous secret voting, it really didn't come into place until something called
03:32the Australian ballot gained popularity. This was made into law in Australia in 1856. It is a single
03:38ballot that's provided for you that has all of the parties on it. This kind of ballot caught on
03:43especially because of poverty. The idea being that a poor person's vote could not be bought as easily
03:49if voting was anonymous and secret. But this progressive advance, it also has had a sort of
03:53darker side. It was a way of effectively disenfranchising anyone who couldn't read the
03:58paper ballots in the private booth. Today literacy is less of a problem than it was in the 1800s and
04:03early 1900s, but there are other ways of restricting how people vote. Right, so let's talk
04:08about that then. Today, Solange, what are some of the ways that the rules can either
04:12enfranchise or disenfranchise a voter? Well after Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 election
04:19was stolen, there was an increase in new voting restrictions. In 2024, this year alone, the Brennan
04:26Centre for Justice says there have been 18 new laws in nine states, most of them pushed by
04:31Republicans. And all this despite the fact that researchers and the courts have found that
04:35actually voter fraud in the U.S. is exceedingly rare. So a prime example of such laws are voter
04:42ID laws. Since 2020, eight states have imposed new and stricter voter ID laws. That's potential
04:48restrictions to some 29 million eligible voters. Today there are 12 states that now have very,
04:55very strict ID laws, including four of the seven swing states. Now you could argue,
05:01what's the big deal? Just get the ID that you need. But the University of Maryland
05:07did a study and it found that nearly 50 million Americans who are of voting age, well they do not
05:13have what's required of them. And minority voters are more vulnerable, especially since the U.S.
05:19Supreme Court loosened oversight on such things in 2013, paving the way for very specific and
05:25potentially disenfranchising laws. Okay, but that's not the only issue, is that there are other ways
05:30that the rules can affect the vote? Yeah, a prime example of one of these other ways is absentee and
05:38mail-in ballots. In 2020, some 65 million voters sent in ballots by mail. This method has become
05:43increasingly popular. On the one hand, this is great because it ensures that more people can
05:46vote. Election day is not a holiday in the U.S. or not on Sunday like here in France. But on the
05:51other hand, discarding ballots with minor errors like a missing signature or a missing date, well
05:56it's more common in some states when you mail in ballots. In Pennsylvania, 20,000 mail-in ballots
06:02were rejected in 2020. And the wild thing about Pennsylvania is that there are no fixed statewide
06:08rules on this. It is up to the 67 election boards, which are partisan, so they're either Democrat or
06:13Republican, well it's for them to decide what is a valid, if something is missing, whether to
06:18reject it or not. And with Pennsylvania being the swing states of swing states, such votes
06:25and or the calling of such votes could really matter. So you could argue why not standardize
06:29the rules with a constitutional amendment so it's fair and equal for all regardless of the
06:33jurisdiction. Well that would require a majority of lawmakers to agree, two-thirds of Congress,
06:38three-fourths of state lawmakers, and currently we are definitely not in sort of the bipartisan
06:43climate that would permit that right now at least. That is certainly true. What an interesting
06:49dive there into how the election works in the United States. Thanks very much.