Ballot Form: Fill & Download for Free

How completely incompetent it all is.Here in the UK, elections take six weeks from start to finish. The government contacts you annually to ask who is living in your house and is eligible to vote, and you fill in a form, either by post or online. Several weeks before an election they send you a polling card which you take along to your local polling station, where they cross you off a list (whether or not you remembered to bring the card, which just speeds things up). You vote by physically making an X on a list of names and then posting the ballot form into a locked box.Polling stations are open from 7am to 10pm - I’ve never in my life had to wait more than 15 minutes to vote, and 3 minutes would be more normal. Unless you live halfway up a mountain (and everyone has the option of voting by post, or nominating a trusted proxy voter to cast their vote for them) there will be a polling station within a mile of your house, and usually within half a mile.Mail-in votes have to be applied for at least two weeks in advance and received by polling day, so they can be counted in a timely fashion. Polling stations stay open till 10pm. Counting starts immediately, we get the first results at about 1am and it's all done and dusted by about 9am next day. I think only once in my life has there been a recount which dragged on for more than about 12 hours - and that was only for a single seat (in which the margin was about 6 votes out of 30,000).

I was surprised enough by this question to check out how Swedes do vote. The first web page turned up by my search describes the voting procedure:There are also different kinds of ballot papers, allowing you to vote either for a particular party (without identifying a specific candidate), to choose from a list of candidates as well as parties, or to vote using a blank ballot paper. On blank ballot papers, you can write down any party and candidate. In theory, it's possible to write anyone's name, and if that person got a large enough proportion of votes, they would be elected.You then put the ballot paper you picked in an envelope and hand it to the election officer in the room.And remember: in Sweden, voting is done by a secret ballot, so you do not need to tell anyone who you voted for if you don't want to.The question is “Why is the Swedish electoral system so undemocratic in a way that it is impossible for voters to vote secretly as is possible in other democratic countries?” The answer is that it is certainly possible to vote secretly for any candidate. The questioner’s confusion is because Sweden gives you more ways in which to vote: by party (with one ballot form), by candidate (using a different ballot form), or with a blank ballot form. (How to vote in the 2018 Swedish election).Is it possible for a Swede to vote in a way that lets an onlooker figure out for whom he or she is voting? Yes. It is also possible just to tell people for whom you are voting, if you don’t care who knows. Or you could choose to vote in a way that gives no clues.I suppose, if many Swedes don’t care who knows their vote, it’s because they tend to trust each other to an unusual degree (https://tino.us/2010/10/proving-bo-rothstein-wrong-why-do-swedes-trust-more-culture-not-welfare-state-policy/), on average 27% more than citizens of the United States do.

Here’s how elections in the Netherlands go:every eligible voter in the Netherlands receives a voting ticket at home, based on the records of the civil registration office.You take that ticket and a form of ID (passport, identity card, driver’s license) to a polling station, hand over the ticket, let them check your ID, and you get your ballot form to enter your choice, or are directed to the machine to enter your choice.People in the Netherlands do not have to register to vote, nor any of the other silliness that the US has thrown in to block easy voting.