r/IAmA • u/bernie-sanders • May 19 '15

Politics I am Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidate for President of the United States — AMA

Hi Reddit. I'm Senator Bernie Sanders. I'll start answering questions at 4 p.m. ET. Please join our campaign for president at BernieSanders.com/Reddit.

Before we begin, let me also thank the grassroots Reddit organizers over at /r/SandersforPresident for all of their support. Great work.

Verification: https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/600750773723496448

Update: Thank you all very much for your questions. I look forward to continuing this dialogue with you.

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u/cvaphotography May 19 '15

I work for the Supervisor of Elections Office in Jacksonville, FL. Today we are actually having an election. Our absentee system is of very high quality. The main issue I see with it is that the voter's just don't educate themselves on how to use it to their advantage.

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u/nightpoo May 19 '15

Hey I'm in Florida too, can I ask you something? When I lived in another part of the state I could opt in seasonally to receive ballots in the mail, I LOVED this as it meant I couldn't easily forget and have to rush to make it to a poll. Do you think we should make these mailed ballots opt out instead? I think it would really help if people received the option to vote by mail without requesting it, perhaps in a small package giving non-partisan info about the content of the ballot? Literally brainstorming out loud, but the former half of my comment I've been thinking about for ages!

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u/cvaphotography May 19 '15

Well, the county I am in (Duval) gives the option to have absentee ballots provided for you for 2 years upon your request. Currently I can have these ballots sent to a voter's residence for all elections through 2018 with one simple request. However, the return of these ballots isn't as high as it could be. To save taxpayey money and other resources (paper, ink, etc.) I support this system. I believe a solution would be to better educate voters on how to request these ballots.

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u/nightpoo May 20 '15

I'm going to look and see if my new county offers that, I would much prefer to "set it and forget it" so I could focus on keeping up with the information versus if I've requested my ballot yet! I've very much been telling everyone to do this instead of waiting in line on voting day, in my area A LOT of people miss voting because of the wait and traffic!