Okay, I get it. I don't see what it has to do with my point--if it's worth avoiding, then isn't it thought to be occurring a significant amount? Or at least to be a risk of polluting the results? And therefore a donkey vote is worth less than a vote you'd cast?

What it has to do with your point is that donkey voting isn't an issue of uninformed voters voting. It's closer to voter apathy.

Donkey voting accounts for between 1% and 2% of the vote in Australia, incidentally. Not a huge amount, but obviously it could become significant in marginal seats.

Ok, it's been fun, but it's past 3 here and I really need to get to bed now. Off to sleep the sleep of the doomed.

I didn't mean uninformed voters. I meant uninformed votes. And in my semantics, that definitely includes the donkey vote.

Do you know how donkey voting trends? From your description of the inception of compulsory voting, it doesn't sound like Australia would have had the same mindset hurdles you'll get in the US.

Have sent the family home. Now am going to eat Easter candy and think about calling my crazy friend whose calls I've been avoiding 'cause I have been entertaining family and dealing with potential trauma.

Typically you can only vote absentee if you have some reason why you can't make it to the polls on election day.

In NC, you can vote absentee for almost any reason. My first presidential vote was cast absentee, because I was in college in Chapel Hill and registered to vote in Greensboro. NC's also been experimenting with extended voting. In the 2004 elections I voted a week or so ahead of time. It was at a different spot than my usual polling place, but once I found it I was able to walk in, grab my ballot, and vote with less than a five minute wait. I think it's a lovely idea--unless one of the candidates goes on a naked shooting spree in the Mall of the Americas, odds are ones mind is made up by the time early voting opens.

Paid time off:

§ 17-118. Refusal to permit employees to attend election. A person or corporation who refuses an employee entitled to vote at an election the privilege of attending thereat, as provided by the election law, or subjects such employee to a penalty or reduction of wages because of the exercise of such privilege, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

that doesn't say paid to me. I think that it means that you cannot be penalized for voting, and they have to let you do it, but they don't have to pay your for it.

I might be wrong, but this:

or subjects such employee to a penalty or reduction of wages because of the exercise of such privilege

reads to me like you can't deduct wages for time taken off to vote.

I think OR might've. Not that it matters to me, since I've voted absentee for almost 18 years.

I want Cindy for Grand Poobah of Everything - who's with me?

Back to turducken:

I think that this particular level of overindulgence hasn't really hit the UK yet

I think the UK's had it and gotten over it. If I'm remembering my History of Food: Renaissance Europe class correctly, Ren. era feasts featured things like roast peacock (with the feathers put back on for table presentation) stuffed with goose, stuffed with grouse, stuffed with pigeon, stuffed with thrush, stuffed with finch, stuffed with a quail egg.

Although, maybe the UK hasn't entirely gotten over it...slashfood also educated me about a Scotch Egg, which looks like the Everlasting Gobstopper of breakfast foods. It's a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage then rolled in breadcrumbs and deep-fried.

odds are ones mind is made up by the time early voting opens

And if not, you don't have to vote right away.

Count me among the "all for making it easier to vote." Preferably with the paid holiday or more-than-one-day plan.

U.S. Fed policy -- for federal elections, you can either come in as late as three hours after the polls open or leave three hours before the polls close, whichever gives you less time off, paid. Not aware of any policies on state or local elections, but I wasn't able to vote at least once (state primary election) because I had to work late.

And,

It's a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage then rolled in breadcrumbs and deep-fried.

Talk about your heart attack on a plate!