Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Legal in the US, But Illegal Elsewhere" video.

  1. As I see on comments and I'm sure Devin will receive tons on this, the only snag is that... down here in Banana Republic Brazil, we can still vote for "None of the Above"... as long as you show up. xD The "obligation", with major exceptions, is that you have to show up on election day and vote... but ou can still vote for no one. It's also an incredibly efficient system with voting happening always on Sundays and tons upon tons of voluntary citizens working in tons of voting places in every city... it's such a huge endeavor that at least in the past several election days I remember I didn't have to wait over 5 minutes in line to vote, and at most busy times you probably won't have to wait over an hour to do it - though there are places in Brazil that conditions are definitely worse. Things got simplified even further after the adoption of electronic voting systems, but historically, other than voting for candidates, there were two other possibilities - voting "blank" and voting "null" or invalidating your vote by error or by voting in some non-existent or pretend/joke candidate/party. It used to be that if you voted "blank", you were just "going with the majority"... because in effect your vote didn't count and so it meant you were satisfied with whoever was elected - you effectively gave up your voting power to the majority. If you voted "null" you were specifically saying you are against all choices. Something like this. Perhaps it's the other way around. Other than the difference for statistical purposes, which still exists today, this was used mainly in a specific situation where parties needed a number of votes to elect legislative representatives... but the legislation has changed since 1988, and now they are directly elected. This all changed definitively when we adopted electronic voting systems, for practical purposes. Nowadays in practice everything other than a valid vote is considered "blank", though the two former options still exist - electronic booths all have a "blank" button so people can nullify their votes by pressing that, or you can press a bunch of zeros or numbers for candidates that don't exist and vote for that if you want to vote "null", they will be counted like so, but in practice it's just a plain majority vote, so a candidate will be decided either way. It's heavily discouraged to do so because in the end you are just relegating your voting power to the majority, so better to chose someone even if it's the "least worse"... which is what most of us sane Brazilians do every 4 years anyways, nevermind the fanatics and cultists. :P Oh, a more complete description of what happens if you don't vote here. First of all, you can justify not going to vote before, during or after the election, up to 60 days after - or 30 days after your entry in the country if you were traveling abroad. The base justification is that you were away from your designated place of voting... in practice, since I've never heard of this being checked in any way, it can be an excuse for anything... so if you don't wanna vote, you just say you'll be away at election day. These days you can also justify in presence at relevant public service buildings, by mail, or using the official elector app available both on iOS and Android, as long as it's during those valid days - before, during, or up to 60 days after. If you do none of that, miss the period, and don't justify... then when you finally do, you'll have to pay the measly fine. And then if you skip 3 elections not justifying nor paying fines, then your voter ID gets cancelled. Oh, BTW, the fine considering current currency exchange would actually be LESS than a buck... xD It's like, 70 cent. Getting your voter ID cancelled has a bit more consequences than just having to do a new one though... but only if you work for or depend on the public sector. You can't renew an ID or passport, you can't apply for nor receive wages for a government tied job, you can't be a candidate for any election, you can't get a bank loan and you can't run for government contracts - and that's basically it. You can always pay the fines and renew your voter ID though. Just to give a general idea how it is in practice though, let's consider the last 2018 presidential election (we have an upcoming election next month currently in 2022), the first round only because we had two. Over 20% of voters in Brazil did not vote, that's almost 30 million people. We had a bit over 3 million "blank" votes, and a bit over 7 million "null" votes, put together almost 9% of voters showed up and either voted wrong or purposely voted for no one. So yeah... I guess even though in Brazil voting is obligatory, and seen as a civil duty, for the most part if you don't wanna vote, there are just tons of ways of not doing it, including opening an app on election day and saying you won't be able to make it. :P
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