Why is it So Difficult to Vote?

This article by way of a colleague on how ex-pats have great trouble at times even to get a hold of a ballot, let alone getting it counted. The description here of how things (do not) function stateside is one concern people have about tomorrow. Sure, it's likely to be a turnout without precedent in living memory, but election day mechanics have been on the front burner now for almost eight years. Why do things not function more smoothly? Well, much has been done by many dedicated, hardworking officials and volunteers in many jurisdictions to improve things, so it's not inevitably going to be mayhem at the polls tomorrow. But part of the problems that remain is a lack of resources, ultimately caused by a reluctance of many Americans to pay the bill (that would be taxes) for a civilized society. So what you get instead is a country with many pockets (physical and metaphorical) of variations of something less than civilization. Most Americans do not seem to mind too much most of the time. Being somewhere else now, "civilized" Western Europe, I must say that it's nice, on the one hand, to have public things taken care of pretty well, generally speaking; on the other hand, there are those bills ...