Hi, my name is Helka and I'm from Iceland. Election day in Iceland is always on a Saturday

and the government encourages people to vote. Election day is also always in the summertime, so no

win is weather trapped or can't make it because of bad weather conditions.

Hi everyone, my name is Patima. I'm from Ecuador and I just want to let you know a little bit about how voting is an election day

It's actually mandatory to vote, which I think it's great and on that day you get an appointment on a location that you need to vote on.

Normally it happens on Sundays. You normally get a lot of lines because it's already

pre-registered with your ID number.

The polls happen continuously around the day and then you get the results at the end of the day.

Voting is one of the few things that I actually remember really clearly from my early childhood. Our polling place was in my elementary school,

which was closed for the occasion.

So this meant it was all dim and quiet.

My mom would take me into the booth and she'd close the curtain behind us and there was this air of excitement, you know,

and seriousness in there. And she'd tell me which candies to choose and I would flip the heavy switches and

then at the very end we would pull the lever together. In the United States only

55% of the eligible population voted in the 2016 election.

In terms of a test grade, that's a hard fail,

and one that puts us far behind most of the democratic world.

There's a certain irony there.

The US is the world's oldest modern democracy.

Over the centuries, it inspired dramatic

democratic shifts across the globe, and its constitution was regularly used as a model

in the process.

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