Here are some surprising voting day practices from around the world

If you're a Floridian like me, you find voting is weird and sometimes perplexing here in the United States. Remember hanging chads?

That's not the only thing. We also always vote on a Tuesday. When we could be doing it on the weekend, or even a special holiday. (Why is that, anyway? Keep reading.)

But Americans aren't the only ones with odd electoral traditions. As the much-anticipated US election gets underway, we bring you some voting-day practices from around the world that might make you go:

Compulsory voting — except for soldiers — in various countries

In the US, the president is the commander in chief of the military and, theoretically, military personnel get to vote for their leader. That's outright not the case in Brazil. Nor in Kuwait, where soldiers can't vote and neither can police.

And while Americans elegible to vote typically only do so about half the time, here's a map of all the countries where voting is mandatory. Penalties for abstaining range from sort of nothing to withholding your salary. But this explainer from The Atlantic makes it all seem not so bad, because it actually does increase voter turnout.

No booze during voting time

This one might not be weird at all.

For one to two days before elections, Mexican states ban the sale of alcohol "to promote a way of voting that's peaceful. … And where people have all five senses intact," elections inspector Dora Maria Tapia told Fronteras. That seems legit, right?

Earlier this year, Peru and Colombia also deployed the "ley seca," or "dry law," during the presidential election and the peace plebiscite, respectively.

Shooting guns in the air in Lebanon

Our Beirut correspondent Richard Hall says this practice is "not reserved for elections, but firing guns in the air and fireworks is an election staple" in Lebanon.

People in lots of places like to fire into the sky when they're really happy (although it might have some really not-happy results). Do you think Beirutians will be doing that after Tuesday night?

Shamans in Peru

Ah, yes. The shamanic traditions are strong in my Andean home country. As they did during Peru's presidential elections this past summer, shamans in Lima recently organized a rite to predict who would become the next president of these United States.

But, Fox News Latino reports, "the results, like those of many polls in the United States, were unclear."

This was a gathering of shamans from all over Peru's coast. One from the northern region said he had given Republican candidate Donald Trump "spiritual power" to win the presidency. Others said the planetary alignment favored Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

No reporting on polls in the UK

When we were reporting on the UK's Brexit referendum earlier this year, our BBC correspondent in London had to be very careful about not producing stories until the polls had closed. This is because in Britain, there is a law aimed at preventing media influence over election results.

From our archives:

"Imagine a world where you could turn on the TV on election day and not be subject to an endless parade of pundits with nothing new to say. A world in which the media’s blowhard opining and meaningless speculation was forbidden by law — at least, until the polls closed.

This utopia exists, right here in Britain. … 

[T]he law forbids reporting on campaigns while citizens are casting votes, to ensure that media coverage doesn’t affect the outcome."

Since this isn't the case in the United States, we'll be coming atcha all day and night.

Voting on a Tuesday? (Yes, this is us in the United States.)

Why we do dat? NPR looked at this in 2012:

"Finally, in 1845, Congress decided to get things under control. Ritchie says lawmakers reasoned that Monday was out because (this is where the buggies come in) people would have to travel to the polls in their buggies on Sunday, the Sabbath. And in a mostly farming society, Wednesday wouldn't work because that was often market day."

But now market days are actually on weekends pretty often, and people might have a harder time getting to the polls on a weekday.

In Australia, voting happens on Saturdays! The Aussie broadcaster ABC seems perplexed with our weekday ballot-casting: "For a nation like ours with a Saturday voting tradition that includes parties and barbecues, the work-day election in the world's most celebrated democracy seems more than passing strange."

Also, there's a pretty ominous saying in Spanish about not doing anything significant on a Tuesday ("Martes"), because it's the day named after Mars, the Roman god of war. So, there's that.

But hey. This is how we do it in the US of A. So go vote. Here's some inspiration if you still need it.