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For ~ 83 million registered voters, that's 1.57KB per voter. It's a lot, but it's not obscene. You can see a sample redacted db record on the article. They have voter ID laws, so they have a bit more info, including maternal/paternal parents.

You can't even store 1 byte per voter on less than 50 floppy disks.

how can every 3rd world country have figured out the ink/thumb solution that costs nothing while we spit into the wind with Billions?

Because most of them don't think voting should be as easy as any other day to day task and believe that the possibility of fraud is something worth working hard against... instead here, asking to see a photo ID is somehow racist.

Yep. The lack of voter ID causes the US to fail international electoral guidelines:

Does the legal framework for elections require that voters be adequately identified prior to receiving a ballot?

In the US? NO. To do so would be "RAAACIST!!!!"

Does the legal framework contain sufficient safeguards to prevent fraudulent or double voting?

In the US? NO. To do so would be "RAAACIST!!!!"

Does the legal framework prevent a person from using an alternative method and the regular process to vote twice in the same election?

In the US? NO. To do so would be "RAAACIST!!!!"

I have to imagine that mandatory voting would simply replace our current system with a human-powered random number generator...

either that, or folks will skew towards the top/bottom/middle option. I could see a lot of candidates changing their names to Aaron Aabraham and such...

What I don't see happening is a large impact in voter turnout: http://www.idea.int/vt/images/...

Here's how to fix it. Do exactly what we do here in Australia. Make it compulsory for everyone to be on the electrol roll and have up-to-date details. Check this with tax file numbers, government payments, medical even door-to-door etc... Make it compulsory for everyone to vote and fine those who don't. Here's the voter turnout data for Australia.

What most people don't understand is while most countries have only two blocs, Israel has seven blocs, maybe four if you squint real hard. The system is unstable because the country is divided, not the other way around! And even this instability is exaggerated. Israel had 15 elections from 1945 to 2001. In comparison, the UK, Norway and France had.. 15 elections (figure 11 - yes, I know it doesn't count parliamentary replacement of PM which is why Italy looks too good, but that happened only once in Israel's history and at the end the ruling coalition kept its position).

  PR guarantees that everyone is represented and that the government is legitimate and has majority support. Given the history of the Middle East and Israel, this is more than enough.

This is actually a common misconception that our voter turnout, while we are definitely not the highest, but we are far from the worst. We have about a 60% turnout for point of reference: http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop2.cfm

Also I think I remember from a sociology class a while ago something about if >x% of voters participate it's a sign of imminent collapse, though I don't have a good source for that.

Sweden has 80% vote participation where the votes are completely hand counted. I fail to see how electronic voting would help... We use fill in the box votes where only a few are ever discarded. http://www.idea.int/vt/country_view.cfm?CountryCod e=SE

> I am in strong support of a tax deduction for voting

In Belgium we've compulsory voting. You don't get tax deductions but get fined if you don't :-) . You've the right to cast a "blank" vote but whatever you do, you must show up and cast a vote. You're actually getting an offical invitation and your identity is being registered while you cast your vote. There's a reasonable chance you get called upon to assist and check the actual voting. If you're unable to physicaly attend for a good reason, you can fill in some paper to give someone permission to show up in your place.

As a result the political landscape is completly different. There are typical between 4 and 10 reasonable big parties and there's a bigger chance you find a party which matches better your opinion. Governing is also more different and maybe more difficult I think . Decissions are far often more compromises. It allows however also for
smaller parties to actually get some of their action points through legislation.

http://www.idea.int/vt/compulsory_voting.cfm
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2874.htm

Nice sentiments but in so far as elections go a secret ballot that is counted by people who all distrust each other guarentees the fairest outcome. At the risk of repeating myself the simplest example I know is a parent teaching their kids how to share, one cuts the cup-cake the other one gets first choice. This method doesn't extend to every situation ( see king solomon and the divide the baby story ), but in "seen to be fair" elections, distrust amongst the competitors is channeled towards a general trust in the outcome, and don't forget "the government" is composed of humans who deserve our love but must earn the extrodinary trust we give them ( eg: capital punishment ).

The processes for fair elections are well known, the processes for getting elected are somewhat more obscure.

"No one commented on the story because it is too filthy to be true.

I agree that the first dozen or so pages of OT comments demonstrates either a failure in the mod system or a failure in the political system.

http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop2.c fm

Actually, I believe your almost right. It shows that no matter where you go, there's bound to be an overabunance of redneck hicks whose "social life" consists of drinking until gut content rejection and life goals equating to seeing how pimp they can get their cars by adding on lots of useless shit. I would imagine people like these really don't give a fuck about politics. Hence, for example, the 49.3% voter turnout of 2000 in the US. Correlation = causation? You decide.

30 countries or so have mandatory voting. Principled objections to mandatory voting aside, why do you think people would hate being forced to vote? I don't get the impression that the voters in compulsory voting countries hate their countries' systems, though of course I don't know for sure and the strength of a country's enforcement varies from country to country.

I find it funny that the copyright issue is forced usage not applied usage. The angle everyone attacks the copyright issue is from the "Copyright holder" not the public.

The copyright holder has the right not to put his copyrighted work on our public airwaves without the broadcast flag. But under a free market, someone else will step up and fill that role.

We let the content providers dictate what usage we must agree too, when in reality we should force them to our regulations. If they don't like the regulations, they can still protect their copyrights and not release. But its a true free market, someone else will step up and do business. Copyright is the smokescreen to total control of distribution.
You can have 100% open distribution and protect Copyrights, the copyright owner just doesn't participate.

Example.
Sony: We won't show our new movie on HDTV if it doesn't support the broadcast flag.
Cable CO: You have that right, we will go with someone else's movie then.

And you just opened the market and have no regulation, in fact that's de-regulation, and people still have copyrights over their content.

Our society has it backwards, we allow businesses to dictate the ways and means of how they do business with the public. This is what creates mono or duopolies. We over-regulate the protection of the businesses, and the consumers pay for it. Why should business's have special interests? It's a free market, well, in theory.

BTW, FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell wants the market de-regulated, he understands it. He showed it in the non-regulation on WiFi, he should use it for HDTV also. Wish I could ask him, humm.

-
USA ranked 114 worst voter participation by country.

Maybe. I think tradition is a part of it, but seeing the relatively low numbers that turn up with eletions in the Netherlands for example, I am not so sure if peopel can really handle the choice better.

Voter turnout in The Netherlands is higher than in the US.

Question is, what is better, someone voting on a side while they just don't know but its what their environment does as well, or people not voting because they dont know.

People who don't think for themselves, but simply copy others are not improving the result of the election. They are simply distorting the result. It seems that in the US, this group has become a majority of the voters. The end result is that politicians stop caring about being positive, but move to a smear campaign, since the 'copiers' can only be persuaded not to vote for the other candidate. A consistent and intelligent set of standpoints is not that important anymore, because you can't convince the copiers anyway. In The Netherlands, this seems to be much less the case.

Could it be that these two parties have 'chosen' values which actually do manage to accurately represent the values of a majority of the people in this country?

I don't see why it would. The majority of the people in the country don't vote.

A sensible system of electing representatives would use proportional representation to fill many legislative seats from a relatively large geographic area. E.g., if the Republicans have 51% of the electorate, they should have 51% of the legislature---not 100% because they just squeaked by in every district. This is more fair both to major parties, and to minor parties that are currently squeezed out completely.

There are working models of voting systems that ensure PR, such as the Hare system of Single Transferable Vote. You won't find support for PR in the Democratic or Republican parties, but the Socialist Party USA, among other minor parties, has supported PR and opposed gerrymandering for years.

Don Doumakes
doumakes (at) spamcop (dot) net

Of course, voting from your home seems like an extremely bad idea and an even bigger democratic problem than low turnout. There's no way to ensure that the voter actually voted independently if they voted from home -- it makes it possible to threaten/pay people to vote for your candidate and make sure they actually voted that way.

your average American is much more liberty minded than your average comfort/security mided city dwelling French person.

Not judged by voter turnout at elections. The U.S. has the lowest turnout of any of the Western democracies. I don't know where your liberty-minded Americans are but they tend to stay home on election day.

Say whay you want about Americans, but very few of us would trade our liberty for the temporary safty of surrendering to an army of evil.

The U.S. sat safely behind its ocean stronghold for 2 full years while the "army of evil" overran everything it its path. In fact the U.S. pre-war policy was exactly one of trading national security for temporary safety as long as it could.

In any case, the French defeat had to do with mistaken reliance on the Maginot Line and outdated military strategy, not a deficiency of personal responsibility and accountability, your two great lessons in liberty. When you compare the crime rate in France vs. the U.S., I have no idea why you think the French deficient in personal responsibility.

Would the rest of world be so liberty minded.

A neat and typically American dichotomy here: the U.S.A. and the Rest Of The World. I'm not sure what you mean by "liberty minded" but you appear to think America has some kind of monopoly on it. FYI, it doesn't.