How Would You Change U.S. Election Procedures?

kkrista asks: "Ignoring for a moment your opinions on the outcome of the presidential election, what do you feel can be done to improve polling procedures in the U.S.? Verifiable votes seem an obvious necessity, but what else? It seems to me that standardized Federal election procedures would help ensure a fair election." Read on for some of kkrista's ideas -- do you have any better ones?

"How about a credit card-style voter registration card that I have to swipe in order to verify that I am eligible to vote? Such a card could be used to present custom electronic ballots to voters so they do not have to physically vote in their home districts (one could be away on business and within the country's borders or even at an embassy in a foreign country and still vote without an absentee ballot). Federal standards would also put the burden of maintaining proper voting facilities on the Federal government, helping to alleviate issues that can arise with insufficient equipment in less affluent or populous districts. The idea is not to centralize the voting regulations that are currently in place in each state, but rather to centralize and unify the mechanics of casting a vote. Your thoughts?"

Comments

How about empower the Electoral College

[sb_steele]

My thought is to give back the power to the Electoral College. Enable the system as it was designed. We should all be voting for a local representative (aligned with the same district as your House Representative). Everyone within that district votes for their representative to the college. And then the entire Electoral College makes their vote for whomever they feel is the best candidate. The system is broken... I agree, but let's repair it to its original design...

Absentee Ballots

[dauthur]

"(one could be away on business and within the country's borders or even at an embassy in a foreign country and still vote without an absentee ballot)" Not to mention the absentee ballots. Noone should forget those 50,000 "mysteriously" lost in Florida...

Federal Voting Rules

[dJCL]

Let the individual states run the elections if they want, but have the Federal governement set the rules.

It works up here in Canada. We have been laughing our asses off at how the US runs an election for the past 4 years, and this time was no exception. When I voted, I had not been registered, I walked into the voting hall, handed them some ID, and they let me vote. No provisional ballot, nothing weird, I just voted and put it in the same box as everyone else.

And to vote, I have a single piece of paper with all the names in that race listed. I put an X (or any mark) in the space next to the name and that's it. If I mark more then one, it is a spoiled ballot.

It boils down to, I put an X next to who I want on a piece of paper.

How much harder does it have to be. We may have to wait a little longer to get the official counts, but we at least are sure it counted, and I know my vote was counted.

Anyway...

Enjoy!

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[nelsonal]

How do you know a few ballot boxes don't fall of the back of the truck in a district that generally votes Liberal, Conservative, or Bloc Quebecois? That's really what all the fuss in the US is all about, probably 99.9% of our vote works very well but there are a few districts (that could swing an election-which is probably the problem you are refering to) that have hyjinks (from both sides-one side tries to boost voter turnout they other tries to reduce it and both occasionally bend and even break the rules in their actions). No one really worried about it until 4 years ago when elections became close enough for those votes to make all the difference.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Dausha]

Let the individual states run the elections if they want, but have the Federal governement set the rules.

We do, however because we still place a considerable amount of authority in the States, our Congress delegated that authority. Each state has it's own propery laws, commerce laws, and civil injury laws; while the Federal Gov't has its own set.

Don't bet that just because you don't hear of fraud in Canada that every vote counts. It's just become popular to point to the cracks in our process in Central-North America.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[jdavidb]

It boils down to, I put an X next to who I want on a piece of paper. How much harder does it have to be.

Sorry; given that some people couldn't handle, "It boils down to I punch out a hole next to who I want on a piece of paper," I'm not sure that's simple enough...

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[TheCarp]

Theres several problems with our voting system (not the least of which is that I think the 1 vote for one candidate thing is silly, I would rather see a ranked voting system)

1. There are no standards

every system has its problems, differences in how votes are counted, error rates, etc. I find it amusing that in 2000 the SCOTUS stopped the recount because different systems in different counties for doing recounts meant that ballots were not bein gcounted in a univorm manner... so they tossed it on equal protection grounds.

Speculation as to their motives aside, its true, and you would think they could fix it. However nothing was done.

2. Political Parties are way too involved.

In most states to be involved in the elections, you effectivly have to be aproved by the parties. In flordia high level election officals were also high level Bush campaign people.

Now I am not saying that they cheated, but if anyone was going to cheat, then they were in the position to do so. This is a matter of conflict of interest. People who are strongly invested in one candidate winning are involved with vote counting? That has an air of inpropriety that should be avoided.

What we need is a central elections authority with very strict non-partisan rules. The entire system needs to be made completly transparent so that there is nothing to contest after the fact.

3. The system is biased

Sure you can bet a Dem and a Repub will be on the ballot, but who else can get on the ballot in every state? Nader can't, but he probably came the closest. I think we need to a) drop ALL offical recognition of political designations and parties. b) make it easier to get on ballots.

John Kerry and George Bush campaigns should have had to go through exactly the same process that Nader had to go through to get on the ballots. That would be much more fair. It just should not be so hard to get on the ballot.

In addition to this, I think there should be one ballot, on in one state, on in every state.

4 Debates

There should be federally regulated debates. Every candidate on the ballot should be invited to the debates. There should be several of them, and the candidates should be GIVEN the rules, not allowed to try to negotiate them for their own favor.

Beyond that its up to the candidates to deliver their message and call eachother on their shit. Overall I think Kerry's mistake was not calling Bush on his shit.

Kerry got in there with policy talk. He came out with concrete actions and numbers. These are things that you can disagree with though. He let Bush get away with talking in vague generality and metaphore about values and whatnot.

Frankly, if I don't rea dbetween the lines, I find myself agreeing with Bush in his speaches and his debates. he never says anything that you will disagree with. Its all visual metaphores. There is no "we are going to reform taxes, help fammilies etc", whereas Kerry is "we are going to cut this, put the money here to do that". Well nobody is going to disagree with "reform" or "helping fammilies", but they may disagree with specifics about how you do that.

But, thats up to the candidates, reforming the system can only go so far, some steps they have to take on their own.

-Steve

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[bevo14]

"we still place a considerable amount of authority in the States, our Congress delegated that authority. Each state has it's own propery laws, commerce laws, and civil injury laws; while the Federal Gov't has its own set." Congress did not delegate any power to the states. The states created congress and the federal government. The federal government was created to do anything that the states could not do by themselves: coin money, national defense, and such.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[tetraminoe]

I was in Montreal this summer during their last national election. My cousin, a Canadian, voted. She walked down the street to her polling place - a hockey rink - and, after being asked where she lived, was handed a ballot without being asked for any ID or even her name. Seems secure to me.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[jemfinch]

We may have to wait a little longer to get the official counts, but we at least are sure it counted, and I know my vote was counted.

How can you be sure? How do you know your vote counted? What is there in that system to assure that some incompetent (or worse, malfeasant) ballot-counter didn't skip over your ballot, or count it for a different candidate?

Jeremy

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Elwood P Dowd]

Yes, they have partisan & nonpartisan counters that do all their counting together. Anyone can watch the count. It's rather verifiable.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

John Kerry and George Bush campaigns should have had to go through exactly the same process that Nader had to go through to get on the ballots.

Umm, I believe they did. They just breezed through it. It requires a number of signatures. A number that is insignificant if you actually have a chance of winning. I'm not sure what Nader being on the ballot would have accomplished for him.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[WGR]

In Canada, every candidate in an election (so every party), is allowed to have someone called a scrutineer to stnad nearby the polling booth (but no able to look in) to verify that the voting procedure is valid. The scrutineer is then able to observe the counting of ballots by the poll officials and object if a ballot is counted improperly. At the end of the count, they then register the objections or sign off that the count was not objected to and this goes along with all the ballots to the central election office.

I have acted as a scrutineer in a number of elections and it is a very fair system. But Canada has it much easier than the United States because there are many fewer elections on the same day. Federal and provincial elections only have one office to elect(for the M.P. Member of Parliament, or M.L.A, Member of Legislative Assembly, MNA in Quebec), so it is much easier to count. We don't have elected senators (yet) and the prime minister is just an elected MP who is leader of the largest party in Parliament.

Municipal elections may have many offices to fill, but they then often use mark-sense ballots etc., electronic counters like the U.S., but still with the idea of scrutineers to watch the count. But all elections have paper trails to allow for a separate recount.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not the same - if you're part of a party, you just have to be nominated by that parties internal procedures.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[siriuskase]

Many states allow a candidate to skip the time consuming, expensive petition process if his party gets a certain percentage of the vote in the previous election. The stated purpose of the petitioning is to eliminate people who don't have significant support.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[software_trainer]

"Let the individual states run the elections if they want, but have the Federal governement set the rules...It works up here in Canada..."

Each state is allowed to run the election its own way, and many other things its own way, so that the states are like laboratories or individual countries where they compete to come up with the best quality of life and the best government policies. Because U.S. citizens can freely and easily move from state-to-state, it's easy for them to "vote with their feet" for the best government solutions. Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) had faith in the free market's ability to propogate the best quality of life, and they extended that faith in the free market to state governments.

"We have been laughing our asses off at how the US runs an election for the past 4 years, and this time was no exception.'

Well, that's certainly a valuable contribution to this discussion. I'm glad that you have found something to feel smug about. Perhaps this will help lift you out of your inferiority complex. On a more productive note, the fact that the U.S. still gives states so much autonomy reflects our different view of the proper role of federal government. Many countries and cultures believe that if it can be regulated at the federal level, then it should for the sake of consistency. In the U.S., we generally believe that if it can be regulated at the local level, then it should for the sake of flexibility. The Swiss have been having this discussion recently, in regards to their education system. Education in Switzerland is almost entirely regulated by the 26 individual cantons. That kind of local control makes schools more responsive to local needs, but the differences also make it more difficult to move between cantons when you've got school-age children.

"If I mark more then one, it is a spoiled ballot."

It's a shame that most people can't understand or don't care about the advantages of Condorcet voting. That kind of approval voting would fulfill the intent of the Electoral College, without the controversy that the College generates every year.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[TheCarp]

As was replied by another - many states allow you on the ballot if your party nominates you and your party has enough support. So the Kerry and Bush campaigns did NOT need to throw money down getting signatures, they were short listed.

So while the campaigns with less money, where every dollar spent getting hteir message out counts, they have to waste large amounts of their money in just getting enough signatures to get on the ballot....

and the major parties that already have plenty of money to toss at campaigns? They effecitvly get a subsidy by the states, because they get a pass on this very expensive process.

-Steve

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Philocke Fox]

We've solved the whole electronic voting issue up here in Canada too.

In Alberta we recently had municipal elections, and there was an electronic counting machine.

Here's how it works:

1. Fill out paper ballot by marking an X next to your preferred candidate and next to your preferred choice on any ballot measures.
2. Wait in line for about 30 seconds.
3. Feed paper ballot into electronic counting machine.
4. Leave.

The counter scans and processes the ballot and saves it to a memory card. So you have a scan of all the ballots the machine processed and the count. All the paper ballots are saved in a bin under the counting machine. So you get the paper trail and you get the quick counting too.

The machine was made by a company called Dominion Voting Systems who seem to have no web presence.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Golias]

You are talking about two completely different types of nations.

Canada is one state, divided into provences.

America is fifty states, united into a federation.

The purpose of the US federal government is to provide a common defense, print a common currency, and regulate insterstate commerce. The role has expanded somewhat since the founding, particularilly in the areas of protecting individual rights, but we are still governed by our states.

If I murder my neighbor, it is the State of Minnesota, not the US, which throws me in prison. If I lose my job and wish to file for unemployment assistance, I apply with Minnesota, not the federal government. If I even want a fishing license, I get it from Minnesota.

As I understand it, if an Ottowan murders somebody, he is tried in a Canadian court. If he loses his job, he gets whatever commie benifits they have up there from the Canadian government. If he wants to fish, he applies for a license from the government of Canada.

See the difference?

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, I'm a Canadian, and I wasn't "laughing my ass off" at your election. However, I do question your faith in the "free market" to help propogate a better election.

Your contention that "... U.S. citizens can freely and easily move from state-to-state, it's easy for them to "vote with their feet" for the best government solutions" is not true in all cases. It isn't easy for all citizens to "vote with their feet". Would you expect a single mother with five children working a dead end job to just pick up and move from Florida to New York state because NY provides a better balloting system?

The U.S. federal government obviously has a role to play in the lives of its citizens. While the American system may grant more autonomy to individual states, it is a 'Federal' election. Wouldn't it make sense to have the Federal government lay down basic rules and standards that each state/county must adhere to? Just a thought....

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Murders are tried in provincial courts. I assume by "commie benifits" (sic) you mean "Employment Insurance", which is indeed administered by the federal government. Welfare, on the other hand, is run by the provinces.

Fishing licenses are also a provincial responsibility.

The Canadian federal government is generally considered to be quite weak. Provinces have a lot of power, and most citizens spend very little time interacting with the feds.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[tbannist]

That's because independent analysis has indicated that American elections are among the world's most poorly guarded against fraud since the 1960's. And nothing has been done to improve the situation since then.

You don't hear about fraud in Canadian elections because there's not enough to make a story out of. We require identification with place of residence to vote in our elections. That prevents Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck from voting.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[tbannist]

I think you misrepresent the issue, some people couldn't handle "I punch the hole on the next line down from the one I want to vote for". If I want to vote for candidate 2, I punch hole 3.

We don't allow butterfly ballots.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[tbannist]

"1. There are no standards

every system has its problems, differences in how votes are counted, error rates, etc. I find it amusing that in 2000 the SCOTUS stopped the recount because different systems in different counties for doing recounts meant that ballots were not bein gcounted in a univorm manner... so they tossed it on equal protection grounds."

I find this even more amusing because it ignores the fact that different systems were used to count the ballots in the first place. If it fails equal protection then by simple logic so does the entire election.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a good way to handle ballot access is to use a 2-round election system. The first round is done entirely by write-in vote (so there are no ballot access issues there). And then the top 7 candidates advance to the real election.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[DeputySpade]

Sorry, but you've got it backward. The "Punch the hole on the next line down from the one I want to vote for" folks are the ones who didn't seem to notice the big black arrows linking the candidates' names to the holes. The ballot is not confusing at all. Each candidate has his name in a box. Each box has an arrow that points to a specific hole. If you can't figure that out, you probably shouldn't be involved in a process that decides the fate of the world.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to add that the chief electoral officer in Canada and his or her assistant cannot vote in any national elections. The whole elections Canada organization is very un-partisan. I'm a conservative and my guy lost and I strongly believe it was a very fair election.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[zeroduck]

The instructions for our ballot are connect the arrow next to the person you wish to vote for. I dont think thats all that much more complicated.

Do you have any idea how many people mark nothing, mark all of them, or mark them all and then fill in the name of the person in the write in section?

Yes, these are the people who elected our president.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[zCyl]

Theres several problems with our voting system (not the least of which is that I think the 1 vote for one candidate thing is silly, I would rather see a ranked voting system) ...
In most states to be involved in the elections, you effectivly have to be aproved by the parties.

The current voting system's game-theory fostering a two-party system results in a horrible false dichotomy. For the most part, candidates are only given a serious chance at winning an important office if they agree with one party's position on both economic AND social issues (or any other grouping method), rather than taking some positions from each party. But the fact is, the vast majority of the country would probably be more in the middle on many issues if the middle were an option.

A system like Approval Voting would allow candidates to express views on issues, and what's more, encourage them to do so. Candidates who were bland, refused to take a stance, or refused to say anything of substance would simply be ignored as noise if there were a handful of names on the ballot, and each one could be voted yes or no. There wouldn't be a motivation for voting for one candidate because you don't like the other. Voters would simply vote for as many candidates as they DID like, and then the most liked one would win. How much simpler and better could an election system get?

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[tbannist]

Hmm. I was under the impression that the voting machine had two metal bars that obscured the arrows during the actual voting process, but I may be mistaken.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

One note:
Nader wasnt even close to being on half the ballots (i believe it was about 17 states)

on the other hand, the libertarian candidate was on 48 state ballots. He deserved the press, not Nader.

One problem i see with regulating the debate in the way you said, (which i do agree with) is that someone is making the rules, most likely a group of people, each supporting their own candidate etc.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

The states should not be allowed to choose HOW they run the election. There should be a set of standards including ballot layout, and the states get to actually RUN the election.

That would solve a number of problems i think, it may not be completely foolproof, but it would be a major improvement.

also, the government should create the specs for the evoting machines, it must have this type of memory secured by this type of crypto. the government should also create all software. any hardware mfg can build it and use the software to sell to the different counties, but it should be 100% consistent.

the states should then run the election. right now too much power is in one place, the states, and it is a major problem, due mostly to incomptentance.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Minna Kirai]

America is fifty states, united into a federation.

No it isn't. The word "state" is misused throughout the USA. Traditionally, "state" is a synonym for "nation", but in the USA it is a synonym for "district" or "province".

Even back in 1780 it was really one nation-state, and by 1860 the total unification was undeniably demonstrated.

If I murder my neighbor, it is the State of Minnesota, not the US, which throws me in prison.

So when you move from Minneapolis to Chicago, you first apply with the Illinois department of immigration. They check your employment history and give you a green card, which lets you apply for Illinois citizenship in 3 years?

Sorry, I don't think so. Citizenship is on a per-nation basis. Just because your "state" (district) has its own laws doesn't make it a separte country, any more than a town's dog-leash regulation make it a country. "Governor" is not the title of a head of state; "President" is.

The European Union really works the way you claim the USA does. Notice that in the recent Iraq invasion, it wasn't the EU that declared support for the operation, but individual countries within it. But from the American front, Massachusetts soldiers went in alongside Texas ones, under a single authority.

PS. Also, Massachusetts isn't even called a state.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Golias]

You completely ignored the last half of my sentence: united into a federation.

If you re-read my original post you will find, among the federal responsibilities I listed, providing a common defense.

States in the US are not completely independent, as they are in the EU, but nor are they mere subdivided districts, as Canadian provences are. They collect their own income and/or sales taxes, have their own legislatures (the structure of which are determined by their own constitutions), determine their own funding levels for education, transportation, etc., write their own criminal justice codes, and so on and so on.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Minna Kirai]

You completely ignored the last half of my sentence:

No, I saw that. YOU, on the other hand, ignored all of my post. A "common defense" is irrelevant to what I wrote, so it seems you just don't understand. Shall I type it all again?

Nation-states have citizens.

Canada, USA, and Spain are all nation-states, because people can hold Canadian, USA ("American") or Spanish citizenship.

There is no process to acquire Ottowanian, New Yorkian, or Andalucian citizenship independent of the nation containing that district.

The "states" of the USA are not separate nation-states because, amoung many other reasons, the residents don't consider them to be separate. There are no legal, language, or cultural barriers to moving between Virginia and California, as there would for going from Denmark to Italy.

They collect their own income and/or sales taxes, have their own legislatures (the structure of which are determined by their own constitutions), determine their own funding levels for education, transportation, etc., write their own criminal justice codes, and so on and so on.

The city of San Francisco collects its own taxes, has a legislature, funds education and transportation, etc. Those attributes are meaningless towards classifying something as a nation, unless you want to claim the USA is made of 400+ different states...

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[DeputySpade]

I may be mistaken as well, but we use a similar kind of ballot and voting machine in my state. And metal bars on either side of the ballot would prevent you being able to turn the page to vote for other races such as congressmen, judges, refferendums. Each race is one page and you flip the pages to vote in each race. The binding is offset so that each page uncovers its unique set of punch holes as it is turned. It's a fairly intuitive and simple system once you get the opportunity to take two seconds to stand in front of it and use it.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

You ignorance regarding Canada is stunning:

1. Canada was NOT subdivided into provinces after its creation. In fact, the Canadian provinces negotiated the Canadian federation in much the same way the orginal 13 colonies (states) in America did:
Confederation

2. Candian provinces DO have their own courts. In fact, the province of Quebec has an entirely different system of law than all the other provinces. Quebec laws are based on the 'civil' rather than 'common' law.
Sources Of Canadian Law

3. Canadian Provinces do have their own sales tax and income taxes (except Alberta, where the oil money means they don't need it)!

4. Canadian provinces are responsible for the administration of schools, hospitals, etc.

Re:Federal Voting Rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Greetings from germany to canada!
In our country it is mostly the same election process than in yours.

Easy, secure und clear.

But that, surely, is the fact it wouldnt work in the USA. The people there want to be betrayed, it seems, from far-away, "old europe" ;o)

Second thing I didnt understand: If it is an democracy over there, why the people cannot vote for their president directly.
Would'nt it make more sense that every vote counts and not only those of the "vote-mans" (dont know how you call them)

I didnt understand that. But okay, the united states are much younger than our states in the european union, so if they wouldnt learn from that, they have to learn from their own mistakes.

Same day registration + indelilible ink

[stomv]

(In addition to the electronic voting stuff)

Same day registration is important. The right to vote should not be predicated on the actions of dealing with a government agency prior to election day.

Some states have same day registration, but it opens the state up to more voter fraud. So: use indelible ink. Nations with low person-specific government recognition including Afghanistan and India use it. Simply, it is ink that can't be rubbed off for at least 24 hours.

You vote. You get your thumb inked. You don't need an "I voted" sticker. Since you can cast a spoiled vote, even those who would prefer not to vote can get the ink on their thumbs. If you've got ink on your thumb, you can't reregister or revote at a different precinct/ward.

Easier to vote + fewer instances of fraud = better democracy.

Re:Same day registration + indelilible ink

[Dausha]

"Same day registration is important."

No, it is not important. For decades the US has managed to vote quite nicely without making voting more convenient. Increasing the convenience has trended to increase fraud. The Government does need time to validate the voter's existance, especially when I've heard a report that more people voted in a county than live there.

Here's how to defraud the "Election Day Registration" (ERD) You are the controlling party who is losing the election. You have previously completed a few thousand ERD forms and ballots. Have one high population/pro-your party precinct show up late. Sneak in the ballots and registrations.

Make sure you rifle through the approval process in that precinct of those registrations. Because you know it's the "marked" precinct, you know what to expect while your opposition does not.

"[U]se indelible ink . . . . can't be rubbed off for at least 24 hours."

You show me ink that can't be rubbed off, and I'll show you how to rub it off. Use in foreign elections does not demonstrate this technique as proof against fraud. Although, I do think it's better than nothing. Put it on their cheek or forehead. Harder to hid/rub off.

You put it on my thumb, I'll have very little time removing the ink.

"Easier to vote + fewer instances of fraud = better democracy."

Well, one thing we know is that certain voting mechanisms have a higher degree of fraud and flaws. We know roughly what the variation is. As a somewhat fictional example, say punchcard has a ten percent error rate. First, go for the system with the lowest error rate and fraud. Second, when the margin between the candidates is within the margin of error, spin a runoff.

So, you have A and B who are running for Dog Catcher. The ballot system has a five percent margin of error. A has 48% and B has 52%. 52 - 48 = 4 therefore w/n margin of error: the election is cast out. The following week you have a manditory runoff. Continue each week until you have a winner, or one conceeds.

The entire state should use the same voting equipment and the exact same standards. Certain parties have ways of defeating elections because of the equipment they select at the county level.

Re:Same day registration + indelilible ink

[Anonymous Coward]

You show me ink that can't be rubbed off, and I'll show you how to rub it off. Use in foreign elections does not demonstrate this technique as proof against fraud. Although, I do think it's better than nothing. Put it on their cheek or forehead. Harder to hid/rub off.

Oh, No!!! mark of the beast!!! Lot of folks won't want that - they might stay home and not vote!!!

Re:Same day registration + indelilible ink

[b-baggins]

Because we'd all much rather deal with a government agency ON the day of election...

Re:Same day registration + indelilible ink

[Lars T.]

Exactly! Make sure the election process takes a few hours, that way the "working poor" will think twice about voting.

Re:Same day registration + indelilible ink

[CrimsonAvenger]

So, you have A and B who are running for Dog Catcher. The ballot system has a five percent margin of error. A has 48% and B has 52%. 52 - 48 = 4 therefore w/n margin of error: the election is cast out. The following week you have a manditory runoff. Continue each week until you have a winner, or one conceeds.

Hmm, given this system were in place for President, with the numbers you specified (5% margin triggers runoff), do you really think that we'd get a President elected?

As an example, bush/Kerry. Do you honestly think some voters would say "well, my guy didn't win the election, so I'll switch to the other guy in the runoff"? Most likely result is that you repeat the election every week until Doomsday, then decide to forget about it.

And who runs things until a winner is picked? the Incumbent? Great idea! We could keep Bush in office virtually forever, if we can just deadlock the next election to within 5% margin of error.

Note that in Clinton's first election, such a system would have required runoffs in 17 States, totalling 211 Electoral Votes. In most of those States, the election wasn't especially close (>3% difference), so it is unlikely that any significant shift would occur during runoffs. So, Clinton could not have been elected under such a system (and he was fairly popular, as such things go, unlike either Bush or Kerry).

Now, such a system could have a major effect in case of a serious third party contender. Reagan's first election (with such a contender), could have easily gone to Carter or Reagen under such a system. Or, just as likely, been severely deadlocked, as Clinton's election would have been.

Let France elect the US president!

[Malfourmed]

Given that when the USA sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold ... set up a mechanism whereby people in other countries get some kind of vote.

I'm semi-serious here...

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[MindStalker]

Yes, of course, brilliant. Any country can count its population and be assigned an amount of electoral votes!!

Of course the countries have to may tax, and the states need to conform to our constituion.

Did I say states? Opps.

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[Elkboy]

There is indeed a gap in democracy on the international level that should be filled, preferably by a reformed UN. We already have international organizations in place for economy, trade and crime, so why not expand it?

However, it should be limited to transnational matters. National matters are for the nation, and regional for the region. Noone wants meddling in their national business. I believe respectful, tolerant cooperation and influence is the best way to change the US (and other erring nations for that matter) as a foreigner.

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[Shihar]

Why in the hell would an American want a North Korean to have any say what-so-ever in any US affair? Why would an American want China to have any say what-so-ever in the US policy towards Taiwan? Why would the US let people who clearly have no interest in the well being of the US vote on how the US behaves?

Eh, it doesn't matter. The chances of anyone else in the world getting to vote on anything American does is absolutely zero. Americans are about as excited to let the rest of the world control their destiny as they are to pounding nails through their eyes. Hell, the only reason why the US is apart of the UN is because of that big old veto vote they get that says that you can't try and force them to do anything.

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[EzInKy]

Given that when the USA sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold ... set up a mechanism whereby people in other countries get some kind of vote.

I'm semi-serious here...


They could always apply for statehood B-)

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a Kansan want a Californian to have any say what-so-ever in any Kansan affair? Or vice versa?

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[Elkboy]

Obviously no nation wants national matters in the hands of others, although some nations have a tendency to make such matters theirs.

I'm just saying that there is a chain of democracy, from cities who vote for mayors, regions who vote for representatives in national congress, and the whole nation that votes for a president or prime minister. Every level decides on matters that affects it.

There is no such function for the international level, only bits and pieces of a system dominated by the strong. Just as you don't want Texans to tell you what to do in New York because they have more guns, we don't want the US to blindly and selfishly push only its own agenda because you have stealth bombers.

An international democratic body is just a logical step. A bit premature in today's world, perhaps, but still logical and in the spirit of the democracy you americans claim to be such champions of.

Re:Let France elect the US president!

[raider_red]

Why not. First though, we'll have to invade, jail your politicians, and dismantle your healthcare and social welfare systems. Also, your children will be taught in bilingual schools which for some reason will only be taught in English and Spanish.

After an initial pacification period, we'll annex France as the fifty-first state, at which point they'll be assigned a number of electors through apportionment.

Sound good? I didn't think so.

Federal Election Procedures

[Rahga]

"It seems to me that standardized Federal election procedures would help ensure a fair election."

Dear kkrista,

There are Federal election procedures in place. This is known as the "Electoral College". The citizenry of each state does not vote on anything higher than Senators, Representatives, and Electors. Those are state representatives that serve in federal government.

Re:Federal Election Procedures

[InfoVore]

To make the Electoral college work as designed, we should only list the names of the Electoral College candidates on the ballot, and not the presidential candidates. We should be voting for representation, not for a candidate.

-I.V.

Leave it alone

[duffbeer703]

The system works, let it be.

Nobody wants a fiasco in their state, so the states are individually reforming the system to avoid a situation like the one in Florida in 2000.

It takes time, anything involving government does.

The last thing that we need is yet another massive Federal program with arbritrary rules and unfunded mandates.

Re:Leave it alone

[rednip]

The last thing that we need is yet another massive Federal program with arbritrary rules and unfunded mandates.

Do you mean something like the Help America Vote Act of 2002?

Re:Leave it alone

[goatan]

The system works, let it be.

How can you say a system that allows someone who didn't win the popular vote become the president work?

Re:Leave it alone

[Beatbyte]

because the electoral college that was setup as the 12th amendment in 1804, did it's job.

Re:Leave it alone

[siriuskase]

It isn't designed to use the popular vote to determine the presidency, not on a national level. The popular vote in each state determines how each state casts its electoral votes. You may have issues with the Electoral College, but the popular vote thingy is a false issue.

Re:Leave it alone

[keath_milligan]

Amen. Mod parent up.

Every election that Democrats lose, there is no end of whining about how the "system is broken". Individual states have issues (mostly in counties run by partisan Democrat elected officials), to be sure, but the system as a whole is just fine and works pretty well.

Re:Leave it alone

[Gilk180]

It's called "Representative Democracy".

I would also ask what president has lost the popular vote beyond the margin of error?

Re:Leave it alone

[stu72]

Winning with out winning the popular vote is a possibility, a trade-off, if you will, by design. It's been there for 300 years - why didn't you make a fuss before?

Further, this has been covered before, but Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibil ity_theorem) proves it's impossible to have a perfect system. All have anomolies of some sort. In the case of the electoral college system, one of it's anomolies is that in a very close election someone will win without winning the popular vote, albeit by a very small margin.

You can pick a different system if you want, but you'll have to take it's new and possibly unknown anomolies with it. At least people understand how this system works.

Re:Leave it alone

[malachid69]

You obviously haven't been reading the other posts here on Slashdot.

There is plenty of evidence that the Republican party got many votes it didn't win (and in some cases many more votes than voters). I really doubt that the Democrats were the ones giving more votes to Republicans.

It could be argued that much of the problem is caused by f'ed up hardware/software (like in the Votergate video where they showed selecting one candidate and it printing a different one) -- but there is too much discrepancy to point the finger at a malfunction.

The fact of the matter is that much of the US does not have faith in the process. That in itself is an issue. Even if everything was on the up and up (which I don't believe), lack of faith in the system drastically changes the outcome (many don't vote because they feel it doesn't matter).

In addition, our system is designed to favor the Republican or Democratic parties, not really giving 3rd parties a chance. Many people this election voted for the lesser-of-2-evils instead of who they liked because they didn't feel that voting for their preferred candidate would help.

And then there are lots of people that vote for their party, regardless of whether they agree with them or not. The system should be designed in such a way that people vote on their ideals, not on their party.

If you really think that what you said was true, take a look at the other political links Slashdot has provided lately and THEN make up your mind. You should never decide because your party wins/looses or because your party says things are a specific way. You should look at all the evidence and decide for yourself.

Re:Leave it alone

[goatan]

because the Electoral College that was setup as the 12th amendment in 1804, did it's job.

Is it it's job to allow an unpopular president? Actually it did work this time but it didn't the time before when someone is only doing there job half the time wouldn't you fire them?

You may have issues with the Electoral College, but the popular vote thingy is a false issue.

Please explain why it is a false issue. I don't have issues with the Electoral College it's an odd system but if it proportionally represented the views of the people it would be OK. I have issues with the unrepresentative nature of the vote. Allowing someone to win all the available Electoral College votes for a state because they won the state by one popular vote is undemocratic no matter how you spin it.

Quick example Abraham Lincoln in 1860 only won 40% of the vote in any other democracy he would have had to form a coalition to or there would have to be another round of voteing with the least popular candidate from the last round removed, yet he got 59% of the Electoral College vote and you know what happened next.

Re:Leave it alone

[goatan]

winning with out winning the popular vote is a possibility, a trade-off, if you will, by design. It's been there for 300 years - why didn't you make a fuss before?

A trade off for what advantage? golly gosh maybe because im only 24 and have only been interested in politics in the last 4 years and during that time I have.

Further, this has been covered before, but Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibil ity_theorem) proves it's impossible to have a perfect system. All have anomolies of some sort. In the case of the electoral college system, one of it's anomolies is that in a very close election someone will win without winning the popular vote, albeit by a very small margin

The link doesn't work but i understand what you meen by perfection. However you can improve and evolve things just because perfection is impossible is poor excuse to not improve and make a system fairer.

I managed to make the link work.

The following is from the document A society needs to agree on a preference order among several different options. Each individual in the society has his or her own personal preference order. The problem is to find a general mechanism, called a social choice function, which transforms the set of preference orders, one for each individual, into a global societal preference order. This social choice function should have several desirable ("fair") properties:

domain or universality: the social choice function should create a deterministic, complete societal preference order from every possible set of individual preference orders. (The vote must have a result that ranks all possible choices relative to one another, the voting mechanism must be able to process all possible sets of voter preferences, and it should always give the same result for the same votes, without random selection)

With the way the Electoral College currently works if you change where the votes are cast i.e. which state then you change the result of the electoral college.

Finally Just because people are used to something doesn't meen it shouldn't or can't be changed. Most people where used to others being and owning slaves but we improved, most people where used to horses, most of us now own and drives cars. Most where used to children going up chimneys or working in coal mine (still dangerous today) but we changed.

Re:Leave it alone

[goatan]

Quick example Abraham Lincoln in 1860 only won 40% of the vote in any other democracy he would have had to form a coalition to or there would have to be another round of voteing with the least popular candidate from the last round removed, yet he got 59% of the Electoral College vote and you know what happened next, 10% is a very big margin of error.

Re:Leave it alone

[Elwood P Dowd]

You moron.

Nobody wants a fiasco in their state, so the states are individually reforming the system to avoid a situation like the one in Florida in 2000.

It takes time, anything involving government does.

No, no, no. They've already succeeded. That's the point. In 2000, there was contention over who won Florida. Now, there can never be contention again, because it is impossible to verify the vote. We have been told that Florida & Ohio won, but there is no way to show that to be true. Or false. I suspect that it is true this time, but it is guaranteed that at some point in the future, someone will hack the election and we won't be able to tell.

Re:Leave it alone

[markh100]

what margin of error? In an election, when every vote is counted, there is no such thing as a margin of error. (That is, of course, theoretical, since they don't seem to be that interested in counting every vote)

Re:Leave it alone

[duffbeer703]

You are always going to have fraud.... and creating new, standardized voting procedures nationwide would simply introduce new, nationally standardized loopholes to exploit en masse. Giving more power to national political parties and the federal government will make it easier to cover up irregularities... nothing more.

The scary thing about the elections in Florida and Ohio is that the Democratic and Republican National Committees produced "manuals" about how to manipulate the system in those states. If you keep everything local, the system stays honest because you are keeping things on a personal level.

The other scary thing was these crazy 527 organizations encouraging voter fraud by paying for voter registrations. These "registration drives" are effectively denial of service attacks against local boards of elections and make it much easier to commit voting fraud.

Legislation strictly limiting the aid that 527's and national party committees can provide to local parties would eliminate most of the widespread fraud without fundamental changes to the system.

The other stuff like de-marginalizing third parties is something that you only hear on blogs and message boards. Its a distraction from the real issue and really isn't that relevant. Perot proved in 1992 that if you present a platform and promote it, the voters will follow.

The Libertarian and Green parties aren't marginalized because voters are afraid to vote for them, but because they're candidates are unknown or too screwy to attract votes.

Re:Leave it alone

[Anonymous Coward]

The Libertarian and Green parties aren't marginalized because voters are afraid to vote for them, but because they're candidates are unknown or too screwy to attract votes.

No, it's because voters intuitively understand Duverger's Law.

Re:Leave it alone

[demachina]

If you think it works read this report from a volunteer election monitor in Tampa. You will get an enchanting picture of the still endemic rascism and voter suppression, now Republican inspired, that is designed to disenfranchise minority voters and rig elections.

In her report an old white cracker, and assorted other apparently Republican poll workers do there best to discourage, con and intimidate minorities and people they visually brand as Democrats from voting. This racially inspired voter intimidation is as old as the hills, and used to be the specialty of Southern Democrats but it has since migrated to the Republican's, along with Southern white voters, since the mid 1960's and is a key reason the Republicans now own the south.

This observer was a black lady and an old white guy did everything he could to try to intimidate her in to leaving including physically body slamming her, because she was calling in potential violations of the law and intimidation efforts.

They tried to send con one hispanic, first time voter, in to leaving the precinct where he was supposed to vote and go to a precinct where he wasn't supposed to be and which would have been closed by the time he got there.

A black lady, ex felon who'd apparently gone to the great lengths necessary to have her voting rights reinstated, which Jeb Bush does for a handful of people each year, was put on a phone to Tallahassee and threatened with felony charges if she voted. She did anyway, in spite of the threats, since it was her right under Florida law.

Re:Leave it alone

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition, our system is designed to favor the Republican or Democratic parties,

It wasn't really designed this way. In fact, the framers of the Constitution didn't even expect this to happen. Take a look at the original tiebreaker rule:

and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. (II.1.3)

The House's selection is limited to five candidates, which implies that it was considered a serious possibility to have 6 or more. Of course, vice-presidental candidates were considered presidential candidates back then, but that would still mean there would be at least 3 presidential candidates.

Re:Leave it alone

[Kymermosst]

There is plenty of evidence that the Republican party got many votes it didn't win (and in some cases many more votes than voters). I really doubt that the Democrats were the ones giving more votes to Republicans.

Doesn't mean the Democrats weren't giving more votes to the Democrats, though.

Seriously, do you think the fraud is one-sided, or do you think, perhaps, that the media is reporting it one-sided?

I would say that the law of mediocrity applies, and the same amount of fraud is going on on both sides.

Re:Leave it alone

[malachid69]

I don't doubt that both sides are involved; although the Republicans have a headstart with companies like Diebold admitting they told Bush he would win (see Votergate video).

Re:Leave it alone

[Anonymous Coward]

If the system worked we wouldn't have elected Bush (or Kerry, who imo would be worse)

Switching to an approval voting or a condorcet voting system would eliminate the two party system and, I believe, allow us to elect better leaders. Of course this will not happen anytime soon, as I really doubt either party would voluntarily give up their power =/

Re:Leave it alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but in a plurality voting system, the most stable configuration is a two-party system. They may not have known that at the time, but there are better voting systems that foster third parties better than what we have now.

Re:Leave it alone

[Anonymous Coward]

300 years? Hrm...

Re:Leave it alone

[CrimsonAvenger]

Umm, the Electoral College is Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution. The Twelfth Amendment just clarified procedures for the pre-existing Electoral College, as well as certain qualifiers for Pres/VP (they can't be residents of the same State, for instance).

Re:Leave it alone

[Beatbyte]

what i meant was :

the electoral college as was setup in 1804

didn't mean the body of it was an amendment

but good eye ;-)

Re:Leave it alone

[keath_milligan]

And you obviously don't read anything but Slashdot.

Don't you think that if any of these crackpot conspiracy theories had any merit that the Democrats (and thereby the media) wouldn't be all over it like wet underwear? Or are you now going suggest that they are somehow in on the conspiracy to engineer their own loss?

All of the popular "Bush stole the election" theories have been analyzed pretty thoroughly by several magazines and news organizations - none of them hold up to serious scrutiny.

Re:Leave it alone

[malachid69]

Only 3 comments:

1) I do read other things than Slashdot, and have watched video footage as well. Have you?

2) The big media corps HAVE been showing stuff. CBS had a special. ABC had articles.

3) Since when has the big media been considered reputable enough to only tell us the truth?

Standardized X

[rueger]

Uniform voting regulations across the country (I know, states rights etc) and a good old paper ballot. This should be simple.

It's insane that each of thousands of states and counties have different rules, different technology, different everything.

And, as the latest irregularities show, there is simply nothing as useful as a simple and unambiguous paper trail.

Oh yeah - and better candidates.

Re:Standardized X

[_iris]

While I would like to see more uniform voting procuedures, I don't believe we should concentrate this power in the Federal Government. I'd much rather see States agreeing to use the same procedures. While we wouldn't achieve a uniform national voting protocol, we would alleviate many of the procedural voting problems we have today without forcing less-able states to achieve the same as a the more-able states (e.g. not all states can afford enough touchscreen voting machines).

Re:Standardized X

[WhiplashII]

In addition to standardizing things - improve the standard. Require the ballot to have a short description of each candidate, including who they are and what their platform is.

Most people know the presidential candidates, but who knew the options for their District Court Judge, comptroller, etc?

Re:Standardized X

[MarkusQ]

Uniform regulations? Perhaps.
Paper ballots? Yes.
Unambiguous paper trail? Definitly!
Better Candidates? Oh, would I love that!!!

But the number one thing we could do to fix the whole mess would be to move the budget to the tax form. When you fill out your tax form, you also say where you want the money to go. But the total you allocate can not exceed (or will be prorated to match) what you paid.

The real problem with our democratic system? It lets whoever we ellect decide how to spend other people's money--sometimes up to hundreds of billions of dollars of other people's money. Expecting everyone (or anyone!) to stay honest in such a situation is just foolish.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Standardized X

[TykeClone]

The real problem with our democratic system? It lets whoever we ellect decide how to spend other people's money--sometimes up to hundreds of billions of dollars of other people's money. Expecting everyone (or anyone!) to stay honest in such a situation is just foolish.

So you're saying that we're sending too much money to Washington? :)

If the tax load was reversed (bulk staying local, state getting about the same, and the Federal government getting the scraps), we'd have at least a more accountable government - and the temptation for misusing other peoples money should be less when you know those other people.

Re:Standardized X

[mooingyak]

The problem I would see with that is who writes the descriptions? Let's say you have two candidates for Comptroller, and they've both submitted descriptions of themselves.

Candidate A submits:
"Joe Smith, a choice for honesty and ensuring your children's safety."

Candidate B submits:
"Ed Foo, the comptroller candidate AGAINST child pornography."

The first one is pure BS, and the second one implies that his opponent feels the opposite when in all likelihood he doesn't.

It'd be great to have these descriptions, but you need a trusted objective source to provide them and those are very hard to come by.

(Incidentally, I was wondering who this WhiplashII guy was who had responded to me twice so far, so I looked up your recent comments and landed on this one. Felt I had to respond.)

Re:Standardized X

[software_trainer]

"The real problem with our democratic system? It lets whoever we ellect decide how to spend other people's money..."

Alexander Fraser Tyler, in Cycle of Democracy, wrote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over lousy fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

Re:Standardized X

[MarkusQ]

If the tax load was reversed (bulk staying local, state getting about the same, and the Federal government getting the scraps), we'd have at least a more accountable government - and the temptation for misusing other peoples money should be less when you know those other people.

Oooo...sort of like it says in the constitution.

I like that idea too!

-- MarkusQ

P.S. It's interesting to note that the exact same issue (regarding the states rights to conditionally vote on constitutional amendments) came up with both the equal rights amendment and the federal income tax amendment, but the offical result is that we have the federal income tax but we don't have the equal rights amendment. What's that all about?

Third Parties

[Hythlodaeus]

The change I would make does not have to do with voter registration/identification. I would introduce some sort of runoff system, so that people would not feel that votes for third parties are "wasted." There's a lot of political vector space left unrepresented by the two parties.

Re:Third Parties

[N3WBI3]

All out problems in this manner could be solved with a good ol' does of federalism. In Lousianna they have a runoff system, it the winning party does not get 50% of the vote they runoff. States are free to run their elections anyway they see fit.

LA has runoffs, NE & ME split their votes, .....

One simple fix.

[mshiltonj]

Eliminate the Democrats and Republicans!

Re:One simple fix.

[snooo53]

Yes, by denying matching government funds to say, any party that got more than say 30% of the vote in the last election. The republicans and democrats have enough money in their coffers, why are my tax dollars going to perpetuate them?

Re:One simple fix.

[Zemrec]

I don't know if you're serious or not, but it made me wonder: Do we really need political parties at all? I wonder how much (if any) better this country would be if candidates could run (and be elected) as Americans, and not "democrats" or "republicans" or (insert political party affiliation here).

I, for one, hate only being allowed essentially 2 choices for president, etc. Yes, there are other parties, but, let's face it, they'll never win the presidency. But if there weren't any political parties, and candidates had to stand on their own feet, maybe we could have more than 2 choices.

Re:One simple fix.

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

OK, let's say we abolish the current Democrat and Republican parties. Can you really imagine that people will not just form new parties and give them new names? Sure, we might end up with more than two major ones, but people form groups and name them. Get over it. Its not the problem.

Re:One simple fix.

[superpulpsicle]

Ventura once said "We legitimately only have 1 more choice than Iraq. Everything is so marketing oriented, even if Ralph Nader is the best candidate, he'll never get more than 1% vote." We should get rid of the democrat republican concepts, and vote against the candidates individually. Right now, it's the 2 billion dollar parties versus any other individual. Wonderful system.

The real problem

[Otter]

Major changes can only be made when the political situation reverts to a less polarized state. Today, even basic security precautions are seen as potential threats by whomever is trying to squeak out a narrow win against what they perceive as an overwhelming conspiracy. (See Tom Daschle and "eye-rolling" by monitors.)

By the way, have other people been getting this "How I Stole Your Election by George W. Bush" spam? It's the first thing I've seen burn through GMail's filtering.

Re:The real problem

[ClioCJS]

Actually, since the election [approximately], almost all mail goes to my spam folder. Even mail from other gmail accounts where we are both in each other's addressbooks (AND MARRIED). Even yahoo groups i am subscribed to. 300 false positives a day is making gmail totally fucking useless.

Select leaders by lottery

[pdp1144]

We should pick our leaders by lottery. Our current system puts people in power that want to be in power. If they really want the job - they should not have it. When it comes time to select new leaders everyone's name goes into "a hat" and who's ever name is drawn is in the that position. The rest of the world would not really notice a difference as the forgen policy radically changes every 4 to 8 years any way.

Re:Select leaders by lottery

[Singletoned]

"We should pick our leaders by lottery."

I think a system that selects about 5 or 6 candiates by lottery, and then people vote for their favourite, would be better. Otherwise a complete idiot with evil intentions could end up as the President, and surely that should never be allowed to happen.

Re:Select leaders by lottery

[Zemrec]

I was thinking that the lottery would work by social security number. Say, just a simple random number generator.

Then, when a number is picked, the computer would check the records for that ID to make sure 1) owner is alive 2) s/he's elligble to be President according to the Constitution.

The person would be contacted to see if they wanted to be President.

Then, and most importantly, the Congress would scrutinize and ratify the candidate the way they do presidential nominees for the Supreme Court and other positions.

If, passing all this, then the person would be made President. (or perhaps a popular election would take place, with 1 or more others also passing the above conditions.)

Just a thought. Probably would never work in reality though.

Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[NeMon'ess]

I heard an idea I like that would shift the campaign more to the populated states, but would keep middle-sized states relevant. The small states are, and will continue to be overlooked, but there's even a benefit for them too.

Presently each state gets electoral votes equal to one for each member of the House it has and two for the Senators. Thus even the least populated states get three electoral votes. I'm not suggesting a change to this, but a change to the way they are awarded. The two senatorial electoral votes are separated out and the population based ones are distributed based on the percentage of the popular vote won in that state. The winner of the popular vote in each state gets two senatorial votes.

Example: Georgia - worth 15 votes (13 population, 2 senatorial)
If Lisa gets 55% of the vote and Jack gets 45%, Lisa is awarded 7 of the 13 and the two for winning for a total of 9. All further examples assume the same percentages.

Example: Montana - worth 3 votes (1 population, 2 senatorial)
The winner gets 2 plus the remaining 1. Thus winning this state is worth all 3 votes and denies the losing candidate even 1 vote.

Example: New Mexico - worth 5 (3 population, 2 senatorial)
Winner gets 2 plus 2 of the remaining 3. That's 4 of the 5. Simply splitting all 5 might've been only 3 to the winner. This way the winner gets 1 more and loser gets 1 less.

What do I like about this extra layer of complexity vs. only awarding votes based on the percentage breakdown? Because it makes it slightly more worth it to not give up on the smaller states. In New Mexico, under a simple split, the loser gets 2 while the winner receives 3. That's an acceptable loss, only 1 point difference. A candidate behind in the polls might write off the state. But if the winner gets 4 of the 5, it becomes more costly to give up.

Example: Indiana - worth 11
Winner gets 2 plus 5 of the remaining 9. That's 7 out of 11. Writing off this state may be costly.

Now let me clarify here, if Lisa wins between 50 and 61.11% she'll get 7 votes. If it's 61.12 to 72.22% she'll get 8.

If you're still reading, it's time to address an important question: Why not write off all the smaller states and focus on the large ones?
Because, compared to simply awarding everything based on the popular vote, every state won is an additional vote. Winning 30 states is worth 30 extra votes. Consider Texas. Lisa and her campaign spend a large amount of time and resources in the state, which has boosted her standing in the polls to 60% so she's getting lots of votes plus the extra one. She has a choice now, she could spend X time and resources there trying to get more votes, or she could go focus them on Wisconsin where she's statistically tied with Jack. The (hypothetical) polls also seem to show her support is plateauing. If she chooses Texas, she'll probably only get one more vote. It makes more sense to go to Wisconsin where she could win the state and get 6 votes there instead of 4.

I like this system better than what we have presently because it makes 8 large, currently uncompetitive, states competitive and important to the race. These 8 are 184 votes, which is 34% of 538. Since smaller states are better represented, these 8 actually have more than 38% of the population who are not being attended to by the electoral process. Counting Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, and Maryland, these 12 are 220 votes and over 44% of the population.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[Filiks]

This ought to be by a constitutional amendment, because while states want to control how they pick the president, there is only one president. That means picking that position ought to be as fair as possible to all people of the nation. If it's left to the states to change their laws, some will refuse.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[siriuskase]

Problem is that under current law, only the individual state has the power to change the awarding of its electorial votes to proportional rather than all to the winner. Since in each particular state, the majority of voters voted for the winner, you would be asking then to give up some EC votes. The minority doesn't have the power to make the majority give up some of its power.

Unless more people are willing to give up some power without getting something in return than I think they are, changes will need to take place at the national level which would require an ammendment to the constitution.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[rednip]

Colorado rejected a bill to split by popular vote, and Maine and Nebraska already split by house district.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[bergeron76]

What about having the # of electoral votes in each state randomized every 4 years. Then, only release the number alotted to each state the week before the election.

This would cut down on the "swing state blitzes" like we saw in Ohio and Fla. In addition, it would take Texas out of the firm Republican 'big oil' hands.

But then again, the random number generator would likely be cracked and the corruption would continue...

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[Elwood P Dowd]

I like this system better than what we have presently because it makes 8 large, currently uncompetitive, states competitive and important to the race.

And I don't, because I'm a member of the reigning party in one of those big states. Your change would cause a dramatic shift in power, and I think that the shift would diminish the power of populous states more than it would diminish the power of less populous states. Yes, they might have reason to campaign here, but the liberals would lose nationwide, every time.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[demachina]

Proportional assignment of electoral college votes is really not a great idea even with your twist. It takes huge swings in the vote to register a 1 elector change, you justed added another 1 elector swing at the 50% mark.

Colorado had proportional assignment on the ballot and it was voted down. It would have resulted in candidates ignoring Colorado because its not worth spending time in a state if you have to swing a huge number of voters to get a 1 elector difference. The only reason it was on the ballot was because Democrats had written off Colorado to the Republicans and it was a way to strip them of a few electoral votes. But Colorado is starting to swing Democratic and if it does they will actually want the current winner take all system.

If you make this the rule in every state, it would result in a bizarre system where candidates look at it each state to see how close they are in the polls to crossing a threshold where they would pick up or lose one elector. They might launch a massive campaign in a state that is 80% to one candidate just because it happens to be on the threshold of swinging one elector. All in all it would end up being worse than it is now.

Fact is each person in this country should have one vote and popular vote should decide the election. There really is no reason why someone living in a small state should have 1.1 votes and someone living in a big state should have 0.9 votes.

Some will argue candidates will ignore the small states, well no they wouldn't. They would be forced to campaign for everyone's vote which is the way it should be. Small states already have disproportional clout thanks to the Senate. There is no reason they should have even more clout in choosing a President.

I imagine the Republicans would fight it to death since they win a lot of small states and pick up the extra electors they have under the current system.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes huge swings in the vote to register a 1 elector change,

The point is that the "toss-up" electors would be distributed throughout the nation rather than in a few swing states.

And the huge swings needed are not the fault of proportional allocation, but of the artifically small size of the House. We could have more than 9000 electors without amending the Constitution.

I imagine the Republicans would fight it to death since they win a lot of small states and pick up the extra electors they have under the current system.

But they'd also get votes in California and New York, which they don't now.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[N3WBI3]

Yes its not liker we are a federal republic right?

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[NeMon'ess]

Your logic doesn't make sense to me. 38% voted for Kerry in Texas. That's 12 votes under this system. Yes 44% of California went to Bush, but 40-something went to Kerry in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, N. Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio, to look at the most populous Republican states. I simply don't see the Democrats (they sure as hell aren't all liberals) losing nationwide. Campaign strategies would shift, and maybe Texas would be 40-something for the Democrat, so more votes.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[NeMon'ess]

Interesting idea, but how much would the largest allotment to a state be? My biggest concern is that if two blue or two red states got the 55 and 34 votes, that might decide the election then and there. It's too much like gambling. One election the numbers just fall for one side. Four years later the random distribution favors the other side.

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[Elwood P Dowd]

Yes 44% of California went to Bush, but 40-something went to Kerry in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, N. Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio, to look at the most populous Republican states.

But more of the biggest states went to Kerry. The smaller states are less effected by this change, because a larger portion of their electors correspond to senators. There are two games to play with our system:

Win narrowly, lose by landslides

small state bonus

The Democrats use one, the Republicans use the other. If you eliminate either arbitrary bonus, you would dramatically shift power to the other party. I'm sure the Republicans would be opposed to subtracting two electors from every state.

Before you say you think it's a good idea, work out what the electoral college result would have been with this system in the past two elections. I guarantee it would lean things towards the Republicans.

Campaign strategies would shift, and maybe Texas would be 40-something for the Democrat, so more votes.

Yes, perhaps. But why is it better for both parties?

I like this system better than what we have presently because it makes 8 large, currently uncompetitive, states competitive and important to the race.

This is not a sufficient answer for me. I'm in one of those 8 states, and I want the Democrats to take me for granted. It means that much to me to remove the Republicans from the whitehouse. I'm happy to be ignored during the race. So. Why is your system better for me?

Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures

[ChristTrekker]

I disagree. Let the candidates win the election one EV at a time, one district at a time. Make them work for it, really earn it. Currently, if you win Denver you've got most of Colarado (9 EV IIRC) in the bag. It's not right that you could run up the vote in one small area and get a whole State worth of impact.

More Teeth Against Offenders

[VernonNemitz]

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION: "Because the process of voting lies at the very heart of the process by which this Nation fairly conducts itself, the Definition of "treason" is herewith Amended so that in addition to its original meaning, it shall also include any Acts intended to interfere with the True Will of Voters."

Then we can execute the guys ripping up voter registration forms, or causing long lines, or creating confusing ballots, or stuffing ballot boxes, or hacking the counting/recording/reporting process. Good riddance!

Re:More Teeth Against Offenders

[E_elven]

Yeah, that's not vague. Wouldn't voting for the losing candidate be 'interfering' with the 'True Will' of the majority of voters?

Re:More Teeth Against Offenders

[CrimsonAvenger]

alright, how do you define "the True Will of Voters"? And how do you determine whether it has been interfered with?

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[rednip]

The system is broken... I agree, but let's repair it to its original design...

So then, slaves would count as 3/5 a person?

It's an interesting idea, but then instead of one race we'd have 500 or so vote for me because I'd vote for him races. Technically the electors can already vote for anyone they want, in practice it has only happened a couple of times.

Personally, what I think is broken is the primary system itself. While I still think that Kerry is a much better man than Bush (it's not all that hard), we could have come out with a better canidate (one with fewer 'negatives'), but Kerry was real agressive in Iowa, and that's who they picked.

I'd change it by...

[Singletoned]

I'd stop allowing Republicans to participate.

Re:I'd change it by...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about by dropping the south... Then we'd get good contests between republicans and democrats arguing about real issues, rather than those fundy nutjobs:

http://www.fuckthesouth.com/

Re:I'd change it by...

[Singletoned]

That is one of the funniest things I've read in ages.

Isn't the internet winderful? A bile-fueled, swear-word laden rant that actually links to sources. You never get that kind of thing in real life.

Streamline the Paperwork

[siriuskase]

In my precinct, the bottleneck was the guy checking IDs. The voter list was divided into 3 printouts with 3 pollworkers manning them. But, you had to get your ID checked first. Why couldn't the pollworkers with the voter list check ID? We had 10 machines, but only 5 were necessary. Or maybe we just needed a faster guy.

Instead of using the plastic key cards at the polling place, they should have mailed us smart versions of our voter registration card that would enable voting at any polling place in the state. The biggest crowds are before and after work. In my metro, the average 1 way commute is 40 minutes, so voting near the residence is inconvenient for people with inflexible jobs.

Re:Streamline the Paperwork

[Tyndmyr]

Selling one card, ready to vote, only five bucks.

What is the impetus?

[revscat]

The only problem with changing the electoral system is that there is never any groundswell of support for such an idea. Who is going to implement it, the Republicans? They're control the entire federal government, and have learned how to game the current system to their advantage. Changing that would risk their power base.

This is not going to happen without widespread and energetic grassroots support and, in the case of Diebold and other unverifiable voting systems, possibly bloodshed. Neither seems likely when "The OC" is on TV tonight.

It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[TheWanderingHermit]

There's one thing I'd like to see changed in the American governmental structure. It's not the election, but I think it would have an effect. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister has to defend his position to the opposition. (I don't know whether it's in the House of Lords or Commons. Could a British reader elaborate on this?) I've seen this several times on "The News Hour" (and now, once I've mentioned a PBS program, I'm sure I'll be branded a liberal and a lot of people will use that as cause to ignore anything I say), with Tony Blair having to justify and explain his reasoning for his position or actions.

While it isn't actually part of the election, I think if the President had to go before the Senate (or House) and personally and directly (in other words, he can't send a Secretary or spin doctor) respond to the opposition, the public (at least those who watch C-SPAN and those who see the mis-representative sound bytes on the news) would know more about who is in office (and possibly up for re-election). During the past 4 years, the President had very few news conferences. There were frequent reports that when he made public appearances, attendees were vetted to make sure they were supporters. The same was done in campaign stops.

I'm not targeting Bush, it's just he's a good example. I think the President, who is elected by the full country, should be held responsible to tell us why he is making the choices he makes -- and should be held to that by the opposition party so he can either clearly explain what he is doing, or reveal that his reasoning is suspect. While this would not have effected Monica-gate, it would have benefited all of us during Clinton's terms as well, since he would have to answer to Republicans about what he is doing.

While it's not part of the election, once a President gets in office, he's basically campaigning for re-election. This would mean he can't spin everything and would have to continually face challenging questions about what he is doing. I think it'd effect elections in the long run, because we'd be more aware of how a sitting President makes his decisions.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[goatan]

there's one thing I'd like to see changed in the American governmental structure. It's not the election, but I think it would have an effect. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister has to defend his position to the opposition. (I don't know whether it's in the House of Lords or Commons. Could a British reader elaborate on this?) I've seen this several times on "The News Hour" (and now, once I've mentioned a PBS program, I'm sure I'll be branded a liberal and a lot of people will use that as cause to ignore anything I say), with Tony Blair having to justify and explain his reasoning for his position or actions.

It's called prime ministers question time, an important thing to remember is that the Prime minister is first amongst equals he is answerable to his peers i.e every member of parliament. Prime minister used to be an insult for the leader of the ruling party that got ideas above there station now a days people call them a presidential prime minister a charge often levelled at TB.

TB has tried to game this process by shortening the time allowed for questions and only allowing questions he's seen in advance, worst of all are the sycophantic arse licking he get from some of the cronies in his party "does the prime minister realise how fabulous he looks today" that last was exaggerated but not by much.

Despite what TB has tried to do to it Prime Minister Question Time is still one of the best examinations of a leader's action possible, also goverment ministers have there own question time where they answer for there actions as well.

General information about what prime ministers do

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[Singletoned]

"the Prime Minister has to defend his position to the opposition"

It's called Prime Minister's Question Time. He has to do it in the House of Commons, and he has to do it every week. It used to be twice a week, but Tony Blair changed it to once a week (but doubled the length of the session).

He also faces constant questioning because he participates in parliament in general (which would be like the president sitting in the senate every day).

I think you've hit on a major problem with American politics. Because your lead politician and figurehead is never engaged in discussion, his views are never, ever questioned. I think this may have had a more general effect on the level of debate in the country in general.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[AndrewRUK]

You're thinking of Prime Minister's Questions, in the House of Commons. Basically, any MP can ask the PM a question (the leader of the opposition usually gets 4, and the leader of the third largest party 2.) There are also question times for each government department, where MPs can put questions to government ministers. (See this factsheet (pdf) for more about how parliamentary questions work.)

Of course, sometimes PMQs are used to give the PM a nice easy question for political point scoring. And example, from last week shows.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[TheWanderingHermit]

I think you've hit on a major problem with American politics. Because your lead politician and figurehead is never engaged in discussion, his views are never, ever questioned. I think this may have had a more general effect on the level of debate in the country in general.

Exactly! It's easy for a President to hide behind their office. Nixon did it before he resigned, and Bush has done it all along. At least Clinton, when Monica-gate came up, addressed the country and faced questioning (that wasn't held confidential). He may have lied (or, as he would put it, exaggerated), but he faced others.

So have you seen indications that the "Prime Minister's Question Time" actually helps public debate in GB? I'd think if it were required in the US, with cameras allowed, we'd be hearing about it what happened on the news and the President's answers (as well as the opposition's questions) would be continually before the public.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[Timothy J. Wood]

While it's not part of the election, once a President gets in office, he's basically campaigning for re-election

How about reforming the Presidential term limits so that a single person can only serve one term as president? This would avoid the idiocy of having the (arguably) most powerful person in the world spending their time campaigning instead of working and would reduce the effect of incumbency (the Vice President would still have an unfair advantage, especially since they typically seem to just sit around on their thumbs anyway)

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[Singletoned]

I can't think of specific examples at present, but constantly hearing discussions between the prime Minister and the leader of the opposition opens people up to understanding the principles of debate and of intellectual arguement.

There are other factors at work, including the fact that it is much easier to get your voice heard. You can write to your MP, and even get him to ask questions in parliament on your behalf if he thinks it is worth it.

For example, everyone who wrote to their MP about software patents has been invited to a meeting to discuss the issue with representatives of the government: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/09/patent_cha rm/

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[b-baggins]

The U.S. system of checks and balances takes care of all this already. The president needs to get majority votes in both Senate and House to get bills passed. The House and Senate can override vetos. The House and Senate can impeach and convict a sitting president.

A parliamentary system is foundationally different from our representative government. A Prime Minister is not a president, per se. He's the chosen leader of the majority government (usually formed by a coalition of parties in the elected assemblies.)

A vote of no confidence can result in many things. It can cause the fall of the government, in which case national elections are held, a new government formed and a new prime minister selected by that government, or it could simply result in the ruling government selecting a new prime minister.
The specifics vary depending on the particular forms of parliamentary government the country has.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[TheWanderingHermit]

In Virginia, the Governer's term is 4 years (I think that's standard for all states), but with the provision that no Governer can serve 2 terms in a row. Right now our Gov. is Mark Warner, which means he can't run for re-election, but he can run for another term 4 years after he gets out of office.

I like that because it also gives us what is usually enough time to find any skeletons that were shoved in the closet during a term.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[TheWanderingHermit]

The president needs to get majority votes in both Senate and House to get bills passed.

That's true, but while the majority party is the same party as the President, the opposition can often be squelched. While filibusters and other tactics are still possible, when the majority party is the same as the President's party, it is VERY rare you'll see them override a veto, much less impeach. (Can you picture either party impeaching a President of their affilation?)

Personally, I've always preferred to see Congress to have a majority that was opposite whatever the President was. While that isn't necessary, as long as the majority party is the same as the President's party, the President does not have to defend his position.

While you reference a vote of no confidence, requiring the President to respond to the opposition would NOT mean a system using a "no confidence" vote that could put the President out of office. Reagan had several cases where he pushed bills through Congress and lost. It didn't take away his power.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[CTachyon]

The big difference between a Prime Minister and a President is that a Prime Minister is the leader of the Legislative branch. Tony Blair's counterpart in the US isn't George W. Bush, it's House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. When Blair speaks, he's doing it on behalf of the majority in Parliament, not on his own, so it makes sense for his fellow legislators to question how he performs his duty of representing them.

While a Q&A session with the President might be nice, very few presidents would agree to it (at least with Congress), merely on the grounds that it clouds the checks and balances between the Legislative and Executive branches.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[TheWanderingHermit]

While a Q&A session with the President might be nice, very few presidents would agree to it (at least with Congress), merely on the grounds that it clouds the checks and balances between the Legislative and Executive branches.

It might blur the distinction of responsibilities and power, but, in the long run, I think it would increase the C&B. I doubt any Prez would like it, because it would make him responsible to more people. On the other hand, making him responsible, directly, for his policies to our representatives, would increase his answerability to the public. Of course, I'm sure that's why no President would want it. (Maybe we can get it through Congress and have it arrive on a President's desk before he leaves office?)

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[KontinMonet]

They certainly did not all get invites. I sent emails and faxes to my MP (one of the Blair babes) who studiously ignored everything. I then wrote to Tam Dalyell (as he writes on tekky matters for New Scientist) who did reply. But I've had no invite.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[_iris]

It is on C-SPAN (or is in C-SPAN2) every Sunday evening. They broadcast the House of Commons in both Great Britian and Canada. Furthermore, I believe it is all ministers who must defend themselves in the House of Commons, not just the Prime Minister.

I completely agree with the idea. However, the absurd level of admiration that we Americans hold for the office of President would prevent it from being as effective here as it is in other countries. I believe Congress members actually have the right to question the President during the State of the Union address. Could you imagine the witch hunt that would ensue if any Congress members actually used this right?

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[buxton2k]

While I agree with your idea, and in fact I'd prefer a parliamentary system to our seperated branches of government (in practice, rather than in theory, it seems to offer more of a check on government abuse, while ironically also allowing a more efficient government), I wonder how effective a question hour would be in our system.

The Prime Minister is (typically) the leader of the dominant party in the House of Commons (similar to Tom DeLay, Majority Party Leader in Congress). He is also, by virtue of that, the head of government (the head of state - the ceremonial and theoretical source of executive power - is the Queen). Put simply, he is a legislator that has been "granted" executive power on the Queen's behalf because he can command the support of a majority of Parliament.

Under that system, it's necessary for him to remain accountable to the legislature, because if he gets too abusive with his power, the legislature can simply demand he resign (vote of no confidence) or stop supporting his actions, completely hamstringing his government. So he has to answer questions and appeal to them (which coincidentally, demands far better speaking and rhetorical skills, since he must constantly defend his positions).

In our system, the President is elected separately - he is not merely a member of Congress picked to run the executive branch. So he is in no way accountable to Congress - if they fail to support him, he keeps his job. Also (and this is particularly important), the President is both head of government (like Blair) and head of state (like the Queen). The later position requires a certain dignitas, a remaining above the fray of politics, while the former requires being in the political fight.

Uniting these positions was one of the mistakes made in the Constitution, I think, because the President gets the mystique of being a head of state and the power of head of government. In a parliamentary system, no one ever stops to say "he's the prime minister, so I'll stay behind him", as many do about the president - that sort of feeling is more focused on the Queen, who has no real power now.

In other words, A) The president wouldn't have any reason to refuse to answer a question because Congress (short of impeachment for criminal matters) can't just say "you're out of the executive", and B) many (in Congress and the public) would be unhappy with harsh criticism of the President that would never be the case with a distinct head of government (the way more people in Britain would check their criticism of the Queen, or moderate it, but feel fine ripping on Blair).

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[DHam]

No, Tony Blair is the equivalent of Bush AND Delay rolled into one. Prime Ministers questions are more about keeping a check on the executive than on government legislation. Indeed, the other ministers also have to front the house to be quized about how they are running their departments too.

Furthermore, there are other countries (Sweden for example) which have parliamentary control of prime ministers who are not themselves members of parliament. This is also - sort of - how the EU system works: the commission is the executive and is appointed by the national governments but it is still answerable to the parliament.

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[CTachyon]

No, Tony Blair is the equivalent of Bush AND Delay rolled into one. Prime Ministers questions are more about keeping a check on the executive than on government legislation. Indeed, the other ministers also have to front the house to be quized about how they are running their departments too.

True. I was oversimplifying a bit, since most parliamentary forms of government don't have as strong a separation between Legislative and Executive as the US does.

Furthermore, there are other countries (Sweden for example) which have parliamentary control of prime ministers who are not themselves members of parliament. This is also - sort of - how the EU system works: the commission is the executive and is appointed by the national governments but it is still answerable to the parliament.

That's rather... odd. Wouldn't that merit a different title than Prime Minister?

Re:It's Not The Elections, But I'd Change...

[DHam]

Furthermore, there are other countries (Sweden for example) which have parliamentary control of prime ministers who are not themselves members of parliament. This is also - sort of - how the EU system works: the commission is the executive and is appointed by the national governments but it is still answerable to the parliament.

That's rather... odd. Wouldn't that merit a different title than Prime Minister?

If you're referring to the EU situation, then it's fair to say that the system is odd, Byzantine and confusing. Negotiated settlements tend to be like that. The legislative process is even more bizarre. Of course in Europe the commission has a president not a prime minister (and the commission president is not the same as the president of the European Council - confused yet?)

In Sweden they talk about statsministern, literally "the Minister of State" but that tends to get translated as Prime Minister. I think that the key distinction is that a prime minister is the head of the government but not the head of state. A president is head of state and may or may not be head of government depending on where you are. Usually prime ministers are accountable to (ie can be sacked by) parliament but they are not always members of parliament.

For added confusion the Dutch Minister-president is a Swedish style prime minister while the German chancellor is like a prime minister and is a member of the Bundestag (lower house of parliament).

Just to top it off, France has an executive president and a prime minister and they are both sort of head of government (and can come from opposite parties!)

The short version is that different countries have different consitutional arrangements but for practical purposes there are some offices which are sufficiently similar that it makes sense to translate the names as "prime minister" or "president".

Weekend Voting

[Lomby]

The USA could begin by making people vote on Saturday and Sunday. Many countries vote on these days: people tend to have more time during the weekend.

A unified voting procedure also helps: just as an example you can then use national television to illustrate the voting procedure.

Re:Weekend Voting

[toolio]

That is a good point, the traditional voting day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday of Novemeber. The day was choosen for reasons that aren't relevant anymore.

More Info on the History

Re:Weekend Voting

[jurv!s]

Why don't we just have a federal election holiday?

Re:Weekend Voting

[ChristTrekker]

These are holy days for a large segment of the population. Many would therefore not be able to vote. Or they might simply use that time for something more important than politics, like spending time with family.

In fact, this is why election day is a Tuesday - in recognition that Sunday was a worship day, and that many people might need a day of travel (in the 18th century) to get to the polls.

Re:Weekend Voting

[Lomby]

I know of no religion that has both saturday and sunday as a holy day :)

Anyway, you could do as in Italy, where the voting is sometimes spread on 3 days (saturday, sunday, monday).

As for the free time: maybe I live in a utopia, but I need no more than 2 minutes to vote here in Switzerland. A lot of people go to curch/for a walk/for a travel, and before doing that they go voting.
We get all the voting forms at home, we can send them by mail, or we can go to the voting booth. Along with the voting material we get a letter with some barcode on it: if you vote by mail, you send it along, otherwise you bring it with you.
You enter, the read the data via a cheap bar-code reader, eventually check an ID, and you can vote.

And, before someone objects, Switzerland is a lot smaller than the USA, but the process is VERY scalable (think of trees :)

And mind you we vote 6/7 times every year!

Political Spam

[Eil]

Amongst all the pyramid schemes, \/iagra, and business opportunies from my good Nigerian friends, here's a message from "George W. Bush" that arrived in the old Inbox this morning.

This is the first spam that I can recall receiving that was purely politically motivated. (And also the first one in a very long time that I read all the way through.) The message discusses all the various conspiracy theories that have popped up on Slashdot over the past few weeks (months, years). While I'm skeptical how much is fact and how much is fiction, I thought it interesting enough to paste here, especially as it relates to this Slashdot article. There does not seem to be any copy of it on the web yet, or I'd have just linked to it instead.

What are the chances that we'll start seeing a lot more political spam of this variety in the future?

Subject: How I stole your election (ha ha ha ha!!!)
From: "George W.Bush"
Date: Tue, November 9, 2004 5:46 pm

How I Stole Your Election
by George W. Bush

The first thing I did to steal your election was to make friends with ALL the
manufacturers and code-verifyers of the Electronic Voting Machines. They were
really nice, especially Diebold who gave me $600,000 for my campaign. Wow,
thanks dude!

http://nuclearfree.lynx.co.nz/stealing.htm

Next, I had my attack dog, Karl Rove, convince these companies to either alter
the vote totals on the central tabulator machines (simple PCs running windows
using Remote Access Server -- RAS), or reprogram (via a downloadable software
patch) the voting machines themselves so that they would give the advantage to
ME! Isn't America great?!? A little money and some religious zealotry goes a
looooong, loooong way. Oh, the religious zealotry thing? That's just a
cover. I'm not really a Christian -- or at least I don't act like one.
Anyway, I digress.

http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-25.htm#rig

Did you ever hear the media complaining about how inaccurate the exit polls
were in prior elections? No. That's because they basically ARE accurate.
But this election, the exit polls showed Kerry WAY ahead. No problem. My
buddies rigged the machines (and all they needed to do was rig it in one
state, Ohio, but they took care of at least Florida for me too) not only to
make me squeak by in the important battleground states, like Florida and Ohio,
but they also made sure that when I did get a state that I was expected to
win, the margin was HUGE so that my "popular" vote would make it look like I
had a mandate.

So let's recap how the popular vote thing worked again. Let's say we didn't
want it to look suspicious by taking states that Kerry really would have won
(except for Ohio and Florida, gotta take those! heh heh). So we let him win
there, but in order once again to boost the "popular" vote (I put that in
quotes because as you know, I'm not REALLY popular), we bring my vote tallies
RIGHT UP NEXT to Kerry's, to jack up the "popular" vote as much as possible,
even if I didn't win the state.

Then, with states like North Carolina, we know we're going to steal the state
anyway (at least according to what the exit polls were telling everyone....
and according to the long, long lines of new voters were telling everyone ...
because we all know most of those people were voting for Kerry, not the status
quo), so we just jack the crap out of the vote total to REALLY stuff a
crapload of "popular" votes in my pocket. You see, this way I can get on the
TV and declare that I have a "mandate" and that I'm going to "cash in" on my
political "capital" (which I don't really have of course, but we made it look
that way).

Here's a nice chart to show you what I mean. Take special note of how the
electronic voting machine totals compare to the paper ballot totals. And see
what I mean about North Carolina?
http://www.bandsagainst

Re:Political Spam

[munkee]

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/sta tes/OH/P/00/index.html says Bush won the Exit Polls from Ohio.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/resu lts/sta tes/FL/P/00/index.html says the same for Florida

Re:Political Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are the "corrected" figures. CNN and the other news agencies didn't want to look inaccurate, so they fudged the numbers to match the election results.

Centralised voting rules

[halothane]

What exactly is wrong with centralised / common voting rules? I do understand that USA is a Federation and the individual states have a lot of powers. But when you are voting to elect your Federal representatives, shouldn't you have common rules and procedures?

I am from India. We are also a Federation, albeit with much weaker powers for the individual states. We have got along farly well with common voting rules and procedures.

Of course, the primary prerequisite, one we have, is a independent, constitutionally empowered Election Commission, whose officials are answerable only to the Supreme Court. If such a thing needs a Constitutional amendment in USA, so be it.

Re:Centralised voting rules

[mwlewis]

It's a basic premise of the US Constitution that the states are more than just local jurisdictions. A lot of that has been whittled away over the years, but certain things remain, because they are very explicit, and a court or a Congress can't just wish them away.

One of these things is the Electoral College. Originally, there was no popular vote. State legislatures selected electors (they also selected Senators) who voted for president on behalf of their states. Over the years, states stopped doing this, and now we have a popular vote that determines which electors go on to cast votes.

It would require a contitutional amendment to alter this, although I seriously doubt that any organization would be created that was responsible to only one branch of the government. Checks and balances are fundamental to the entire Constitition (not that they always work, or work in a timely manner). Having certain powers reserved for the States is part of this.

We've gotten along fairly well with our voting system. 2000 wasn't the first time there was a really close election that perhaps should have gone the other way. Nixon declined to pursue a Gore-like legal campaign in 1960. There was even an election in the 1800s where no one won the electoral college, and the House of Representatives had to select the president.

No Electoral College

[mattboston]

Do away with the electoral college. Make it based on popular vote. I don't want my state making a choice for me when the majority of my state votes the other way.

Re:No Electoral College

[mattboston]

also, limit how much money that can be spent on a campaign. it's stupid that we're spending billions of $$ on the DNC, RNC and people's campaigns, yet our national debt is extremely high, there are millions of people unemployed who want to work, and millions of people who are homeless, need healthcare, etc. the list could go on, but instead we're spending all this money on useless things

Re:No Electoral College

[Paladin128]

Um... spending that money on the campaign actually employs people...

Re:No Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... spending that money on the campaign actually employs people...

This is such a bogus arguement. We should not continue harmful practices just because said practice employs a certain number of people. Should we continue the "war on drugs" forever just because so many people are employed by it? There are countless examples.

See 1984, Orwell, specifically the part about endless war as an economic system.

Ban gerrymandering

[Zarn]

I read that somewhere else, probably on Dailykos. I agree wholeheartedly with it but there are several problems:

• How do you define gerrymandering?
• How do you enforce the ban?
• What to do with districts that are already skewed?

Disclaimer: I am not an American.

Re:Ban gerrymandering

[siriuskase]

Ban districts with concave shapes unless the lack of convexity is due to a use of a natural feature (river, ocean, mountain ridge) as a boundary.

Re:Ban gerrymandering

[Singletoned]

"Ban districts with concave shapes unless the lack of convexity is due to a use of a natural feature (river, ocean, mountain ridge) as a boundary"

If you ban all distrcts with concave shapes, you will have to give every district straight edges or else ban half the districts (if districts connect to each other then any convexity of one district will equal the concavity of it's neighbour).

Iowa's got a pretty good voting/counting procedure

[infernow]

Speaking as a resident of Iowa, I'd say the system we use to vote is pretty good compared to those questionable all-electronic systems. We get a marker and a big ballot with the candidates and ovals to be filled in next to them. The layout is fairly idiot-proof, and it's blatantly obvious which ovals you filled in with your marker.

As far as making a mistake goes, I think all you have to do is go up to the people in charge of handing out the ballots and get a new one after the old one is invalidated (perhaps by filling in all the ovals?).

When you're done marking your ballot, you take it over to the optical reader and feed it in. If the ballot is incorrectly marked or can't be read, it spits it back out at you. It would be nice if there were a little screen that confirmed your votes after reading, but other than that, I'd say the system's pretty good.

Change it so...

[goatan]

That electing a president with a minority of the popular vote is impossible.

Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

1. Allow absentee voting for everyone. Not all states allow absentee voting unless you are absentee, or some other excuse.

2. The option to paper vote at the polls, regardless of being able to electronically vote.

3. Have the polls open from 6am to midnight at least cause some people sleep during the day.

4. iVoting. Being able to cast your ballot over the Internet would be nice, but too much corruption exists.

5. Modify the Electoral College
5a. Use IRV to determine the winner of the state popular vote. That winner receives two electoral votes.
5b. The remaining electoral votes are split among the plurality. ...
The state winner, determined by IRV, gets those two votes. If Bush gets 40% of the votes, then 40% of the remaining E.C. votes goes to him. If Kerry gets 40% of the votes, 40% of the remaining E.C. votes goes to him.

6. Declare Election Day an official holiday, giving students of all kinds the day off. Create more polling stations at public schools.
6a. Modify overtime laws so if you work more than six hours on Election Day, you get double overtime. Logically, a 7 hour day would pay the same as an 8 hour day any other day.

7. To get a bigger voter turn out, offer a tax "credit" for voting. If you have voted in every single election in a given year (the ones in February, March, May, September, November, and any other ones your locality may have), you get like a $50 tax credit of off your income taxes. Of course, if 200 million voted, that's $10 billion there.

Re:Just some ideas

[cpt kangarooski]

I don't much care for that last one as voters who are not members of a party cannot reliably expect to be able to vote in party primaries.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

I guess it really depends on the state concerning party primaries.

Re:Just some ideas

[TykeClone]

In many states, you can change your party affiliation when you walk up to the caucuses or primaries. That's not an impediment.

Re:Just some ideas

[cpt kangarooski]

But I don't want to be a member of a party. The proposed rule should be limited to general elections, or elections within a party only if you are at that time a member of the party holding the election.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

I don't know how primaries are done exactly in other states, but let me change what I said. How about a $50 tax credit if someone votes the November general election. That at the least would increase the voter turn out in the general elections.

We don't have party registration in my state of Washington. We can register with the party organization, but that's it. There is no registration with the government concerning political parties.

We had something called a blanket primary for the September primary. I heard we were able to vote for the individual, and the plurality winner of each party went onto the general election. This was declared illegal, and it makes sense since what if someone runs unopposed. Then a voter could trash another party's candidates.

We then had to choose a party in the September primary, and only vote in that party for each of the races listed on the ballot(s). People weren't happy about that.

Now Washington State is going to the top two plurality winners total, meaning it very well could be two Democrats going onto the general election for a given race.

Re:Just some ideas

[TykeClone]

In Iowa, we do the "caucuses" in January for Presidential candidates and actually hold the primaries for other positions in June.

As far as declaring a party - all it does is get you in the door for the cauceses. It's not a big deal either way.

We shouldn't have to pay people to vote. It's a civic duty to do so - not one that should require a bribe.

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

5a. Use IRV to determine the winner of the state popular vote. That winner receives two electoral votes.

Please don't support IRV. Australia's used IRV for almost a century, and they still have a two-party mess because IRV becomes just as unstable as our current system when a third party becomes powerful. For a peek at a similar system, look back at the two-round runoff elections used in France in 2002, when the lefties were so busy nominating their vanity candidates as their first choice that their second choice Jospin was eliminated in the first round, leaving center-right Chirac opposed to far-right racist LePen. IRV is also a nightmare to tally, since the data of each individual ballot must be kept separate (you can't just add up the votes, you have to have all 120 million ballots shipped to a central location). Support Approval or Condorcet instead, neither of which have these deficiencies and both of which encourage third parties.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

You do realize Condorcet is flawed, right? http://www.mich.com/~donald/x2002d.html will explain some of why it's flawed, if you find the second occurrence of the word "Condorcet".

Condorcet can elect one of your lower choices, unlike IRV. With Condorcet, each lower choice vote has the same weight as one of the higher choices.

With IRV, you should NEVER vote for a candidate you don't want, even if it's a protest vote. You should really vote for a candidate you would want to win.

You mentioned http://electionmethods.org/IRVproblems.html, which has the below. The below is flawed in it's logic. It assumes that the Libertarian's second choice transfers to the Republicans, which may be correct. Well, if Republicans come in third place, thus being elimanted, who do you think the Republicans voted for second, Democrats? Yeah right, more likely the Republicans voted for Libertarians as their second choice in that three major party race. The below seems to assume that Republicans didn't list a second choice.

http://electionmethods.org/IRVproblems.html
Suppose my true preference is for the Libertarian first and the Republican second. Suppose further that the Libertarians are the strongest "minor" party. At some round of the IRV counting process, all the candidates will be eliminated except the Republican, the Democrat, and the Libertarian. If the Libertarian then has the fewest first-choice votes, he or she will be eliminated and my vote will transfer to the Republican, just as I wanted. But what if the Republican is eliminated before the Libertarian? Unless all the Republican votes transfer to the Libertarian, which is extremely unlikely, the Democrat might then beat the Libertarian. If so, I will have helped the Democrat win by not strategically ranking the Republican first. But that's the same situation I'm in now if I vote my true preference for the Libertarian!

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

Condorcet can elect one of your lower choices, unlike IRV. With Condorcet, each lower choice vote has the same weight as one of the higher choices.

That's the WHOLE GODDAMN POINT of Condorcet: to pick the winner that, while not everyone's first choice, the fewest people will bitch about. If a liberal, a conservative, and a moderate are all running, and the population is 50/50 split between liberals (who vote LMC) and conservatives (who vote CML), the moderate will win, because otherwise 50% of the population will be pissed off.

With IRV, you can rank someone higher and make them lose, or rank someone lower and make them win. This is a violation of the Monotonicity Criterion. Please explain why this is better.

With IRV, you should NEVER vote for a candidate you don't want, even if it's a protest vote. You should really vote for a candidate you would want to win.

In Condorcet, you just truncate your ballot at that point. You let all the people you can't stand all tie for last place, and then you have no problem.

Well, if Republicans come in third place, thus being elimanted, who do you think the Republicans voted for second, Democrats?

Probably some voted for Democrats, because they're duopoly loyalists, many voted Libertarian, a good chunk of the extremists and especially Southern racists voted Constitution, etc., etc.

A lot of Republicans HATE the idea of Libertarians, because they actually want to legislate people's private lives.

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

Probably some voted for Democrats, because they're duopoly loyalists, many voted Libertarian, a good chunk of the extremists and especially Southern racists voted Constitution, etc., etc.

Actually, at that point in the hypothetical example, all parties except Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian have been eliminated, so the Constitution party isn't a player anymore. The point still stands, though, that people don't do what you'd expect. Those Constitution voters might vote Con, Rep, Dem, Lib, Green for all you know, maybe because they think of Libertarians as hippies for wanting to legalize drugs. (Which is about the most fucked up characterization of the Libertarians as I've ever heard, but then I've heard stranger things from people's mouths.)

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

In my state, the Libertarians tend to be the ones that hurt the Democrats. Hence the huge mess we're still having concerning the governor's race.

And as for Condorcet, I still don't agree. My main reason: I don't advocate that method because that is a method that will use your lower choices to help defeat your earlier choices.

Re:Just some ideas

[bonniot]

I don't advocate that method because that is a method that will use your lower choices to help defeat your earlier choices.

How is this idea formalized? Can anybody comment if this is indeed a problem with Condorcet?

On the other hand, there seems to be loads of problems with IRV. In particular, with IRV:

1. voting a candidate higher can cause the candidate to lose, and voting a candidate lower can cause the candidate to win.
2. adding one or more ballots that vote X over Y can change the winner from X to Y.

Based on these facts, why do you think IRV is a good method?

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

If I'm not mistaken, the Avy method of IRV passes the Monotonicity Criterion.

http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm says both IRV and Condorcet fail Participation Criterion. As to whether the Avy method fails PC, I don't know.

Re:Just some ideas

[bonniot]

If I'm not mistaken, the Avy method of IRV passes the Monotonicity Criterion.

From what looks like avy's author's webpage:

A simple way to measure that unfairness of a method, is to show the smallest example exhibiting unfairness or non-monotonicty, when the counts of ballots are integers. For the Alternative Vote, the smallest number is -9 when 3 candidates. [I have not computed the number for the Avy example.

This seems to suggest that avy is not monotonic.

http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm says both IRV and Condorcet fail Participation Criterion. As to whether the Avy method fails PC, I don't know.

Right, Condorcet fails PC. This illustrates that no method is perfect (which was proved, for a certain set of criteria).

Still, it seems that this should be a killer requirement: "If one candidate is preferred over each of the other candidates, then he should win". It actually sounds like a self-evident proposition. Well, only Condorcet satisfies this requirement.

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

And as for Condorcet, I still don't agree. My main reason: I don't advocate that method because that is a method that will use your lower choices to help defeat your earlier choices.

The smarmy one-liner reply is that IRV will ignore your lower choices and throw away the lesser evil first, then let the greater evil win by default.

Look at it from this perspective: suppose the IRV and Condorcet winners are different; then, by definition of Condorcet method, either the Condorcet winner would defeat the IRV winner in a one-on-one election (i.e. the IRV winner is more widely disliked), or the Condorcet winner and IRV winner were both part of an A-beats-B-beats-C-beats-A cycle and the Condorcet winner was the one ranked highest on most people's ballots (i.e. the IRV winner is more widely disliked).

To use a plausible example, suppose that, like me, you live in Kansas (heavily Republican, with Libertarians the biggest 3rd party), and suppose that Kansas instituted IRV. Now, a few elections from now, suppose that the Libertarian party has gained such that 40% of the voters are Republican (vote RLD), 25% are Libertarian (vote LRD), and 35% are Democrat (vote DLR). Condorcet would choose the Libertarian candidate. IRV would eliminate the Libertarian candidate in the first round, giving the victory to the Republican.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

In that case, both sides, the Democrats and Republicans, are compromising their first choices in effort of compromise. If both sides end up compromising, there is no true catalyst for change cause it's just a so-so candidate. But that's my opinion.

In other words, it would be like the Democrats and Republicans working out a deal to merge and choose a candidate they both agree on.

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

So... your point is that compromise is bad, because if your first choice doesn't win, you're going home and you're taking your toys with you.

Please explain how IRV is better than Plurality then.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

The problem with plurality...

1. There may be a 49/49 tie, and it has to be broken somehow.

2. With IRV, you aren't forced to choose a second, third, etc. choice. You can stick with just your first choice.

However, I'll say this. IRV and Condorcet has to be better than plurality. If I had the choice between Condorcet and plurality, I'd choose Condorcet. But that doesn't mean I'll be ranking all my candidates on Condorcet. I might only choose two or three out of ten or so candidates, tying the eight in last place.

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

1. There may be a 49/49 tie, and it has to be broken somehow.

Ties aren't unique to Plurality. What if the vote breakdown of an IRV election is 49 RLD, 49 DLR, 2 LRD? Libertarians are eliminated, then there's a tie between the Democrats and the Republicans, just like in Plurality. Ties pop up in Condorcet, too. No matter what voting system you use, there's just no avoiding the chance of a tie. It's a people issue, not a system issue.

2. With IRV, you aren't forced to choose a second, third, etc. choice. You can stick with just your first choice.

Nor are you in Condorcet. You just specify your first choice, then leave the rest unspecified. They all tie for last place by default -- which is exactly the same as what happens in IRV. If you honestly think all the others are equally bad, this is a good thing, but if you actually have an opinion, you're giving up your chance to express it. (For instance, I'm a rampant little-l libertarian on social issues, so despite the fact that I don't want the Republicans in office because I'm economically center-left, I *still* think they're better than the neo-Nazis in the Constitution Party. If I truncated my preferences, and by some nightmare scenario the Constitution Party were a serious contender this election, I'd be letting them waltz into office.)

This attitude that ranking is a bad thing stems from the mathematical fact that IRV throws away most of your ballot. This page shows some example rankings and demonstrates how much is thrown away by IRV:

• 63: A,B,C,D,E -> 63: A,B
• 75: B,A,C,D,E -> 75: B
• 100: C,D,B,E,A -> 100: C
• 86: D,E,C,B,A -> 86: D
• 73: E,D,C,B,A -> 73: E,D

1st round: A eliminated, xfer to B. 2nd round: E eliminated, xfer to D. 3rd round: C eliminated, xfer to D. 4th round: D wins. C was the candidate with the most 1st place votes, and the Condorcet winner, but it still loses.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

I don't think we're going to agree with each other on which is better, IRV or Condorcet. But I think there's one thing we can agree on: Condorcet is better than plurality.

Here's my preference of voting. IRV > Condorcet > Plurality.

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

Err... bad example for the tie. 49 RLD, 49 DLR, 1 LRD, 1 LDR. (I'm an LDR. We exist.)

Re:Just some ideas

[CTachyon]

Well, if that's what it comes down to, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. (I don't understand why you would support IRV after C lost the ABCDE example, and if that doesn't convince you, I can't think of anything that will.)

Re:Just some ideas

[burns210]

"Of course, if 200 million voted, that's $10 billion there."

But then again, it is 10 billion dollars that was payed by the people, that would be given to the people... Instead, give them a tax break that said thay could pay $50 less on there tax form.

Re:Just some ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

I'm told the Avy method passes Monotonicity Criterion when there are three candidates.

Re:Just some ideas

[bonniot]

Great. But the whole point of election reform is to make it possible to have more choice, and I would guess you need at least 5-8 to cover a broad range of ideas. So why not chose a system that works well in all cases, not just for 3?

Or, to quote Henry VI...

[benhocking]

Kill all the lawyers!

Naturally, this would have the added benefit of eliminating most politicians.

No, I'm not being serious.

Proportional representation

[delta_avi_delta]

I'm not sure why everyone is so scared of proportional representation. We have an excellent electoral system in Ireland, the Single Transferrable Vote. A better description than I could give is to be found here

We also have more than two parties, and therefore more than two stances to choose between.

Re:Proportional representation

[CTachyon]

STV is acceptable for proportional representation, but it's useless in presidential elections and of questionable usefulness in Senate elections (2 seats per state, regardless of population). Any sort of PR would also require being approved by the current duopoly.

Re:Proportional representation

[KrunchTime]

But PR-STV becomes instant-runoff in a single-seat election. This would have been useful in 2000 where Nader was perceived to have been weakening the Gore vote.

In this case a Nader supporter could have voted:
1. Nader
2. Gore

When Nader got knocked out the vote would then automatically go to Gore. A similar sitation could exist on the republican side for minority right-wing candidates and possibly libertarian candidates.

As you point out the duopoly would have to approve such a change in voting method. I believe each state would have to approve the method also.

Such universal approval is very unlikely ... which is a shame.

Krunch

Re:Proportional representation

[CTachyon]

I wasn't supporting the current Plurality system, I was arguing against IRV because it has stability problems if a third party actually becomes viable. I guess I should have made that clearer, but I was hoping my .sig would speak for itself. It obviously needs some work.

Oh gosh, that's easy.

[mog]

Trial by combat.

Re:Oh gosh, that's easy.

[MrPeach]

to the death!

Require Citizens to vote, or at least show up

[warpSpeed]

Require citizens to show up at the polls, or mail in ballots. That will get more partisipation.

Let each state decide how best to take care of its own electoral votes. The Fed should not force how each state casts its votes. The constitution lays out how it should work already, so leave it alone, if a state wants to change, let it.

Bingo Ballots . . .

[Dausha]

I have a strong distrust of electronic balloting in general, and recommend something that most Americans can handle: Bingo Ballots.

1. A Bingo Ballot (BB) is a stack of cards, perhaps 4"x 6".

2. Each (BB) card contains only one race. (I suppose they could be called Race Cards.)
a. All candidates listed in alphabetical order
b. A candidate slot for "none of the above" will always be provided at the bottom.
c. candidate slots will be evenly spaced on the card (i.e., if there are three candidates, then each occupies a fourth of the card. Don't forget the "None" candidate slot).
d. a row resembling a row of equal signs will divide each partition (======)
e. Each card will have a registration number (e.g. 12345-6-8). The middle digit is the "card" number, and the last digit is the "of cards" number. This will show the voter that there are eight cards to complete.
f. Font will be Courier 18pt minimum.
g. cards will be glued together as a notepad is, but such that they can be easily removed for counting.
h. For aiming purposes, a one centimeter box will be provided to the left of the candidate's name. As you will see below, this is not really important.

Voting:
a. The voter will be given an ink blotter resembling that used in Bingo, such to provide a one centimeter dot.
b. Voter will vote on each card, to be inspected at the end. Any race not voted for the voter will be required to mark "None."
c. Voter much manage to make a substancial mark (with a blotter that should be easy), that does not cross the line dividing candidates.
d. If the gap in the row (===) contains the substancial mark, then that vote is discarded.
e. If there's a big mark and a little mark, then the big mark counts.
f. If the voter screwed up, then they draw a fat 'X' on the ballot and is handed a replacement card. The original and replacement are stapled together.

Ballot Initiatives will have half the card to explain the initiative, and the bottom half will have three candidate slots: Yes, No, Don't Care.

Re:Bingo Ballots . . .

[Dausha]

On the Ballot Initiative Cards, I have a follow-on recommendation. On the BACK of the card, space will be provided to each side of the issue to state their reason for the initiative. Most initiatives have a committee that serves as ring leader. Typically, opposition will be more scattered, but they tend to unify on key reasons why an initiative is bad. The top half will be headed "For the Initiative" and the bottom half will read "Against the Initiative."

There isn't enough room, but does provide space for a few written sound bites.

Election reform

[w0]

Well I think there are a few things we can do to fix the system. The first is to reform the electoral college or do away with it. I personally believe that once we have a open digital system for voting, that we could do a straight popular vote for the presidency.
If that isn't possible, I believe we need to reform the electoral college. Giving two free votes to every state seems silly to me. It's a dated policy that gives people living in small states a bigger say in who gets to be president. It also makes it a lot closer to a popular vote as each district is fixed every ten years based on population. (I did some rough math and the results for this election ended up being the same, and actually split down the popular vote)
w0
PS check out www.blackboxvoting.org It's interesting to say the least.
PPS I for one welcome our new republican overloards.

What would I do to improve elections?

[Henry V .009]

I'd restrict suffrage to male property owners. I'd institute a poll tax and a reasonable test for intelligence and knowledge of history and current affairs. Seriously. We have this reflexive "everybody votes in a democracy" type thinking, but expanding suffrage to everybody just doesn't lead to better government in practice. Democracy has its place in constitutional government, but like the American founders knew, it should not reign supreme.

I probably shouldn't have added male in the first sentence. I can't really justify it. But hell, if you're going to make a suggestion like this, you may as well go all the way and be traditional about it.

Re:What would I do to improve elections?

[Star Stealing Girl]

Who modded this interesting? The thought that only male property owners should have the right to vote is not interesting and is not democracy.

Re:What would I do to improve elections?

[b-baggins]

But it was the way the country was originally set up. Why not ask yourself why.

Re:What would I do to improve elections?

[Henry V .009]

Hmm. Well, people make their own decisions on what they find interesting I expect.

Whether my suggestion is democracy or not is another matter. All democracies restrict suffrage to some degree. The United States did not extend suffrage to women until 1920. I certainly do not see any great improvement in our elected officials dating from the time. Nor do I see decline, although single women (a larger voting block than it used to be) tend to vote Democrat.

Still, I have reconsidered my original point. Male property owners and married women. People with a stake in the polis.

Approval Voting

[Leknor]

See: http://www.electionmethods.org/evaluation.html and http://approvalvoting.org/

The short of it is that you change the directions from "vote for one" to "vote for any". The whomever has the most number of approvals wins. It doesn't let people express preference between two candidates they find acceptable but it makes up for that in that it's simple for people to understand and it should be possible to use our existing style ballots.

There is a technically superior voting method, similar to IRV, called Condorcet but it's more complicated and therefore would be less easy to understand by the general public and I think it's important that people be able to understand the election process as much as possible.

Loads of things need changing

[__aavljf5849]

1. First of all, the US system of voter registration is completely outdated. In many modern countries you get your paper that tells you that you are eligible to vote send home to you with ordinary mail well in advance of the vote. Come on, the US goverment knows who are citizens, they know who get to vote. Why do you have to tell them first? This would get rid of any need for pruning or verifying the registration lists. This would also get rid of people registering Betty Boop for crack...
2. Secondly, you need a better paper trail. As it is now, the federal goverment can't tell the states how the voting should be done, with the effect that you have a plethora of different types of voting machines, many of them either confusing or insecure. But why should not the federal government be able to impose rerquirements on how federal voting is done?
   A good voting machine is simple: A computer with a touch-screen where you select who you want to vote for, get the answer "Are you sure?". When you are sure it prints out a paper. You confirm that the paper says the same thing as what you actually pressed on the screen, and you put it in a ballot box.There! Now you have an electronic voting machine that is extremely simple to use, and, most importantly, provides a paper trail, so that if the machines are called into question, you can recount the ballots manually.
   Machines like this helped verify the referendum in Venezuela as valid. Machines like this would have made it very simple to validate the votes both 2000 and 2001.
3. And, yes, as so many others, I would make the system proportional, and get rid of the ancient system of voting for electors. It was a good idea in the end of the 18th century. It's not a good idea now.

And that's just the election procedures. Just wait to I change the rest of US politics! Oh, right, I don't get to change anything, I just get to rant. Ah well, better than nothing! :-)

Majority rules!

[hublan]

If the majority of elegible voters doesn't vote, then they win. Pick some person at random from the social security number list, cross-check with immigration, and presto! they get to be president.

Better yet,, make it like a Dating system

[rednip]

While we're on crazy (yet strangly appealing) voting systems...

Each canidate fills out a profile about what policies and laws they consider important, and when people go to the polls they do the same. Then we could find the canidate who is most like their electorate.

Re:Better yet,, make it like a Dating system

[squiggleslash]

I'm more interested in someone's values and judgement. People who vote on the basis of laws being proposed now, except on insofar as they represent values and judgement of the individual being voted for, are really missing the point and, to some extent, living in the past.

I don't know how Bush or Kerry will support and implement the Agricultural Subsidies and Terrorism Act of 2007. I don't because it doesn't exist. Nor does the situation exist that leads to that law being proposed. I don't even know that the law is going to be proposed. I don't know the complications involved with that particular law. So ultimately, I want a President who I'm certain will do the "right thing" with it. If there's a terror attack tomorrow, and half of Ohio is made radioactive, I want a President who will the right thing. If there's no terror attack, and Bin Laden turns around tomorrow and says "My God, I've made a terrible mistake! Followers, drop your arms, what are we doing?", I want the President to do the right thing.

And I want that in the case of political candidates for all positions. And that's hard, to be honest. In this election, I had to really read between the lines before I worked out that one candidate actually had values very close to my own, and had acceptable judgement. Election campaigns tend to obscure those very issues. Worse still, I'd never have gotten it from either of their voting records or what policies they say they're in favour of today.

The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Ideas

[Noksagt]

in this series of articles (free-reg-req). Summary via comp.risks:

1. Election day should be a holiday (rather than penalizing employees for having to take time off to vote).

2. Early voting can allow people to vote when it is convenient for them.

3. Voter-verified audit trails, source code accessibility to election officials, spot checks of code on Election Day (as is done in Nevada's slot machines!)

4. Shorter lines at the polls, standards for numbers of voting machines and poll workers.

5. Impartial election administrators, and restrictions on insiders endorsing candidates.

6. Uniform and inclusive voter registration standards.

7. Accurate and transparent voting roll purges.

8. Uniform and voter-friendly standards for counting provisional ballots.

9. Upgraded voting machines and improved ballot design.

10. Fair and uniform voter ID rules.

11. An end to minority vote suppression, disenfranchisement, harassment, dirty tricks.

12. Improved absentee ballot procedures, e.g., downloading absentee ballots from the Internet, but avoiding the ballot-by-scan/fax/e-mail with explicit loss of privacy.

Unfair! Discrimination!

[Chemisor]

> If you've got ink on your thumb, you can't reregister or revote

This is so damn unfair and discriminating against hygiene-challenged voters. They would then be brutally forced to take a bath at least once every four years.

Re:Unfair! Discrimination!

[Singletoned]

"If you've got ink on your thumb, you can't reregister or revote"

It's also unfair on people who's pen had burst that day.

Also, people could cheat by cutting their thumb off after they vote, and then going and voting again, and then cutting their other thumb off, etc.

Republican voters would probably be willing to do that if they got whipped up into enough of a relgious frenzy.

Quiz Question before you vote

[hobbestcat]

Is Fox News actually News?
If yes
vote > /dev/nul

Re:Quiz Question before you vote

[davidwr]

> Is Fox News actually News?
>If yes
> vote > /dev/nul

else if corruption_exists
vote > /dev/nul

sigh

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[10100]

I disagree, although I see your point. The problem with giving power back to the electoral college is that the system is so outdated--it was actually created not too long after the US became a nation. While I agree that the system is broken, I think that a popular vote would be more effective in the long run. Fixing the electoral system only serves to remove citizens further from the electoral process; something that defies the true meaning of a democracy.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[TykeClone]

we could have come out with a better canidate (one with fewer 'negatives'), but Kerry was real agressive in Iowa, and that's who they picked.

Each state had the opportunity in selecting the candidate. Iowa comes first because its a small state (candidates can meet the people that they are trying to win the votes of) and ad time is relatively cheap. Winning Iowa != winning the nomination in many cases - George HW Bush beat Ronald Reagan here in 1980.

There may have been a better candidate, but I'm not sure that he (or her) was running this year - or that they could have won the nomination.

Vote by mail

[epcraig]

Despite nostalgia for the old polling station gathering, I appreciate being encouraged to vote at my convenience. I work at night, and before Oregon progressed to vote-by-mail I typically cast a zombie ballot after working overnight.

Nebraska!

[crow]

The state legislature elections in Nebraska are non-partisan. If you don't know the people when you go to vote, you can't just look at the party label on the ballot (it isn't there).

I would love to hear from people in Nebraska how this works in practice.

Re:Nebraska!

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

If you don't know the people when you go to vote, you should not be allowed to vote!

Re:Nebraska!

[ChristTrekker]

Relatively new Nebraskan here...

In theory, I like it. In practice, neither of the candidates running for legislature in my district made their positions very clear. I made the effort to try to educate myself on the candidates for every office on my ballot this year, but I couldn't tell the difference. I think many others had the same problem, as the results were less than .5% apart.

Nebraska (and New Hampshire, I've been told) has another problem - not paying legislators squat for the job. As a result, you only get candidates who are independently wealthy, or retired living off their savings. I don't think that makes for a very representative government. If you can wrap up legislative business in 2 months, maybe that's OK, but sessions typically last 4 months, and then there are special sessions. You can't hold a real job, and you can't live on your salary. It sucks. I'd like to take a shot at office, but I can't support my family on sub-poverty-line pay.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[_iris]

How Beltway Democrats Sank Howard Dean

Rolling Elections

[Noksagt]

After seeing all branches of government go to one party, I think it is careful to prevent this in the future. In a system that is so partisan, it would be best if goverment was stalled from doing anything by not giving either party all of the reigns.

To this end, states should have different Election Days. My vote for representative isn't only based on who would be best for my region, but also who would be best to keep Congress divisive.

Having 50 election days might be over-the-top. But perhaps ~4? One for each Tues in November.

Unfortunately, this would never happen--states would bicker about who would have elections first & it would confust the electorate.

Re:Rolling Elections

[b-baggins]

Um, you know, all branches of gov't went to one party because the VOTERS chose that.

So, which way do you want it? Will of the people counts no matter the result, or will of the people counts only when you like the result?

Most of the comments on this thread, in fact the entire existence of this thread pretty much tells the story.

I don't recall massive calls for vote reform when Clinton won both terms with less than a majority popular vote, and I'll make a what-if prediction that we wouldn't be seeing this thread if Kerry had won Ohio and the presidency with less than a majority popular vote.

Re:Rolling Elections

[Noksagt]

Um, you know, all branches of gov't went to one party because the VOTERS chose that.

And, if the voters would make the same decisions after they saw the final makeup of Congress, I'd say you were right. I don't think this is likely. I voted for the republican in the representative race in my region. If I knew the president, the senate, and the rest of the representatives would also be republican, I'd have changed my vote. I don't think I'm the only one. In many of the Congressional races that have occurred when the Presidential election hasn't, the composition of Congress has shifted. In the most recent case (two years ago), it shifted towards the republicans. In many others, it has shifted away from the President.

Will of the people counts no matter the result, or will of the people counts only when you like the result?

Um..I'm not saying people shouldn't vote & that vote be heard. I'm only suggesting that more information on who is already in the various branches of government may influence which way and to what strength the will of the people would lean. This isn't partisan whining--I've voted for democrats and republicans.

I don't recall massive calls for vote reform when Clinton won both terms with less than a majority popular vote,

Umm..I do. A whole bunch of people raised the fact that more people voted against him than for him & that we should have some form of runoff voting. This was particularly true when Perot managed to gain a healthy share of votes which many thought would have otherwise gone to the Republicans. I also recall talk of voting reform across the political spectrum before the election.

I do agree that many liberals are whining about reform because they didn't get what they wanted. But, just as disgusting, many conservatives are sweeping valid concerns under the rug because they got what they wanted. In some cases this is more sleezy--they had been concerned before & those concerns magically disappear if they get their way. At least those liberals who are newly concerned about voting can plead that they were ignorant of the problems before they didn't get their way!

I'll make a what-if prediction that we wouldn't be seeing this thread if Kerry had won Ohio and the presidency with less than a majority popular vote.

I'd have submitted something similar myself, regardless of how won or how much of a landslide it was. I don't know if it would have been accepted a story & it is a shame that the most enthusiastic discussions have to occur directly after an election, rather than in the more civil & less divisively partisan times leading up to the election.

Re:Rolling Elections

[dowobeha]

To this end, states should have different Election Days....perhaps ~4? One for each Tues in November.

And how exactly would this help?

Re:Rolling Elections

[Noksagt]

To this end, states should have different Election Days....perhaps ~4? One for each Tues in November.

And how exactly would this help?

To illustrate, allow me to reduce it to four states: (A)Alabama, (B)Alaska, (C)Arizona, and (D)Arkansas. Allow me to say that each state's voters have similar criteria: They want two things foremost--(1)abortions to conitnue to be legal and (2)Little restriction on gun ownership. Only two parties: the democrats support (1) and oppose (2), while the republicans oppose (1) but support (2). Assume that, knowing nothing about the makeup of Congress, the states are indifferent as to which party represents them.

Holding a single election day for all states would vote. There would be only be a 3/8 chance that there would be equal representation from both parties. It is more likely that one party will have a majority, making it more likely that either abortions are banned or more stringent gun control is imposed.

If there were two election days, it would change the voting behavior. If Alabama and Alaska vote one week & both end up putting the reps from the same party into office (there is a 1/2 chance of this), then Arizona and Arkansas would rationally elect the other party in so that balance was maintained & so abortions aren't banned & there continues to be few restrictions on gun control. If Alabama and Alaska had voted different parties in, there would only be a 1/2 chance of maintaining balanced representation between the two parties. Still, rather than being screwed by extreme party views over half (5/8) the time as in single-day elections, they'd only be screwed one quarter (2/8) of the time.

This is, of course, greatly over-simplified. But you get the point--it is better for moderates and, assuming each party is relatively equal & that they want equally to be in power and not want the other party to be in power, it doesn't disadvantage either party.

Please note it doesn't prevent the system from being in control of a single party, if that is what the country wants (and which a previous reply to my initial post argued for). If Alaska isn't a swing state, but is for the republican, it will vote the republican no matter what. This is a good thing.

Split the United States into Red and Blue

[Chemisor]

The election has made it pretty obvious that we have a country divided into two groups. Cities versus the countryside. The new versus the old. Education versus religion. The Smart versus the Dumb. It is really an inevitable split; all those little towns in the middle of nowhere, with their ultraconservative opinions, dull stolid lives, and unchanging placidity, are hell on earth for an intelligent young person. So what do they do? They pick up and move to the city, creating this cultural divide. So why not make it official and split the country in two? Look at the map of the election results and you'll see that they are geographically cohesive. Split the country into the Blue States of America and the Red States of America and be done with it. We might even want to have a separate state just for California, who are different anyway. They might want to join up with Mexico.

Re:Split the United States into Red and Blue

[mc6809e]

The election has made it pretty obvious that we have a country divided into two groups... The Smart versus the Dumb.

Keep talking like that and you'll never win another election again.

Re:Split the United States into Red and Blue

[HMA2000]

One suggestion on what you could do is quit talking about your outright hatred of people that don't live in the city.

Democrats used to support working class rural folk. Now they openly display disgust for them. Turn you back on your core voters and what do you think is going to happen?

Re:Split the United States into Red and Blue

[Chemisor]

> Democrats used to support working class rural
> folk. Now they openly display disgust for them.
> Turnyou back on your core voters and what do you think is going to happen?

Well, the last time this happened, the South seceded from the Union and we had a civil war. Perhaps things might turn out better this time around. Or not.

Re:Split the United States into Red and Blue

[Chemisor]

> Keep talking like that and you'll never win another election again.

Of course not. Politicians are not allowed to tell the truth when it hurts. If you take a stand on anything important, you will have enemies and they will make damn sure you will not win any election. After all, most people are dumb (at least 51% of them, according to the last election), and will believe whatever they hear last. Therefore, since the politician is one man and the dumb are a huge crowd, is it so surprizing that the majority opinion can shred any opposition? With enough sheep you can slaughter even the staunchiest pack of wolves.

Kings

[crow]

That's how we select our king. Long live Thorson! (Well, until Kelson assumes the throne in the spring.)

Context: SCA (At least in most kingdoms, the king is the victor in a tournament. In my experience, we're just as likely to get a good king as a good President.)

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[TykeClone]

Presuming that he would have been a better candidate, other states could well have voted for him during the primary season. Don't blame Iowa because the Democrats in the rest of the states are like sheep and played follow the leader this year.

Better Business Bureau of Political Ads

[cafebabe]

This isn't an election change, per se, but I would like to see an independent, bipartisan review organization for political ads. They could fact check the ads before they air and reward them color-coded icons or something that the candidates could display in the corner of the TV. Something like a green seal for factually accurate and all points made in the proper context, yellow for factually accurate but the context may stretch the credulity of the claim, red for unable to verify, etc.

In order to make this system so that it doesn't stifle free speech, this certification would be optional but I think candidates would participate in order to set themselves apart. If candidate A is running ads with the seal of approval and candidate B is running ads without the seal, it might make people think better of candidate A and more critically of candidate B. I know I'd rather vote for a candidate that went out of his way to prove he was telling the truth. I think this system would have a better chance at persuading candidates from making outrageously false claims than "I'm candidate A and I approve this message".

Standardized Registration

[crow]

Voter registration needs to be standardized. Because only US Citizens are allowed to vote, it would probably make sense to require a Social Security number. That would allow for easy removal of duplicate registrations across state lines (that doesn't happen now--college students and people with vacation homes can easily vote twice). It would also allow for easy removal of fellons in states that don't allow them to vote without accidentally removing people with similar names.

Re:More Teeth Against lawyers too

[rueger]

Good idea, but let's also include the lawyers involved in defending shady practices!

You mean, a national ID?

[ghostlibrary]

The poster suggests "How about a credit card-style voter registration card that I have to swipe in order to verify that I am eligible to vote?"

That sounds like a National ID card. After all, since all potential voters have to carry one, that mandates all citizens aged 18 or over have one.

And if the gov't has to make a card for each citizen, why not make it more useful, by having it be a National ID?

See earlier /. discussions on why a national ID is not a good idea.

Further, given that motor-voter registration (anyone with a driver's license can register) is frequently blocked by the Republicans (not a partisan comment, just a statement of the voting history on motor-voter issues), I think the above scheme would be blocked.

Restore the Great Republic

[WayneConrad]

It's a bad idea to have the people directly elect the president. The electoral college was designed the thwart democracy. Think I'm a nut case? So were the founding fathers. Check out this little piece that Hamilton wrote in the Federalist papers:

The Federalist Papers : No. 68, The Mode of Electing the President

Hamilton makes it clear that the electoral college was designed to prevent just the sort of elections we have today:

The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

Unfortunately, the founding fathers did not foresee either the ffects of political parties upon the electoral collage, or of states passing laws binding the electors to vote a certain way.

Democracy is bad. Republic is good. Restore the great republic and liberty may reign again. We don't need to change the constitution nearly as much as we need to follow it.

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[Minna Kirai]

will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people,

Uh huh. Less exposure to communication, he says. In other words, banning political speech. Sorry pal, but the First Amendment has a little more legal weight than a Federalist Paper.

Democracy is bad.

No, democracies are fine, to the contrary of some long-dead authors who didn't even use the word to mean the same thing it does today (the Federalist Papers went against even 1750s dictionaries in their usage).

Republic is good.

Yeah. Like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Republic of China, and even Saddam Huessein's Baathist Republic of Iraq. All of them are good.

The word "democracy" means something; "republic" is nearly content-free. The only requirement for a nation to be categorized as a "republic" is to give no preferential status to royalty. Even hereditary dictators-for-life are acceptable, so long as they lack royal title.

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[fingusernames]

Democracy and republic ("res publica") actually mean pretty much the exact same thing, as words: basically, government of the people. From a legal philosophy viewpoint however, they are accepted to have particular meanings, and you can use them with one another even. A constitutional democratic republic is quite different from a direct democracy which is quite different from a constitutional autocratic republic. Direct democracy as a form of governance is considered unwise for anything beyond a very small population. Any statement such as "republic/democracy == good/bad" is rather vacuous.

Larry

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[Minna Kirai]

as words: basically, government of the people.

No, that is simply not the definition of republic.

"Res publica" is vacuous too, and in any event, pulling out Latin roots provide the definitions of English words. If that were the case, then "agnostic" would mean "not believing in Gnosticism", when instead it means "undecided as to the existence of deities"

Any statement such as "republic/democracy == good/bad" is rather vacuous.

No. "Republic = good" and "republic = bad" are flat-out false, while "democracy = good" is true and "democracy = bad" is false.

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[fingusernames]

New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 2 (off my shelf, sorry, no URL):

2. Any State in which supreme power is held by the people or their elected representatives as opposed to by a monarch etc.

I believe the OED trumps reference.com. I stand by every word I wrote previously.

As for "pulling out Latin" roots... my (formal) study of law and legal philosophy is what caused me to mention that origin (read M. Cicero, De Re Publica? I suggest the Loeb edition, also on my shelf.), not the mere fact that republic has its etymological root in Latin.

Larry

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[Minna Kirai]

2. Any State in which supreme power is held by the people or their elected representatives as opposed to by a monarch etc.

That definition is partly correct- lack of a monarch is a critical feature of a republic, but power held by the people is not. For example, the United Kingdom isn't a republic, but it would match that definition (Their monarch has non-supreme power, but she does exist).

I see that you picked definition #2, which suggests you are omitting information that doesn't support your viewpoint. If a word has many definitions with non-overlapping meanings, then it has little descriptive power.

"Democracy" means that ultimate power resides in the people living there. "Republic" means nothing, because many non-democratic dictatorial/aristocratic states are republics.

I believe the OED trumps reference.com.

It doesn't. In fact, the kitchen-sink approach of such non-abridged dictionaries is more likely to supply definitions that are wrong (or at least obseleted). But more importantly, genuine usage trumps everything. And a quick survey of an atlas will show that I'm right. "Republic" has for centuries been used to refer to both democratic and non-democratic nations, as long as they are non-monarchal.

Usage by English dictionaries, legal dictionaries, political scientists, and active politicians from George Bush to Ted Kennedy (and beyond) all support my definitions.

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[fingusernames]

Oh my dear Minna, you got me!

Yes, I picked #2. #1 is:

The State, the general good.

While that may be a common usage today when naming nations, it is not the meaning of the word when used in a political science context. That is because when people discuss democracy v. republic, they are speaking of that definition number two, and of a republican form of government. Definition 1. does not describe a form of government, 2. does. This is English, words may have multiple, co-equal meanings.

As for the New Shorter OED being a kitchen-sink dictionary, you are rather mistaken. I didn't use a watch glass to read it. The NS OED is a two volume desktop dictionary, and is quite abridged.

The fact of the matter is that in the realm of legal philosophy, republic has a meaning. When the Romans kicked out the Etruscan king, they formed a government, the res publica, where the people were sovereign, but were governed by elected representatives. The People met in their centuries, exercised their sovereign powers and chose represenatives. First the Senate, then later the Pleb Assembly. That ultimate form of the Roman Republic is where the political definition of republic came from, as well as being a blueprint for many later governments. The term "republican form of government" exists as a contrast to a purely democratic form of government.

The fact that the People's Republic of China or the Republic of Kazakhstan chose to use a western term with a couple thousand years of meaning behind it does not somehow strip it of that meaning. When the United States Constitution guarantees to each State a Republican form of government, it has meaning which is understood, and it isn't that Karl Rove should design their government. If W or Boozer Kennedy use it in some other way, well, that's nice.

I unfortunately cannot spend much time researching this, and my college law and philosophy books are boxed up somewhere. I did a quick look through Russell's History of Western Philosophy but that's too obscure. However, when I looked up the Republic of Kazakhstan in the CIA World Fact Book, I did come across these:

Democracy - a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but which is usually exercised indirectly through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed.

Republic - a representative democracy in which the people's elected deputies (representatives), not the people themselves, vote on legislation

Perhaps you'll appreciate the CIA's classification system of world governments. Though I rather doubt it.

Larry

Re:Restore the Great Republic

[808140]

Hi. Just as a disclaimer, I don't care (about your dispute, that is.) But I feel it's necessary to point out that just because many countries that are demonstratably not "of the people" have used republic in their names doesn't make them republics.

If it did, then, for example, North Korea -- or the DPRK, as they call themselves -- would be Democratic, wouldn't it? After all, it is "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea". And East Germany, or, as it was actually called, the DDR -- die Deutsche Demokratische Republik -- would also qualify.

Of course, these countries aren't/weren't Democratic, and as any fool will tell you, just because a despotic regime calls itself free or democratic doesn't make it so. This is common sense.

So unfortunately, the widespread use of the term "Republic" by said regimes, like their widespread use of the term "Democratic", most probably qualifies as misuse, as as such proves nothing.

Now, I have no idea which of you is correct, but I wanted to point out that your argument is bunk.

Re:The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Idea

[Kevster]

As a Canadian, I would add: Make the presidential voting day only about electing the president. I.e. no other votes on bills or other referenda. Save those for a different day. I would allow, perhaps, votes for Congress/Senate seats, but that's about it. Don't mix up the issues.

I also think the voting devices should be paper-based, and exactly the same across the entire country.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Gilk180]

The electoral college is in place and had lasted this long for a reason. It forces candidates to go after voters across the nation/gives all states a say in the election.

The college has the same effect as the congress. Smaller states are given the same number of senators so that they are represented nationally. Larger states are given more representatives because they have more people and pay more taxes. States are given electoral votes so that smaller states have a say.

Without the electoral college, candidates would simply pander to NY, LA, Chicago, and maybe a few other markets. They can then safely ignore the rest of the nation because a small victory in the large markets overcomes even the largest losses in the rest of the nation.

The other reason for using the electoral college is that it creates a consensus. This year was a big enough victory that it doesn't really matter, but four years ago, the popular vote was too close to call(Let it go.), but the electoral college presented a clear winner(eventually). I think that after some thought, people on both sides of the issue would agree that if the election is really that close, we are better off with either candidate as president than with the presidency vacant.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Dausha]

"So then, slaves would count as 3/5 a person?"

Sorry, but a Constitutional Amendment (13 I think, but maybe 14 or 15) fixed that problem. Besides, we don't have slaves any more . . . unless you're talking computers.

The Primary system belongs to the Party. If it's broke, fix it w/n your party. If the Democrats got a lame candidate, it is because of strategic changes made by the DNC that was meant to weed out potential threats to their establishment. They didn't want Dean and the system helped get rid of him really quick.

What if Primary votes aren't reported until the end of all Primaries? This would encourage a shorter primary campaign cycle and help give each candidate a real shot instead of sand bagging some in the beginning.

Point to be made...

[Beatbyte]

If you noticed the size of previous political threads (including the "strange happenings with votes in key states"), they were huge and full of complaining of a broken system.

Now you have a thread with the chance to offer ideas to fix the system under which we survive (politically). And there's not even 100 posts?

Very strange.

Anyways, back on topic.. I would have to recommend a change in removing the electoral college and having the vote be decided by the popular vote. I think the system did it's good back when it was designed but is nothing but 200 year old fluff (actually adopted as the 12th amendment in 1804.. this year was the 200th anniversary of it).

If you would like to read up on the E.C., there's a good write up here:

http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[rednip]

Each state had the opportunity in selecting the candidate. Iowa comes first because its a small state (candidates can meet the people that they are trying to win the votes of) and ad time is relatively cheap. Winning Iowa != winning the nomination in many cases - George HW Bush beat Ronald Reagan here in 1980.

And that was the last time the Iowa didn't pick the canidate (Hint, that was 24 years ago), Reagan came in a close second, and then won New Hampshire. New Hampshire (another tiny state with lots of power) by state law has the first primary. In essence the people in New Hampshire get to individually vote on the people whom Iowa caucuses 'Nominated'.

While it may not be a 'sure thing' winning Iowa is so very important, that in the next few months you'll see many high ranking party members making 'stops' there, also look who is traveling to 'visit' New Hampshire and you'll have a list of 90% of the presidential hopefuls.

Superball Prizes

[rueger]

I've long thought that Senate and House seats should be given away as lottery prizes instead of by electing the millionaire with the biggest campaign chest.

Now THAT would give you a representative democracy!

"The Chair recognizes Bubba Mullins, the Senator for Virginia. Senator - I'll remind you that chewing tobacco is prohibited on the floor"

More technology is not the solution

[BoxedFlame]

A standardized voting system with a paper trail, preferrably one little piece of paper for every single vote, is essential. Also not having party functionaries of the party that won last time running the counting is a good idea, as is to smooth out the whole registration mess. If you are registered with the IRS you should get a voting card (just a piece of paper, no fancy stuff that can be remagnitized or otherwise tampered with) and that will give you the right to put a piece of paper in a box. The more you complicate the procedure the easier it is to dupe.

A few things

[iwadasn]

1) Use voting machines like the ones Nevada developed. Fully electronic, don't allow mistakes, and let the voter verify their receipt, and then have it dropped in the ballot box.

2) Privacy concerns aside, in order to vote you should have to provide a thumb print. Already if the feds want your prints they can just grab your voter registration card and dust it, so this wouldn't really change anything. After the election, woe to anyone who has more than one thumb print floating around.

3) Everyone votes. None of this "if you're convicted..." or "if you've moved lately...." or anything else. If you vote in a state, you pay taxes there (in addition to anywhere else you need to pay taxes), so you're penalized for not voting in your home state, but it can be done. If you vote in two places, see #2 above. Once we start letting people be stripped of the right to vote, where does it end. You say felons can't vote, I would say churchgoers shouldn't be able to vote (separation of church and state?), it never ends. In addition, the purge lists end up as a tool for descrimination. Most of the people on those lists nationwide DO NOT belong there. Just check it after the fact and punish anyone who voted twice.

Those would be my reforms. In addition, states should all function like Maine. You get a vote for winning each congressional district, and two more for winning the state overall.

National ID Card, Here We Come!

[PipianJ]

Well if we're going to make everyone who can vote have a card that is a national standard, why not make it a mandatory national ID card?

It'd save the government so much money over having to tattoo a number on your arm, and it would make it so much easier for the administration to eliminate those pesky Kerry voters!

Just what we need. More federal standards.

[TrebleJunkie]

More Federal Standards are NOT the answer.

Given the *incredible* cost of dealing with other recent Federally Unfunded Standards Mandates (HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, ADA) many communities/industries are already at the breaking point. The expense of complaince with some newfangled Federal Election Transaction Standard -- without some *intensive* study to 1) make sure it would actually make a freaking bit of difference (remember folks, that *most* precincts vote tally's worked out just fine.) and 2) would be inexpensive enough to implement and/or 3) whether there would be federal money available for communities with which to implement it -- would *not* be acceptable to most of the communities out there.

Slashdot and Politics. I cringe.

Here's an idea

[alexo]

This was circulated after the 2000 elections. Still relevant...

Examine the process that chose Kerry as candidate

[leobaby]

Are the primaries a hoax? I never even got a chance to cast a ballot for my choice of democratic candidate. If I would have maybe Kerry would not have been the candidate and maybe the dems would have had a fighting chance. leobaby

Losing votes

[Tom7]

Losing votes should "accumulate" and credit the party for the next election, so that everyone gets representation eventually. ;)

Re:Ban gerrymandering... why

[Gerry Mandering]

WTF did I ever do to you?

a few

[zogger]

Reduce the cost and propoganda blitz, outlaw corporate contributions to political parties and candidates for office. They are bribes, let's call them what they are.

Along that line, drop the contribution level that a single named human can contribute,(down to 100$ or something small like that) and make it illegal to contribute to a candidate running for office in an election you are not privy too legally.

Force the inclusion into debates broadcast on public airwaves with all candidates that have gotten on the ballot in enough states to theoretically get an electoral win, and make the ballot requirements uniform across the states.

Hold the news organizations to the spirit of the FCC regs where their parent corporations are required to be at least somewhat in the public interest. Their "license" is provisional, it is not granted *solely* so they can make profit. They must provide news that cover ALL the candidates in their normal mix.

And my favorite, somewhere, sometime, someplace, we need a brave public prosecutior to open grand jury proceedings to investigate the DNC and the RNC under the RICO statutes. Enough's enough on this hijacked government. We have what, IMO, is in essence two criminal gangs who have co-opted government to the point of ownership of the public government and have betrayed the public trust. The loose term "corruption" applies.

And egads, just get rid of black box voting, it is NOT needed and a large amount of the available evidence points to a severe and on purpose fraud.

Re:The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Idea

[siriuskase]

"As a Canadian, I would add: Make the presidential voting day only about electing the president. I.e. no other votes on bills or other referenda. Save those for a different day. I would allow, perhaps, votes for Congress/Senate seats, but that's about it. Don't mix up the issues."

Why?

"I also think the voting devices should be paper-based, and exactly the same across the entire country."

Why?

I hate unsupported opinions, especially such as these that create unnecessary inefficiencies. But, you are Canadian, maybe you are not interested in improving the US system.

Voter Verifiable Voting

[Xepo]

I think what should really happen, though this might be a bit too technologically advanced...is that, after you hit the vote button, you get a receipt, giving you a generated ID number, and how the machine recorded your vote....if what is on the slip is different from how you voted, then you tell the election officials before you leave and they'll either correct it, or remove your last vote and let you vote again.

The reason for all of this, is that within a couple of days, the results should be posted on the internet, where you can type in your given ID number, and it'll report what results were recorded for you. If they are wrong, then you can take your slip to an official and show them how you voted, and that it's being reported wrong. (Also, there should be an automated phone service for people who don't have access to the internet). Of course, something needs to be made so that the slips can't be faked, otherwise you'll have people buying the slips from other people. You could do it by simply cryptographically signing everything that's printed on the slip, and printing the signature along with it.

Nice thing about this, is that there's no need for a recount of votes, and it's no longer in the official's hands. If the news reports that one county is being counted wrong, then anyone who cares will contact the automated services to make sure that their vote is being counted correctly. If they don't contact an official, then they're effectively saying "Hey, I don't care, just throw away my vote." It becomes part of the voter's responsibility to make sure that things are being counted right. (And you can only get an official to change your votes *if* they're reported *differently* from the slip. You can't just say "Oh, this is how I meant to vote"...you should have corrected that at the booth).

Also, Implement condorcet voting. It'd make the whole thing a lot more fair.

Re:Voter Verifiable Voting

[NoBeardPete]

This is a _terrible_ idea. If voters walk out of the voting booth with a receipt that says how they voted, you've just enabled everyone who might want to pressure, bribe, or influence voters. Domineering husbands will demand that their cowed wives vote the "right" way, and then offer proof of it when they get home. Employers will give bonuses to employees who proove they voted a certain way. Religious figures will deny services to people who voted "wrong". In areas with a poor police presence, gangs will demand to see your receipt and beat you up if you can't prove you voted the way they want.

It's a deliberate feature of our voting system that after you leave the voting booth, there is no way that anyone can gain knowledge of how you voted. This enables people to vote their concience. It makes it almost impossible to harass or reward someone based on how they voted. To change this would be a disaster.

Re:Voter Verifiable Voting

[mpost4]

On can still prove how one voted, but you are right it is harder to find out how some one voted. How could some one prove how they voted, a camra, camra phone. but at this time it not that common for that to happen so it not likely that people will get hurt rewarded for thier vote now.

Re:Voter Verifiable Voting

[Xepo]

You're right. I hadn't thought of that method of bribery. Hmm. Well, it'd be possible to eliminate the slip, but giving someone something which they can keep to prove to officials that they voted a certain way would be useful. Maybe only provide an encrypted slip showing how they voted, along with an ID number, and only allow the voters to check on, or correct their votes in person, with noone else around?

I guess it's getting kinda complex and losing a lot of the points that way, but I can't put off the attractiveness of having the ability to verify that my vote was counted correctly.

Just got an idea. Put out that slip with the encrypted data. When a voter votes, the machine prints out an encrypted slip containing the voting data, and an ID. You can then goto the public web site, type in the ID on the slip, and verify that it matches with the encrypted data. There's no way to decrypt that data without meeting with an official. If the ID isn't recorded on the web site, or differs from the encrypted data, then you know that your vote has been tampered with. Otherwise, you know your vote got counted.

you should also be allowed to meet with an official alone and just verify that the encrypted data matches how you voted...not that you'll be able to change it, but it'd make it known if there was some sort of fraud.

Re:Voter Verifiable Voting

[xlv]

It's a deliberate feature of our voting system that after you leave the voting booth, there is no way that anyone can gain knowledge of how you voted. This enables people to vote their concience. It makes it almost impossible to harass or reward someone based on how they voted. To change this would be a disaster.

I agree entirely that the secrecy of the vote should be maintained and in fact probably improved: I've never understood before the current US elections why it was so hard in France to get absentee ballots but now I see that it's to protect the secrecy of the votes. In France, you need a medical reason or planned business trip with proofs to get an absentee ballot. This means that each time I want to vote, I have to drive 100 miles to the Los Angeles consulate as distance from the polling place itself is not enough even for expatriates. With the raise of absentee ballots in the 2004 US elections, I've been wondering what impact that would have on vote buying. And of course, there's the case of Oregon where everybody votes by mail...

Re:Voter Verifiable Voting

[nine-times]

This is a _terrible_ idea. If voters walk out of the voting booth with a receipt that says how they voted, you've just enabled everyone who might want to pressure, bribe, or influence voters.

This, for me, is a good example of something: Many of the ideas people are coming up with are flawed. It sounds like a good idea, until you really think about it, and then you realize it's a _terrible_ idea.

Most of the screwed up things people make fun of in the American electoral systems are screwed up in order to prevent something more screwed up from happening. The electoral college is there to prevent a delicate power balance between states. Why aren't there uniform election laws around the country? The federal government is *constitutionally* forbidden from setting election laws specifically to keep the delicate balance between state govt and federal govt.

The American system is complicated because the men who set the rules understood the complexity of fair government. For the most part, the best idea is to leave it be.

Re:Voter Verifiable Voting

[EasyT]

This is a _terrible_ idea. If voters walk out of the voting booth with a receipt that says how they voted...

That is NOT what Voter Verifiable Voting means. VVV simply means that the voter can personally verify that their vote was recorded properly.

Today, with paper ballots, this is as easy as looking at your ballot and making sure you put the mark next to the intended candidate. You don't keep this with you when you leave the polling station; you drop it in the ballot box. Nobody knows how you voted but you.

Today, using electronic voting machines, this does not exist. The machine may tell you that it cast your vote for the candidate you intended, but ultimately the machine records your vote on a memory card that you don't have access to. In other words, the voter has substituted their own verification of the vote for the machine's verification of their vote. And without the voter being able to personally verify that their intended candidate received their vote, in the end, they're forced to trust that the machine has made no error and his recorded the vote honestly. Many voters do not have this trust. And with the myriad accounts of voting machine errors and tampering in circulation today, rightly so.

So when people loudly decry that our voting machines need Voter Verifiable Voting, what they're usually looking for is a paper trail that they can personally see and understand. For example, a slip of paper that says "You voted for John Smith for President". This paper receipt need not be kept by the voter! It could be verified by the voter and then dropped in a secure ballot receipt box. The voter need not even personally touch this receipt! It could be presented behind glass for verification by the voter, to be secured upon the voter's approval. And while the machine would still be used to count and report the votes, the paper receipts would allow for meaningful recounts and would provide a paper trail for audits. These are good, important things.

And while there exists a poorly informed minorty that would like to be able keep this voter verifiable receipt with them when they leave the polls, these people represent a distinct subset of people calling for Voter Verifiable Voting in general. So let's be sure not write off VVV as a whole because there exists a handful of people who want to implement it poorly.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[malachid69]

The Electoral College does not fix this problem.

If candidate A gets the top 11 most populous states, it doesn't matter that candidate B gets the other 40 (counting DC). How can winning 21.5% count as protecting the smaller states when the other candidate can get 78.4% of the states and still loose? Where is the incentive to win more than the big states?

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[b-baggins]

You do realize, of course that the reason the 3/5th person clause was put into the Constitution was to weaken the power of the Slave holding states. Representatives are apportioned by population, and electors for presidential elections equal representatives plus senators for the state.

By making a slave count as 3/5th of a person, you have weakened the federal power of a slave holding state.

It was a very clever move, actually, to limit slave state federal power. If they could have gotten away with it, I'm sure the Free states would have had a slave not count at all.

Note that the clause referred to slaves, not blacks. Free blacks in the north and the south counted as full persons.

Use your drivers license

[musicon]

Rather than setting up the infrastructure and overhead of a separate card to swipe, just use your drivers license; most of them already have a magnetic strip along the back with all of your information. For people without drivers licenses, I believe the regular state ID card has the same setup.

Ballot with Rankings or Ratings

[Soong]

No compromises, no strategies, no votes thrown away, no spoilers.

Vote your conscience about all of the choices. If you don't get your favorite you might still get your second or third choice.

You can vote the bums out, even your own bums, safely. If I don't like the crufty incumbent in my own party I can vote to prefer someone else, but still vote to keep my crufty incumbent over the alternative from the opposition.

(Yeah, this is kinda my holy cause.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[hsteck_ylf]

I think not reporting poles until the end of ANY of the elections would be a great idea. We have freaking CNN reporting their predictions all dang day long and it only frustrates people watching. We should all vote and then the next day or two they announce the outcome. Quick and simple. Don't have to waste the news stations for 3 days showing charts that don't make sense and telling us what they think may happen.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[siriuskase]

The United States invented the Electoral College. But while many nations have incorporated other features of the United States system into their own, not a single one has used the Electoral College idea. it is a bad idea whose only practical purpose was enabling the Founding Fathers to create one entity from a diverse collection of large and small, rural and urban states.

I wish they, the Founding Fathers, had included a sunset clause, this is one feature that needs to be reevaluated. But there is no incentive other than fairness for the majority to vote for it, and when has that mattered when the race is tight?

Very Easy

[temojen]

The Votes are counted at the polling station.

Repeal the 17th amendment

[isotope23]

I think removing the 17th would restore the balance of power between the states and the fed.

Re:The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Idea

[b-baggins]

1. Employers are required to give you two hours to vote on company time.
2. Representative government is not about convenience, it's about freedom. I only want people serious enough about their franchise to sacrifice for the privilege voting. Lazy people are lazy voters and vote stupid and uninformed.
3. Elections officials are not slashdot geeks. Source code accessibility is stupid. The machines are physically secured. It's the vote tabulation software than is the weak point.
11.By this point your fading credibility has died. There was no minority vote suppression or disenfranshisement, which fact is easily provable by asking one simple question: Where is the list of names of minority's disenfranchised?

First rule, voter must prove who they are.

[Shivetya]

Photo ID would go a long way to helping some of this, many licensing departments will issue state recognized IDs with your picture.

However I would go so far as to allow the college issued photo ids to be acceptable along with military id.

A paper trail would be nice as well, even though PAPER ballots provide no trail either and both parties are well versed at how to commit fraud there.

Provide more than 12 hours for voting, perhaps 3 days or a whole week? The problem with more than 3 days is preventing people from forecasting the vote and causing local or regional distortion.

I still believe the requiring proof of identification is the most important part of voting. I cannot stand the twits out there who go out of their way to claim that requiring someone to prove who they are infringes on their rights! What about the rights of the voters to know that those voting are legally entitled to do so. Same goes for allowing ILLEGALS to vote - how preposterous can you get? What part of ILLEGAL doesn't anyone understand?

The people making a mockery of the system are the very same ones trying to bend it every which way they can.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick edit for the satirically challenged...
So then, slaves would count as 3/5 a person? lol

The 3/5 Apportionment was part of the original consitution, the post that I was responing was suggesting that we 'go back to the orginal system'.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a really tired argument. In a popular vote, everyone's vote actually counts. There's absolutely nothing special about Minnesota that should give its people more voting power than I get in North Carolina.

Consider: under a popular vote, a candidate would be accountable to the entire rural farming community. That's a large voting block.

All these arguments about the electoral collage were invented by the founding fathers to cover the fact that they needed to compromise to make sure that slavery would continue forever. This is also why we can never pass a constitutional amendment to take away a state's right to two senators, even if we passed a unanimous national referendum on the subject.

Finally, the 2000 election was messy no matter how you cut it.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[angel'o'sphere]

What sense does it make to repair it to the "original design"?

The reason for the original design was: the president candidates cold not visit every town all over america to present themselves.

Neither could every voter move to Washington DC to cast its vote.

So the candidates visited what every they could and payed otehr people to run around talk for them.

The electors where necessary to have one who is representing you. You voted for an elector, because you in your twon where all to poor to make a trip to Washinton DC. You trusted teh elector to cast a vote on how his impression about the candidates was.

Today everybody pretty well gets his impression from the press and from TV or internet.

Why do you think an Elector is worth it? Why not getting rid of him altogether and vote for the president directly?

angel'o'sphere

Every switch is better than keeping that system

[angel'o'sphere]

Hm,

I break it up in two posts. Post one:

Every democratic country in the world has a better system, a better working system, an easyer system and a fairer system than the USA. I suggest, just to pick one :D

angel'o'sphere

The Electoral College

[aplope]

Actually the best point I heard during the election about the electoral college was from George Wills. The purpose is to provide a bigger margin in the college than the popular vote thus giving the new president legitimacy. Take the 1960 election: Kennedy won the popular vote by only 100,000 votes. That's one vote per polling precint. But with the EC, he had more than enough "votes" to show that he really had won.

Re:The Electoral College

[zev1983]

Well, if we need some sort of puffed up electoral college number to legitamize our president what does that say about our democracy?

Re:The Electoral College

[N3WBI3]

We start by pointing out were not a democracy...

Re:The Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

We start by pointing out were not a democracy...

Still allergic to dictionaries, eh? I hear you can get a prescription for that now...

Re:The Electoral College

[N3WBI3]

At the close of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."

The founders gave us a constitutional republic, and a federal government.

By the way

Republic: A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president. A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.

Democracy: Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.

We live in a republic, not a democracy..

Re:The Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

"A republic, if you can keep it."

Yes (which does not exclude democracy). But, what did the American public back then fear most about non-republican governments? Monarchy. They had just been through a painful war against an enemy personified in King George, and they were anxious for reassurance that no royalty could again enthrall them. The ONLY firm thing "republic" means is that there is no monarchy.

Republic: A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president.

True. That is the definition of republic.

A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.

False. That is not the definition of republic, primarily because it contradicts the correct definition you already printed. For example, the citizens of the hold supreme power and elect representatives, so it matches this definition, even though it's it is a constitutional monarchy, and not a republic.

Democracy: Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.

True. But if you know that, how can you continue to claim that the USA is not a democracy? I mean, the final two sentences of your post directly contradict each other. Or don't you think the people there govern through elected representatives?

Re:The Electoral College

[N3WBI3]

A republic and Democracy are two different kinds of governments, so yes one does exculde the other. False. That is not the definition of republic, primarily because it contradicts the correct definition you already printed.

Now whos allergic to the dictionary..

But if you know that, how can you continue to claim that the USA is not a democracy?

Because the US government does not work directly or even directly through elected representation. Have you ever heard of the supreme court? are they elected? The bicameral legislature contains only one part that is democratic, the other is there to represent the states not the people. The preisdent is also there to represent the states not the people.

Or don't you think the people there govern through elected representatives?

Supreme Court, President, Senate these are bodys of the states not of the people.

Top three changes

[CTachyon]

1. Absolutely, under all circumstances, mandatorily demand a Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail. This applies not only to touch-screen technology, but to all voting machines. NO EXCEPTIONS, THIS MEANS YOU.
2. Having accomplished #1, Condorcet voting would be nice, maybe with Approval voting while we wait for everyone to get used to the idea. The Republicrat duopoly needs to end, and though I disagree with the Libertarians on economic issues, it'd be nice to see some real dialog rather than thumping gay abortionist Bibles for the imminently threatening Iraqi children.
3. Abolish the Electoral College and directly elect the President. This is about equally as important as #2. Land doesn't vote, so why should one land's people get more voting power than another's?

A while back, I wrote this rant on #2, and just last week I wrote this letter to my state legislators regarding #1 and #2. Please, please, PLEASE do the same to your own legislators. (Remember, don't bother so much with your federal legislators. For the forseeable future, the Electoral College will stay in place, and that means each individual state decides its own standards on audit logging and election methods. Only your state legislators currently have any say with regard to #1 and #2, so the rise of Condorcet/Approval will have to be a state-by-state thing.)

Re:Top three changes

[CTachyon]

Oh, regarding the abolishment of the Electoral College, there's one more point I forgot to make: if it comes down to the popular vote across the nation, that means no one location is so critically important. Whether or not you think fraud took place in this last election, you have to admit there was more room for it because of the Electoral College. If either party wanted to control the election, all they had to do was commit fraud in the swing states, not all 50. The Electoral College adds fragile centralization.

Re:Top three changes

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

if it comes down to the popular vote across the nation, that means no one location is so critically important.

That's not strictly true - it means "densely-populated cities" become the "critically important" locations. A pure "popular vote" based mechanism means a proportionally sharp under-representation of non-urban areas.

Do you WANT the nation's garbage being dumped next to all the farm fields, just because the farmers are outvoted by "city folk" who just want to get rid of their garbage? Do you WANT all the water shipped to supply e.g. Los Angeles instead of growing food? There's a reason people have been proposing other, more complex replacements for the electoral college than a simple popular vote...

Not to say that I'm in favor of the current system, either - the "Electoral College" is rigged to require "major party" votes only get counted.

Re:Top three changes

[CTachyon]

I was talking about fraud. On Nov 2, we had about 5 choke points where fraud could have swung the election. If we eliminate the EC, we'll have 50 choke points, each of lesser usefulness. It's no different than securing a computer network.

And frankly, I live in Kansas, and I'm sick of the way that corporate-owned pig farmers already run this state. Every time I see a new kickback rider subsidizing the Kansas pig-farming industry passed by Sen. Brownback and his buddies, it makes me sick. Eliminating the EC won't fix that, but it's part of the same thing.

Re:Top three changes

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have popular votes within the states, and I don't know of any Texas farmers who've said "it's not fair that Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio can outvote us". Why is this only a "problem" in the presidential election?

And, partly for the reason I just stated, the Electoral College doesn't really help rural areas anyway.

Re:Top three changes

[Kwil]

On the other side of the coin, do you WANT the nation's poor dying in the streets because the farmers outvote the city folk in providing tax money to create shelters? Do you WANT the religion of the midwest dominating the lives of people in the cities?

There are losers and there are winners in any system. Why should owning more land be a better way to determine winners than making the majority of the populace the winners?

Always campaigning vs. longer terms

[Zemrec]

I don't like the way that presidents are always campaigning, always looking to get re-elected. They say and do things that are nothing more than pandering for supporters at the next election.

On the other hand, I don't necessarily agree with the current 2 term limits we have now. if someone is a great president, then they should stay in office longer. I think one problem America has is that it keeps changing the driver every 4-8 years. Economic, social and foreign policies take longer than that to take effect and cultivate.

One idea I had was, perhaps, making the presidential term longer. Perhaps 8 years? But tie his hands so that he can't campaign until the last 8 or so months of the term. That would give would-be competitors a head start, but the president would have over 7 years of practical experience to show the nation what he's capable of.

If the president truly is a tyrant or does something illegal, we have the impeachment process already in the Constitution.

Re:The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Idea

[Noksagt]

Keep in mind that this is a summary of NY Times articles & not my views. Still, I will reply to you and hence reveal my thoughts on what the Times has to say.

1. While employers are required togive you two hours, this isn't enough! 2-3 hr waits aren't uncommon in many precincts (this doesn't include travel time). Reports of waits which are much longer than this aren't unheard of.

2. Lazy people won't vote early. Early voting would help decrease those excessive wait-times discussed in 1. Many states do have early voting. It is usually beneficial & the only possible argument against it that I would entertain is that it would come at a financial cost to man the polling places a few more days. I think that increasing the number of informed and proactive voters who are ale to vote is worth this minimum cost.

3. I agree with your point. However, I don't think the NYTimes author is a /. geek either. Source code accessibility need not mean the election officials themselves inspect the code. They could hire independent experts to do so. Vote tabulation is the weakest point: it represents the single point where the most votes can be added & where verification is quite difficult. The Times didn't argue that only voting machines should be opened for better scrutiny. I would also point out that a compromised machine would be a great path to get totals to the tabulators in the first place.

11. My fading credibility? (a)I didn't write the Times article, nor the summary that was posted to comp.risks. (b)How has the credibility faded? You posted points you disagreed with but, until this point, refuted no facts I presented. You can disagree with the Times author, but that doesn't disprove his credibility.

I agree that I think relatively few (if any) have stepped forward to say they were denied their right to vote as they pleased. Many more minorities were subjected to having to cast provisional ballots. Who knows if they'd be counted. A number of "dirty tricks are aimed at minority voters every year, like fliers distributed in poor neighborhoods warning that people with outstanding traffic tickets are ineligible to vote. Laws barring former felons from voting, which disproportionately disenfranchise minorities" are also a consideration.

If you think that there is no minority vote suppression, than you agree that the point is valid--just that "an end to minority vote suppression" has already been reached.

I agree that this is the most partisan point in the bunch & understand your strong reaction, but I think the Times does make excellent points.

Fighting Foreign Influence Peddling

[Anonymous Coward]

An overlooked but shocking event during the election campaign was Korean intelligence agents trying to rally the Korean-American community to vote against candidates who refused to sacrifice American interests on the altar of Korean nationalism. When the FBI discovered the Korean spies, they promptly disappeared. *poof*

Similar events have happened in the Chinese community (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong), but the Chinese are more overt about the matter. Prominent Chinese essayists in Taiwan warned the Democratic Party and, specifically, Mr. Kerry that San Francisco and neighboring areas have more than 600,000 Taiwanese holding American citizenship but remaining loyal to Taipei and that if the Democrats did not sacrifice American interests on the altar of Taiwanese hypocrisy, then the Taiwanese-Americans would vote against the Democrats.

Such is the nature of the Chinese pig.

Election Reform

[Anonymous Coward]

First thing is there must be a paper trail to audit like in the case of the Florida fiasco. Second is the software used to count votes must be open source and the results should be publically auditable. Third, there should be mandatory recounts, by hand if neccessary, if the exit polls are too far off the results. Independant auditors should be able to examine the equipment used to vote and to count votes. I really don't like the idea of touchscreen voting.

Changing the system

[angel'o'sphere]

A) The registering: in germany we are registerd automaticaly as we have a law which enforces to have a id card. When you register in your country probably you should get a "voting card with photo" whcih you give back afer the vote. We get a voting card for the vote and when we enter teh room we give it to the clerk.

B) The voting room: in germany the voting rooms are more or less allways at the same place. In schools or in the house of the major. Your appointed voting buereau has a names list of all votesr, there you can vote by simply giving the card and they check the list and mark you there. If you like to vote elsewhere, for any reason, you can identify there with your id card and give the voting card.
You have not to read where you may vote in teh newsppaper and its definitly not far awy, most its a 10 minutes foot march.

C) The voting districts should only be adjusted for moving inhabitants. The current practice in USA is to adjust the voting districts in after (or before) every voting to ensure that they have a majority of the desired votes. (E.G. if you have a district wich likely vote democratic, but has a lot republicians at the edges, you try to change the voting district so that he republicians shift into a 50:50 district to get that one to swing. Something like this is unthinkable in germany, but in the USA it is common practice and obviously the granted right of the governing class)

D) The winner takes it all attitude, might be funny in sports ... but well, the world agreed to give gold, silver and bronce medals in olympic games. Only you are so convinced that the winner should get everything. Being president is not a poker game. So divide the whole united states into as many districts as you want ... likely per state and population, but if Iowas 10 districts vote 8 : 2, then one party gets 8 votes and the other 2, and not *10* electors for the later president. Thats plain stupid. Nobody on our side of the ocean can believe that you want this. When colorado voted about chaning that, they even voted AGAINST it ... unbelieveable.

C) My suggestion for D) I only made because I think US citicens would prever that one like this one: make your districts, but only for simple counting and simple precalculations during the voring day. The final vote should be based on the population percentages and not on gained Electors or gained districts or gained votes per district or state. Plain simple if 55 Million americans vote for A and only 45 million for B, A has one regardless wether B has 271 electors!

A frined of mine explained me the Australian voting system. It seems it the fairest system currently thinkable ... but its to complicate for me to explain it ... probably you should have a look at theirs?

angel'o'sphere

Re:Changing the system

[Anonymous Coward]

When colorado voted about chaning that, they even voted AGAINST it ... unbelieveable.

I don't think it's because they thought it was a bad idea, but because it would give Colorado an unfair disadvantage as long as most of the other states were still using winner-take-all.

My Ballot Idea

[DavidYaw]

A ScanTron or similar (here's a random pic for those unfamiliar) The scantron would not be a fancy custom printed thing for the election, but the simple, completely generic ones.

For each question, the order of the choices would be different: Example: For president, A) Republican, B) Democrat, C) Libertarian. For Senate: A) Democrat, B) Libertarian, C) Republican.

All the votes would be counted using a normal scantron machine. If the machine cannot figure out which one was bubbled, then the existing system of having humans look at the ballot to determine voter intent would kick in. But, the people looking at the ballot would not be shown the question number on the ballot, only the bubbles themselves. Since the people evaluating voter intent do not know which party corresponds to which bubble, they would not and could not make their decision based on party, but only on how the voter bubbled.

By doing it this way, it eliminates the problem of partisan humans evaluating the ballots. The only problem I can think of is an inconvenience for people who vote the party line.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[EzInKy]

Why do you think an Elector is worth it? Why not getting rid of him altogether and vote for the president directly?

The President presides over the United States, that is why he is elected by them.

The solution!

[Thunderstruck]

I think my state should just pick electors in the State Legislature. How those of you who are not from my state handle your selection process is none of my business.

Weed Out Unqualified Voters

[jazman_777]

Need to weed out voters who should not be voting:

• Illegal Immigrants;
• People who don't know who their Representative and Senators are;
• People who receive government funds (a clear conflict of interest!)

Re:Weed Out Unqualified Voters

[dowobeha]

Need to weed out voters who should not be voting: People who receive government funds (a clear conflict of interest!)

Is this meant to be a joke or a troll?

I'm really curious. I assume you aren't serious.

Re:Weed Out Unqualified Voters

[Creepy Crawler]

It ws probably said with tounge really hard in cheek.. but it does have a meritous basis.

The founding fathers saw it fit only landowners could vote. They saw if they allowed everybody to vote, the poor could vote themselves more and more "welfare".

It was a sort of minimum requesite to participate. After all, would you vote somebody who's giving you handouts down to someone who'd cut you off of that same system?

Re:Weed Out Unqualified Voters

[jazman_777]

I assume you aren't serious.

You would be wrong.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Dausha]

I see. Sort of an Apples Oranges issue? Although, selecting electors is a legislative issue rather than Constitutional, so it's possible to return to the earlier system w/o a Constitutional change. Sorry, I'm in law school now so sometimes my humor meter gets caught up in my legalese meter.

But, if you want to go that far, then only rich, white landowners can vote. Talk about a paradigm shift.

shorter lines for starters

[davidwr]

For starters, get more poll workers and voting booths so there's no long lines.

Second, voter-verified paper trails for all methods of voting.

Third, anyone who wants to should be able to vote in any language that's widely spoken in the voting district. E-Voting makes this easier.

Fourth, to the extent practical, people who are blind, have limited mobility, or are otherwise handicapped should be able to vote in private. E-voting makes this easier.

Fifth, we need to work on ways for people outside the country to vote electronically, e.g. by fax. Where possible, this should be done privately. For example, US military installations and consulates can collect paper ballots en masse, then have a machine scan them and bulk-transmit them to Washington, for distribution to local precincts, much faster than current mail systems. This year at least one astronaut voted from space.

Sixth - same-day registration. We would need some mechanism to prevent people from voting twice, for example, having all same-day registrants vote provisionally, or taking thumbprints of everyone who votes, or some other mechanism.

Seventh - make sure each and every step of the vote-counting process is watched by poll watchers from both major parties and invite the press to watch also.

Eighth, keep spoiled ballots so they can be statistically analyzed later. This will deter people from playing games when deciding which ballots are "spoiled" and which are not.

Finally, do "routine recounts" in random precincts, as a sanity check and fraud deterrent.

mod parent funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I hadn't posted in this thread so I could :)

Re:The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Idea

[EricTheFish]

I agree with a lot of these ideas. This is what we did in San Diego county, CA, which I thought did a pretty good job (as opposed to the problems that we had with electronic voting machines in the march primary).

1) Optical scan ballots. Scantron style. Verifiable. The absentee ballots were identical to the normal ones, (is this normal?) and although very long, very very straightforward. We in california had about 60 things to vote on this year.

2) Although I cannot find reference for this, I was told that there is a 1% recount- 1% of all ballots are recounted manually to make sure that the machines agree with reality.

3) well, of course we still have the problems with provisional ballots, not a holiday,etc., but you can do early voting, and is quite easy to get an absentee ballot. In fact, some candidates mailed out a postpaid absentee ballot request form to you, that was already filled out with your name, address, etc. All you had to do was sign it, and drop it in the mail, then you got your absentee ballot. An excellent idea for a campaign.

3) Unfortunately, this situation is going to change- we're apparently going to go back to the pure electronic systems once they are "certified". However I like this system better. Hopefully other people will agree, now that they have used it.

4) Something interesting that happened in san diego specifically: The mayoral race became very interesting. In march, we had a primary, choosing between which of the 3, mid fifties, white moderate republicans that we wanted for mayor. Up until about 6 weeks ago, we had to choose between 2 of them, and they were splitting the vote nrealy 50-50. Neither of them was that popular, and there are currently a lot of scandals going on at city hall (i.e. we underfunded the pension system by 1.2 $Billion (with a B). So, a very popular city council member who had the lone vote in city council meetings to fix the pension system decided to run as write in. And it looks like she will win. One advantage of the optical ballot- you already have a pen and paper in your hand, with which to wrote someone in... The final vote: 35%, 34%, 31%. Note that the 35% is the total "write in"- they're still counting the ballots and are about halfway through.

Here's a pre-election article about the race. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cities /20041018-9999-1m18mayor.html

Current results: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/cities /20041110-9999-6m10work.html
Another interesting website: http://calvoter.org/
The California Voter Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization promoting and applying the responsible use of technology to improve the democratic process.

ditch the electoral college

[davidwr]

Yeah, this is probably redundant but it's worth repeating:

Get rid of the electoral college.

Go to a popular vote.

The hard part is what to do if nobody wins a majority, like what happened the '90s and 2000. Should we use a runoff, or some form of instant-runoff? Should we declare someone with a plurality the winner? Does he have to have a certain % of the votes or a certain-sized lead over his closest rival to win without a majority? The devil is in the details. Well, that and most state legislatures LIKE the power of their state voting as a bloc so they aren't likely to approve any consitutional ammendment to change it.

total runs do not determine the World Series

[ChristTrekker]

Because running up the totals in a few large States does not prove that you'll be the best president of all 50 States. States are different, geographically and socially, and have different concerns. Thus being able to carry a large-ish number of the States is also a good criterion for being president. The Electoral College does an admirable job of balancing these two concerns. The federal nature of the US is one of its greatest strengths.

Re:total runs do not determine the World Series

[Draknor]

The World Series is a great analogy - I think I'm going to use this when I explain why I'm in favor of the EC :-)

Re:total runs do not determine the World Series

[Anonymous Coward]

States are different, geographically and socially, and have different concerns

But what EC advocates conveniently forget is that there are also differences within the states.

The Legislative branch of our goverment realizes this. The state I live in is Republican-dominated, but my newly-elected House representative is a Democrat. If the minority party in a state has representation in Congress, why don't they have representation in the Electoral College?

Re:total runs do not determine the World Series

[ChristTrekker]

Oh, I'm completely in favor of allocating EVs by district similar to Nebraska and Maine. But I'm completely against the abolition of the EC altogether.

Is open-source really necessary? audit trails=WIN

[davidwr]

I'm all in favor of open-source for non-classified government projects including elections, but I don't think it would add anything that a paper trail wouldn't add.

If every vote was cast with a paper ballot or voter-verified paper trail, then you can recount by hand, or more likely, by a machine designed by a different manufacturer, if necessary. The mere THREAT of this will deter companies from playing games with the vote-counting software.

On the flip side, open-source WITHOUT a paper trail IS NOT tamperproof. If someone dickers with the compiler that compiles the code, they can bury "cheat" code in the binary. The bottom line is that the audit trail is where you get your Big Win for accountability. Other things like open source are "nice to have" but don't add much that an audit trail doesn't already provide.

Pre-Election changes are important, too...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Mainly, I'd require the Presidential Debate corporation to include all candidates who are on the ballots in enough states to conceivably win (and make sure fair rules are in place to allow any semi-reasonable candidate who enough people would like to see on the ballot can do so). The biggest problem I see is the collusion between "The Two Parties(tm)" that keeps other voices out of the debate and other views away from the voting public.

I'd also like to see the voting public stop and think long enough to lose the stupid "throwing away your vote" attitude towards voting for anyone-but-the-established-political-corporations (Disneycrat/Rupertican). Personally, I see my vote for a less-famous party as making far more of a difference than another drop-in-the-ocean vote for "the same guy everyone else in the area is voting for".

And anyone who votes for someone just because they expect that someone to win should be beaten on public TV - yes, even if they voted for a candidate I like. People with the attitude that the presidential election is a "sporting event" and just wants to be "on the winning team" regardless of who that team is poisons the voting pool (and, yes, I have heard of people doing this in the last several elections...).

Election 2.0 spec

[Doc Ruby]

Obviously, get rid of the Electoral College. There's no reason a Wyoming voter gets 4x the say in who's president as a California voter, except a broken system. And the many "snowbird" votes in multiply registered states (without a central "uniqueness" registry) go away.

Next, make "Election Day" a national holiday, but floating, during Election Month, October. Get a receipt that you voted (of course, not for whom, but matching your signin at your polling place), and claim any day in Election Month (even if you voted after work). After businesses complain, we can drop down to just taking the entire day timestamped on the receipt, or Election Day.

About those receipts: in the event of a revote, admission to the repolling place is accepted only with a receipt from the original vote, which is confiscated and replaced with a "revoted" receipt. Extreme cases of vote fraud investigation can count submitted receipts against retained voting receipts. Which, incidentally, are the only legally countable records of the election, uniformly printed by machines with filled boxes readable first by the voter when verifying them in the booth, then by machines which count them quickly for fast unofficial reports, then more slowly during November by humans on camera, for the official count.

Those voting booths are only the last resort for people who miss the mailin ballot all month, like in Oregon. Postally challenged voters, and those who require more reliable anonymity, will go to the machines. While everyone else will send their ballots registered mail, with an October postmark. The postal police will get reinforced by all sorts of local and federal police for the month, all of whom will be on camera throughout their custody of the ballots. Postal balloters all get Election Day off, like anyone else.

Of course, after the abuses of the 2000 and 2004 elections, which brought us both President Bush and huge majorities of Americans who don't trust the voting process, we'll see an irresistable movement in Congress and the mass media to reform the system, so we're not a mockery of democracy, right?

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

At least he has to win 11 States. In a purely popular contest, a candidate could carry Massachusetts unanimously, and his opponent could get every other State by a margin of 100 votes. The Massachusetts winner would win only 1 State but be president of all 50. We could argue forever about what the right balance is between being the president of the people and being the president of the States, but the EC is an attempt in the right direction.

audit trail needed, receipt not necessary

[davidwr]

The concept of an audit trail is that the e-voting machine generates a paper ballot, lets you look at this paper ballot before you cast your vote, then when you hit "vote" it drops that paper ballot into a box. It also records your vote in memory. If you hit "cancel" it destroyes the paper ballot and you start over.

If there's any need for a recount, it's the pieces of paper in the box that get recounted, not what's in the machine's memory.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

Not many other countries take the idea of federalism to the degree that the US has. The federal model protects the rights of citizens. The EC balances the concerns of States vs the concerns of people in a singular office, just as the two houses of Congress do this for a multi-seat body. It may not be a perfect balance between the two concerns, but you cannot eliminate the validity of State concerns in the federal government. Since the 17th Amendment we've already seen growth in the power of the central government that has eroded the freedoms of citizens.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

You do realize, of course that the reason the 3/5th person clause was put into the Constitution was to weaken the power of the Slave holding states.

Backwards. It was to increase their power, and thereby entice them to enter a union with the more-populous northern states that otherwise might dominate federal voting. (In a similar way, the "Conneticut Compromise" gave smaller states extra power to attract their membership)

By making a slave count as 3/5th of a person, you have weakened the federal power of a slave holding state.

Livestock, such as cows, chickens, and slaves, count as zero people. Only the special exception embodied in that clause adds them to representative totals.

One cannot argue that slaves were already people anyway, because although biologically human, they were certainly not people under the eyes of the law. Otherwise typical slave-owner actions like bondage and beatings would be illegal kidnapping or felony assault.

not runoff, Condorcet

[ChristTrekker]

Here's why.

BTW, I've also used the "political vector space" analogy. It's silly to think that 1 dimension adequately describes the complex issues of the political arena.

A minor change

[dacarr]

State election results would not be talled until 03:30 EST the day after election day. This way, the problem of time zones (where people in western states vote for whomever was reported as the winner in eastern states just because they want their vote to count) is otherwise eliminated.

Why 03:30? It's because at 03:30 EST, it's 20:30 the previous day in Guam. No election, but enough of a buffer. Note, it's at that time also 21:30 in HI and westernmost AK.

It's important to note that it's not "press cannot report on it until the next day" - that way, they can't scream "First Amendment!" The registrars in each area just don't report results until after 03:30.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Noksagt]

That is an as-idiotic stance to take. Does "compromise" hold no meaning to you? Of course the Northern and Southern states had polarized views. This was a compromise & wasn't to the benefit of the North any more than to the South. Don't agree? Let's rephrase your post:

You do realize, of course that the reason the 3/5th person clause was put into the Constitution was to weaken the power of the Slave-free states. Representatives are apportioned by population of people with rights, and electors for presidential elections equal representatives plus senators for the state.

By making a slave count as 3/5th of a person, you have strengthened the federal power of a slave holding state.

It was a very clever move, actually, to grant slave states more federal power. If they could have gotten away with it, I'm sure the Slave states would have had a slave count as a full person.

Anyway, New Jersey and Virginia had two opposing plans. New Jersey's plan didn't get crammed down anyone's throats. Indeed, since slaves counted as more than a half a person, the compromise was closer to what the slave states wanted.

Thanks Jim

[dangermouse]

1. You're right in your follow-up that restricting suffrage to males is idiotic.
2. You forgot that restrictiing it to property owners is also idiotic. Do you really think that because I rent my home, I have less stake in the decisions of government than does some guy with a 1/20th-acre townhouse plot?
3. Poll tax? The poor have no stake in government? The poor have a great many problems that can only be addressed by government, and a great many of them are caused by government policy. I think they should get a damn vote.
4. A test? In a nation that is split almost 50/50 on every major issue, who are you going to get to write this test without disenfranchising half the population? The Ministry of Truth?

Expanding suffrage to everybody does lead to better government than the alternative, which is what we call oligarchy. Of course, I define "better" as "more representative of and responsive to the people", not "in agreement with me specifically". I understand that's very trendy of me.

Re:Thanks Jim

[zippthorne]

Call me crazy, but I think there ARE people that shouldn't be voting. There should also be people who shouldn't be driving, people who shouldn't be surgeons, etc. We should decide who gets to vote and we already do:

The very young (and presumeably inexperienced) are not allowed to vote.

Foreigners (who presumeably may have interests other than the well being of American citizens)are also excluded from voting.

We should also exclude:

People who have not paid attention (watching ads doesn't count, you should read something with..say.. facts) -- the ignorant

People who don't understand what's going on anyway -- the incompetent

The ones we've already taken care of are easy, those last two are trickier.. how do you prove that someone is incompetent without disenfranchising perfectly capable voters who just can't pass some arbitrary test?

Maybe the you should have to write in every candidate for every position with no cheat sheet provided (you could bring your own)-- that would prove you're aware of who's running, but how that would affect resolutions, ammendments, etc. I have no idea.

some ideas

[mzs]

It seems to me that standardized Federal election procedures would help ensure a fair election.

It seems to me that this would make it so much easier for election fraud to take place. Seriously consider if someone wanted to rig the election nationally how much easier it would be to do so if there was a central way to do so. I did not come-up with this idea myself, I read it somewhere, and wish I could remember where right now.

Also the idea of the credit card like device, that is just along the same lines as other technological solutions. This approach is no panacea. There is a long history of adopting newer technologies in the USA to try and 'solve' the perceived problems at the polling place. What I view as the real problem here in the USA is that voters are not informed about the candidates and issues. For example check-out this statistic:

23% of lesbians, homosexuals, and bisexuals voted for Bush.

Think about that. Only 4% of the sample claimed to belong to that category so there is the issue of small sample size and in addition to that anyone fibbing would have a greater effect, but at 23% you cannot seriously discount it all. Then there must be some people where certain issues out weighed the Bush administration's take on gay rights. For example very wealthy gays may have had a serious reason to vote for Bush since Kerry was promising to increase their taxes. Now some could have voted because of being fearful of terrorism or something like this, but now you are getting to the issue of the voting public not making well informed rational decisions. (I know that people can reach a 'rational' decision to have voted for Bush based on weighing evidence in a particular way, but I would group that in the previous category anyway, I am talking about an irrational decision based on fear here.) Now what does that leave, that leaves some percentage of gays that voted for Bush out of a Pavlovian response to always vote Republican, I am convinced that there was a non-negligible percentage of gays that just did not know the Bush administration stance on gay rights issues.

I think that is a serious problem about the voting populace here in the USA. I am not being elitist or anything of the sort, I just think that there is a sizable proportion of individuals that just take the word of others as Gospel and do not form informed decisions. What is the percentage of Americans that still believe that Iraq was behind 9/11? Until voters take voting much more seriously, no amount of better voting technology, methodology, or legislation is going to solve the real problem.

But about technology, I personally am a fan of optical scan systems. You fill in the sheet and send it through a reader that immediately deposits it into a locked ballot box. If the counts do not match exit polls or are close, you can manually recount the ballots in the box. Also you can manually spot check a certain percentage of the ballots. Also at each polling place (not each precinct, there can be multiple precincts per polling location) you would have one computer system for those challenged in anyway to vote in the manner that others were. For example the blind. This would produce an optical scan ballot with the proper choices selected, which would be fed through the appropriate reader. This would be low cost and have a verifiable paper trail.

I have to close this off quickly, but as for actual voting method I personally like Condorcet schemes. You can explain what to do to the voter the same way you would what to do with the ballot with instant run-off. You would have a harder time explaining how the winner(s) are chosen if there is not an apparent winner. There are two methods I like for choosing the winner in such a case which I cannot remember the names of. One was written-up in a paper in the 80's and the other in a paper in the 90's. There are two reasons I prefer Condorcet to IRV. First IRV i

Condorcet Voting

[ChristTrekker]

"The winning candidate is the one who can beat every other in a head-to-head race. Just rank your choices 1, 2, 3, etc. Your preferences indicate who wins in a head-to-head in your opinion. Tally those 'wins' for everyone's ballot."

Not too hard, eh?

Re:Condorcet Voting

[bonniot]

The winning candidate is the one who can beat every other in a head-to-head race. Just rank your choices 1, 2, 3, etc. Your preferences indicate who wins in a head-to-head in your opinion. Tally those 'wins' for everyone's ballot." Right, but you know you are ignoring the case of ties. Based on every serious comparison I read, it seems clear that Condorcet is the most fair system, with Approval still a significant improvement over plurality, while IRV is not. The problem is that when election reform comes under the spotlight, it would be easy to run stories describing tie-breaking algorithms, and scare people about the mess if a tie occurs and the lack of confidence in the result.

I wish there would be a more united election reform front, with more energy spent spreading the word than fighting each other. The choice between Approval and Condorcet is simply a compromise between simplicity and fairness.

Re:Condorcet Voting

[ChristTrekker]

You're right, I purposely ignored the case of a tie. Why? Because in virtually any real-world scenario they would be extremely rare, to the point where I doubt most people would ever be involved in a tied election. You might hear of one, somewhere, during your lifetime. But Condorcet ties most often occur in small or contrived examples. How often do you currently hear of ties in any "traditional" two-way race? Not very. Why would they be more common in Condorcet? I don't see that they would. And the very fact that there is a way to determine a winner even in a tie situation is a point in Condorcet's favor.

All that said, and as much as I'll continue to promote Condorcet, if Approval replaced Plurality today I would be much happier than I am now.

Re:Condorcet Voting

[bonniot]

My gut feeling is that ties would indeed be rare, but probably less so than with plurality. Is there any data or model to assess approximately how rare?

You've also got a very good point that Condorcet at least has a method to solve ties, while other methods simply hide the problem under the carpet. Ties are not a problem of Condorcet, it's a fact in the voters' intentions that has to be dealt with (should it ever occur).

This does not mean that it would be easy to sell Condorcet. The media is not always rational... Hence, it might useful to support Approval now, while still supporting Condorcet for the long run. What are the ways to do so? I know of Citizens for approval voting, although I'm not sure how active they are. Any other proposal?

Re:Condorcet Voting

[ChristTrekker]

Grass roots efforts to promote voting reform are a great thing. Letters to the editor and the like raise awareness, and if well done, can educate the public of the need and the options.

Third parties can also serve this function. Though they have platforms with many issues, solving this problem is a means to those issues. Since generally they are aware that the current system is stacked against them, they obviously have an interest. If I were to run a campaign, I would make it a forefront issue.

Unfortunately, most third parties advancing this issue (mainly Greens) have the wrong solution (IRV). We need to educate the parties as well. Citizen groups like the one you mention have undertaken to educate themselves. Parties may not have voting reform activists as adherents - they realize it is important but not enough to dig in themselves. They'll use information from the citizen groups. So we have to make sure they get the right info.

In that vein, I'd encourage anyone who can make a case for the need for voting reform, and can intelligibly discuss all of the several leading methods, to make a 15-20 minute presentation. See if your local parties would be interested in having you speak. Despite the "extremist" tag they get in the media, most 3rd party types are quite thoughtful, and will listen to and consider a well-reasoned speech. And they'd probably be happy to have someone volunteer to speak on an important subject like this.

Re:Condorcet Voting

[bonniot]

Great idea. Which makes me think it would be useful to have a place on the web to put presentation material, to make the task easier. Does such a place exist already?

Re:Condorcet Voting

[ChristTrekker]

Not that I know of. Though if I could dredge up everything I've ever posted on the subject, I'd probably have enough. ;) I link to relevant sites like electionmethods.org pretty frequently; those are good references as well. Slashdot user robla runs an election methods mailing list and site.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[EzInKy]

This is a really tired argument. In a popular vote, everyone's vote actually counts. There's absolutely nothing special about Minnesota that should give its people more voting power than I get in North Carolina.

Other than the fact one has more people than the other you are right. Perhaps states should each got just one vote each when the elect the leader of their union? Possibly, but that would ignore population altogether. No, the EC is the best compromise. Equal say for being a state, bonus say for more citizens.

Re:The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Idea

[xlv]

"As a Canadian, I would add: Make the presidential voting day only about electing the president. I.e. no other votes on bills or other referenda. Save those for a different day. I would allow, perhaps, votes for Congress/Senate seats, but that's about it. Don't mix up the issues."

Why?

Because otherwise you end up with a referendum on gay marriage and not an assessment of the merits of the incumbent and challenger...

what about minors?

[davidwr]

With a few exeptions, we already deny the vote to people under 18 and who have court-appointed guardians.

I don't really want elementary-school children to be voting - it would effectively give parents an extra vote, which discriminates against people without young children.

I *DO* think "emancipated minors" should be allowed to vote. Technically, they aren't minors anymore.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

The EC also centralizes voter fraud. Instead of fraud in 50 states, you only need fraud in 5 or so.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Jim?

[Henry V .009]

1. I didn't say it was idiotic. In my opinion it's half dozen to one, six to the other.
2. On average, yes, but that's not why I suggested restricting suffrage to property owners. Poverty is correlated to incompetence. I don't want the poor voting. As a mass, the poor are stupid, lazy, and when given the power to vote do not exercise it thoughtfully.
3. See 2.
4. Our government functions today because of the efforts of a number of branches of non-partisan civil services. Yes, abuse is possible, but it does not seem to be too high of a risk.

A certain degree of oligarchy is quite beneficial to a well-ordered society. Representative and responsive government is only good within tight limits. The representative and responsive branch of the U.S. government, the House of Representatives, is limited in our system by the President, the Senate, and the Judiciary.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Johnny5000]

It forces candidates to go after voters across the nation/gives all states a say in the election.

I see... this way the candidates can't just focus on a few states; say Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Johnny5000]

If candidate A gets the top 11 most populous states, it doesn't matter that candidate B gets the other 40

Actually it is the least populous states that have a disproportionately large share of the electoral votes when compared to their population.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

It forces candidates to go after voters across the nation/gives all states a say in the election.

This is completely untrue. Neither major candidate campaigned in my state. And this is entirely because of the Electoral College.

The college has the same effect as the congress.

This is also false.

The Electoral College is fundamentally different from Congress. In 42 states, the minority party has representation in Congress. But they have no representation in the Electoral College.

This winner-take-all system makes the EC benefit large states. Better to get a few more thousand more votes in Florida and Ohio than to waste time campaigning in Montana.

Without the electoral college, candidates would simply pander to NY, LA, Chicago, and maybe a few other markets.

This is only because they are not located in swing states. If they were, they'd get pandered to even more than they would under popular vote.

Also, it's interesting that you mention cities and not states. The EC does nothing to protect small populations within a state.

This year was a big enough victory that it doesn't really matter, but four years ago, the popular vote was too close to call(Let it go.),

The popular vote had a reasonable margin. It was the Electoral College that made the election artifically close.

Obviously

[Valarauk]

We need to do away with the secret ballot and place armed guards at all polling stations to crack down on voter fraud!!! You don't want the terrorists to win do you!?! :p

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he has to win 11 States. In a purely popular contest,

To win a pure popular contest with votes from only 10 states, you'd need 92.5% of the vote, which would be extremely unlikely to happen. So, for all practical purposes, popular vote requires at least as many states as the electoral college.

a candidate could carry Massachusetts unanimously, and his opponent could get every other State by a margin of 100 votes. The Massachusetts winner would win only 1 State but be president of all 50.

You talk as if "winning a state" was equivalent to unanimous support of that state's voters. It's not. A 100-vote margin is closer to a tie than to a unanimous vote, and ought to be treated as such. It's misleading to say "The other candidate won 49 states."

I can quibble about a lot of little things

[mbrod]

but to sum it up, if we could come up with more popular viable other parties it would really fix all my beef's.

Green party is too pro environment and peace for me. There will never in the history of humanity be no war, so to run on that runs against humanity. Sometimes it is necessary.

Libertarian is almost spot on for me except their are some government agencies I would like to see stay. Also too pro legalizing drugs. I don't think the opiate family of drugs (hydrocodone, cocaine, oxycontin, heroine, etc) should be legal for anyone to buy, etc.

So I think we need to create a better party than what we have now. I don't like any of them. I would take that over any system reforms.

Re:I can quibble about a lot of little things

[CTachyon]

Cocaine isn't an opiate, it's a completely different family of drugs.

Re:I can quibble about a lot of little things

[mbrod]

Yah I thought I might be wrong on that, but it is one of the drugs I don't think should be availble so I left it in the list.

Re:I can quibble about a lot of little things

[CrimsonAvenger]

So I think we need to create a better party than what we have now. I don't like any of them. I would take that over any system reforms.

So start one. If you have good ideas, you'll get support. Hell, you might even get MY support, if you agree enough with my basic positions.

My Solution

[liqnitro]

My solution to the voting problem is two fold solution. It is part social, part technological.

First I would get rid of the electoral college. It forces canidates to focus on a small segment of the population ( individual states, and demographic groups ) that could leave them with a win instead of focusing on isues that effect everyone. Second, anyone who is a citizen of voting age can vote period. This eliminates the problem of voter disinfrachisement, provisional ballots, and absentee ballots.

Second is the technological solution to the voting predicament. Social security numbers should be used to ensure that duplicate votes are not entered, and only living people vote. Voting machines should be allways be networked using encryption to transmit and hashes to verify the autenicity. Voting machines should also create an optically scanalble paper ballot trail, it should also be plainly visible to the voter who he voted for by looking at the card. The purpose of the networked envirement is to collect live ellection results, and increase ellection efficieny, ensure only one vote per person. The purpose of the cards is to ensure election accuracy. Also absentee ballots could be handled in much the same way using an web application, and user balot card that must be printed out and sent in. At the end of the election results, the votes are audited using the paper cards, regardless of wether voter fruad is suspected.

That is my solution to the mess we call voting, simplification and verification. If India can vote electronically and correctly we should be able to as well. Please post any security concerns about my implimentation.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[wonkavader]

Allow me to stick my neck out.

I flip back and forth on this. A smaller number of people to bribe (or, as another poster pointed out, to swap votes with, and make deals with) means graft, and petty politics.

And clearly, CLEARLY, that's bad.

But what the electoral college was set up to do is to protect us from the beast. That is, the people, for 70% of the people, my fellow slashdotters, are unlike us. They are poorly educated, non-rational... folks, they're stupid, and they hold out fates in their hands. I know, that's anti-democratic. But when a race is based on the will of the people, by pure numbers, candidates have to worry about how people perceive them on an emotional level, not on how they stand on issues. Kerry kept saying "I have a plan" because if he said what it was, it would confuse the electorate.

So we have to elect someone sight unseen, essentially, because we cannot be told what a rational person needs to be told, and that because 70% of us aren't rational.

So the electoral college means electing a local big-wig who goes to the convention. Any surity that that person will be rational? No. Any surity that that person will be more likely to be rational than the man in the street. YES.

A system which allows 20 candidates to be in serious contention, and which required a 2/3 majority to elect (very parlimentary, essentially) would be much better for third party candidates. But electors could very well be party hacks. And we might have stalemate.

But the electoral college would have public votes. Electors would be held responsible for a shitty president by the people in their ward. We could burn their house down, or stone them if they chose for personal gain, or certainly never elect them to the College again.

So again, I go back and forth. But I'll tell you something, we need change, here, whether it's the Electoral College or something else.

Howsabout this: We reduce the power of the president. Why are we at war in Iraq? Do you remember a declaration of war (only congress has the power to do so)? If you do, you're halucinating. Imprisonment without lawyers for years? Anyone who can do that has too much power.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

But theoretically, someone could win a popular election with a million vote margin in one state while losing a 100 vote margin in every other. The EC removes this scenario from possibility. True, winning with only 11 States is not that great, but it's better than winning only 1 and becoming president. The point of the EC is that the president has to appeal to a broad range of voters, not a huge bloc of voters in a very narrow range.

Abolish the party system

[rubee]

The current system is designed so that only billionaires and lawyers from the Ivy leagues can possibly win an office. You know what I want to see? I want to see people like teachers, doctors, and small business owners to hold office. Not to mention the constitution/bill of rights/etc says absolutely nothing about political parties.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[N3WBI3]

And that was the last time the Iowa didn't pick the canidate (Hint, that was 24 years ago)

Way to sound like you know what you are talking about, too bad you dont.

1988 Winners: Richard Gephardt (D), Robert Dole (R)
1992 Winner: Tom Harkin (D)

So it has been a doxen years not 24, and in that time we had only one election w/out a sitting presidnet running for re-election.

Make Elections Transparent and Unriggable

[natoochtoniket]

A substantial fraction (nearly half) of the USA population is convinced that the last presidential election was rigged. I have a Ph.D. in computer science -- and I am almost certain that this election was rigged. That is a recipe for disaster. It doesn't really matter whether or not the past election was really rigged. What really matters is that it clearly could have been, and many people believe that it was.

For the government to be stable, we need the vast majority of people to believe that the elections are fair and honest. When some of the people believe that the election is rigged, those same people are likely to seek an alternative way to force power away from the people who rigged the election. We see that happen in other countries, every year. It's called an assasination, or a revolution, or a civil war. Whatever you call it, it is messy and bloody, and there is only one way to avoid it. That way is to make the election process so transparent and honest that everyone can be certain that it is honest.

I have read that there are four boxes to use in defense of liberty: Soap; Ballot; Jury; Ammo. The first two have now failed. It's time for the third. If the legal process fails to correct the election process in this country, then it may be time for the fourth. I sincerely hope that the fourth box will not be necessary.

The details of the election process matter, but not nearly as much as the transparency. Paper ballots go a long way to make elections transparent. Paper ballots provide evidence that can be examined if the election is disputed. Registration requirements have been used to disenfranchise people, so registration should be eliminated. Inking the thumb of each voter provides a transparent way of being sure that no one votes multiple times. Electronic machinery can be useful, to provide handicap access or save labor, but only to the extent that it does not reduce honesty or transparency. Other mechanisms may also be useful, but each should be judged by the extent to which it improves honesty and transparency.

Rigging or attempting to rig an election should be a capital crime, even for minor conspirators and accomplices, and even for minor local elections.

Re:Make Elections Transparent and Unriggable

[TiggsPanther]

It doesn't really matter whether or not the past election was really rigged. What really matters is that it clearly could have been, and many people believe that it was.

I think this is an important factor, both in the US and anywhere else. Once a significant amount of people believe that an election result was inaccurate (whether through being rigged, or simple mass problems) then up to a point it doesn't actually matter whether it was rigged or not. Whether the result is the correct one or not, as soon as there's a significant amount of doubt then it's as good (bad) as if the result was actually rigged. People lose confidence in the result, even if it is the correct one. And I'm sure that that's not a good thing.

Jury-Draw Tripartisanship

[Wandering Wombat]

A little idea I came up with,and haven't really fleshed out. It is a lot like the above plan, but a little bit wierder.

Jury-Draw Elections.

Feel free to leave comments, I'd love some feedback on this.

Take the money out.

[Captain Splendid]

Give each candidate 10 mil and say "that's all you have to spend, so spend it wisely!".

Also, what's up with cmapaigning for a whole damn year? It's frigging ridiculous. I like the UK system for this: The PM announces the date, they spend 5 weeks campaigning, and boom, all done.

Independent election agency or agencies

[Hamster Lover]

I've said it here before, but the various state elections commissions should not be headed by the Secretary of State or any other political official. It should be entirely independent and apolitical like we have in Canada. I do not understand how Americans tolerate such a blatently politicized system.

Yes, our system is not perfect and yes we still use paper ballots, but in the end it is about as fair as humanly possible (and we have verifiable paper ballots in case the recound rules take effect). To accept that partisian elements ultimately control the process for selecting their own representitives is crazy.

Another area where Canada differs from the U.S. concerns the prohibition of political contributions from corporations and unions. Again, not a perfect solution and one that would probably not fly in the U.S., but at least it's a step forward.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[malachid69]

Yes, but....

Using the Electoral Vote Calculator (http://www.americanresearchgroup.com/ev/) you can see that if CandidateA wins every state that has 15+ electoral votes and CandidateB wins the rest, CandidateA wins (discounting voter fraud, corruption, etc -- just using it as it is meant to be)... Thus: [I tried to do this as a UL, but Slashdot kept complaining about Short Line Length, sooo....]

CandidateA wins CA(55),FL(27),GA(15),IL(21),MI(17),NJ(15),NY(31),N C(15),OH(20),PA(21),TX(34) for a total of 11 states and 271 votes

CandidateB wins AL(9),AK(3),AZ(10),AR(6),CO(9),CT(7),DE(3),DC(3),H I(4),ID(4),IN(11),IA(7),KS(6),KY(8),LA 9),ME(4),MD(10),MA(12),MN(10),MS 6),MO(11),MT(3),NE(5),NV(5),NH(4),NM(5),ND(3),OK(7 ),OR(7),RI(4),SC(8),SD(3),TN(11),UT(5),VT(3),VA(13 ),WA(11),WV(5),WI(10),WY(3) for a total of 40 states and 267 votes.

That means that if CandidateA got the 21.6% most populous states, then it wouldn't matter what the other 78.4% of the states thought. If you don't want to have the winner determined by which areas have the most population, then the Electoral College is not the right forum to fix this problem. It is also interesting that, although they were the top 11 populous states, they only had 57% of the people (per http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G04/ElectorAllocatio n.phtml?sort=Popu ).

It is an interesting point. People complain that Sun has too much control over Java. They made the JCP, so their vote is exactly equal to that of Apache. Every member on the JCP Executive board gets 1 vote. If the national election were based on 1 vote per state, then CandidateB would win the above stats because he had almost 4/5ths of the states. As it is now, the candidate only has to get the top 11 populated states to win. I agree a direct election would not fix that problem -- but I don't think anyone can use the stats to show why the Electoral college protects the small states. The numbers above disprove that theory.

Voting How To

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that there are two principals to voting, sometimes largely ignored:

1. One eligible voter gets to vote one time.
2. Only certain persons are eligible, and proof of eligibility is the responsibility of the person who wants to vote.

If you think this is too hard, too confusing, too much trouble; good don't vote you're far too stupid to have an informed opinion in such a case.

One Voter - One Vote Principal
- Ditch registrations, etc etc
- Everyone votes at the same time, at a polling place.
- You get a 'tatoo' when you vote.
- If the election officials even smell a bit of 'washoff' 'tatoo' No Vote For You.

Proof of Eligibility
- Bring in any three of these must be current
= Photo ID Driver's license or State photo ID
= Property tax bill (maybe this is only one you need - in my dream world only property owners get to vote).
= Birth certificate
= Passport
- Don't have three No Vote For You.
- What you bring also gets 'tatooed' so you can wash your hands with gasoline, but your documents are also 'tatooed'.

All voters vote electronically, and TWO copies of their electronic ballot are printed. One for them to keep and one for them to place in the Ballot Box. Hopefully they compare the two. Ballots are issued sequentially starting with #1. If you show up early and they are #3,427 you had better call someone! The last voter helps seal the Ballot Box, so additional ballots cannot be easily added.

If there are any questions about the electronic votes, count the paper ballots in the Ballot Box. The Ballot Box cannot be opened by the polling place staff. The Ballot Box cannot be opened by any one person - it needs multiple persons one of whom is the Secretary of State.

Yeah I know recounts will be delayed, so what, bring the Ballot Box to the SoS and open it their under much public witness for the re-count.

Additionally polling staff would have a list of felons, and check you against it. If you are on it, you get a provisional ballot and hope they clear you. Also felons should really get a red driver license or otherwise easily identifiable felon id. Just so they can't vote.

Could someone still generate fake people and fake ids? Yes - but this makes it much more difficult and harder to re-use people/documents as each use negates the documents and the person due to the 'tatoo'. The whole idea is to make cheating cost more than it gets you.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[h4x0r-3l337]

You're overlooking that without the electoral college, there would be no such thing as "winning a state". You'd win a certain number of votes. And while you would win more votes in some areas than in others, if you look at the by-county results of this last election, you'll notice that states as a whole are far from uniform in who they vote for.

Without the electoral college, candidates would probably campaign only in the most populous areas, foregoing the rural areas. *With* the electoral college, they mostly campaign in so-called 'swing states', while ignoring the "sure thing" states. What's the difference, really?

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[h4x0r-3l337]

The reason for the original design was: the president candidates cold not visit every town all over america to present themselves

That might be the reason for the electoral system itself, but the reason for the discrepancy between population and number of electors (small states have a larger number of electors per capity than big states) was to persuade small states to join the union by giving them a relatively bigger say in it.

Before we do anything aligned with House Districts

[kevinatilusa]

we have to do something about the way house districts are drawn.

Right now (when all that is at stake is a few seat in the house) we've seen court cases galore and the farce that happened in Texas. If we make it so that electoral votes depend on these gerrymanderings as well, things will just get more ridiculous.

Make elections run by a non-partisan office

[kevinatilusa]

In Florida in 2000, elections were run by the Secretary of State and co-chair to Bush's election campaign in that state. When the results in Florida were close, her presence tainted the election with the appearance of corruption no matter how partisanly or non-partisanly she behaved. In Ohio in 2004, elections were run by a Secretary of State who was also heavily involved in Bush's reelection campaign. Fortunately the results in Ohio were not close enough for us to have the same problems, but if they were we would have had the same situation. I'm not sure exactly who should be running the elections in each state, but it seems like it really shouldn't be officials who run on one party's ticket for statewide office and who may have higher ambitions within that party.

Get rid of elections all together

[JimBean]

Some wacky alternatives:

1. Just have people bid for their desired positions--acknowledge the fact that money controls politics, not ideas. Stop beating around the bush with the current system.

2. Have a lottery during each election cycle in which citizens/residents are randomly chosen for positions. (Those chosen would, of course, have the option of declining). People don't understand elections, but they sure understand lotteries. This system would get a wide swath of Americans involved in politics. They probably could perform just as well (or poorly) as the current "professionals."

3. Go the Platonic route. Periodically measure everyone's intelligence (method to be determined). Offer government positions to those with the highest levels of intelligence. Witness the rise of NerD Nation!

And I'm spent.

Re:Get rid of elections all together

[Anonymous Coward]

regarding (2)... some have said that the people capable of *being elected* are probably the worst people for the job...

therefore, the people who accept should be automatically disqualified and a "runoff" lottery of the decliners until you get down to one?

Canada, Cringely, scrutineers, game theory.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don't, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology.

Primary system problems

[rjamestaylor]

Kerry was selected by not much more than 100,000 Iowans and New Hampshires and then the rest of the Democrats were saddled with him for the election. Was he the best candidate the Dems could offer in 2004? I dunno. Did he capture the heart of the Dems? Doubtful. There was never a move for John Kerry as much as a move against "W". (See my journal for more on this).

Personally, I am not bothered by a two-party system as much as I am the primary system used to select the two candidates. IMO, the primary system bit the Dems this year. If I was a California Dem or a Texas Dem I'd sure want to change my party's primary system.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[WGR]

In actual fact, the opposite happens. States where any party have a sure majority, whether small or large, Republican or Democrat, are not given many visits by candidates because the winner gets all the Electoral College votes of the state.

If the rules for selection of Electors were by proportion to party vote in state, then California and New York Republicans and Texas Democrats would get a vote for President. At the moment, a huge number of voters have effectively no vote for President because they live in a state where the other party is strong. Suggesting proportional choice of electors in an Electoral College still gives smaller states a bit bigger influence, but enfranchises millions of voters who now lose all influence in choosing the President. This would also not require any constitutional amendments, just a model law for each state as is done in many other matters.

2 Simple changes

[Tobias Luetke]

1) The president is elected by popular vote. Discarding valid votes for any reason is undemocratic and currently all votes past the one which is enough for 50% in a state are discarded. This is undemocratic.

2) Banks should be required to outfit ATMs with voting tools. Let people vote at their ATMs, everyone know where theirs is. Voting could be done up to a month prior and the actual election day should be a deadline instead of the only possibility.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[stanmann]

Actually, the slave states, wanted them counted as whole persons for representation and property for tax(levy/conscription) purposes and the non-slave states wanted the reverse. thus the compromise.

Easy voting = easy mistakes

[zippthorne]

Open up the votes themselves to public scrutiny:

everyone gets a number that corresponds to their ballot at the polls. The numbers are attached to the ballot, not the voter so the ballot would still be secret.

After the election is over and the votes are tallied, allow voters to check their votes online. They could even give their reg. numbers to partisan/non-partisan vote-checking organisations that mass-verify votes if they choose.

If everyone can review their vote, then miscounts will be irrelevant: too many people (i.e. a signifiant portion of the vote-difference) complain about wrong/lost votes, either have another vote or solve the problem some other way. The important thing is to know if it happens.

Precinct scaling and other ramblings

[dtfinch]

A great deal of the potential for geographic turnout manipulation (creating long lines or other barriers to voting) can be reduced by scaling votes according to the population of each precinct.

Then there's condorcet voting. That'd help fix our two party problem. It's more likely to produce a result that all sides think they can stomach.

Electronic voting machines:
Must be open source.
Redundant vote records. All events, like touchscreen presses, signed by hardware and logged. And a seperate counter that cannot be rolled back to delete votes.
Binaries stored in rom and verifiable before and after election.

Must show ID to vote. ID stored with vote to enable removal of duplicates.

All adult citizens and permanent residents with ID eligable to vote. Even felons. No voter registration required. All exceptions create loopholes. No challenging the right to vote. Voters without ID get provisional ballots where they must be able to certify their identity and age after the fact.

Vote by mail. Within a single precinct, there is still opportunity to influence the election by deciding where to place the polls. And there are other biases that this would help eliminate. Oregon has this.

No electoral college. Everyone's vote should matter. The precinct scaling should fix the voter turnout biases.

No publishing results or exit polls while polls are still open. Not all polls close at the same time, partly due to time zone differences, giving the opportunity to rush them in some states but not others.

Currently the law in most states, but should be formalized. When the polls close, whoever's already in line must be allowed to vote.

OT: CAN WE DISCUSS EURO POLITICS TOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

How long are we going to ignore the rest of the world, especially Europe. There are many topics of interest over there, for instance the problems in Denmark with the murder of Van Gogh and its impact on freedom, as well as the EU itself!

Easy peasy

[DaveJay]

Step 1: Everyone gets to vote for as many people as they want for the primaries (their own party, the other parties, or independents) -- then the top half get to proceed forward. Hardcore Repubs will vote for all of their guys, Hardcore Dems will do the same, and everyone else will cherry-pick from both sides plus the independents. At the end of the day, the Repubs/Dems/Independents that are most acceptable to BOTH sides will make it to the finals.

Step 2: Repeat step one until you end up with about five guys. Again, the cream will rise to the top.

Step 2.5: At this point, no more money can be spent on ads, and no radio/tv/newspaper ads can be run by the candidates. The debates should be the only media exposure that the candidates get directly.

Step 3: Debates, debates, debates. Public, pre-empting all other broadcasting, and without the questions in advance.

Step 4: On election day, everyone gets to vote for as many candidates as they want. Whichever one gets the most votes wins, whichever one gets the second largest number of votes is vice president, and the rest are out of luck.

Step 5: Paper trails, automatically initiated recounts, and no concession allowed -- and the media doesn't run around telling everyone that someone did or didn't win until all the votes are counted.

Step 6: I wake up.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[EnderWiggnz]

its because DIRT DOESNT VOTE!

the electoral college "roughly" gives population-sensitive weighting.

if you want real reform, we would uncap the house of reps upper limits, and go back to 1 rep/X0,000 people.

none of this insane gerrymandering every 10 years.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

Actually, the slave states, wanted them counted as whole persons for representation

Yes, as I already mentioned, it was a compromise. But that doesn't change the fact that the 3/5ths clause increased the power of slave-holding states because, (as I already described), slaves, who are not legally people, wouldn't otherwise count towards the number of people in a state. "Indians" didn't count. Oxen didn't count. Organutans didn't count. In the abscense of this clause, slaves wouldn't count either.

They wanted 1, but they got 3/5, which is substantially more than 0. Therefore it was an increase, not a decrease as claimed above.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[DeputySpade]

DC is not a state. Sorry, just had to pick that nit. 40+11=50? Hrm.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

The difference is that swing states can change from election to election. A city can't uproot itself and move elsewhere. We don't want candidates continually paying attention only to certain places, only pleasing small segments of the population in order to maintain that power base.

I'd like to see EVs allocated by district to lessen the value of a "swing state". It would create the possibility of "swing districts" though. Colorado as a whole might be predictably Republican, but some districts might be in play then. Likewise, New York as a whole might be predictably Democrat, but Republicans might be able to win some districts. Make politicians work to earn those EVs, flying all over the country.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[malachid69]

I know, but evidentally they have electorate votes. I provided the link the information came from.

Simpler then that.

[McBeer]

Get rid of the electoral college. It is no longer needed. Its just that simple.

Furthermore, we should use the condorcet voting system with schwartz sequential dropping for cyclic ambiguety resolution. It is hands down better then the plurality system currently implemented in the US.

Re:Simpler then that.

[NeMon'ess]

I'd like that and I agree, but good luck getting the states to ratify it. I'd like to think my plan, were it a snowball, would have a slightly larger chance in hell of surviving.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[_iris]

I posted the link as evidence of the sheep effect (i.e. blaming other states for being sheep) not to blame Iowa.

That said, I do believe that more than one state should hold their primary on the same day as Iowa.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[TykeClone]

I think that Iowa will always be early in the process. It's a small state, so young campaigns have a chance to purchase less expensive advertisements than they would in larger states, and it gives the candidates a chance to meet the voters (more so than a larger state would).

Iowa and New Hampshire also have a filtering effect - this last cycle, they took the 9 Democratic "contenders" and narrowed it down to Kerry, Dean, and Edwards. That is a double edged sword, but it does help reduce the signal to noise ratio for candidates as the process moves forward into the larger states.

Make Election Fraud Equivalent to Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

Treason is a crime against all of the people of a democratic society. Treason is punishable by death.

Election fraud is also a crime against all of the people of a democratic society. It is equivalent to treason in almost every respect. It should be taken as seriously as treason, and it should be afforded the same punishment.

Keep elections local

[billeger]

A colleague and I were named to monitor election procedures in Hawai`i. The bottom line is that state and federal laws were broken constantly and, because of the complex of laws at federal, state and local levels, it is virtually impossible to get enforcement. A new commission is in charge of Hawai`i elections but it hasn't even met! People who should know better are thinking that can be changed with the 'magic bullet' of federalizing the election standards or responsibilities. For those of you who love the Patriot Act, that might be exactly what you want for, for the rest of us, let's think again. If there were problems with the election we just had it is mainly because of federal intervention with the Help Americans Vote Act that flooded states with money to buy computer voting systems, most of which have no paper trail for post election audits. What we discovered in five months of research is that the purchasing system -- at leas in Hawai`i -- seems to have been rigged, posted on April 30 and a $3.8 million dollar contract signed, sealed and delivered on June 7. Seem strange to you? And there is no paper trail even nearly adequate to the task. This takes much caution and the technical community could be of great value to the nation by looking closely at it, refusing to be knee-jerk federalists and getting local press interested. For some reason, they aren't. Maybe it's those million dollar political ad budgets!

MOD PARENT UP

[dcmeserve]

This is the first time I've heard a really clear description of what the hell this Parliament stuff is about. I think I'm starting to get it. :) Thanks!

...the President gets the mystique of being a head of state and the power of head of government. In a parliamentary system, no one ever stops to say "he's the prime minister, so I'll stay behind him"...

Heh, so the U.S. President is more like the old King of England that we rebelled against than even the actual British Royalty is now!

And nowadays, it's including the role of Pope as well...

Amending the Electoral System

[amper]

Ah, a question near and dear to my heart these days. I am in the process of preparing several articles on this very subject, so I will give a brief overview here...

The first thing we need to do is enact legislation to require all voting procedures to be transparent and to produce a physical audit trail which can be independently and repeatably verified. We can go no further in this great experiment until we resolve this fundamental flaw in our electoral process.

The second problem we face is that Public Law 62-5, effective as of 1913, limits the number of Representatives in the House to 435. The long-term effect of this limitation is to drastically increase to power of the less populous states at the expense of the more populous states. We need to change this system. Fortunately, this is part of the United States Code, and not part of the Constitution, as Amended, so passage of such a measure would be somewhat more easily accomplished than if it were enshrined as the Law of the Land.

I believe that the Federal system works well, even some 200-odd years after its inception, but that there are a few inconsistencies which we need to clear up.

We need to move to system by which Representatives are apportioned based upon the percentage of the population which resides in each state. For example, according to the 2000 Census data, the least populous state, Wyoming, has 493,782 residents, and is apportioned 1 Representative, whereas the most populous state, California, has 33,871,648 residents, and is apportioned 53 Representatives.

As we can see from this data, the ratio of Representatives to Constituents in Wyoming is 1:493,782, and in California it is approximately 1:639088. Counting the Senate representation, this gives a ratio of Members of Congress to Constituents of 1:164594 to Wyoming, and a ratio of 1:615848 in California. This is grossly unfair.

The effect is to cause the more populous states to compete for a fixed number of Seats, while the less populous states retain the same number. A large population move to the urban areas would mean less representation for those areas, and an even greater imbalance in Congress.

We can improve upon this system while still retaining a more fair, but still increased power to the less populous states by simply enacting a rule which removes the limit on the number of House seats and apportions them by population ratio. Under such a system, using the 2000 Census data, I have calculated that using the ratio of 1 House Seat to every 493,782 residents, that the total number of Representatives (rounding down for each state) would increase to 647. California, for example, would recieve 68 House Seats under this rule, and thus, 70 Electors to Wyoming's three.

It is interesting to note, for those of you who would argue that the balance of power would be too drastically changed, that under this system, I have calculated that, based on the voting tallies of each state thus far, that Mr. Bush would still have won the Electoral College 340:307 (barring any further discoveries of election anomalies that might change this outcome). While the Electoral College under this system would reflect more closely the views of the Electorate in general, it would tend to reinforce the election of a candidate who carried a majority of the vote.

The more important effect of this would be to give proper weight to the voices of the more populous states in Congress.

The two biggest downsides? We'd have to build a new Capitol Building and probably some new House Office Buildings, and our government would be somewhat larger and more unwieldy. I should point out, however, that many might find a slower legislative process to be more to their liking...

This would insulate the fair makeup of Congress from population shifts. Should more population shift to rural areas, those areas would be proportionately better represented. Should more population shift to the urban areas, the same would be true.

The next change that we

My ideas

[Lord Kano]

First and foremost, eliminate all "Campaign Finance Reforms". Anyone and everyone can contribute as much money as they want to any party or campaign.

Think Nader is being treated unfairly? Just one rich guy can bankroll his campaign. No more scraping for $2000 donations.

Second, full disclosure. No hiding behind PACs. Every dollar should be traced back to its source.

No federal matching funds. Elected officials shouldn't be able to use tax dollars to run for office.

Return the debates to the league of women voters. They have proven to be a fair group who just wants the issues addressed.

LK

The amount of time would be the major change.

[will_die]

If I had dictator abaility I would remove the 2+year election process.
First would have clump the primaries so that each state is on one of 6 times. These would take place one per week. The results of the offical results would stay secret until all states are done.
After all states are done the results will be released. Two weeks will then be given for all initial news talk to get over with. Following thoses 2 weeks the first convention will take place, followed by a week break(for third parties,news coverage to end. Then we will have the next convention, followed by yet another week off. Upto this time the parties are not allowed to use the government provided funds.
The party which currently holds the president gets to select the week they want to go, and this must be selected when they pick the location, 2 years or so before the actual time.
Following that week break, the canidates are allowed to access to any government funds and 5 weeks later we have the national elections.
With that done we have the elections down to starting in late July and we would be done with it come November.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[kingpin2k]

I'm personally for empowering the state legislatures to take care of this. I don't believe there is a one-size-fits-all strategy, and I think state's should take back control of their electoral processes. I'd be more than willing to have my state rep picking electors. Hell, I've actually met my state rep. The only pres. candidate I've met was Harry Browne (libertarian 2000).

Leave it up to the states

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, read the Constitution. You won't find a right to vote for President anywhere in it. The only ones with the right to vote for President are the electors from each state. The Federal government leaves it to the states as to how they select their electors. A state legislature could draw names out of a hat, flip a coin, or hold a lottery to select its electors. Right now all of the states have graciously chosen a method that lets their citizens vote, but they don't have to let you vote at all!

Leave the process alone. Let the states' electors choose the President.

I wish we still let state legislatures choose their U.S. Senators. Can you tell that I'm a "states rights" kind of person? Ever heard of unfunded mandates?

No more registered as *insert party*

[rubberbando]

If we got rid of the whole, "registered as a democrat, republican, independent, etc" Shady election workers couldn't harrass you based on what party you are affiliated with.

Plus I think having this info currently available like it is now is a privacy issue. Anyone could look it up (like employers), and use it against you if they wanted. In fact, I was almost hired through a temp agency to help get out the vote and when they realized that I wasn't registered republican (republican party was paying fot the job), they turned me down.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[CrimsonAvenger]

Kerry kept saying "I have a plan" because if he said what it was, it would confuse the electorate

No, if Kerry said what it was, people would know quite clearly what he stood for, and voted against him in (even larger) droves.

By keeping things ambiguous, he left people open to the possibility that his plan was one they'd approve of. If he'd had a plan that people, in general, would have liked, he could have reduced it to a couple sound bites (yah, big picture only), and sold it.

As it most likely was, a really complicated plan that reduced to "raise everyone's taxes" wouldn't play well in Poughkeepsie. And he knew it.

Electoral Vote is Needed!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think getting rid of the electoral vote was a good idea, but if you think about it it would benefit the Republicans more then the Democrats which wouldn't be fair. The reason being that the Republicans would only need to focus their campaigns on the large cities and not even worry about the midwest because they already know they're going to get them, and they know the Democrats will have a hard time campaigning in these areas because they cover so much land and aren't that densely populated. So not only would Democrats have to defend themselves in large cities they'd also have to try and swing a couple Republican states, which would be much harder then focusing your entire campaign on large cities.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

In a purely popular contest, a candidate could carry Massachusetts unanimously, and his opponent could get every other State by a margin of 100 votes.

Well good! Because if a guy can win 100% of MA and still have 49.999% of TX (and every other state) voting for him, then his nationwide popularity has been demonstrated, and he deserves the job.

That's a lot better than the alternative, which is a man with three million fewer votes and less widespread acceptance becoming President. I mean, seriously: what reason could there be for a candidate to take zero percent of the MA vote? No major canidate can be that unpopular in a single state without being truely warped. He probably wants to sell Massachusett babies as deli meat or something.

We could argue forever about what the right balance is between being the president of the people and being the president of the States

The idea that he's the President of the United "States" and not of the "United States of America" was obseleted even before Lincoln was born.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

Make politicians work to earn those EVs, flying all over the country.

That makes almost as much sense as cutting the deficeit by cutting taxes.

If more states allocated EVs discretely, then candidates would spend even more time near the big cities. George Bush would have an incentive to campaign in NY and CA again (because otherwise urban=solid Democrat), which would draw Kerry in too, to protect his turf.

I say use Approval Voting.

[MtbRocket]

I say we get rid of our first-past-the-post voting system and use approval voting instead. There are other voting methods, I just like approval more. Here is a link to learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

Ever heard of gerrymandering?

[cryptochrome]

Watching those in power in congress ram district changes through the process would be even uglier and more unfair than what we normally see. They probably wouldn't even end up with anywhere near the same number of voters in each district.

If you don't believe me, you should look up how Texas districts changed this past election.

Popular vote is the only logical change to make. And it has many of its own difficulties.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

The idea that he's the President of the United "States" and not of the "United States of America" was obseleted even before Lincoln was born.

I completely and fundamentally disagree with that notion. And I guess it shows in every discussion we have.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

A candidate might be able to hit more districts more quickly by campaigning in cities, but it suddenly would become less effective overall. For example, Kerry wouldn't have won all of NY just by winning NYC. Each district would count. Rather than trying to run up his total in and around NYC (assuming NY was ever a contested state), he'd have to pound ground out in some of the fringe suburban districts.

Right now there is incentive to court the cities because you can win a whole state without investing a lot of travel time. But the actual areas being contested are not always in the cities. I'd like to see politics being closer to the people, and anything to get candidates closer to the people seems like a good thing.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

I completely and fundamentally disagree with that notion. And I guess it shows in every discussion we have.

I've seen Holocaust Deniers before, but never War-Between-The-States Deniers...

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

Perhaps I misread you, or poorly stated my position. I don't deny the War of Northern Aggression increased centralized power at the expense of State power. I disagree that we should just go along with that, when I believe it is clearly in our best interest to restore the balance of power between DC and the several States.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Minna Kirai]

I believe it is clearly in our best interest to restore the balance of power between DC and the several States.

So that's your opinion about how things should be, and you're entitled to it.

But when someone makes a factual statement about how things actually are, and you contradict it, then you are straightforwardly wrong. (Which can occasionally be acceptable as rhetorical hyperbole, as in "Abortion is murder!" when legally it isn't. In that case the clause "should be" is inferred)

Now, as to trying to convince other people as to how elections should be conducted, you have a pro-EC viewpoint that's based on the idea of states being fairly autonomous. But I strongly suspect that the average USA voter believes in her heart "One Nation, Indivisible" and harbors patriotic feelings not towards Georgia or Kansas, but "America".

On a different topic, if you want a weaker, less-meddlesome federal government, then you should support a popular vote. If the President was elected nationwide, then rather than pandering towards Yucca Mountain here and farm subdidies there, he'd run on a platform based more in truely federal-level issues, and not promise to bring spoils back to every swing state he touches.

Remove the Electoral College, etc

[ToyKeeper]

The current voting system in the US is arguably one of the worst ever used. Sure, I'm glad I have the right to vote, but I'd be much happier about it if the voting system did not make my vote irrelevant.

There are two main problems with the US voting system: an incomplete way of expressing one's preference, and the electoral college. Together, these create a system which is extremely chaotic and sensitive to small manipulations. Look at the way results change over time, and the numbers jump wildly around. Sites such as http://www.electoral-vote.com have detailed election data demonstrating this.

Limitations of Singular Voting
Many people, when deciding how to vote in the US, encounter the same problems and dilemmas over and over. For example, what if you really like a 3rd-party candidate? Do you "throw your vote away" by voting how you truly feel? Or, do you "choose the lesser of two evils" by picking one of the Democrat or Republican candidates? Frankly, in the current system, voting for a 3rd-party candidate in a major election means you choose to let your vote be ignored. The only way you can make your vote count in this environment is to lie on your ballot. But why should it be necessary to falsify your preferences?

Much effort has gone into voting theory research, in an attempt to find an ideal way to choose an action based on personal preferences. This field involves two main concepts: collecting the most detailed and accurate preferences possible, and evaluating the data in the most fair manner. In both of these aspects, Condorcet voting has emerged as a fairly clear winner. It has the most desirable properties of any voting system devised so far, and the fewest undesirable properties.

I propose changing the US electoral system to use Condorcet voting, instead of its current system.

Electoral College
Once upon a time, the Electoral College was a good idea. Back when it took a very long time to send a messenger across the country, it wasn't feasible to count every person's vote. So we used the next best thing -- a smaller model of the country, designed to be as fair as possible without becoming unmanageable.

But the restrictions of back then no longer apply. The electoral college now is, at best, an inconvenience which reduces the accuracy of elections. At worst, it is an effective and abused tool for Gerrymandering. It produces large changes in the election results based on very small populations of people, making elections very chaotic. It usually has the effect of throwing away nearly half the votes of each state, and sometimes (as with Dubya) even produces a different result than the popular vote. People in states which are either Democrat or Republican strongholds cannot make a difference by voting against the majority.

Several people have created programs to deal with the symptoms of the broken electoral college, such as vote-trading organizations. In that way, you can relocate your vote to a place where it might matter, instead of wasting it where you can be assured it will not count.

I propose eliminating the Electoral College, and using the popular vote instead.

Vote for Nobody
As an added enhancement, adding "Nobody" to each ballot would make it possible to more accurately express preferences. If you disapprove of all the candidates (or, in Condorcet, disapprove of any), voting for "Nobody" means you don't have to choose the lesser of various evils. And, if the "Nobody" candidate wins, the election would need to be held again, with entirely different candidates.

(this is a copy of the on-topic rant at my site)

Re:Remove the Electoral College, etc

[mercedo]

An elimination of the Electoral College, and introducing the popular vote instead. - I think it's a perfect choice. Very suitable to tackle arising problems on Presidential Elections last two times. While on vote for Nobody, I don't think it's a good idea.

Re:Plurality is a better solution

[ToyKeeper]

Without the electoral college, candidates would simply pander to NY, LA, Chicago, and maybe a few other markets. They can then safely ignore the rest of the nation because a small victory in the large markets overcomes even the largest losses in the rest of the nation.

The electoral college does not solve that problem. It arguably even makes the problem worse, though that's not my point. The problem stems from our current single-vote, winner-takes-all system. This is a system which consistently ignores almost half of the votes. If I disagree with the majority in my state, that means my vote doesn't matter, at all. The only way for me to be heard is to either lie on my ballot (vote other than how I believe), or do a vote swap and try to work outside the system. The electoral college just compounds the problem, by making gerrymandering easier, and making the system unpredictable.

Those problems don't need to exist. If we switched to a plurality voting system (such as Condorcet), all sorts of voting problems would disappear overnight.

The main barrier in the way is the two main parties -- neither one wants to change the voting system, because it currently benefits both parties unfairly. Changing to condorcet would greatly increase the success of third parties, at the expense of good old Red and Blue.

Currently, I cannot vote for a third party. At least, not in any way that matters. Say for example I have the following candidate preferences: 1: Green, 2: Purple, 3: Blue, 4: Brown, 5: Red. It's a given that Red or Blue will win. So, if I vote for Green, it's the same as if I did not vote at all. I would like to vote for Green, but instead my only choice is to vote against Red. So, I can vote for Blue, or be voluntarily ignored.

That, to me, is a broken system.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ToyKeeper]

70% of the people, my fellow slashdotters, are ... poorly educated, non-rational... folks, they're stupid, and they hold out fates in their hands. I know, that's anti-democratic. But when a race is based on the will of the people, by pure numbers, candidates have to worry about how people perceive them on an emotional level, not on how they stand on issues.

Though I'd generally agree that people are stupid... I think you just explained Bush's campaign technique. He won because he ignored issues, appealed to people on an emotional level, and told the stupid masses what would make them feel better.

The electoral college does not protect us from that sort of politics.

I don't know a reasonable, fair way to keep clueless knee-jerk voters out of the system. If this image has any truth to it, a simple IQ test (require an IQ of 100 or greater) would have produced a landslide victory for Kerry. But that's not fair, and not democratic. So, we'll just have to deal with all those uninformed people who haven't been paying attention to the world; the ones who made the PIPA report so interesting. Bleh.

For now, the only reasonable things I think would help are: switch to Condorcet voting, get rid of the electoral college, and add a "nobody" entry in every election.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[ChristTrekker]

On a different topic, if you want a weaker, less-meddlesome federal government, then you should support a popular vote.

I do, that's why I support repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments. If you want to rein in the USGov, that would do it right quick. I support the EC because I don't want DC ignoring the concerns of smaller states altogether, which is what eliminating the EC would lead to.

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[Johnny5000]

"but I don't think anyone can use the stats to show why the Electoral college protects the small states. The numbers above disprove that theory."

I tried to find the link but I was unable to...

one thing that I've read was that if you take the X number of smallest states needed to get to 270 electoral votes, and figure that the candidate wins with 50%+1 vote, you end up with something like the electoral college winner only gets something like 25% of the popular votes.
(not that popular vote actually means anything in our system, but still...)

Also, a voter in Wyoming's vote may be worth 1/X electoral votes, while a voter in California's vote may only be worth 1/(5X) of an electoral vote. So each individual voter in a small state has more sway over who becomes president than those in a large state.

(I don't have the exact figures in front of me.)

Divide the Executive Branch

[IPFreely]

OK, I've been bouncing this idea around in my head for a while now, and this looks like the right place to publish it.

One of the aspects of the Presidential election in particular is the winner take all aspect of it. Different issues drive different people in different directions. Side issues like education, energy and environment take a back seat to economy and security. But rarely is there one candidate that is aligned with a particular voter's wishes over all areas.

On top of that, the President often holds much greater popular power than Congress simply due to the singular nature of the office. A single person gets press when no particular member of Congress gets the same coverage, and when many different members do, their messages are often crossed or lost due to the unrecognized status of the member. They are too often relegated to background noise in the press.

So, my solution is to break up the executive branch in terms of election.
1. Cabinet positions are each elected to office by some method of election (Many methods are presented elsewhere in this thread. Pick one).
2. They each have terms and reelections, similar to presidential terms. They do not all necessarily get elected on the same year, like Senators.
3. After each election, the total cabinet can get together and choose a "spokesman", somewhat like the senate majority leader or house majority leader. This spokesman is called the President. The responsibility of the President is similar to current responsibilities, with limitations with respect to particular cabinet powers.
4. Each cabinet seat is solely responsibility for activity within their cabinet position.
5. Cross cabinet activities are settled in committees, possibly with the assistance of the the President.
6. Single entity actions, like signing laws or appointing judges, should eiher be cabinet specific if the law is cabinet specific, or should be aggreed to by a vote among the affected cabinet departments or the entire cabinet. Again, this is most likely a committee function.

PROs:
No more winner take all elections. Citizens can zero in on their favorite candidate for each issue and major area of responsibility.
Less public power to single individual due to greater exposure. Personal presentation takes less of an overall effect, leaving more specific issues to take importance in each election.

CONs:
Cross cabinet conflicts. Committees deal with it, similar to the ways commities deal with conflicts between House and Senate.
Less consolidated executive presentation. There is not quite so much power of personal presentation for any individual person. Many people often like having a single person they can point to and say "That's the leader".

My own responses to the CONs.
Cross cabinet conflicts. There is actually much less of this than you might imagine. Something like 90% of responsibility in the executive branch is cabinet verticle; that is, it lies entirely within a single cabinet department. Most of this goes on mostly invisibly behind the scenes. When it does occur, it can be handled through committees, similar to the way Congress handles conflicts in committees. Committees have a bad wrap due to the slowness and conflict involved. Many people want "decisiveness" and committees just don't feel decisive.
Less consolidated presence, no single person. I personally don't mind this. Personal power due to presence does not necessarily benefit the country. It is more of a "feel good" thing for people to have a name and face they can look to and say "That's the leader". The actual execution of office responsibilities does not depend at all on such recognition or presence or fame.

This is not designed to address other problems or replace other solutiions in the election system. Party politics and winner take all electoral processes should still be addressed through other means.

Empower all USA Citizens, Disenfranchise Money!

[OldHawk777]

1. "More Money" in one elections campaign account to pay for all campaign cost. ALL USA Federal, State, and Local campaigns and elections are paid from the same elections campaign account. Any company, religion, country, individual, special interest ... can donate any sum to the USA elections campaign account. All other donations/gifts of property, money, time, ... anything/everything would be to the elections campaign account, or paid from the elections campaign account. Allocation of funds would be on a sliding 50/50 base. If independents are identified as being supported by 7% of the USA Citizens, then the two major parties (must be supported by 9.3 of 10 Citizens) would receive a split of 93% (46.5%/46.5%). A party/group receiving less-than 17% would not be required to account or pay for volunteer time. [The percentages are just place holders to express concept]
>
2. Move all National/Federal elections to November 11th. Veterans/Armistice Day should be the holiday for all National/Federal elections. All business except hospitals, hotels, ... police, fire, emergency, security, safety, power-plants, public-transportation, ... should be required to close (including theaters, restaurants, shopping, banking, ...). A National/Federal elections holiday (I believe) would enfranchise the USA working Citizens to a far greater extent. Using Veterans' Day, November 11th, would clearly stress the importance of Elections and Veterans to the USA. I am a 52yo veteran, I would be honored to hear that Veterans' Day is Elections Day. Veterans' Day can exist with out elections, but without Veterans the USA and maybe elections would not exist. Bind US (Veterans, Citizens, Elections) together for a stronger nation with a voracious veracious vision (not division).
>
3. Fine US Citizens 0.01% (or more) that do not vote (if health, prison, accident ... did not prevent voting). I have not voted for many years, why waste my time. Politics, politicians, and the PTB must show an interest in getting me to vote ... as of today USA politics are more focused on getting money, then getting citizens to vote. USA voters today are emaciated not emancipated by plutocratic dogma interests. The anachronistic mysticism of corporate democracy, destiny ordained by pseudo-prophets, and righteousness defined by fundamentalism describes this present "Obscurantism Age" with voluntary disfranchisement by me ... others. The increased participation of the past election is, I believe, an aberration of the normal of about 50% or less voter turnout; which means, Presidents, Senators, and Congress-members are elected frequently by less-than 25% of eligible USA Citizen voters. There may be a little more participation, but the fact is we (in the USA) have a weak democracy governed by special (corporate/religious/wealth/power) interest. I like many other recognize that our voting participation is not required or desired for the decisions made for wealthy/religious special interest.

stock-exchange model for citizen feedback

[Rubio2]

A fundamental problem with out current democratic system is that citizens do not have the adequate ability to provide the government with feedback; even with perfect voting. One idea is to create a new institution that mimics a stock exchange where citizens buy/sell opinions. Each citizen is awarded x units of a specialized currency every so often that allows them to put their money where there mind is. This would create a realtime poll of the citizenry on every issue from who should be our leaders to how you feel about the war, etc. The more popular an idea the more expensive it becomes. You can profit or lose "opinion influence dollars" depending on your ability to buy/sell at the right time so people with foresight (or luck) will have more influence than others. This is how the business world "polls" their constituency and it is excellent for measuring consensus. In the meantime, we can keep improving old fashioned voting. This market of ideas would trump the liars in government and the media who are constantly telling us what we think. Instead, let's tell ourselves what we think. Since this is a new institution its creation might be easier than changing old ones that seem to have reached the status of "sacred cows". There are important details to be fleshed out like how do "opionions" get posted on the exchange, how do we maintain anonymity, etc. The software already exists to do this and it is at least as reliable/believable as the software running the stock exchanges around the world...

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[_iris]

The signal to noise ratio was actually lowered by the elimination of primary candidates. That is, the noise was the GOP's rancid populist bigotry. The signal was the de facto mass media coverage of the Democratic primary candidates' platforms. Notice that the GOP began pushing for a ban on gay marraige in late 2003. Yet, it didn't make any headway until after ~March 2004 (when the media stopped covering everyone but Kerry and Bush).

Re:How about empower the Electoral College

[TykeClone]

The gay marriage issue started making headway after the mayor of San Francisco decided that there was no reason not to perform those ceremonies. The Mass. supreme court and some other municipalities got into the act. Without them, the issue would have been a non-issue and would not have gained any traction.