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How Would You Change U.S. Election Procedures?
"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?"
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...
(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.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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...
a world in progress...
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.
For great justice.
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.
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.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
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.
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
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.
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?
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
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.
How Beltway Democrats Sank Howard Dean
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:
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.
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.
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
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
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.
Constitutionally Correct
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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.
User Training for Busy Programmers
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.
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.
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.