Slashdot Mirror
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...
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!
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
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.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
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.
Three Squirrels
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Arrr, it be the infamous pirate, No Beard Pete!
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.
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.