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Using Crowdsourcing To Design More Accessible Elections

Posted by samzenpus on from the two-votes-are-better-than-one dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Election Assistance Commission is sponsoring an online, open innovation challenge to search for creative answers to the question: 'How might we design an accessible election experience for everyone?' The goal is to develop ideas for how to make elections more accessible to everyone, especially people with disabilities."

2 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. lots of things by theedgeofoblivious · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Move voting to the weekend(for people who can't get away from work).

    Make it last a full weekend from Friday at noon until Monday at noon(for people who can't get away from work).

    Move voting to the spring(for people who have bad weather in early November).

    Make it so anyone can vote at any voting station rather than requiring that people go to only the one(for convenience).

    Make it so all schools and all government offices are voting stations(for convenience).

    et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

    1. Re:lots of things by theedgeofoblivious · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh, and institute approval voting.

      Approval voting is simple. You mark the candidates you'd be okay with(not just the one you like the most), and the person with the most votes wins.

      Make it so people can just circle the candidates they'd be okay with. This would cut down on extremist candidates and would improve the chances of candidates with wide appeal, would make voting easy to understand, and would make it easier to determine people's intended choices. It would remove people's incentive to vote for the "electable" candidate, and would encourage them to vote for candidates they really like.

      The winning candidate would be the candidate who really had the most support among the voting population, not just the candidate who people thought most other people would vote for.