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United States Government Politics Technology

How Would You Change U.S. Election Procedures? 419

Posted by Cliff from the improving-the-system dept.
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?"
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How Would You Change U.S. Election Procedures? More

How Would You Change U.S. Election Procedures?

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  • How about empower the Electoral College (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sb_steele ( 513302 ) * on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:06AM (#10775920) Journal
    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...

    • 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.

        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

      • "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
      • 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
        • 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

  • Federal Voting Rules (Score:4, Informative)

    by dJCL ( 183345 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:07AM (#10775931) Homepage
    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!

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

      We do [megalaw.com], 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 Centr

    • 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 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TheCarp ( 96830 ) * <sjc.carpanet@net> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @12:09PM (#10777295) Homepage
      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

  • Same day registration + indelilible ink (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stomv ( 80392 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:10AM (#10775962) Homepage
    (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.
    • > 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.
      • "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.

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

  • Leave it alone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) * on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:12AM (#10775988)
    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 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by goatan ( 673464 )
      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?

      • because the electoral college that was setup as the 12th amendment in 1804, did it's job.
      • 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.
      • It's called "Representative Democracy".

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

    • Re:Leave it alone (Score:3, Informative)

      by demachina ( 71715 )
      If you think it works read this report [counterpunch.org] 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 intimidati

  • Standardized X (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:12AM (#10775992) Homepage
    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.
    • 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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WhiplashII ( 542766 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @11:20AM (#10776785) Homepage Journal
      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?


    • 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'

      • 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 gove

  • Third Parties (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hythlodaeus ( 411441 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:12AM (#10775993)
    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.
  • Eliminate the Democrats and Republicans!

    • Kill all the lawyers!

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

      No, I'm not being serious.

    • Re:One simple fix. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by snooo53 ( 663796 ) *
      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 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.
  • 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.

  • Tweaking the Electoral College procedures (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NeMon'ess ( 160583 ) <flinxmid&yahoo,com> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:14AM (#10776016) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • 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
    • Colorado [usatoday.com] rejected a bill to split by popular vote, and Maine and Nebraska already split by house district. [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Tweaking the Electoral College procedures (Score:4, Interesting)

      by demachina ( 71715 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @02:44PM (#10779163)
      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.
  • 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/recor
  • 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

  • What is the impetus? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:19AM (#10776066) Journal
    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... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:21AM (#10776090)
    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 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.

      • 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
    • 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) [parliament.uk] 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 exam [parliament.uk]
    • 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

  • Weekend Voting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lomby ( 147071 ) <andrea&lombardoni,ch> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:21AM (#10776098) Homepage
    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.

  • Political Spam (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:23AM (#10776116) Homepage Journal

    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

  • Just some ideas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Antony-Kyre ( 807195 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:33AM (#10776241)
    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.

  • Oh gosh, that's easy. (Score:3, Funny)

    by mog ( 22706 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `elahcmxela'> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:38AM (#10776294)
    Trial by combat.
  • 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 . . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:39AM (#10776315) Homepage
    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.
    • 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

  • What would I do to improve elections? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:44AM (#10776373) Journal
    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.

    • Thanks Jim (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dangermouse ( 2242 )
      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
  • See: http://www.electionmethods.org/evaluation.html [electionmethods.org] and http://approvalvoting.org/ [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

  • The NY Times Already Printed A LOT of Good Ideas (Score:3, Informative)

    by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @10:54AM (#10776470) Homepage
    in this series of articles [nytimes.com] (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.
  • 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.
  • 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 f
  • 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
  • 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 t
  • 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.
  • 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 regist

  • Restore the Great Republic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WayneConrad ( 312222 ) * <wconradNO@SPAMyagni.com> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @11:15AM (#10776723) Homepage

    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 [yale.edu]

    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.

  • 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 ba
  • 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"

  • 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
  • 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!
  • 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 in

  • This [wilk4.com] was circulated after the 2000 elections. Still relevant...
  • Losing votes should "accumulate" and credit the party for the next election, so that everyone gets representation eventually. ;)

  • a few (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 )
    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
  • 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 t

    • Re:Voter Verifiable Voting (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NoBeardPete ( 459617 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @12:39PM (#10777678)
      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.
  • 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 [bolson.org].

  • Make Elections Transparent and Unriggable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by natoochtoniket ( 763630 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @03:30PM (#10779621)
    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.

  • Independent election agency or agencies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hamster Lover ( 558288 ) * on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @03:42PM (#10779754) Journal
    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.

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