Given the expenses for voting such as fuel, purchase of a driver’s license/identification, and time, there should be a deduction on the federal tax return to offset the monetary cost for voting. I suggest the deduction be $500 dollars*. This’ll not only encourage people to vote but also make it clear that voting in the United States has no cost and that everyone who wants to participate, can, regardless of income. I also think that such a deduction could run in parallel with more stringent ID requirements such as the incorporation of social security numbers and harsher sentences for voter fraud.
Further, I also think that private corporations should not be involved in making voting machines or consulting in the voting process. Voting should be like the Manhattan Project: no corporations allowed. Get the Army Corp of Engineers and some people from NASA and the NSF to make a voting machine that allows voters to track their vote using their social security number online in real-time. Why pay corporations when you have highly skilled government workers that can do it for free?
Lastly, there should be concerted effort from the government to encourage people to vote. God knows the government runs around screaming about seat belts (for which, it should mind it’s business) and illegal drugs (again, it should mind it’s own business) but doesn’t air commercials or put up billboards about the importance of voting. The government should spend money during every election to encourage people to vote in the most non-partisan way possible.
Honesty
I know the question in this regard will be “HOW WILL WE PAY FOR IT”. The answer is: It’ll be paid the same way you all pay for your tax cuts.
In the last Presidential election 126 million people voted. That would mean we’d need to come up with an additional $63 billion every 4 years just for this. And that’s just for the Presidential election. The state and local elections would presumably be paid for as well. Would all of this additional money come from the Federal government? And just be magically gotten to in the ‘same way you all pay for your tax cuts’?
Um…do you have any idea of how difficult it would be to have those government agencies not only develop the machines but manufacture them as well? Do you have any idea of the scale you are talking about here?
Why do we pay corporations to do it instead of ‘skilled’ government agencies (:p)? Because those other agencies you tagged ALREADY HAVE FULL TIME JOBS. Otherwise, why are we paying those public servants if they have all this spare time to do this massive job which you seem to think is easy and can be done presumably over a long weekend?
Um, they do. Do you not watch TV? During the last Presidential election there were all sorts of celebrate commercials about getting out the vote. As for state and local elections, there are lots of signs in my own state telling people to get out and vote, and lots and lots of signs showing where you can do early voting as well as ads in local newspapers and on the various county’s websites saying when and where to vote, as well as encouragement to do so.
Of course, the state and local agencies don’t have your $500/person to bribe people to vote (or even $500/person budget to advertise to get folks to vote) because reality rears it’s ugly head, but you either have to have been living under a rock with no access to TV, radio or the internet to not know that the government (as well as private groups) actually do advertise to try and get folks to vote.
Yeah, which is why there ought to be a new governmental agency tasked with it.
Ok.
I don’t think it’s a bribe. It’s a way to offset the cost for voting, which ain’t free. This’ll also allow for more stringent ID requirements. I’d love to see a mechanism where we can input our SS # on the ballot and track your vote online at some .gov website. That would be very cool.
I like the general sentiment here, but I don’t think there should be a potential profit incentive for voting. For instance, I can imagine there are people out there who couldn’t be bothered to vote, even if it were cost neutral, but once you essentially offer them $500, then they’ll vote, but there’s no saying whether they’ll particularly be putting any effort into considering their vote or they’ll just vote for random candidates.
In my opinion, I’d love to see as many eligible voters as possible vote, but I’d hope that they’d at least have some reason for voting for whomever they vote for, even if it’s a reason I think is ridiculous. But if you’re just going to go in and pull random levers for a tax deduction, I think that the votes are random falls short of even being justified as a ridiculous reason to vote for that candidate.
Instead, I’d rather see some sort of program that would provide transportation or other common costs for individuals that want to vote, but can’t make it to their polling location, can’t get someone to watch their kids, etc. I work as a government contractor, and I’m generally allowed to take 2 hours on election days to go vote and get paid for it; so maybe for those that have issue with getting time off work, there could be some way of incentivizing other businesses to have similar programs.
You do realize that that isn’t free, right? The biggest problem we’ve had, as I understand, isn’t that corporations are making voting machines, but that the technology isn’t publicly disclosed. Personally, I have a great deal more trust in using, say, a publicly known encryption algorithm that has been verified by numerous sources than one that is closed source, even if by a reputable company. So, I don’t care who makes the machines, but make sure all of the information is made public, let numerous unbiased groups analyze and verify them, and try to enforce a national standard, rather than having different methods in every single precinct.
Quite frankly, between all the various get out the vote campaigns and the campaigns themselves, I think it’s hard to say that there’s anyone out there that doesn’t know elections are coming, at least on Presidential years. I could potentially see some value for this on midterms and off-years, since I believe the turnouts are significantly lower. I think generally, though, the reason turn-out is lower isn’t because people don’t know, they just don’t care. And while I do want everyone to vote, I also want them to want to vote, as I suspect those who are less interested are more likely to vote closer to random, which really just increases the noise in the elections.
This might be a good idea, though I think $500 is too much (maybe $50 per election). And it would be an extra deduction that one could take on top of the standard deduction. There probably would have to be some sort of proof (some document provided by board of elections that says “John Doe voted on X date”) to prevent abuse, and to ensure it meets its purpose.
[QUOTE=Honesty]
Yeah, which is why there ought to be a new governmental agency tasked with it.
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Which would add even more cost on top of the additional costs you are already talking about. The government doesn’t build stuff like this because it’s cheaper and more efficient to hire contractors to do it. That’s why pretty much every government agency works that way.
Let’s pretend that this is feasible, though. It would take years, maybe a decade or so in order to form up your new government agency, spin it up, design your new system, tool up and manufacture it and then shove it down the throats of all the state and local government, who would be resisting you every step of the way, train those agencies and poll workers to use it, work out the bugs and actually start taking votes with them. I can’t even imagine what the costs would be. As a for instance, the state I work for recently decided to begin upgrading the voting machines here. The counties resisted, of course, until the state promised to pay for the upgrades. One county I recall cost several million dollars to upgrade (including voting machines, servers, ballots, workstations and training…about 50 new voting machines IIRC) and it took months to work out the kinks and issues. And this was with existing voting machines from a voting machine vendor who specialized in doing this sort of thing. And there are over 30 more counties in my state alone.
Voting isn’t free, but it doesn’t cost $500 per person to do either. Many places give you time off to vote, and there are a lot of places to vote, there is early voting and mail in ballots if you can’t get the time off or don’t want to go early and avoid the lines.
As for your suggestion, I’m unsure what the purpose would be, and I doubt many people would want their social security number on their vote ballot, since the votes are supposed to be anonymous. I can see all sorts of ways that could and would be abused or vulnerable, and I don’t see the benefit verse the cost. Why would it be ‘cool’ to have that ability? What purpose would it serve, in your mind?
For me, voting consists of leaving the house slightly early, walking down the street to our neighborhood school, waiting approximately 5 minutes in line, then 2-3 minutes to mark my ballot. There’s really no need to offset the cost for me or any of my neighbors.
Either people vote or they don’t. I want more citizens to exercise their right to vote, and making online and early voting options available seems like a much better approach. Paying people to vote seems wrong on many levels, is subject to abuse, and is a pretty major expense for no real reason.
It isn’t worth the money to bribe people into voting. And I cannot imagine circumstances where it cost anywhere near $500 to vote.
It is also not worth the bureaucracy costs to reimburse people for what it does cost. I drive maybe a mile, at most, out of my way and stand in line for ten minutes. My employer is legally required to give me time off to vote, so that costs me nothing. The IRS reimburses for business mileage at $0.56 1/2 per mile. So my total out of pocket is in the range of fifty cents. It isn’t worth setting up another agency to save me fifty cents, and the idea is a bit more than ludicrous.
I don’t want to pay people to vote. I would be in favor of setting up a nationwide online voting system, if such a system could be made to allow the voter to verify his vote via SS number plus some PIN, would be hacker-proof, and allow for those that don’t trust computers to vote in person. Voting online would trigger your name to be eliminated from the voting lists at the polling place so you couldn’t vote twice. But I would suggest a different contractor than the guys that did the health care website.
I vote by mail, so I have no cost. I’m poor, so a tax deduction is useless for me, can I get a rebate so that I can buy the free stuff I’m **not **getting by voting?
I think our dear friend is trying to imply that those that vote Democratic do so in the hopes of getting “free stuff”. I vote Democratic all the time and have never done so in any such anticipation nor have I ever received any “free stuff”.
If something like that were to happen, it should be a tax credit not a deduction (i.e., a $50 credit rather than a $500 deduction). The reason being that high incomes benefit more from a deduction than a low income person. (10% of 500 is 50, but 40% of 500 is 200). I don’t think it makes sense to offer rich people 200 dollars to vote and offer 50 dollars (or less!) to poor people to vote.
$500 is too high, but I’d be in favor of a nonpoll tax: each year, you choose to participate in our democracy either by voting, or by paying an extra $100 in taxes.
I think the real question would be “Why the hell would the Republicans allow this to happen?”
Its a fact that the GOP is trying to suppress voters through a variety of voter ID laws in states they control. Outright fraud and lying are not something they shy away from. So any honest attempt to get more people to vote and reward people for that behavior will be opposed by the full force of the entire conservative body.
These are the same people who count as members the governor of Pennsylvania who bragged that voter ID laws will deliver the state for Romney, and guys like Florida Republican Ted Yoho who just said he wanted voting to be only for property owners.
Small steps needs to be taken to make voting an unrestricted right. I don’t see any of those things happening before they declare Election Day to be a national holiday that everyone gets off work. When that happens, the rest of your ideas might have a chance.
How about this? A set of amendments that constitutes a compromise:
Balanced Budget Amendment, Tax Limitation amendment, for us, in exchange you get a Voting Rights amendment, the Udall amendment(with slight modifications, it’s currently too broad), and your $63 billion program, or $6.3 billion if you want to make it $50.
