I posted this in the GOP Vote Suppression Pit Thread but it was ignored. Maybe it will be here also.
Hey, now that this election is over, let’s work on improving the voting process.
Where should we start?
Standardization of the voting process? Getting all counties in all states on basically the same page. Everybody gets the same quality booths, ballots and what-not.
Voter ID? Not a fan of the idea but if we’re gonna do it it should be NOW and not 6 months before a presidential election. But if you get Voter ID, you HAVE to give up the purge. If a citizen must present a government ID to exercise his/her right to vote, then government must have probable cause to remove any voter from the rolls. That means showing that there is a particular reason to believe a particular voter in the roll may not be valid.
Penalties for voter fraud? I believe they should be draconian. This would of course include registration fraud. I personally believe that those caught altering or destroying registration forms should be stripped of citizenship and deported to Monster Island. Or 10 years in prison. Whichever. Anyone caught hacking, or conspiring to hack into an electronic voting machine? Grisly death!!
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Absentee Ballots?** To use them you MUST BE ABSENT ON ELECTION DAY!!! Go to polls, you lazy sumbitch!!!
A conservative friend of mine wants voter ID required to vote…but also wants it to be easy to get. The effect of suppressing the vote is as offensive to him as it is to the rest of us. He wants everyone to be able to vote – he just wants to make sure they only vote once.
As for draconian penalties…maybe. It has to depend on context. If someone goes out and engineers large-scale fraud, yes, hurt them as badly as you can. But I know a dopey college kid who voted twice, having registered at both his parents’ house and at his college address. He got caught, and suffered a fairly minor penalty (100 dollars fine, 100 hours community service.) (Plea bargain because of his lack of any previous criminal record.) I wouldn’t want to send someone like that to the Gulag.
I just want a $10k fine for any ad that contains false and misleading information. The $10k is for each time the ad aired. So, if ad A contains a lie and it runs on 3 stations for 5 times each, that is $150k in fines. All money collected in fines are used to provide additional voting machines to shorten voting times.
The entire state of Oregon has been doing the mail-in thing for 4 presidential elections. Works like a charm and we always have one of the highest voter turnout rates in the country. Unfortunately, only one other state has seen fit to copy our example.
If the OP really wants to fix the various election problems, then you should encourage all states to adopt vote-by-mail for all voters. There’s virtually no election problem that’s come up recently (including hurricanes) that it wouldn’t at least ameliorate.
I think rather than put forward ideas that sound good in theory, it might be better to look at what works in practice. We’ve got 50 examples to study. (More, in fact; someone I know who lives about a mile away had a different style of ballot than I did.) I think a good start would be to see which states have the most inclusive, least troublesome, and most accurate elections.
Those aren’t easy criteria to judge, but to the extent that any of them can be determined, I think the results would be illuminating.
Here’s the reforms I’d put in place if I were made God-Emperor of elections;
Nationwide early voting beginning three weeks before Election Day, with voting stations open at least 6 hours a day seven days a week (and expanding to 12 hours a day the weekend before the election).
Nationwide guarantee of at least one polling place for a certain number of registered voters to ensure that precincts aren’t overcrowded, with at-large polling places in commercial areas to serve commuting voters.
The registration card the state mails you when you register is your “Voter ID”. No other identification required or demanded.
Registration at the polling place.
Absentee voting on demand in all fifty states.
Voting should be done by an electronic machine that produces a paper ballot with both computer-readable and human-readable code, the paper ballots to be verified by the voter and turned in to be examined in case of a recount.
Mandatory voting for all eligible citizens, non-voters to be assessed a penalty on their income taxes.
While we are at it, can we change the term of the president to six years, with no consecutive terms? It gives the president six years to complete his programs, without being interrupted by an expensive, frequently useless campaign. Non-consecutive terms also allows presidents to be re-elected after a six year hiatus, so if the people really like them, they can run again and again.
Well, what are the goals here? I see “make it, y’know, better and shit” but that’s … a touch vague. What is the system like now as you see it, what’s bad about it, and what would you like to see in place of those bad things?
Voting should be very, very easy for anyone and everyone legally eligible, and “legally eligible” should be expanded to include ex-cons in every state. That is all.
Elections Canada updates the voter registration database if you tick a box on your federal income tax form. (You also need to tick the “I am a Canadian citizen” box, and you don’t want to lie about that, because that would be tax fraud, and they get *serious *about that shit!) They also get info from Citizenship & Immigration and cross-reference to provincial DMV records and other pertinent records. This works very well.
Why are ex-cons, who’ve paid their debt to society, barred from voting? I understand forbidding people currently incarcerated from voting, by why people who’ve paid hteir debt?