I recommend :
[ol]
[li]One vote per live adult[/li][li]No disqualification for prison time[/li][li]Hi Opal! Did you remember to vote?[/li][li]One extra vote for completed military service (active-duty personnel wait until they muster out).[/li][li]One extra vote for a college degree.[/li][li]5 extra votes, to be awarded by act of the separate State Legislatures, 7/8ths majority, to any State resident for service or valor above & beyond what is expected of an ordinary citizen, or scientific or artistic achievement. One award per lifetime.[/li][/ol]
It can start with mandatory voting:
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All eligible voters would be required to vote, or face financial penalty (penalty debatable).
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All eligible voters would receive or have access to (via public libraries, etc.) a non-partisan brochure outlining candidate positions based primarily on public voting/governing record, along with public statements and ratings by public advocacy groups. All candidates or parties in each election would vet the facts contained in said brochure in advance of distribution (or provide evidence to dispute them).
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Said brochure would include a vote-match quiz similiar to the type featured at various select-vote/vote-match websites. Eligible voters would be required to take the quiz and return the results (for statistical analysis that would also be made public).
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All eligible voters would be required to sign off that they had read and understood the brochure, and had taken and returned the results of the quiz. If necessary, this could be done as late as election day.
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Campaign adverts limited to 6 weeks prior to election. No “negative” campaign ads allowed (tell us about your own record, or future plans, or STFU). All candidates, in addition to public records, must take the same quiz mentioned above, and publically record the results (included in brochure for easy voter access). Refusal to do so (prior to brochure publication) will be noted as such.
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Uniform voting procedure nation-wide, with paper trail.
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Secret ballots debatable - I’d like to see them eliminated, but at least verifiable by a listed (but private) id number, so votes counted could be personally verified if necessary or desired.
IMO, the result would be a completely transparent and verifiable voting system, eliminating all voter disenfranchisement, and facilitating voter awareness, and candidate accountability. This alone is makes it worth consideration.
But I also think making voting a requirement rather than a priviledge will spur an incentive for more informed voting. People can be lazy or apathetic, but don’t like to be wrong, or called out as fools. If they have to vote, they might make more of an effort to seek out the facts.
This is my ideal, which means I don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime, if ever. I’m also not saying it would result in the election of candidates to my liking. But at least I’d know with more certainty where people stand relative to my own positions.
I’m tired of bullshit media speculation about “moral values” voters and such. I’m tired of GOTV efforts and brainstorming that involves sacrificing dearly held values for the sake of political strategy. If I really am that far out of mainstream I need to know that for sure, before I can either accept it, or re-evaluate my positions and/or future as a citizen.
I agree. There is a widespread belief (restricted to no particular political persuasion) that reasonable, well-informed people cannot come to different conclusions. But this is not the case. People can arrive at different conclusions because they operate under different premises, and these premises are often not falsifiable statements of objective fact. Rather, they may be statements of value, like “outlawing abortion is the most important factor in how I should vote.”
Nonetheless, people are sometimes ignorant of facts which, were they aware of them, would change how they voted. Education is certainly no guarantee that people will vote the way I do, but I do believe that a well-informed populace directly correlates to a healthy democracy. Also, some statements of value, though they are not matters of objective fact, are inconsistent with the healthy functioning of democracy, such as “whether Teresa Heinz Kerry deserves to be first lady is the most important factor in how I should vote.” If we care about democracy, then we should try to discourage such values. However, I would hesitate to call such a project “education”, because it need not involve correcting ignorance of facts. A better term might be “indoctrination”, were it not for the negative connotations.
How about instead of making the U.S. democracy even more old-fashioned than it already is by modern standards (parliamentary democracy, coalition government, etc.), why not upgrade it so that votes actually all count equally and all matter? A drastic change like that might actually regain the trust of some skeptical voters, and allow voters to be more precise in specifying what concerns them - different parties will have different focusses, and each party has a decent chance of at least ending up in parliament and/or in the coalition government.
I had to laugh at the ‘one man, one vote’ comment in the first post in this thread, because the U.S. democracy allows one man’s vote to count for something like 13 other men’s votes. A relic of giving more weight to individual states, another anachronism. What amazes me most is that most people here don’t even consider it a problem, and still regard the U.S. democracy as top of the bill, the standard for all others to follow, when there are few democracies left in the world that are so … well … T-model ford. Revolutionary at the time, but hopelessly outdated now.
(Of course, since we’re in a discussion forum, I spiced this up a little, but only a little)
I don’t care if you vote Bush or Kerry, that’s your problem, and we’ll just have to deal. But what I do worry about is the two party system - it’s negative side effects (corruption, corporate sponsorship, ridiculous campaign spending, voter skepticism, etc.) are considerable and important. Something will have to change if the U.S. wants to stay on top of the world’s ideological (and economical) foodchain.
But that’s just my humble opinion, looking at the U.S. from a little country in Europe.
The only way I can see a quiz working is if the answers are published beforehand (out of order) and the questions are about policy and based on voting record rather than what the candidates may claim. And no minor voters, sorry, because then we’d have six year olds voting.
Ex:
George W. Bush is against same sex marriage/civil unions? T/F
Heck, let people get it wrong as many times as they like, so long as they know what each candidate stands for on election day. Still, it’s, y’know, not going to happen. 
Sorry, dude. Vice President.
Google’s not helping me find a birthday- or even a name- for John Cabell Breckinridge’s wife.
I was hoping it was a trick question, like Rufus DeVane King’s wife’s birthday. That’d be easy.
Just because something is old doesn’t make it an anachronism. Many of us are still fighting tooth and nail to get the feds off our backs as much as possible and give power back to the states. You have to remember that the US consists of states that joined together to form a union, and is not a country that was after-the-fact divided into states for purely administrative purposes. You’d be hard pressed to find an analog anywhere that consisted of states coming together and NOT maintaining some sort of voting weighted by state rather than by strict population.
You wanna change things? Get the constitutional amendment process rolling.
The answer, of course, is Mary Cyrene Burch (August 16, 1826-October 8, 1907). She married John C. Breckenridge on December 12th, 1843.
Her most famous action seems to be the construction of a set of colors from her wedding dress. These were presented to her husband’s bravest company during his service as a Confederate brigadier general.
John, as a resident of California, are you saying you are content with the fact that the the population/numerical differential between your vote and say, a Wyoming resident, is shortchanged when it comes to Senate or Presidential votes?
As example, a Presidential vote by a Wyoming resident is worth about 2.85 times what a California resident’s vote is worth.
Your position is not clear from your post here.
I like anna’s suggestions, for the most part. My qualifications:
- Voting isn’t a requirement, but you’re eligible for a $100 tax break in any year that you vote.
- Children at least twelve years old may vote, but they must vote alone (i.e., no parents present).
- In recognition of some problems created by the above two, voting machines will come equipped with a big old “I dunno” button that registers you as having voted without recording any specific votes.
- Campaigns become entirely publicly financed.
- Equal Time laws for public media are reinstated.
Daniel
Twelve year olds voting?!! That’s interesting. Probably a whole other thread though.
Tax break idea is a good start, but doesn’t take into account that most people who don’t vote don’t need tax breaks. I’m trying to come up with something that would apply equally to the apathy of non-voting. It’s hard work (to quote a modern philosopher)…
I think this is a silly idea. However, there already is a suitable test for citizenship – you don’t need a new one.
Annaplurabelle gets the point. I think that in the matters that concern all Americans, all Americans should have an equal vote. In the matters of State, all State residents should have equal vote. How national and state interests interact is another matter.
Don’t look to me to start that process rolling, I’ll worry about that in the E.U. 
Just trying to point something out that I believe is holding the U.S. democracy back. Like I said, it’s clear that this is not yet really an issue in the U.S. But I consider it the task of a site like this to at least make people aware that this isn’t necessarily as good for the U.S. now as it was when implemented a century ago.
Definitely. I’m in favor of getting as many people as possible to vote, though, including people currently on death row, teenagers, and anyone else I can get to participate.
Really, are you sure? This surprises me.
Daniel
Yes. I recognize that to be a necessary consequence of how the union was formed, and consider it to be well worth the trade-off.
My Senator’s vote is skewed by even a greater amount. I can’t say that the exact formula we have is optimal (2 senators for each state, and EC votes = number of Senators + number of Representatives), but some sort of vote by state was necessary in order to for the union as well as to get new states to join. And the current one is at least simple to understand.
I’ve seen polls showing most Americans would want to ditch the EC, but those polls are really besides the point. I’m sure most people in the largest states would always have preferred a direct vote for president-- even back to the early days of the Union. What matters is if a majority of the voters in the SMALLEST states want to get rid of it. And that is unlikely ever to happen. If it does, it should be simple to get the necesarry votes to change the constitution.
What trade-off exists now? I don’t understand why you consider it worthwhile today. Is it heresy to consider that things change?
If we got rid of the EC and the Senate, we’d see more homogenization, more federal power than we have today. The federal government certainly has a role to play in those areas the states **cannot **manage (like the national defense). But local governments are more responisve to their constituents and many (perhaps most) governmental functions are best run at the most local level possible. That, btw, is how you REALLY make your vote count. Once you federalize something, your vote regarding that “somethin” gets lost among hundreds of millions of other votes. You have a much better chance of affecting the outcome of a local election.
I’m often surprise why those on the left, in light the current political climate, want more federal control over things. For instance, do you really want the Bush administration controlling the schools in your neighborhood?
No. Did I ever say it was? Did I ever even HINT that it was? Given that the answer to both is “no”, I can’t imagine why you would pose that question to me.
Change is good, when it’s what the people want.
Pursuing the not-quite less than serious side, how about simply let people buy votes? Put it on a logarithmic scale:
$1 = 1 vote
$10 = 2 votes
$100 = 3 votes
$1,000 = 4 votes
$10,000 = 5 votes
etc
In years where they want to encourage voting - maybe there’s a big budget deficit - they could have Buy One Get One Free offers!
But we’re not discussing what should be federal and what should be local, we’re discussing a possible better way of voting for either. Decisions on which issues should be handled local and which should be federal are different matters. I say what’s most efficient for each issue is the way to go, with the exception of constitutional issues which should probably always be federal. I don’t think we have a big disagreement there anyway.
You’re turning this into a different issue. I greatly disapprove of generalising over political left and right, especially on a forum like this one. This is not about politics, but about facts and if we look at them objectively I think we can transcend the sports mentality of rooting for your home team.
Change is good, when its better. Change is better, when people are ready for it. If you don’t stick to this form, there’s no way to justify introducing a Democracy into Iraq.
As soon as you talk about changing the way we vote, you have to consider the consequences of those changes. I, and a lot of people, think the feds already have too much power. Your suggested change would give them more power. So yes, we ARE talking about that.
No, it isn’t about rooting for your team. It’s about understanding that the more you can control things locally, the less you have to worry about whose team is running things in DC.
Actually, a federalist model (with lots of autonomy at the local level) is the only system with any chance of wokring in Iraq.