The Supreme Court doesn’t take kindly to being told to get bent, which is what the Florida supremes were doing. That was the only undemocratic action that I saw- Florida. They were determined to keep “counting” votes till they could declare Mr. Gore the winner. Pretty transparent, and in very poor taste overall, not to mention making the US the laughing stock of the free world, and not so free world. Way to go, guys.
Perhaps some concession needs to be made with respect to the severity of the crimes. Murderers, rapists, psychopaths, robbers, child molestors, etc… have no business voting, and yes, it should be permanent. Break the social contract, and lose your right to vote.
Bottom line, we vote on Election day, and invalid ballots get thrown out. We can improve the process, but can’t change the facts- Dragging the process through the courts- therein lies madness.
Tedster: *Murderers, rapists, psychopaths, robbers, child molestors, etc… have no business voting, and yes, it should be permanent. Break the social contract, and lose your right to vote. *
What purpose does that serve, other than to satisfy one’s personal feelings of vindictiveness towards criminals? I can see the point of certain lifetime, or at least long-term, prohibitions following certain felony convictions: I have no problem with denying the right to own a gun to somebody who’s been convicted of committing a felony with a gun, for example. But as long as we have the concept of judicial punishment as “paying one’s debt to society”, then we have to accept the implication that once you’ve completed your punishment, the debt has been paid.
After all, felons who spend years in jail already lose a great deal in terms of time, freedom, and opportunity for the future. That’s not unfair—they did commit a felony, after all (at least, the ones who weren’t wrongfully convicted)—but I don’t see the point of adding on to that the loss of one’s voting rights in perpetuity. Aren’t we better off rehabilitating ex-convicts as much as possible into law-abiding, tax-paying, respectable society, rather than continuing to segregate them as much as possible as a disfranchised bunch of second-class citizens? I’m not suggesting that you personally have to go out and make friends with reformed murderers and rapists, but I can’t see why a reformed murderer or rapist shouldn’t have voting rights. And once they’re out of prison, unless and until they commit another crime, the law has to assume that they’re reformed.
Kimstu in Providence, where we re-elect our convicted felons mayor! (Not that that might not be taking rehabilitation a little too far, IMHO… :))
Presidential elections are held every four years. Elections are held every one or two years, and you also have primaries.
You do, of course, understand that the “civics test” is unconstitutional, right? And besides that, who gets to write it? Who decides what standards are appropriate? How will the test be administered? And who pays for it? In short, the entire idea of a test to determine who can vote is unworkable.
And no, the proposal to let everybody enter their ballot and then throw out the ones that are invalid would not lead to “Florida style battles” as long as the standards were clear.
Exactly which parts of the free world did you survey? In all parts of the free world that I’ve visited since the selection, it’s Bush who’s making us a laughing stock.
When an election goes wrong, it is not necessarily due to cheating. Or not entirely. Honest errors and outright stupidity should not be overlooked as possible causes.
I would add that if I had been on that Commission, I would have brought up a problem that no one ever seems to mention – We need better rules. Many of the problems with the election in Florida were problems with the rules governing elections, and the rules regarding how a disputed election is resolved. Some examples–
> Rigid deadlines that were earlier then necessary.
> The whole postmark thing re absentee ballots. A better rule would have been that the absentee ballots had to arrive by Election Day. Period. It should be up the the absentee voters to mail them in in time. There should be no need to look at postmarks, or to care if ballots lack postmarks.
> As others have mentioned, the rules should prevent a situation in which the officials in charge of elections are involved in one candidate’s campaign.
> In a disputed election, it should not be up to the two front runners to decide which counties will be re-counted. Identical recounts in all counties should be automatic.
> There should be state wide standards regarding ballot design. It should not be possible for an election to be won or lost due to one county’s foolishly choosing to use an unprofessionally designed ballot.
> The official results in Florida amounted to a tie. (When the margin by which A is ahead of B is exceeded by the margin of error in the counting method, that’s a tie.) When this happens, a run off election should be held.
Actually, I think a civics test would be constitutional. In fact, the Supreme Court has held (in a very close vote, back in the 60s or so) that literacy tests are constitutional. Literacy tests are illegal today because of the Voting Rights Act, which was enacted by Congress via its autority to enforce the 15th Amendment. So by the same reasoning, civics tests would probably violate the VRA, but not the Constitution.
Actually, that used to be the rule. But due to the crappy military mail service between here and places like Bosnia, Congress passed a law requiring states to accept military ballots that are postmarked before the election. (And now that I think about it, that law is at least some indication that Congress does have the power to regulate federal elections.) I personally wish they’d stuck to the rule that the damn things had to be postmarked, but hey, what’s a little fraud when we gotta get the right guy elected?
That right there was Gore’s biggest strategic cock-up. I can imagine scenarios where the vote is only really questionable in certain precincts, but Florida 2000 was not one of those situations.
Disagree strongly. I wouldn’t mind rules saying there has to be a runoff if nobody captures a majority of the vote, but the closeness of an election should not, by itself, be grounds to do the whole thing over again.
Minty, you label “Gore’s biggest cock-up” as having been the dicision to call for a recount in only some FL counties. Agreed. It was a big mistake. And I would say that it should not be possible for an election to be won/lost due to one candidate making a mistake like that – it shouldn’t be up to the candidates.
The badly designed ballot in West Palm Beach was another big mistake. A mistake made by Dem officials in a largely Dem county. The Dems did not lose FL because fewer people supported them; actually, more people supported them. They lost FL because of errors in judgement made by a handful of people.
With better rules in place, neither of these mistakes would have occured. Under better rules, it would not have been up to the two frontrunnters among the candidates to decide what counties to recount. Under better rules, well-meaning but ignorant officials would not be free to use a poorly-designed ballot. (When I call them ignorant, I mean that they were not knowledgable about good ballot design, and evidently didn’t know that experts in this field do exist and can be consulted.)
FL needs to revise the rules under which elections are conducted. In all probability, most of the other states need to do this as well.
Here’s the thing. More and more people are disatisfied with the two-party system. Some express this with a refusal to participate in it: they don’t vote. Others, however, are turning to minor parties. My guess is that voting for minor parties is going to increase in coming years.
Result: we can no longer count on it that the winner of a Presidential election will have 50% or more of the vote. In the 2000 election, even with a relatively small percentage of the vote going to minor party candidates, Bush and Gore each got slightly less then 50% of the vote. IMO, this may well happen frequently in future Presidential elections.
I think we need to do one of two things. Either we need to have a runoff election whenever the winner has less then 50% of the vote, or we need to enact IRV, Instant Runoff Voting. Unfortunately (IMO unfortunately), I see little chance that we’ll do either. The Big Two parties won’t want this; they don’t want anything that might help the minor parties.
To calm all the people that did not vote for him (the majority), Hayes promised a one term only administration after the similarly contested election of 1876. He fulfilled his promise. Now that was showing character. And his trust in democracy.
We are forgetting a lesson a president gave to the nation in 1877, We are forgetting that this can applied to the current one.
Ok, so this is mostly a precedent that looks like an advice that can be ignored by the current President, but it brings to mind the fact that the press in that time was merciless with Hayes. The press did not forget the controversial nature of the election.
But the press of today actually made a collective yawn to the New York Times report on the Florida debacle. “News delayed is news denied” like Orwell could say.
Final lesson:
We have to be merciless in demanding reforms to the powers that be. Including the President and the Media.
Well, even if we somehow managed to tear down the VRA, there would doubtlessly be a legal challenge to this civics test, and the current Supreme court would have to rule on it. Considering that the civics test in question would deny voting rights to some citizens based on an arbitrary measure of the “quality” of those people’s education, I don’t see how it could be considered constitutional.
It’s not the arbitrariness of literacy tests (and, by extension, civics tests) that makes them illegal. Rather, it’s the literacy test’s effect of disenfranchising voters on the basis of race that gives Congress the 15th Amendment power to outlaw their use.
LASSITER v. NORTHAMPTON ELECTION BD., 360 U.S. 45 (1959) (holding literacy tests constitutional–and it was unanimous, despite my recollection above).
GASTON COUNTY v. UNITED STATES, 395 U.S. 285 (1969) (upholding the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its ban on literacy tests).
This might help, but on the whole registration procedures weren’t one of the big problems.
This would definitely help. Let’s face it, if it weren’t for the last minute, a lot of people would never get anything done. As long as they’re legit, I have no beef with counting them.
This is a great idea. First off, for many voters the choices are a last-day decision, so they won’t use absentee ballots. And a lot of people are working extra hours every day and juggling other responsibilities, like a family. Not everyone needs the whole day, but many do; they should be accomodated.
No opinion, since I have no idea if greater simplicity would have prevented those overseas ballots from getting thrown out. (IIRC it was some technical issue.)
Were it not for the War on Drugs, I would oppose this change. The sad fact is that a great many “felons” are simply victims of this reprehensible, senseless policy. Anyway, I say as long as they’re paing their debt to society, they should have a voice.
6, 7. Don’t know about these; can’t comment.
Unnecessary; as long as the equipment works, there isn’t a problem. When Hawaii switched from punchcards to electronic scanners, there were intially some problems, but overall the system has been a success.
Good idea. In particular, anything that clearly violates the instructions on the ballot (three-corner chad, circling the choice, marking more than once choice, etc.) should be discounted.
No. The risk of a Constitutional violation isn’t worth it. As I’ve said before, it’s your damn fault if you can’t drag yourself away from the TV long enough to get to the polls.
My reason for being against barring felons from voting has nothing to do with whether I like/dislike or forgive/don’t forgive felons. And that seems to be the level that most people (both pro and con) are arguing on.
Nobody has responded to my point (made earlier) that barring felons from voting is inherently dangerous to democracy:
You’re right. I misread statewide voter registration system as statewide voting system.
Maybe I missed it. Exactly what restrictions would you put on absentee voting that would solve the problems of distorting results because people vote at different times (which I don’t think is a real problem) and still solve the problems of overcrowding on election day evenings?
Im with you on the automatic or instant runoff voting. It’s a much more drastic reform than it would at first appear though. It would probably dramatically change the nature of campaigns/elections at the very least.
I’d go back to the bad old days when you could only vote absentee if you had a legitimate excuse for doing so, i.e., you will be out of town on election day or otherwise unable to make it to your local precinct. I support that change, despite the fact that it will mean more people at the polls on election day, because I think mass early voting can significantly alter the results of a vote that, by law, is supposed to take place on a single, specific day.
Oh, and I would also add that the resources the state and local governments have been spending on early voting stations can easily be rerouted to the election day polling stations to relieve any extra stress caused by the return of voters who otherwise would have gone absentee.
Frankly, I have no problem with prohibiting convicted psychopaths from voting ever again. We don’t let them own guns legally, so apparently we’ve learned something as a society over the years. Politicians are just as dangerous as a .45, but the death is a slow, lingering one.
95 Per Cent plus voting accuracy is not “hideously bad” or whatever somebody opined, given 50 different states, without any standardization among these states, and given various intelligence levels, that’s pretty good. No, I wouldn’t accept a 4 Per Cent error from my bank, but I don’t have 80 million different accounts with 80 million different tellers, either. What’s your point?
“Provisional” ballots could lead to florida style chaos. Even if “the standards are clear”; It doesn’t matter who votes, all that matters is who counts the votes. The standards were clear in florida, but they chose to ignore them. That’s the problem, not the solution. Machines aren’t capable of lying, or being “racist” or any such nonsense as subjective people are.
As far as a “civics” test- I don’t see it as asking a whole lot for voters to be able to name, oh, say the current vice president, the senators from their home state, or who we fought during world war II.
Oops, sorry for the common sense and logic, continue with the over-analysis.
Please enlighten us as to how common sense and logic dictate that the right to vote is dependent upon a trivia quiz? And would how to amend the Constitution be one of the questions?
Hazel makes a very good point about runoff elections. The 1995 French presidential elections used the runoff idea, and it worked very well there. France had eight major parties running a candidate. Jospin and Chirac were the two favorites, but the other six enjoyed a decent amount of support. The other six candidates had a Nader’s chance of winning, but anyone who voted for them didn’t have to worry about siphoning off votes from other candidates and thus having to choose between voting their consciences and giving de facto support to the candidates they felt most strongly against. Two weeks later, a runoff is held between the top two candidates, which means that a voter can still give support to his or her candidate of choice without having to worry about some nutbar taking over because there weren’t enough votes to head off the unsavory result. I personally would have voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 if I could have voted in a runoff against someone like George W. Bush, whom I still believe has no business being president. Likewise, I’m sure many Bush voters would have voted for Browne or Buchanan if they would have had the runoff option, but felt as constrained as I did.
We must enfranchise smaller parties. We must make it possible for a candidate to run for office even without party affiliation. We haven’t had a non-affiliated president in this country since George Washington; it’s time to make it possible again.
Neither Gore nor Bush nailed down over 50% of the popular vote, so I guess a runoff would have been in order. Frankly, the notion of a runoff being decided by the House of Representatives is insane. This archaic notion must be scrapped. If the American people can be trusted to vote for a candidate, they should be trusted to settle the vagaries of a less-than-fifty-percent result.
I had not thought of this aspect until you brought it up. I agree. I also feel that once someone has served his/her sentence, there is no justification for failing to restore the right to vote.