I’d like to see electoral fusion, where different parties can endorse the same candidate, made legal across all states again. When I lived in New York I thought it was a good way both for smaller parties to attain prominence in an election and for voters to indicate why they were voting for a candidate.
Electronic voting machines should produce a human and machine readable paper ballot that is counted separately from the total kept in the machine. Or another way to look at it, is the voting machine is an aid that helps fill out the paper ballot correctly.
With mail in voting WA uses good old fashioned scantron sheets. Quickly counted by a computer but can be hand checked when needed for a recount. I think that is probably the best use of human readable / computer readable for ballot counting we got right now.
While transferable voting systems look great on paper (I occasionally teach them when I teach the mathematics of voting) I would strenuously oppose it for our national elections. The tabulation is too dependent on the computer, and too hard to audit on the scale of US voting districts. Handwritten ballots would likewise not work with voting districts as large as ours, and if you made districts smaller, as great as that would be from a representation POV, it would make our legislature unmanageably large.
Making election day holiday is fine idea, but it is a state holiday where I am, and the increase in voting is not huge. Its not like more than a few places of employment close on such holidays. You might get more mail carriers voting.
W/r to gerrymandering, you could just automatically create equinumerous districts by one of several well known algorithms, but that will end up artificially splitting communities, and probably only work well in fairly homogeneous states. Independent redistricting commissions are a better fix since they can try to respect community groupings, but this is already not uncommon and it doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem. Some of the strange borders in current districts really do correspond to legitimate community groupings.
I personally think the system works as well as can be expected in a country this big. I’ve noticed here on BB that some of the loudest voices complaining about features of our system have come from people in other countries, and often reflect a lack of close-up, concrete experience with our elections, both the particulars and the scale. Many ideas simply don’t scale sensibly from a small country of 100 million or less, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that other countries the size of ours have their own problems with keeping some semblance of democracy functioning.
One thing I really would like to see is a move from primaries to caucuses. I’ve voted in 7 states, and in the three where I’ve caucused the decisions seemed to be much more thoughtfully made than in the others.
One reform that I never hear mentioned, and which I am intent to force, is that of registering to vote by geographic boundary rather than a specific address. The US has since its inception explicitly legislated making nomadic and homeless life difficult. Probably for ethnocentric reasons. Many rights and responsibilities USians expect and take for granted are made prohibitive without having an address. Including the right to vote.
The excuses are usually that an address is required for administrative ease. Also it shifts the burden of proof from the civil servant to the citizen. Back in the 20th century I could maybe buy that the logistics of this would be difficult for currently existing government models. But the increasingly surveillance/statistically-driven nature of government now undermines those arguments, as it is really trivial to know where people are.
So, for example, suppose I live in Montana. If I claim citizenship of Montana, and spend a requisite amount of time within its borders, then I can vote, drive, and other such normal things. Living within the boundaries of the state is what triggers our mutual obligations. NOT me claiming some personal territory or property.
This would be a boon for homeless people, who are often discriminated against deliberately. Where “help” seems to involve a requirement to tie them to a fixed position rather than encouraging them to function in society.
Yeah the extended primary mess made sense in the days before instant communication and mass media… not so much anymore. Making a single primary vote and limiting the campaign run up would be a very good thing.
Human redistributing already does this. And what is wrong about it is that it’s done intentionally to dilute or concentrate a voting bloc.[/quote]
I understand the problems with having humans determine boundaries. I was just pointing out the different problems with having them done automatically. Humans however have do the potential of making boundaries.that respect community.
That’s a good way of making sure the early front-runner wins the nomination. Without Iowa being early we would have had Clinton to vote for in 2008 instead of this year, and got her over with by now.
I don’t see any problem with putting all the debates and campaigning before any of the states actually get to weigh in with their votes. The logic of letting some states choose from a wide array of candidates and effectively excluding others from the process altogether escapes me.
Candidates for national office love visiting California when it’s time to schmooze with rich campaign donors, but they rarely make an effort to convince voters one way or another because California’s primaries come too late to make an effective difference in the Primary selection process and everyone assumes the state will go blue for the general election no matter what happens.
Same here. At least Trump won’t be showing up to screw up my commute like Obama did when he came up here for fundraising - which was the only reason he ever did show up.
If you want them staggered, why not have a random draw or something? Why always Iowa and New Hampshire? (other that their stupid state laws that say they have to)
Some restrictions on campaign spending so that poorer candidates can compete on a level (ish) playing field would be nice, too. But there’s that pesky 1st Amendment unintentionally screwing things up.
Not necessarily. The state went Republican for six consecutive Presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 and a number of times before that. Remember, Reagan and Nixon were both Governors from here.
(ETA: Reagan was governor, Nixon ran for that office but lost)
Then the solution is “find a way to allow candidates to campaign in every state,” not “allow a handful of small states to control the primary selection process.”
Excluding the majority of the voters from meaningful participation in candidate selection is inherently undemocratic.
