cellio | thoughts on election day (not about candidates)

Voting reforms I would like to see (unlikely as they may be):

1. No "vote straight party" options. The right to vote is important and was hard-won; it is not too much to require that you actually vote for candidates.

2. All voting is write-in. If you can't bother to learn, or write down, some approximation of the names of your chosen candidates, why are you voting for them? All reasonable permutations of spelling accepted (to be determined in advance for each candidate). Nice side bonus: it might reduce negative campaigning, which repeats the opposition candidate's name all over the place...

3. No handing out of campaign literature at the polls. Signs are fine (at distances specified by law), but no hand-outs that subvert #2 and create a waste problem.

The goal of all three: a more-informed electorate. When asked who you voted for you should be able to say something more specific than "the Democrat". It might take a little longer to vote and a little longer to count the results, but isn't it worth it?

And finally:

4. Ranked voting, so that people can vote for perceived dark horses without feeling they've implicitly voted for the greater evil among the front-runners. (You see this all the time -- "I'd like to vote for X, but the bad guy is ahead so I need to vote for the less-bad guy who could actually win instead". So other parties get few votes and the cycle continues.) There are merits to both the Worldcon-style "Australian ballot" (do Australians actually vote that way?), where you keep eliminating the lowest vote-getters until a majority emerges, and point tallies, where top position is worth N points, next on N-1, and so on, and most points wins. Either scheme is better than what we do now.

Now that would be an enpowered electorate!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Julia and I each voted for about 25 people

Wow. I had 4. Yeah, that would make a difference!

Note that I didn't say spelling had to be exact and that bringing in notes would be ok. I'm not trying to impose a literacy test, just trying to move people away from "oh, I recognize that name" or "vote for whatshisname because he's the $party". I encountered people today who could not name the person they had just voted for for Senate. One admitted to not even having read the names because that's what the "straight party" button was for. (No, I wasn't badgering anybody; these were conversations I overheard at the polling place.)

Regarding spellings, yeah, you actually are imposing a literacy test. Why not have all the candidates listed? Then you don't have to argue is MacGregoire or Gregor close enough to Gregoire. That's going to be a big issue in the Alaska Senate race where the incumbent is a write-in candidate. And I fully expect that to end up in court (most write-in races have a series of "acceptable" spellings for the candidate name).

In addition, I could not have told you the names of most of the city candidates until I got our voter's pamphlet (and one of the races wasn't included) -- I just never saw any ads for them or heard much about them in the news. I googled them before voting.

Regarding voting party tickets, why not? If I agree with the party's platform, then why shouldn't I vote straight party? I know you want to see more voting for third-party candidates, but a lot of people believe that is either throwing away their votes or a de facto vote for the incumbent. Other people want to vote for a main candidate so they feel their vote counts, but will vote for the "lesser of two evils." That's their right.

I think we will probably have to agree to disagree.

S

I agree with

cellio on the straight party option. Everyone who votes should have to make the same number of touches, ovals, etc. to get the same result. No shortcuts. I also wish that every ballot choice had the "abstain" option, so that a voter is required to make a choice. This serves as an additional check on the vote counting (the number of "votes" for race A is the same as the number of "votes" for race B). If they aren't the same, then something was missed (or there was an error).

I have heard that some states have "none of the above" as an option on all ballots, which sounds interesting. If NotA wins do they throw everyone out and start over, I wonder?

This is an option I could get behind. I don't like McMurray, but her challenger is even worse.

S

I like the abstain or none of the above options. If a certain percentage of the voters don't vote on a race, a new election should be held (of course that's expensive).

But regarding straight party options, I agree it's less than ideal. But people have the right to vote that way. It at least makes it easier for people to vote even if you don't think it's a good idea.

S

My whole point is why should voting be easier for some people than for others?

If there are four different races, for example, why should one voter have to make four actions to register their vote while another voter can register their vote for the same four races by a single action?

In addition, I could not have told you the names of most of the city candidates until I got our voter's pamphlet (and one of the races wasn't included) -- I just never saw any ads for them or heard much about them in the news. I googled them before voting.

So you took it upon yourself to become an informed voter (to some level), and went in with a list of names. Nothing in my proposal bars that. If you had not done this, and were seeing the names for the first time in the voting booth, do you feel your vote would have been informed?

Regarding voting party tickets, why not? If I agree with the party's platform, then why shouldn't I vote straight party?

Because candidates don't always follow the platform (or the parts of it you care about) and you might be voting for a whack-job without knowing it? Arlen Specter (until recently) and Pat Toomey are both Republicans but have very different platforms; Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton are both Democrats but there was so much division between them that some of their supporters refused to line up behind their party's candidate. Not all members of a party agree; why should I assume that a particular member of my party agrees with me?

Or look at it this way: for the last two years one party has controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. If they all agree on the agenda they should have been able to do practically anything, right?

I try not to make too many assumptions about people -- candidates or voters -- based just on party affiliation, because I think people are more complicated than that.

Washington puts out a voter pamphlet, which is a huge help. In PA, I don't recall getting one. So I was left at the ballot box with the option of voting for races where I *might* dimly remember something about a candidate (or at least I hoped it was one) or not voting on that race.

Regarding party ticket voting - if that's how someone wants to vote that way, it's their right.

S

Regarding party ticket voting - if that's how someone wants to vote that way, it's their right.

I agree -- one race at a time. Not by one big button that says "I don't care who they are even enough to look at the ballot; just cast an auto-vote and get me out of here".

There was one Cambridge election where a challenger in the City Council race had the same first and last name as one of the incumbents (Cambridge uses STV), but a different middle initial. Some people believed that the challenger had been put up as a straw candidate by opponents of this particular incumbent.

thoughts on election day (not about candidates)

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