thoughts on election day (not about candidates)

[cellio]

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!

Comments

Straight party vote

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

I've often thought that we SHOULD continue to offer a straight party vote option, but any votes made under that option would be worth half. Mark that clearly, of course. If you're in a hurry, or you can't bother to read the rest of the ballot, it's a quick way to indicate your preference without being informed. Your vote counts for less, though, because you're explicitly saying that you don't care who the candidate is and can't even be bothered to look through the rest of the ballot to find out.

I'd also like to see actual paper ballots of some sort. The lack of a paper trail is disturbing.

Re: Straight party vote

[cellio]

Interesting idea! That has a lot of appeal. Would probably be challenged on "one man, one vote" even though one man had the option for one whole vote instead of half of one, but it would be interesting to see how it played out.