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

Re: May I make a suggestion to you, since you're so concerned about security?

[cellio]

Seriously?

Yeah. Sometimes it pays to read the corporate newsletters. Now, given the way the company is structured, whether any particular location will go along with that hit to overhead hours is anyone's guess, but it's worth a try! (The policy requires 30 days' notice to one's manager, FYI.)

I would be bothered if I thought someone were able to tell who I, specifically, voted for too. (For the same types of reasons that I think votes to unionize a workplace should remain as secret ballots.)