A Modest Proposal on running elections
My current ideas on elections and how they should be run; a response to the current electioneering and all the stories about how dangerous and insecure voting machines are.
Part 1: Things I think are popular and doable in the short run.
1. Paper ballots. Every ballot cast has a paper backup that is archived and can be used in recounts.
2. Universal voter registration. You get a drivers license and you're 18, you're registered. You turn 18 and you don't have a license, you're registered.
3. The ONLY reasons to remove someone from the voter roles are (a) they moved and they informed you of the move or they registered in a different district (yeah, that would require comparing voter rolls across districts; that may be iffy), or (b) they die. Specifically, you can't remove them just because they haven't voted recently.
4. Make election day a national holiday. Everybody gets off except for essential health & safety personnel (and maybe they also get time off to vote).
5. Every state and local district has at least one month of early voting for every election AND early voting is done every day of the week, including weekends AND there's more than one place in your district to vote. The last one is, of course, to make it more convenient for everyone to vote.
6. The federal government should allocate waaaay more money to states to standardize their electoral procedures, machines, and processes.
Part 2: Things I think should be done, but will take more time and/or support.
1. All source code for all voting machines should be open source and should be reviewed by acknowledged experts in software development and computer security before it is used. They should be contracted and paid for this by the federal government and their reports should be in the public domain.
2. All electronic voting machines should generate a paper backup ballot that the voter has the opportunity to review before they cast their final vote. The backup ballots should be saved at each polling place and then transmitted to the counting location. No electronic voting machine should be connected to the Internet.
3. NO Internet voting should take place until it is proven (yes, proven) that voting via Internet connected devices (smartphone, tablet, computer) is at least as secure as executing financial transactions over the Internet (your bank & credit card transactions, for example).
4. There should be state and federal election commissions to regulate and review all voting machines. All voting machines (including upgrades to the software) must be approved by their relevant commission before they are distributed for use.
5. All elections should use ranked-choice voting.
6. All election results that use electronic machines should be audited immediately after the polls close and the votes have been counted.
7. All voting precincts should use the same style of voting machine. (Having half-a-dozen different voting technologies is just silly.)
8. For any federal election there should be mandatory rules on process and machines at the federal level.
Part 3: Things not directly related to voting or voting machines that I think need to be done as well. (and probably won't)
1. U.S. national elections should be limited to 6 months before the actual election day. No candidacy announcements and no campaigning are allowed until inside that 6 month window.
2. No private monies should be spent on national elections. All the money should be allocated by the federal government. (Failing that, see numbers 4 - 7 below.)
3. There should be a cap on the amount of money a candidate can spend on the primaries, and another cap on how much they can spend on the general election. (Hey, the British kind of do this. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_funding_in_the_United_Kingdom)
4. Corporations should be forbidden from contributing to candidates or parties and should not be allowed to run political ads at all. (Corporations are NOT people and don't have First Amendment rights.) Labor unions and other special interest groups (Say, the Sierra Club or the NRA) should be treated like individuals where campaign contribution limits and timing are concerned.
5. All political action committees and super-PACs should be banned.
6. The equal access provision for broadcasting should be re-instated by the FCC for federal elections.
7. There should be a maximum amount of money any individual can contribute to a single candidate in the primaries and in the general election. Let's say something like $1,000.
That is it for now, but I'm sure you and I can come up with way more interesting and safe things to do for elections.
