Two things really shock me:
1) There are, according to the highly suspect election results of 2000, roughly 50 million voters who thought that George W. Bush and his administration was their best choice in 2000. That baffles me. Even worse, according to the polls – a lot of those ~50 million STILL think that Bush is the best choice. That astounds me – we’ve got four years of his record, how can anyone vote for more of the same?
Alone, that first thing is appalling, but acceptable – because it looks like there will be over 120 million voters this year, and simple math means that Kerry will get a big win of the popular vote; except….
2) Elections for national offices, are determined by laws in 50 independent states, and they do not comply with any reasonable standards to guarantee integrity. The simple fact is that no one who votes on either the legacy (ancient) “Automatic Voting Machines” (the old lever mechanical beasts), or newfangled “Touch Screen” electronic voting machines will absolutely know that their own vote was counted correctly, unless there is also a printed copy of the ballot, that the voter can see but not touch, that stays in the polling place in a recount box. The sad truth is that most states using AVM or Touch Screen voting will have no such voting trail; and I am fully confident that ESNS, Sequoia, and Diebolt will deliberately mis-count the votes in those machines where a paper recount is impossible.
The bad news: The system is already hijacked.
The good news: it has been for many years, and we the people will not tolerate that hijacking anymore, and slowly (far too slowly) election systems will be forced, by public scrutiny and demand, to become more and more transparent to the voters. Elections will only get to be more and more fair.
No matter who wins tomorrow – we need to battle, in each state legislature – for verified voting. Preferably for plain old paper and pencil ballots (they are cheaper), but at least for verified paper trails on all automatic machines (mechanical and electronic) – paper trails that stay in the polling box (to avoid extortion scenarios) and paper trails that are manually counted in at least 0.5% of all precincts every election, randomly chosen.
Furthermore, we need to fight in each state legislature, to switch from the traditional, simple, un-democratic, least-of-all-evils “Pluralistic” voting, to any of the following voting systems, all of which are better: 1) Instant Runoff Voting, 2) Borda voting, or 3) Concordet (though that mandates expensive electronic systems). All three are better at sorting out the people’s combined choices when there are more than two choices. In 2000 in would have left people free to vote for Nader, Gore, and Bush last – and Gore would have won with a wider margin than he had.
Ballots should not list the candidate’s party affiliation, and multiple candidates from each party should be allowed (this opens up areas where on party totally dominates, and prevents ignorant voters from easily sweeping one party behind a single well known name).
Any counting software used in tallying the vote absolutely must be source code visible. Public review of the counting software must be available to any voting citizen, to prevent even the illusion that there is improper counting.
We ought to at least have a good national discussion of the Electoral College and whether it is still useful. It was meant to protect small states, from larger states in a loose federation of largely independent states. The American Civil War ended any pretense of the loose federation, and cemented this country with a strong central government. Why not at least make the election of national offices (President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. Congress) subject to national election rules? Why should I as a Virginia resident, have to accept Wyoming votes as superior to my own and Florida election practices as trusted as my own? It is time to at least standardize election practices for nationally held offices, and discuss the possibility of amending the electoral college to be more even, if not drop it all together.
It is enough to make me seriously consider running for Virginia State Assmbly seat 013 (the seat I am living in) in the 2005 elections… but that would mean a change of jobs and careers, at least temporarily.
