Time to fix our broken electoral system
Regardless of whether your candidates and/or issues won at the polls this election, it is imperative that we as a nation fix our broken electoral system. So much is wrong with it, it’s hard to know where to start. But begin we must, and finish we must, if we are to honor what our forefathers tried to establish: a government by, for and of the people.
Right now, we have a government by bribery, paid for by huge financial interests, and of corruption. Although the GOP has done a great job of highlighting this fact for us, with an arrogant abuse of power so profound even die-hard Republicans voted Democrat in protest, nothing much will change unless there is fundamental, sweeping reform of the system. The challenge is made all the more daunting because it is the elected leaders in Washington that must make the changes. Since they got there by raising big sums from corporate donors (Dems and Repubs alike), and they wish to remain in power, the only thing that is likely to convince them to change is a massive, united movement from the grassroots – citizens like you and me.
Our leaders should be accountable to us, not big campaign donors. We absolutely must stop listening to the corporate-financed campaign commercials, and start using our brains, researching, talking and learning about which candidates would really help make these important changes, changes that could save our democracy from the steep decline we now find it in.
Besides taking big money out of the political machinery, we must also take the machinery out of politics – namely the easily-manipulated electronic voting machinery. This is one place complicated, secret technology does not belong. Yes, there has always been election fraud, but never has it been so easy to do on such a potentially large scale. If we are going to have machines counting our ballots, then at the very least we should:
• Have open source software on them, inspected by bipartisan panels – there is absolutely no good reason to keep the software proprietary and therefore secret – these are public elections!
• Use voter-verified paper ballots, printed for each voter, which they can verify before casting.
• Completely RANDOM audits in every district. If no anomalies are found in the audit, then accept the vote. If there are discrepancies, a hand recount should be automatic for that district.
Remember, with machines counting, there should be NO margin for error – the counts should match the printed receipts EXACTLY. Again, counting ballots with secret software is no way to run a democracy. The entire process needs to be completely transparent.
“There’s an erosion of voting rights implicit in our inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud.”
– DeForest Soaries, Bush’s first chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission
Right now, we have a government by bribery, paid for by huge financial interests, and of corruption. Although the GOP has done a great job of highlighting this fact for us, with an arrogant abuse of power so profound even die-hard Republicans voted Democrat in protest, nothing much will change unless there is fundamental, sweeping reform of the system. The challenge is made all the more daunting because it is the elected leaders in Washington that must make the changes. Since they got there by raising big sums from corporate donors (Dems and Repubs alike), and they wish to remain in power, the only thing that is likely to convince them to change is a massive, united movement from the grassroots – citizens like you and me.
Our leaders should be accountable to us, not big campaign donors. We absolutely must stop listening to the corporate-financed campaign commercials, and start using our brains, researching, talking and learning about which candidates would really help make these important changes, changes that could save our democracy from the steep decline we now find it in.
Besides taking big money out of the political machinery, we must also take the machinery out of politics – namely the easily-manipulated electronic voting machinery. This is one place complicated, secret technology does not belong. Yes, there has always been election fraud, but never has it been so easy to do on such a potentially large scale. If we are going to have machines counting our ballots, then at the very least we should:
• Have open source software on them, inspected by bipartisan panels – there is absolutely no good reason to keep the software proprietary and therefore secret – these are public elections!
• Use voter-verified paper ballots, printed for each voter, which they can verify before casting.
• Completely RANDOM audits in every district. If no anomalies are found in the audit, then accept the vote. If there are discrepancies, a hand recount should be automatic for that district.
Remember, with machines counting, there should be NO margin for error – the counts should match the printed receipts EXACTLY. Again, counting ballots with secret software is no way to run a democracy. The entire process needs to be completely transparent.
“There’s an erosion of voting rights implicit in our inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud.”
– DeForest Soaries, Bush’s first chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission
posted by James Israel @ 1:56 PM
1 Comments
